The Story of My Assassins (58 page)

Bajpaisahib arrived amid a flutter of his supporters and policemen, their elbows and shoulders widening a pathway for him. His appearance was significant. For some time rumours had been rolling that the romance between Donullia Gujjar and the wily brahmin
had begun to sour. Many felt the new police action and the cordon at the temple’s inauguration was his doing. His appearance here was an alibi, to allay these suspicions. He was a brahmin. He would never take on the brigand in the town square. He would mug him in some warm and intimate alley.

Gwalabhai touched the politician’s feet, and on his way out fifteen minutes later, Hathoda Tyagi caught his eye. When the assassin reached for his feet, Bajpaisahib said, ‘Should you be here? I am told they want you in five states now.’ Without straightening up, the young man said, ‘Guruji needs me here tonight. I will always be where he needs me.’ The old man said, ‘Well, be careful. These are not good times. And this place today has as many policemen as god’s men!’ Folding his palms, the assassin said, ‘I carry my life in my pocket, and am happy to give it away.’ The politician filed away the information as he vanished into the heaving crowd.

Just before midnight there was a sudden uproar as a manic band of sadhus and fakirs pistoned through the mob. In flowing beards and flowing ochre, wearing multiple necklaces and wristlets of exotic beads, high on god and high on hashish, they came chanting the glory of Shiva, clacking their castanets and beating their dholaks and banging their cymbals and strumming their ektaras.

Immediately, as the crowds made way for the soldiers of god, the soldiers of the state closed in. In this swirling noisy whirlwind of orange, somewhere, without a doubt, was the man they were looking for. Hathoda Tyagi too dissected the swirl. Could it be that one? The not-too-long beard, partly grey; the prominent hook nose; the firm wrist holding the ektara; swaying with two big men close by him. No, more likely this one. A big turban twirled around the head; strong shoulders; and even in the delirium of devotion, eyes that were open and watching. Yes, this was him.

Hathoda Tyagi mowed through the crowd to stay apace with the dervishes as they powered their way to the shrine, not losing sight of his mentor. All around, he could see and sense the policemen
working the sieve, looking for signals from their informers. The assassin’s hand hovered near his waistband. This was the day he had lived for. When he would kill to save Donullia Gujjar, display he had an asshole of iron, become part of folklore.

Then his eyes met the eyes of the man and he knew it was not him. Yes, they were open, but they shone with an empty abandon, a foolish immersion in the moment. The noisy frenzied orange blob was now squeezing through the main portal of carved sandstone, beginning to dance up the short flight of wide steps. At the head waited Gwalabhai, hands folded, delighted at the appearance of god’s armies. With his big shoulders Hathoda Tyagi pushed his way through, in parallel, up the stairs, and he spotted Guruji at the precise moment three pairs of policemen’s hands reached into the heaving bodies to unobtrusively pull him out. The giveaway was right there—the sneakers! The big unruly white beard with streaks of black, the dark skin, the wiry body!

The assassin reached into his waistband for his 908, poised to unleash mayhem, but suddenly found his wrist gripped in iron. He tried to hit out with his elbow, but the hand holding his wrist had trapped the arm too. By his ear, a firm voice, said, ‘Stay still, son. The world is an illusion. Nothing is ever what it seems. Those who adore the gods are taken care of by the gods.’

From the corner of his eye, in the shoving-screaming crowd, he saw a bent-over tired-looking man with a salt-and-pepper stubble and a bushy grey moustache, wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a loose maroon turban. On his forehead was a wet red tilak and in his ears round gold earrings. The assassin said, ‘Guruji!’ The bent-over man said, ‘If you call someone guruji, then he becomes a guru. Surely you know this. It’s written in our scriptures.’

Before the assassin could think of something to say, the bent-over man said, ‘Like the immense Bajrangbali, you are a man of purity and purpose and strength. Take his blessings, son, and become twice the man you are, and be quickly gone. Today is not a day to
linger. Our friends are behaving like our enemies, and you have many important things to do.’

Hathoda Tyagi said, ‘But Guruji, I am here to protect you.’

The bent-over man said, ‘I do not build monuments to the gods only to be then scared of men. There is only one mighty Hanuman and there is only one Donullia Gujjar! The policeman has yet to be conscripted who can pluck a hair from his body. Go now, son! Go!’

