new novel. First draft. -- BELOW THE BELT 1. MAKING HAY WHEN MATTERS ARE GOING HAYWIRE

My first independent assignment as trainee reporter for "BEHIND THE NEWS" daily was a tricky double-header thrice removed: Rape of an underclass Muslim girl and on-the-spot arrest of a high-caste Hindu boy, consequent communal riots and persistent confusion amidst demagoguery by opportunist rabble-rousers on all sides of the exotic Indian politico-theocratic prism. More importantly, manipulation by a media baron and the idiotic scoop-chasing shannanigans of a greenest of greenhorn reporter.

"You are lucky to get the opportunity, young Aryan Seth. A real break, if you know what I mean," Chief Reporter Pankaj "Spike" Roy said airily

That was the way the pusillanimous veteran of a million scoops made the introduction just before plunging me into the suicidal mode as a greenhorn following orders from the media baron Krishna Mohan, the Manipulator. "Mr. Mohan seems to be taking keen interest in your progress, Aryan," he said grudgingly' "It's developing into a big story. Look at all the angles."

"Isn't it a simple law-and-order situation?" I asked timidly.

"Never treat any assignment as simple in this country. Complexize it even if it is cut and dry," he snorted, dismissing my suggestion with an imperious wave of his hands: "Make hay while matters around you are going haywire."

"Go get behind the story. You are too much of a greenhorn to have gut-feelings .Facts, facts. facts, real facts.Not the facts police throw at you. Wade through the quagmire of all spurious leads. Self-doubt is suicide."

"Facts, facts, more facts. No value-judgments. Who? What? Where? When? Why? Answer all these questions and you can't go wrong. FACTS. that's all and fast!" A contemptuous dismissal of an idea even before it was born, a familiar case of early termination of pregnancy even before conception.

Delhi University dropout Hira Lal "Harry" was being held on suspicion of raping and killing an underclass Muslim girl Fatima inside the Old Convocation Hall. "That's your story, Aryan. Get straight to the point. Don't beat around the bush. The sex-starved junkie dropout Harry went for the Muslim girl and that's it," he said.

I was confused. Just then, the media baron stormed into the newsroom, puffing and panting: "My Safari van has been set ablaze!"

The tycoon was livid because his favorite vehicle, his Penthouse on Wheels, was reduced to ashes outside the Old Convocation Hall.

"What was it doing there, sir?" I stuttered.

He glared at me: "Never mind! Go get your rape story. Don't bungle your first assignment."

I was intrigued by the media mogul's interest in a small-time common crime. Besides, why was the Penthouse-on-Wheels burnt down and what was it doing at the campus.

I decided to overlook all briefings and went straight to the start: To the police station where Harry was being held. But he could not be traced by the duty cops. The officer in charge admitted that the young man could not be traced because scores of rioters were being detained because of the communal frenzy linked to the rape..

Harry found me near the skeletal remains of the media baron's burnt van. There was something disturbingly compelling about Harry, his bruised face twisted in an enigmatic frown, blazing eyes eloquently defiant and a curse frozen on his bleeding lips. He looked at me with contempt and hissed: "I am innocent. Billa and his cronies brutalized the poor girl. Police are protecting Mr. Mohan's son Billa and making me a scapegoat for a crime committed by Billa and Home Minister's son Viren inside that bloody van," Harry said, seemingly suspended in the time-space continuum of self-pity and hatred for the human race.

I had the story. My employer, the media baron, was a monster. So was his buddy, the Minister for Home Affairs. They wanted an innocent youngster framed for a heinous crime committed by the own perverted offspring. Above all, they wanted me, a nincompoop cub reporter, to frame Hira Lal Harry as the rapist killer of the girl he loved.

Harry's timid girlfriend Faatima slapped Billa, the bully, as he pinched her while she was picking up refreshments in an orderly queue in the college cafeteria.

"No one messes with me!" growled the only son of Krishna Mohan.

Harry froze as Billa slapped her on her pretty face "Muslim bitch! How dare you?"

Harry was devastated. A dreamy sensation of love was in the sultry air of the forlorn orphan's hollow life. He had carefully rehearsed what he was going to say to her in a few minutes. Instead, he screamed: "Leave the brute alone. Run! I love you." Here, the infirmity of the out-and-out coward in Harry had taken over.

What followed was indelibly etched on the dilated pupils of his mind's eye; his own statuesque immobility in a hurricane, unable to hear his screaming soul, muted by the sight of hooligans molesting the girl he loved.

"Go home, dude! She's only an untouchable!" mocked the Interior Minister's son...

"The most touchable untouchable," he stuttered; "She's a very special person. Leave her alone, sir."

"Get lost, creep!"

Harry was lost, really. He saw demons pounce on the girl in the middle of the cafeteria and carried her into the Safari van parked outside the Convocation Hall. Someone hit Harry on the head and he simply passed out into a hallucinatory mode, visualizing graphic depictions of gang-rape special effects involving five monsters dancing around the body of Fatima draped in a white robe lying on a bed of spiked black roses.

Harry never recovered from that vivid cataclysmic nightmare. When he came to, he puked. The girl lay naked in a pool of blood in the porch, dead, as dead as human decency.

"You are under arrest," Harry heard a cop barking at him.

"That's the story," I told the chief reporter.

"You are fired!" he shouted and spiked the sheets of copy.