ISSUE 52

‘PROPHESIONAL VERMIN REMOVING SERVISES’

Anykind pest removing. Anysize. Door 2 door delivery. Just send pic and 1 line describe of pest. Coast depend on type of pest.

‘Your wish is my command’

Fourteen-year-old Hutoka, handed the weighty responsibility of dealing with the giant rat in the kitchen, was the first to avail of this new service he came across on a WhatsApp business page. To his parents’ delight, the man arrived within thirty minutes, riding a second-hand scooter. The man, a nonlocal, attempted to introduce himself, but Hutoka’s father cut him off by ordering him to put on a mask before dealing with the hazardous work lying ahead. The man, now wearing a fresh black mask, fished out a sheet of paper and a pen from his backpack and requested a signature, but Hutoka’s father cut him off again by stressing that while the paper could wait, the work could not. And so, the man got down to it. He laid his backpack on the ground and took out a man-sized gin trap. On the plate of the trap, he placed a large brown pellet, and after requesting everyone to vacate the house for ten minutes, spritzed a fine mist on the pellet.

At the end of the ten minutes, the trap carried the severed head of a giant black rat. The rat had its eyes wide open and a smile stretched across its face, as though murdered by an overdose of laughing gas. Not a drop of blood was to be found on the floor. Hutoka’s mother, who was standing by the door with a maid with a mop behind her, promptly sent away the maid. Hutoka’s father, nodding in approval, found no reason to bargain with the service provider. He readily paid the ₹100 he was quoted. As he watched the man leaving on his scooter, with a zipped garbage bag containing the carcass of the rat, he stroked his stubble. He turned to his wife and remarked, ‘What a thorough professional. Look at him go and turn that hundred into a thousand by sundown. If our Naga lads had just ten per cent of his entrepreneurial spirit, we would be a wealthy nation!’

Hutoka, unable to contain his pride, shared this story with his classmates the following day. Most of them dismissed it offhand as another one of his tall tales, some of them listened because he seemed unable to contain his excitement, and one of them, Lipok, went home with a desire to share this story with his father. Lipok’s father, Mr Tiamongba, who was an affable man, often encouraged his son to share stories from school. Today was no different – he listened to the outlandish story with rapt attention.

At night, he listened to a different group of people. He was the first Chairperson of the recently formed Kohima Alcoholics Anonymous-Agri Colony Chapter (KAA-AAC). As the colony was full of alcoholics, the organisers ran into an awkward problem: there was a shortage of qualified candidates to fulfil the role of Chairperson. After an honest attempt to compare their drinking habits, the outspoken Mr Tiamongba, one week shy of completing six months of sobriety, emerged as the strongest candidate. His first order of business was to direct all thirty members to surrender their stash of alcohol to him. Each man was motivated to show up first and deposit his stash in the storage room of the community hall where they were to have their sessions. By the time each man introduced himself and shared his story, an hour had passed. Their families were expecting them by then, but one of the members raised a valid issue that prolonged their meeting by another hour: although they were from the same neighbourhood, they hardly knew each other, so why not take the opportunity to exchange their opinions on issues that concerned them all. This pleased no one more than Mr Tiamongba. Freed from the formal role he had to play in the first hour, he regaled his neighbours with a refreshing take on the issue of illegal immigration in Nagaland. There was not a trickle of fear on his face as he welcomed the additional productivity brought by ‘outsiders’. He concluded with the joke, ‘When you eat fruits produced on Naga soil, do you ask who planted the seed?’. The other members, impressed by his oratory, went home thinking that their chairperson could have attained such insight only by abstinence from alcohol.

After everyone had left, Mr Tiamongba found himself alone with the cartons of alcohol. The bottles had to be sorted for the bottle smashing event to which the press was invited. Tomorrow’s headlines would read ‘KAA-ACC members voluntarily destroy 500 litres of liquor from personal inventory.’ As he inspected each carton one by one, his fingers were halted by the ultra-matte finish of a Johnny Walker Double Black. ‘Ho ho ho!’ He smiled to himself in the semi-darkness of the storage room. He had tasted Black, but not Double Black. This bottle was too precious to be wasted on a publicity stunt.

Around 11 pm, Mr Tiamongba staggered home with just enough liquor to make him unrecognisable to his new neighbour’s dog. Now Rambo was not just any dog, but a dog in the process of adjusting to life in a new neighbourhood. All it took was for Mr Tiamongba to crash onto the neighbour’s iron gate due to a temporary loss of balance, to set off a chain of barking led by Rambo. The other dogs in the neighbourhood soon joined in, and before long, Lipok’s mother joined in too. After somehow managing to calm his wife down, Mr Tiamongba sat down by the fireplace, alone, to curse the dog.