By the time he realized the iron grip on his arm was no longer there, the bent-over man had vanished, like a shadow in the dark, and the cavalcade of delirious sadhus and fakirs had swept into the sanctum, and the thousands of peasants and townsmen, the old and the young, the poor and the affluent, men and women, upper caste and lower caste had ascended into a crescendo of chanting, one with the gods, elevated into the divine.

For the next ten days the local papers quoted dozens of devotees who had seen Donullia Gujjar, and even touched him. No two descriptions matched.

The man who had been pulled out and arrested was revealed to be a harmless panda from the sangam at Allahabad. The sneakers were a gift from an American tourist.

The police superintendent received a public rebuke, two inspectors were transferred, and one sub-inspector suspended.

The district buzzed with speculation about the growing estrangement between Bajpaisahib and Donullia Gujjar, based on the shifting alliances in Lucknow.

The temple’s reputation soared, and hundreds of devotees began to visit it daily.

Hathoda Tyagi walked on air.

The old man at the farm said, ‘He called you son? He touched you? What do you have that the rest of us don’t?’

Courage. Loyalty. Asceticism.

Like the great god Hanuman. Servitor of Lord Rama. Embodiment of strength. Eschewer of all pleasures of the flesh.

For the next few years, as Donullia Gujjar’s swordarm outside the ravines, Hathoda Tyagi, with unemotional efficiency, battered and slaughtered the foes of his chieftain and of the people, sending brain and bone flying like confetti. Working alone, working with teams, he never asked questions and he seldom failed. Once a name was delivered unto him, the man was, for all practical purposes, dead.

He continued to live on the first floor on the farm—the old man, growing older, merely his vassal now—and lavished all his money and love on his multiplying dogs and had his scalp lapped daily by the buffalo. A few times his sports mentor, Rajbir Gujjar, came to visit him, but there was little left in common between them. The protégé had entered and colonized a space whose boundaries the teacher had dared not touch. With characteristic generosity the young man gave to his tutor more money than he had ever seen. It was after all thanks to him that he had found his asshole of iron, and found meaning in the shade of Guruji.

Thanks to Guruji he also gave up the eating of all flesh, and took to fasting on every Tuesday. Continually Guruji sent him gifts. Little personal things, a Rolex watch, Nike shoes, a Denim deo. Also new weapons, pistols, revolvers, even two grenades. He locked everything up in the steel trunk, and lived solely by his 908 and hammer.

Hathoda Tyagi was content. He had a mission. He had a guru. He had a god. He had his dogs and a buffalo. He had a roof over his head. And he had an asshole of iron.

He needed nothing else.

Then one day Gwalabhai drove up in a cloud of dust in a new blue Gypsy and told him about a man who was working for forces inimical to the nation. For the enemy. Pakistan. This man posed as a journalist and was cunning as a fox. He lived in the country’s capital,
Delhi, and was guarded by the police. A team would have to be assembled. Gwalabhai would help do that.

Guruji sent his blessings. And from the ravines, the others—Kana Commando, Hulla Mallah, Katua Kasai—their admiration and love.

This one was for the country. This one was for all Indians. They knew he would not fail.

Hathoda Tyagi—from the sugarcane fields of western UP, brain-curry man and ascetic disciple of Hanuman and Donullia—was overcome with gratitude and a sense of purpose.

‘K
afka!’ Jai said, slurping a mouthful of tea. ‘Read Kafka, read Miller, read all the business newspapers. That’s it! And pay no attention to god, and pay no attention to love! Power is the engine of the world, and sex and money its oil and lubricants. God is at best the invocation before you start the engine—meaningless if you have no engine to start! God is a goli, a multi-flavoured pill, invented by those who have power, money and sex, to give to those who have none! Love is another great goli. Some days we too swallow these golis. They feel good, like a joint, a temporary high! But they are not the reality. The reality is power, money, sex! And yes, there’s another goli—morality!’

And, I thought, the revolution. Sara, Kafka, Miller and Che Guevara. Power, sex, and the revolution! All in one unequal body, nailed singing to the wall.

