Piyali Basu and Shalmili Dey had known each other since their days in Journalism School. After graduating from college both started working for an internet based tabloid in Kolkata that published juicy gossips and scandals involving celebrities. Their job profile included dipping into the lives of celebrities, following them around lo get a glimpse of their hidden activities and then writing articles that garnered excited response from the youth. Young girls and boys awaited eagerly to lap up the contents as soon as it was posted on the webpage of the tabloid.
For a while, they enjoyed the work. Getting to see and follow their favourite celebrities was like a dream come true. However, with time chasing after youth icons and young models became tiring. There was no substance in the stories they wrote. Mostly they catered to idle gossip mongers who have no regards for anyone’s privacy. The girls now wished to be the kind of journalists who fought for the rights of those who had no one in their corner. They have had their share of fun. Now it was time to become active participants of social revolutions. As journalists they wanted to unearth scams, expose corruption, take down people who leeched off the underprivileged, and bring justice to unheard. This thirst for righteousness led them to question their current job profile.
In a whim Piyali quit working at the tabloid. As easy as it was for her to sign the resignation letter, finding a new job in a metropolitan city like Kolkata proved to be an uphill task. Shalmili being the calmer one continued working for the tabloid while applying at other places. For weeks the two kept giving interviews and getting rejected. The experience of working for an internet based tabloid was not considered good enough to be hired by newspapers and magazines of repute. Dejected Piyali often wondered if she had made the right choice. After three months and seven days of incessant rain of rejections, Shalmili received an offer to work at a local branch of one of the leading newspapers in Aizawal.
They were starting a new branch in Mimawl, a village lying at the international land border between India and Myanmar. Since the branch was situated in a tiny village with bare minimum facilities, no good journalist applied for the posts. The salary too was not very high. Thus the newspaper was ready to accept anyone with a little experience in journalism, fluency in English, and a working knowledge of any one of the languages spoken in the state. The local branch where Piyali and Shalmili were hired was headed by an idealist A. G. Roy. He aimed to fight against and eliminate the menace of drug trafficking spread in the region. Piyali and Shalmili’s experience in stalking celebrities earned them field jobs.
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Inhabited primarily by poor, illiterate, and unemployed people of tribal origin, served as a passage for smuggling contraband. Mizoram, the state within which Mimawl was located lies within close proximity to the Golden triangle area of Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam, popular for opium production and it’s illegal cross border trade. The business of smuggling men, women and children for sex and organ trade thrived in the neighbouring areas. Every street in the village was crawling with pill pushers.
Piyali and Shalmili befriended Bengali speaking women and using the trivial informations that they got from these women, the two understood connections, linked people to one another, and went after small time drug peddlers, local opium suppliers and other such criminals. The problem though was that most of the people caught or exposed were locals who dealt in small quantities of opium, and marijuana, none of whom actually knew anything about the bigger names in the trade.
Though the cases they worked upon were mostly low profile, Piyali and Shalmili felt like they were doing something worthwhile. This work gave them much more satisfaction as compared to writing juicy gossips and fake scandals about ill tempered celebrities. It made them feel useful. They now belonged to the class of people who worked for the betterment of the society.
One day a local informant came rushing to the branch office with the news that a large international consignment of drugs was to be received in a few months in Mamawl by the drug lord himself. It was a small village few kilometres from the international border, far from the capital city of Aizawal thus it was both easy and safe for the cartel to carry out their transactions. Since this involved a large sum of money and a major international supplier, the drug lord was to come to the village next day to instruct the local goons involved.
The news about the drug lord coming to the village was equally exciting for Piyali and Shalmili. Finally they were to get their chance of a lifetime. If they played their cards right, they would be able to go after the drug lord.
There was a lot to be done. They needed to devise a failsafe plan. Brimming with enthusiasm, the girls rushed to Editor Roy’s cabin only to find out that he had a completely different assignment waiting for them. A new IPS officer was transferred to the district recently. They were to go and interview him the next day. It was irrational, they protested. On the day they were about to get the biggest scoop of their careers, Editor Roy was sending them to a mere interview. This was not fair. But there was nothing they could do about it. If they wanted to keep working for the newspaper, they had to follow his orders.