Lipok was asleep, so there was no chance to confirm if there was any truth to the story he had shared earlier in the evening. There was only one way to find out. Mr Tiamongba stepped out of the house and clicked a photo of his tormentor. Triggered by the flash, Rambo set off another round of barking, but this time, Mr Tiamongba had this to say, ‘Bark all you want now, you stupid animal. Who knows? If this service works as advertised, this will be the last time you get to bark at me.’ The next thing he did was to send the grainy picture, along with the short description, ‘This dog barks too much.’

Immediately after he sent it, he said to himself, ‘Heh, what am I thinking? Not even Miyas work this hard – even they need to sleep. I should get some sleep too, and check in the morning if he got my message.’ Twenty minutes later, his phone rang. It was the service provider announcing that he was at the doorstep. The masked man put a shushing finger to his mouth and requested Mr Tiamongba to stay put. Then he drew a long pipe from his pocket and blew it. A sharp object flew out of it into Rambo’s belly. In an instant, the dog dropped dead without a whimper. As Mr Tiamongba stood in shock, the masked man displayed his phone screen with the Google Pay invoice of ₹150. As soon as he received the payment confirmation, he rode off into the night, a silent assassin with a dog inside a garbage bag.

The neighbour, Mr Zubenthung, organised a search party for Rambo the next day. Mr Tiamongba was only too eager to join the search to assuage his guilt. It did not take long for his overzealous involvement to raise suspicions, however, and one night, Mr Zubenthung confronted him. A series of lies preserved Mr Tiamongba’s innocence, but soon they plagued his conscience so much that he approached the pastor of his local church to unburden himself. The pastor, although forgiving, was disturbed by the means through which Mr Tiamongba had gotten rid of the dog. Faced with such a circumstance, the pastor felt justified in gathering all the other pastors of the town for an emergency meeting, at the end of which they arrived at a consensus about an ominous conclusion that they drafted: ‘If we cannot put an end to outsourcing our disputes, the end of Naga society is at hand.’

*

Meanwhile, The Verminator, as he was now christened by the grateful people of Nagaland, was on his way to becoming the byword for bespoke vermin removal. A quick look at endorsements such as these would give an observer an idea of his burgeoning reputation:

#1 pest remover in Nagaland. My worm-infested plot of 10 acres was cleared in an hour! (Google Reviews)

RECORD BREAKING removal of cockroach nest in 10 SECONDS! (YouTube link)

Nagaland becomes the first dengue-free state in India. (India Daily headline)

Nobody knew where he came from, but like Hutoka’s father, they did not care as long as he carried out his work. Any time the locals detected the slightest hint of vermin – it could be as minor as a recurrence of dandruff – they could rest easy knowing that their beloved Verminator was just a message away. When such a convenience was available at such affordable prices, the people of Nagaland sleepwalked into the notion that getting their hands dirty was now a thing of the past.

Now the only thing interfering with the total occupation of airtime and newspaper column space dedicated to The Verminator was the parallel coverage of a disturbing trend emerging in Nagaland. The first in this series was a report from YouTube channels Tragopan TV and Kohima Today on the disappearance of a girl from Postmodern College, Kohima, under mysterious circumstances. No sooner had a Special Investigation Team (SIT) been constituted to probe into the affair than the following headline indicated the second instalment in this series:

Two members of All Nagaland Youth Association (ANYO) vanish from busy street in broad daylight

Within three days, two more instalments were added to this series, each one progressively more perplexing:

29-member staff of Twinsang District Hospital evaporate into thin air
Congregation at River Cummerbund Colony Baptist Church abducted by mysterious flying vehicle

The public, who had finally achieved consensus celebrating a professional business venture based in Nagaland – which was possible because The Verminator was yet to be adopted by any tribe – were wrenched out of this once-in-a-generation moment of unity. Immediately, the loved ones of the affected citizens took turns to make their voices heard on the streets leading up to the Chief Minister’s residence in Kohima. ‘We demand an SIT!’ was the plea from each group, but it was futile as the Governor had advised the Chief Minister against appointing more than one SIT per day due to a shortage of qualified personnel. ‘SIT’s from outside the state!’ was the retort, but this too was quelled by the leaders of civil society organisations, who emphasised the perils of involving outsiders in the internal matters of Nagaland. Because the bodies had not been recovered yet, funeral plans were reluctantly put on hold. Naturally, such a state of affairs created the perfect moral vacuum for the pastors of Mr Tiamongba’s church to swoop in and visit the affected families. Following closely behind them was a bunch of reporters from Tragopan TV and Kohima Today. The sharpest fellow among the pastors was swift to notice the media presence. Without consulting the senior pastors, he grabbed one of the mikes and used the platform to drum up support for a state-wide Christian revival. When asked why he was expressing such unsolicited fervour, he glibly stated that evil forces were lurking about in Naga society.

