The Story of My Assassins (64 page)

When I told him I was a journalist, he spat a thick gob into the tin, and without preamble, mumbled that he knew nothing about his son, that he had not seen him in a few years. My shadow picked up a mooda lying close by, took it to the corner of the yard, and sat down, looking at me in contempt. It was his luck to be detailed to guard a low-life like me.

When I persisted, the old man said his son had been seduced by bad company and forced into the wrong life. There was a lower-caste man, a Gujjar, a sports master in his school, who had taken control of his son, debased him. Tyagis, such as he, kept no truck with that criminal caste—not of friendship, not of marriage. Did he know that before a Gujjar father married off his daughter, he checked whether his son-in-law could scale a tall wall quickly and as swiftly crack open a closed window? A man of such a wayward caste had snatched his boy away.

But the boy was his boy, still a good son. He had, over the years, taken care of their land disputes in the village, and regularly sent
them money. When his sister was being tormented by her husband he had had the man’s legs broken; then sent him money for the repair.

Just then a thin old woman came out of the black hole in the brick wall, her salwar-kameez frayed and colourless. The dogs rushed to her, circled her, tails wagging, and then settled back under the charpoy. She peered at me through her thin-rimmed glasses and asked, ‘Guddu has sent you?’ I told her who I was, and she said, ‘Have you met him recently?’ I said no, and she said, ‘Well, when you meet him tell him that Lalli’s husband has begun to thrash her again, and the doctor says his father needs to have his knees operated, and the buffalo we had bought from Ghomuru has died, and his mother moves closer to the cremation ground every day, and if he would just come by and show her his face once, she would feel bathed in the peace of eternity, and there is just no money at home.’ She moved towards the cattle trough, and then turned back and added, ‘And tell him I am still waiting to get him married so that Gyanendra Tyagi’s blood-line does not die out!’

I was still framing a reply in my mind when the old man suddenly put down his Bournvita tin with a clatter and said in alarm, ‘Is he okay? Have you come with bad news?’

The old woman said from the trough, ‘The shastriji had said at his birth that no one can hurt him. His stars are like Hrinyakashyap’s. He can only be harmed in a place that has both sunlight and shade; he can only be harmed when he is moving and not still; he can only be harmed when his belly is full; he can only be harmed when he is hidden from view; he can only be harmed by a slain enemy; and he can only be harmed when he is trapped between friends. For all these things to come together is a near impossibility. To kill the evil Hrinyakashyap, Lord Vishnu had to appear himself and bend the elements. And we know the gods don’t descend into this country any more.’

I said he was fine. There was no bad news at all. As far as I knew
he was in good health and high spirits. And Lord Vishnu had not yet descended.

Just then the shadow leaned back in his flatwood chair and took out the iron from his crotch and began to caress it. The old man instantly let out a bloodcurdling shout and began to wildly spew abuse, calling us sons of catamites, whores, eunuchs and sweepers. The woman turned around from the trough and charged on hobbling legs, screaming similarly. The dogs exploded like gunfire from under the charpoy, yapping and baying, and darting at our ankles. I tried to tell the old couple that he was a policeman, my guard, but they were beside themselves with drooling rage. The old man even managed to pick up and fling the Bournvita tin at me, and the crazy old crone charged as if she were an armoured carrier out to flatten us.

We beat a retreat with the dogs yowling us all the way to the car.

Inside the air-conditioned car, the shadow said, ‘Arre sahib, why do you get familiar with such low-borns? One should always keep them at an arm’s distance.’

That one foray cured me of all curiosity. I dropped my half-baked plans of visiting Bareilly, Chitrakoot and Keekarpur off the Grand Trunk Road and, in fact, failed to make it even to the nevernever-land platforms of the New Delhi railway station. Sergeant Sara and her bleeding hearts band could carry on with their show, egged on by cheering groupies. I had a life to live.

