Former Intelligence officer AS Dulat turns to fiction: Ranjit Soni operates in strife-hit Srinagar
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Earlier that day, Ranjit Soni examined himself in the mirror with the practised eye of a man who understood that appearances were intelligence work’s first defence. The bathroom was still steamy from the shower, and he wiped the condensation away with the edge of his towel to get a clearer view. At 50, he looked younger than his years – good genes, moderate drinking (by Srinagar standards) and the kind of discipline that came from understanding that your face was a tool like any other.
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What wasn’t visible in his reflection was the weight of his lineage. His great-grandfather had been chief engineer to Maharaja Hari Singh, the last independent ruler of Kashmir before the whole subcontinent went to hell in 1947. His grandmother, Rano Ratan, was the first woman in Kashmir to pass matriculation – an achievement that meant something then, in a world where education for women was still controversial. The Sonis had once belonged to that vanished world of Punjabi Kashmiris, families who had moved between Srinagar, Lahore, Murree and Peshawar as easily as others moved between rooms in a house.
That world had ended, of course. Partition had seen to that, efficiently destroying things that had taken generations...