However real these tragedies were, it was just as real that the outcry was limited to those families directly affected by the disappearances. The rest of the population of Nagaland was content to fill their news diet through Nagaland’s most productive industry, the rumour mill. This was the one industry where overemployment, rather than underemployment, was the norm. Among the contributors, those customers who had most recently availed of The Verminator’s services reported that he had traded in his old scooter for a sleek black car with tinted windows. And if reports from correspondents living in the remote areas of Nagaland were to be believed, this car was capable of flying across districts, thus cementing The Verminator’s status as a truly pan-Nagaland phenomenon. With the rate at which these new developments were taking place, the media fraternity was reduced to a flock of headless chickens, neither able to confirm nor deny these claims.

Such chaos in the fourth-smallest state in India could not be expected to give rise to anything other than discord, but above all odds, a voice of reason emerged, like a luminous hand rising out of an earthquake rubble. The owner of this hand opted to air his opinions through The Mithun Express, which he considered the only newspaper with an iota of social conscience. The article, two fingers long, penned under the name Lima Aier, appeared with this title: ‘Put the Genie Back in the Bottle!’ The tone was that of a false prophet befitting a writer who had deluded himself into thinking that he could speak for all sections of Naga society. As for the gist of the article, his point was that his fellow Nagas should learn to put two and two together, or rather, learn to read the left side of the newspaper headlines against the right. It was no coincidence, he pointed out, that the recent casualties had begun at the same time The Verminator’s business began flourishing. ‘Furthermore,’ he concluded, ‘when we consider the amount of power and money that we have handed on a plate to this outsider, it is crystal clear that he is the only person in Nagaland capable of devastation on this scale.’

Despite his noble intentions, Lima Aier was promptly branded a ‘pan shop conspiracy theorist with designs on wrecking the economy of the state by snuffing out the entrepreneurial spirit.’ As he was neither a politician nor a civil society leader nor a church leader, but merely a concerned citizen, he might as well have shouted his opinions into a well to unburden himself. But since he had scratched the itch, he got the trouble he had invited. On the evening of the day the article was published, Lima Aier was caught off guard when a group of unemployed young thugs from his colony barged into his house. Under duress, he was forced to retract his ‘incendiary statement’ and made to tender an apology in the next day’s papers.

In a series of amateur errors, the biggest one that the unemployed young thugs committed was thinking they could perform their task without wearing masks. The six of them were no strangers to Lima Aier. He knew that all of them were unemployed and in need of money, so his ridiculously straightforward task was to ask one of them, his neighbour’s son, to drive him to the town centre for double the regular fare. Without the protection of his pack, the young man wilted in the face of Lima Aier’s probing. It was revealed that the man behind the assault was none other than the newly elected MLA, Mr Tiamongba.

Mr Tiamongba? Was he not the former Chairperson of the KAA-ACC? Was he not the lone candidate from this upstart political party that ran their election campaign on the promise of championing local businesses? Was he not the fellow who held up The Verminator as a role model for Naga youths to emulate? Was he not the one who asserted that it did not matter who contributed to the state’s economy as long as they were based in Nagaland, that it was high time to discard the motto ‘Made by Nagas’ in favour of ‘Made in Nagaland’? Was he not the speaker in that viral clip where he joked, ‘When you eat fruits produced on Naga soil, do you ask who planted the seed?’

This new development did not derail Lima Aier’s original plan. As he walked towards the back entrance of The Mithun Express office, he felt even more convinced that he was on the right track. On any other day, Lima Aier could have challenged the editor to show his face, but such was his sense of purpose that he viewed the editor’s insistence on conducting business through the flap in the back door as a whimsy. He muttered a prayer and slipped in the sheet of paper containing his next contribution to the newspaper.

The next afternoon, while he was conducting background research on Mr Tiamongba, Lima Aier’s phone rang. It was a muffled voice, perhaps filtered through a handkerchief, at the other end. The caller had decoded the cypher in the paper and carried out the instructions. Where could they meet?

‘I’m sending you my home address. Make sure you come alone.’