Guruji and Hathi Ram and Dubeyji were right—this country was crazy and out of control, and these men were killers and criminals and waywards, and had to square their sordid accounts. I was through with orphans, charmers, chisellers, knifemeisters, hammermen, penguins in courts and rodents in castles, and the labyrinth of all their travails. I did not make the world and I was not responsible for it. Bhallaji and Chutiya-Nandan-Pandey and silhouettes
in castles were free to run it; and Jai and his media choir, to sing of it.

Vedanta had, millennia ago, declared it all an illusion. Maya. All of it. The suffering of the waif and the pomp of the emperor. To fret was naïve. In the scale of eternity we would all be perfectly balanced out. I forgot about my assassins, and after a few attempts at reconnecting—that were rudely snubbed—I forgot about Sara too.

I did not take the mound of money offered by Jai to squawk on TV, and I did not make the thirty-day pilgrimage to Kailash Mansarovar. The very thought of chanting alongside mindless traders trekking up to the icy abode of Shiva to ask for some more money exhausted me. Instead, I decided to learn Sanskrit.

It would have been as easy to learn American football. As I looked for a place to start, a bewildering array of schools and approaches hit me. I didn’t want to sit in an open-university classroom, nor under a tree with my head tonsured. An old Tamilian at the newspaper’s copy desk found me someone who would come home. This Dr Sarma was older than my father, wore a dhoti and sandals, and in his first few tutorials I struggled to understand a single word. It was not just his Telugu accent, it was also the numbing abstractions—of religion, language, and culture—that he piled up without drawing a breath. I understood why for centuries the language had been learnt by rote—there was no other way to hold on to anything. He sipped coal-black Elizabeth’s tea and swayed to and fro, and intoned in a singsong drone, and I was mesmerized.

Some weeks later, I cornered my colleague and asked him for someone younger. The new man who came was from Kerala, wore jeans and white bush shirts, and cracked jokes in English. He was also a fan of Hindi films. Slowly I settled down to learn the mother of all languages, to acquire the words in which the cosmos was first explained, before colonial buccaneering vanquished it all, word and meaning.

At the newspaper I realized how far in the world a minor
reputation could carry you. On the basis of that one exposé which had brought on nothing but ruination and killers and shadows, I was treated as a savant. My specialization was presumed to be state policy and strategic affairs. For days I could coast around doing little, and then to register my presence, hammer out a few banalities about some national issue on one of the opinion pages. Sometimes, even simpler, there was an interview, a pointless ping-pong with some minor minister that could be conducted and banged out all in the space of an hour. Few things are less taxing than modern journalism.

For pleasure and peace there was the parlour on the second floor, above the crockery and the utensils, with Jesus Christ on the way up. The bitter-chocolate skin, the kinky hair, the hands dipped in oil, the fingers supple from needlework.

And I jogged every day at the Saket sports club, where the women got trendier and the men prettier. I would pound the bitumen track till I had sweat out all foolishness and sentimentality, and all illusion was dead and my mind was clear and still as a sheet of glass. It was meditation on pumping legs.

The shadows were still there, and I only noticed them if they were missing.

And then I had the encounter.

It was the month of March, and I was on my way to Abu Dhabi for a two-day conference on managing tensions in South Asia. At Muscat I had to change a flight and for the four-hour layover I had been seated in the first-class waiting lounge. It was cavernous and plush, and in bad taste. In India it could have housed twenty families. Apart from me, that vast space of sofas and settees and chairs and tables contained only two other women huddled in a far corner. They were draped in such comprehensive hijab that only their fingers
were visible. After a few visits to the food counters and the toilets I slumped into a maroon satin sofa and fell asleep.

When I woke suddenly, chilled by the soundless air-conditioning, I found a man seated across from me, looking intently at my face. He had a neatly trimmed beard around a strong nose, and was clad in a cream-coloured salwar-kameez. His glasses were strung on a chain of black beads around his neck and there were traces of henna in his thick wavy hair. I gave him a tight smile, and he said, ‘I know who you are and what you did.’