We were sitting in his swank new office. Glass walls shaded with wooden venetian blinds; recessed white lights in the ceiling; a big desk heavy with stationery and books and magazines and papers and a gargantuan tea mug and a computer; a black-and-white picture of his wife behind him, her eyes and mouth in happy laughter; and a round table with four chairs tucked into it where important decisions about shaping the world could be taken with speed and intimacy.

Nearly three years had passed since we finally shed ourselves of the magazine. His beard was greyer, his hair thinner. Little else had
changed. He was still at the pulpit, his passion and eloquence undimmed. But the discourse was no longer state-of-the-nation, no more about democracy, liberty, equality, public interest, Gandhi, Nehru, and the idea of India. Now was the time of the philosopher of realism. In a flawed world, flawed humans pursued flawed dreams—the real triumph lay in being a master negotiator of this journey, whose engine and lubricants were power, money and sex.

‘Kapoorsahib! Remember him? We used to knock him, but he knew how to read the world! Kapoorsahib ran the world, Kapoorsahib is the world! You must understand, Kafka is not power, Kafka only understood power! Power is the Castle! Kapoorsahib is the Castle! You and I can only write about the phallus, but Kapoorsahib
is
the phallus!’

With a typical sleight-of-words Jai had made a virtuous thesis of his humiliation, our humiliation. In reality, Kapoorsahib had stripped and buggered all of us, Chutiya-Nandan-Pandey included, for many months before sending us on our way.

Kapoorsahib had taken on the financial cross of the company but had made each of us sign hillocks of documents higher than our knees, ensuring we initialled each page (we had to take breaks to rest our wrists). These documents made it clear that every legal liability for anything the magazine had ever done was ours. The three original investors had their high-powered lawyers read their agreements and argue about them, unsuccessfully, but Jai and I just signed wherever we were told. There were no lawyers we could possibly hire, and to attempt to read those documents was to enter a labyrinth of language and possibility that could fry your brains.

There was no point in contesting anything, either. If we had once signed away our life, liberty and lund to Kuchha King, Kuchha Singh and Frock Raja, then we were doing it a hundredfold now. Kapoorsahib’s lawyers had pioneered endless unintelligible ways of laying claim to them.

At the final signing at the lawyers’ offices in Connaught Place, in
a sombre meeting room with video-conferencing screens and dark teakwood furniture, the three original investors had not even cast a look in our direction. We had sat at the opposite end of a table huge enough to negotiate the buying of America, and signed our respective hillocks, one junior attorney by each one’s side to ensure we didn’t skip a single page. Just before the ceremonial disembowelment, Jai had attempted one last stand at Kapoorsahib’s feet. Should the two of us not be given some kind of severance fee, given all we had done to create the magazine? ‘You should be caned! For creating this fucking shambles. Across your dirty buttocks!’ Kapoorsahib used the Hindi word—chootad. ‘For taking on this garbage I should get the two of you for free! Put a leash on you and tie you to my door!’

Within the month, Jai had lined up a job for himself as a consultant with a television news production company. The money was real, and way more than anything our wretched enterprise had ever produced. It was also the key that once again unshackled his eloquence. Since then, in the last two years, he had floated on his soaring rhetoric to two job changes—the cabins getting swisher, the cheques heavier, the philosophy of realism more robust. Now he was astride a zebra, a round-the-clock news channel. Depending on the call of the hour it could be posited as a black animal temporarily painted white, or as a white animal temporarily painted black. Realism never dressed better, and Jai was the master of such dressage.

India had more such zebras now than in five millennia. And more masters of such dressage than ever before.

Of these, Kapoorsahib was an exemplar. Kapoorsahib was the phallus.

Once we were out the door, he’d brought in an old washed-up beast from the watering hole of the India International Centre. The city was awash with such animals: vaguely familiar names whose eminence was a mystery. Men who had once thundered morals on the editorial pages of the dailies, and now dissected Delhi over
whisky and soda in subsidized bars. They were all also zebra riders, and could be used by anyone wanting to dress up realism better. So the magazine had chugged on, now full of political and strategic bombast, and hardly any reportage. Jai said, ‘You can see what it is? It’s an iron poker kept in the fire. When it’s needed—if it’s needed—it will be taken out for a quick jab! It’s another Afghan carpet venture complete with the herbal tea and the lovely woman!’