Lima Aier watched with admiration as the young hacker showed him the screenshots taken from The Verminator’s phone. The screenshots revealed images sent to The Verminator by his clients, along with their accompanying descriptions:

• • A blurred image of a college girl with long fangs and black wings: ‘This girl from Postmodern College was texting my best friend behind my back.’
  • An image of two young men sitting in a library, wearing monocles and sharing a container of sada: ‘The President and the Vice-President of ANYO, have been floating a dangerous idea of demanding a separate state exclusively for the youth.’
  • An image of a group of doctors and nurses worshipping a piggy bank; ‘A den of thieves masquerading as a hospital!’
  • An image of a church congregation, dressed in their Sunday best, planting funny inflatable crosses on a plot of land; ‘I had gone away for my father’s treatment, and when I came back, I found a church in my backyard!’

‘Shabash!’ Lima Aier clapped his hands with victorious force. ‘Come on, let’s see some more.’

‘I’m sorry, uncle. He switched off his phone right after I grabbed the fourth screenshot.’

‘Ahh! Right, right. Okay then, let’s go back to the second message. I want to double-check the name of the sender.’ It was none other than the dishonourable MLA. Lima Aier recalled learning that the two ANYO executives had drawn the ire of Mr Tiamongba by calling him out on his lies. His lofty promise of championing local businesses had predictably turned out to be nothing more than hot air. This single screenshot would serve as indisputable evidence in the court, Lima Aier thought to himself.

Another conclusion, no less disturbing, became evident from the screenshots: the definition of ‘vermin’ had undergone a drastic revision in the dictionary of the Naga people.

*

‘Where’s your appointment letter?’

‘Your wall had an opening.’

This was true, for Mr Tiamongba’s newly allocated bungalow was undergoing major renovations, starting from the walls which he had deemed as not high enough for a VIP’s house. But this loophole alone was not enough to explain the unannounced presence of this cocky commoner. Who even wore a coat on a summer morning? And what was more, this was a coat that had clearly rubbed the shoulders of multiple owners. The coat, along with the stack of files this stranger was carrying, did a passable job of giving the impression of a pan shop conspiracy theorist.

‘What is your name?’

‘Lima Aier.’

‘From which village?’

‘Why does that matter?’

‘How can I help you if I don’t know where you’re from?’

‘I’m not here for your help. I’m here to give you notice that I’m taking you to court. You better have the answers for the recent tragedies that have befallen Nagaland.’

‘Acha, acha, acha.’ Mr Tiamongba looked this way and that in response to the sudden accusation.

‘That’s right. You need not say anything. I have it all here,’ Lima Aier said, tapping his stack.

‘Acha. You are some kind of lawyer? You are going to hand me a summons?’

‘No. I am merely a concerned citizen.’

At this moment, Mr Tiamongba, roaring with mocking laughter, raised his hand to halt one of his bodyguards who had belatedly spotted the intruder. ‘Go back to sleep. I’ll handle this joker myself.’ And then he turned to Lima Aier, who was standing erect like a pillar of justice.

‘Now, Mr Mystery Man! Tell me, what is it that I did to make you stiff like this?’

‘I’ll save my words for the hearing, but for now, I will tell you this: you know it was you who set off this chain of tragedies by misusing The Verminator’s services for your personal gain.’

‘Nonsense! If you’re so damn sure, why wait for a court case that will turn you into a grandfather by the time the verdict is delivered? Let’s settle it here and now! How much do you want?’

‘I told you I’m not here for money. I only want our Naga brothers and sisters to see, through your example, what happens when we are so incapable of resolving our conflicts that we resort to misusing a service that was intended to ease our lives. The Verminator was never meant to remove…’

‘Why don’t you just admit that you want to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize? When I first laid eyes on you, I wanted to laugh at you, but now I feel sorry. You think you are doing a service for the people, huh? You will know just how wrong you are when the people show their true colours.

I hereby challenge you to a public debate! THAT is how Nagas resolve their disputes in the 21st century, yes or no?’

‘Chalo! For once, I agree with you.’

*

Hon’ble MLA Shri Tiamongba vs Lima Aier

Public Debate

Topic: Who is more concerned about the future of Nagas? You or me?

Venue: Local Ground, Kohima

Time and date: 11 am, 19th July, 2025

Posters for the event were plastered all over the walls of Kohima, including the walls of schools and old-age homes. An army of volunteers was mobilised through the Kohima Municipal Council to ensure that every citizen received word of it. The aggressive publicity campaign could be attributed to the efforts of Mr Tiamongba, who expressed a zealous belief that all citizens, irrespective of age, had the right to witness a debate that could shape their future. Finally, a public holiday was declared for the convenience of the attendees.

