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off somewhere over Odisha, was roused by his PR officer. Both men knew immediately that they were not at their intended destination, New Delhi, for they had flown into the Indira Gandhi International Airport often enough to recognize it.
    The lights dimmed for a brief interval as the power was switched from the jet engines to the generator. The PR officer switched on his mobile phones but they failed to connect to any of the networks. As part of his job, the PR officer needed to be available 24x7 – which was why, at taxpayers’ expense, the government had provided him with smart phones and SIM cards for every possible carrier. That not a single one among them was able to find a network – in the middle of the urban sprawl that he had witnessed as they landed – led him to suspect a jammer in the vicinity. In spite of himself, he tried all the usual tricks to get a signal – shaking the phones, holding them up above his head, walking up and down the aisle and sticking his arms towards the windows – but to no avail. Throughout the entire exercise, the prime minster kept looking outside, wondering about the retinue that should have surrounded them the moment they landed.
    Has the swearing-in happened already? The thought crossed his mind a few times as he waited. Each time it did, he dismissed it. They wouldn’t have gone so far without informing him. Dammit, they owed him at least that much!
    The stewards, the PR officer remembered noticing, had vanished into the cockpit as soon as the flight had landed – he had thought little of its significance at the time, but now, faced with the reality of being one of the two people occupying the fuselage of an entire aircraft, it led him to start thinking of possibilities. Foremost among them was the possibility of a hijack.
    This is why you should have gone in for engineering, he chided himself, instead of going against his father’s wishes and getting into media and politics. He was about to delve deeper on what might have been, when the door to the cockpit opened and the captain stepped in. He took off his cap respectfully as he approached the prime minister.
    ‘What’s the problem, Captain . . . Munde?’ asked Kuldip Razdan, narrowing his eyes to read the name off the badge.
    ‘I am extremely sorry, sir,’ said Captain Munde, ‘but I’ve been ordered to seal the aircraft under further orders.’
    ‘Whose orders? Head office?’
    ‘Erm . . . no, sir. These orders come from someone . . . else.’ The captain’s eyes darted about nervously between the prime minister and his PR officer. ‘I was ordered by my superior, and he was given his own set of orders . . . I hope you will forgive me, sir. But you will want for nothing here, certainly. My crew and I have made all the arrangements for your comfortable stay, for as long as it takes, and if you need anything, you just need to . . . erm, press this button here,’ pointing to the call button overhead, ‘and we’ll be right with you.’
    Without waiting for a response, he turned on his heels and started to hurry back towards the cockpit. Catching sight of the PR officer, he mumbled, ‘Sorry, sir. All mobile phones and other electronic devices need to be switched off at this point of time.’
    16th September. Ghaziabad.
    At the stroke of noon, a platoon of commandos entered the Julius Room of the International Conference Centre. The delegates within – leaders of most of the other parties and factions that constituted India’s political spectrum – were caught by surprise. Despite the fact that three separate mobile jammers had been humming silently for the last ninety minutes, the delegates were hurriedly divested of all communication devices with them. A cordon was thrown up around the building and every employee caught within running distance of the Julius Room was herded back inside.
    The whole operation reminded the delegates of the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai, when a group of heavily-armed terrorists from