New Delhi | Somewhere in Europe | Islamabad
March 25, 2025
A haze hung over New Delhi, dense with the smoke of early spring bonfires and the metallic taste of anxiety. The sky, once a hopeful stretch of dawn, had dulled into a dismal grey, the kind that carried weight in its silence. In the heart of the capital, shielded behind layers of sandstone walls, security cordons, and the hush of bureaucracy, the Indian Prime Minister sat alone.
The sanctum was a private space – far from the curated corridors of diplomacy and sterile grandeur of press briefings. Here, the air was still, heavy with silence that seemed to cling to the teakwood panels and Persian carpets like a patient predator. A dim yellow lamp cast soft pools of light on the mahogany desk where a single device blinked – cold, sleek, and silently ominous.
On its screen glowed a single line.
"The time to choke them has come. Water is your blade."
He read it again, then once more, though he had already memorized it. The words carved themselves deeper into his mind each time, like ripples freezing into jagged ice across a lake.
There was no signature, no seal of authority. But he didn't need one. He knew the voice behind the veil. Or thought he did. Over the years, it had come like mist in the night – an untraceable whisper in times of crisis. Sometimes the message warned of events no one else could have predicted. A flood. A border skirmish. An assassination that never made the papers. Sometimes the whisper prodded him – suggested actions so bold, so reckless, they seemed the stuff of fables. And yet, disturbingly often, those fables turned into headlines.
But this message was different.
It wasn't veiled in metaphor or cloaked in riddle. There was no hint of suggestion. This was an order, a command.
The Prime Minister leaned back in his chair. The leather creaked under him as if even the furniture bristled at the implications. He was a man known for measured words, for speeches sculpted from discipline, but inside him now was a storm. His thoughts spun like the desert winds of Rajasthan – hot, dry, relentless.
He rose slowly, gathering the weight of history on his shoulders. India, a nation of rivers and resilience, had abided by treaties older than the age of satellite warfare. But blood had spilled again in Kashmir. Children had died. Soldiers had been mutilated, filmed, mocked. And the public had roared for retribution.
He walked toward the heavy wooden door and paused.
A voice echoed in his memory, faint but fierce: "If they bleed our borders, we'll damn their thirst."
He didn't remember who had said it. Perhaps it was his own voice, in some darker mirror of himself.
In the adjoining conference room, tension hung like a blade suspended mid-air. The National Security Advisor, a wiry man with a mind like a scalpel, sat stiffly, his eyes flickering between the folders before him and the thick door behind which the Prime Minister had cloistered himself for nearly an hour.
The Chief of Army Staff, General Rawat, stood by the window, watching crows wheel and caw above the gardens. He felt it in his bones – change was coming. Not the kind that made the news, but the kind that broke empires or birthed them anew.
The door opened.
The Prime Minister entered like a man walking out of a dream and into war.
"Effective immediately," he said without ceremony, "India is suspending its participation in the Indus Waters Treaty."
Time stopped.
He let the words sink in, watching as jaws clenched, papers stilled, and hearts missed a beat.
"All technical meetings are cancelled. All water sharing shall be reviewed unilaterally."
The silence that followed wasn't mere absence of sound. It was the sudden void that emerges before an avalanche begins its descent.
The Foreign Minister, ever the cautious statesman, broke it. "Sir… That treaty has survived four wars. This is not just water. This is a declaration."
The Prime Minister turned to him. His eyes, usually calm reservoirs, were tonight, the surface of a boiling lake.
"Exactly," he said. "Let them understand that no blood-stained river shall flow freely from our land again."
A chill passed through the room. Not from the air-conditioning, but from something older, something elemental – rage dressed in the robes of righteousness.
That night, the world changed.
Satellite networks buzzed. Embassies typed furiously. Analysts stayed awake under flickering fluorescent lights. Media started buzzing.
"India Threatens to Cut Off Indus Water Supply to Pakistan"
"Treaty on Brink of Collapse After Kashmir Attack Fallout"
"UN Secretary-General Expresses 'Grave Concern' Over South Asia Crisis"
Prime Minister's Secretariat – Islamabad
In the marble corridors of the Prime Minister's Secretariat, panic had given way to precision. The Foreign Office's war room hummed like a disturbed hive. Files were dragged out of cold storage. Diplomatic cables flew across continents. Every drop of water was suddenly a matter of sovereignty.
But in Rawalpindi, inside the heavily fortified Joint Staff Headquarters, it was not the bureaucrats who set the tone.
It was the military.
General Azaad Ahmed, head of Pakistan's armed forces, stalked the room with the energy of a caged predator. Maps of river systems, dam structures, and disputed zones littered the table. His uniform, crisp and starched, did little to hide the rage in his eyes.
"They want to make this existential," he said, voice low and heavy. "If the rivers stop flowing, then so does restraint."
An aide attempted to interject, but a glance from Azaad silenced him.
He stopped before a satellite image of the Chenab River and jabbed a finger at it. "We've trained for war on land, in air, at sea. But not for a thirst-stricken nation. Not for watching our wheat die while they gloat across the border."
Someone whispered about backchannel diplomacy.
Azaad laughed, bitter and sharp. "We speak of peace while they aim to starve our soil. If we starve, they starve as well."
Outside, storm clouds gathered. Thunder rolled over the Margalla Hills as though nature itself was joining the conversation.
Somewhere near the Nepal border
Dawn
In the sparse highlands, frost still clung to the rocks, and the wind whispered in the language of wolves. Amid the towering pines and drifts of early spring snow sat a structure that, from a satellite's eye, appeared serene – a Buddhist temple, faded saffron and white, half-swallowed by the terrain.
But in a room close to the temple, serenity was a lie.
The walls were lined with tactical maps, explosives hidden beneath altar stones, communication gear disguised as prayer wheels. This was not a house of prayer. It was a theatre, and the actors had begun rehearsing their final act.
Mullah Ahab sat on a flat rock, robed in orange to camouflage his intentions. He did not pray. He watched.
A thin ribbon of water trickled past his feet – icy, innocent, oblivious to the chaos it now embodied. He bent down, scooped some into his palm, and let it spill back to the earth. Then he closed his eyes.
He was listening – not to the water, but to the fire beyond the mountains.
News had reached him. Delhi had taken the bait. Islamabad was cornered. The West would wring its hands, call for calm, but remain paralyzed by its own fears. The rivers of diplomacy would freeze. And when thirst began to gnaw at the people, when crops failed, and wells dried, the cry for vengeance would drown reason.
Exactly as he had planned. The second stage was complete.
He stood, the wind tugging at his robe.
Ahab turned to his lieutenant and spoke calmly, "It begins next week."
The lieutenant blinked. "Too soon sir, if they trace it back–"
"They won't," Ahab interrupted. "They'll suspect. They'll accuse. But they'll find no proof. That's the beauty of the whisper."
Far below, valleys stirred awake. Birds called to each other in songs older than borders. But today, the mountains did not echo peace.
Today, they echoed a warning.
Prime Minister's Chambers – New Delhi
The Prime Minister stood alone again, this time on the veranda outside his chambers. The sky was streaked with the first hints of dawn, tinged blood-orange at the horizon.
He looked to the northeast, where the rivers began their ancient journey.
And for a moment, he felt the weight of every droplet, every farmer who might gain, every child who might lose, every line of the treaty written by men who had believed that nations could share what nature had given.
Then he heard it again.
That voice. Soft, just beneath the surface of consciousness.
"Let the rivers carry your will. Let them become your sword. And may your enemies drown in their own thirst."
He closed his eyes. The decision had been made.
The water was now a weapon.
And war had changed its course.