This scale of publicity, way beyond what he could have reached through his meagre Mithun Express readership, gave Lima Aier equal reason to dream and doubt. On the one hand, he would enjoy unfettered access to the town as his audience, but on the other hand, he had gnawing suspicions about why Mr Tiamongba would express such enthusiasm for an event that could potentially bring about his downfall. There had to be a big reason behind the big talk – the MLA knew something he did not. The two debaters had agreed on an interval of one week between their conversation and the event. Lima Aier had chosen to invest this time into polishing his oratory skills and fattening the dossier of evidence against his opponent. But as he started his car on his way to the local ground, he wondered if he would have been better served by carving one day out of his preparation schedule to step out of the house and gauge the mood of the public.

Had this always been the way people looked when gathered in a crowd? Their eyes, as harsh as floodlights, shone so brightly on Lima Aier that he felt a shrinking sensation in his shoulders. He was aware of his lack of experience in addressing a public audience, an area in which, Mr Tiamongba had made his name during his election campaign. When his eyes first sampled the stunning kaleidoscope of Naga traditional shawls, Lima Aier put it down as a timely visual reminder of Nagaland’s cultural diversity. However, as he shifted from the panoramic view to a row-by-row view, a dreadful realisation gripped him. He counted no less than fifty-one designs among the shawls, triple the original seventeen, 102 if he counted the male and female designs as separate. As his VIP opponent was yet to arrive, he could afford to pass his time playing a painful game of spot the difference. To the untrained eye, this would have been an impossible task, but the differences existed, however subtle. Apok and Sanen, two men hailing from Lima Aier’s village, were sitting a row apart. And what was the absurd reason? The elephant motif in Apok’s tsüngkotepsü had two tusks whereas its counterpart in Sanen’s shawl had a single tusk! That was it.

What happened to the proud tribes of Nagaland? This fragmented collection of people could no longer be recognised as tribes. There was no end to Lima Aier’s disillusionment, as he realised he had been deceived by the sheer number of colours into thinking that this was a massive turnout when in truth the actual turnout was much smaller. There were just fifty people representing each tribelet. Was this what Kohima’s population had been reduced to? Was this, was this, The Verminator’s doing? Was this what Mr Tiamongba had warned him about? Was this the fate he deserved for failing to accept the ground realities of his society? Had he lost the debate before it had even begun?

*

‘Oi, get up!’ Lima Aier was woken up by a rifle butt poking at his ribs.

‘Ahh … what did you say? I won?’

‘You lost, you joker! Passed out in public!’ The armed assailant’s derisive howl filled the tiny cell Lima Aier found himself in.

‘Where am I?’

‘Brother, you’re in the Day Care Centre!’ two or three voices answered him from across the cell.

Lima Aier ran towards the locked door and shouted, ‘Who is that? And what are you here for?’

‘We are pastors from Mr Tiamongba’s church. This is where he locks up anyone who raises their voice against The Verminator.’

‘How do we get out…’

‘Oi! Come back to your bed right now!’ The guard pulled him back.

‘Why should I listen to you? Is this a prison? Are you a prison guard?’

‘You better sit down if you don’t want this in your ribs again,’ the man warned, raising his rifle.

‘Now listen. I entered your room to inform you that you will be out in five minutes. Here is your phone. You may make your last calls to your friends and family members.’

Something about the way he said ‘you will be out’ caused Lima Aier to make a desperate lunge for the phone. Five minutes was all he had, after which, he imagined, Mr Tiamongba would get rid of him. The nightmarish images he’d seen at the local ground were still playing in his head, telling him that Naga society was beyond salvation. He had exhausted all his powers of reasoning on their behalf, but something beyond reason was required to solve the issue of The Verminator. Only two numbers in his contact list would serve the final solution he came up with.

The first was his hacker friend. For once in his life, Lima Aier could not complain that young people were glued to their phones all the time. The young man picked up the call at once and promised that he would carry out the request in three minutes.

With one minute to go, he got the picture he wanted: a drone capture of Nagaland depicting hundreds of torn shawls draped over hundreds of divided hills. This picture was proof of the epiphany he had during the debate. He typed at a frantic pace: ‘As a concerned citizen, I can no longer watch the infighting among my people. Please put us out of our misery.’

With the ominous knowledge that this would be the last time he would tap his fingers on a phone screen, he sent his first message to The Verminator.

That was to be The Verminator’s final assignment in Nagaland.