I said, ‘What do you know?’

He said, ‘I know you exposed corruption in the agriculture ministry, and I know there was an attempt to kill you. Do you still live under police protection?’

I said I did.

He said, ‘But I hope you know that actually it was nothing to do with you. The plan to kill you was really aimed at getting rid of some others. It’s true you could have been killed—but that wasn’t really the purpose of the plan.’

I said, ‘What
was
the purpose of the plan? To get rid of whom?’

He said, ‘Did you ever meet your killers?’

I said, ‘Yes. Once. In the courtroom.’

He said, ‘Do you remember a young, very strong-looking boy?’

I said, ‘Hathoda Tyagi.’

He laughed aloud and slapped his hands together. ‘Hathoda Tyagi! Yes, Hathoda Tyagi! You know that name too! Do you know who he worked for?’

He was speaking in a flowing mix of Hindi and English, and now I noticed he had gold rings on most of his fingers, with different coloured stones in them.

I said, ‘Some criminal don. In Chitrakoot?’

He said, ‘Not just some criminal don, but Donullia Gujjar, one of the most dangerous and powerful dacoits ever seen in that part of the world. Do you know anything about him?’

I said, ‘No.’

The air-conditioning had got to me and my bladder was bursting, but I didn’t think this was the moment for me to break the conversation.

He said, ‘The problem is, Donullia did not live his life in English. That is why you don’t know about him. If he had been shooting beans instead of bullets, and cutting carrots instead of arteries, and speaking chutterputter English, everyone would have heard of him, from Delhi and Bombay to Madras and Muscat. And if he was a woman, like Phoolan Devi, you all would have made books and films on him and elected him to Parliament. But let me tell you, he is a far greater dacoit—far purer. He’s always lived like one—on his feet, in the jungles and ravines. Do you drink Coca-Cola?’

For a moment I thought it was a trick question. Then I said, ‘Yes.’

He got up and walked away to the end of the cavernous room and turned into the service area. The big face was not misleading. He was a large man, probably over six feet. Beneath his cream salwar-kameez he wore well-buffed leather sandals. I scampered to the toilets at the other end, and had to close my eyes to concentrate before my piss found its flow. The soap smelled like strawberry dessert, and I splashed palmfuls of water on my face.

When I returned, he said, ‘I thought you had jumped on to the first plane and fled.’ The two women in hijab in the corner were playing a hand-slapping game on the table, and tittering. It was impossible to tell how old they were, but from their frames they did not seem like girls. The man said, following my eyes, ‘Beneath our skins we are all the same. All seeking a moment of joy.’

I said, ‘And what’s your name?’

He said, with a patronizing smile, ‘Rashid Iqbal. They call me Iqbalmian. But how does my name matter? It could be Jalal-ud-din Akbar. What I know is what matters. What I have to tell you is what matters.’ He took a sip of his glass and said, ‘Coca-Cola from the tap is never as good as it is from the can.’

I said, ‘What do you do, Iqbalsahib?’

He said, more Hindi less English with every exchange, ‘Some business and some politics. But I could be a carpenter or a barber. How does that matter? What I can do for you is what matters. My main profession is the making of friends. In our village we say, profits are good but true wealth is friends. Now see, in the waiting room in Muscat, I have suddenly become richer. I have made you my friend. So you must call me Iqbalmian, and I must do whatever I can for you.’

I said, ‘Iqbalmian, you are from Chitrakoot?’

‘Thereabouts. Wherever the gods are, Iqbalmian is. I know UP is the size of three countries, but all of it is ours. You know this boy, Hathoda Tyagi, he was dreaded like few men I have heard of in my life. He had no weaknesses and he had no fears. He broke men’s heads like you and I would break eggs, and he never failed. And he was loyal only to Donullia—he was like a son to him. They say when Donullia heard Hathoda had been arrested, he raged for days, slapping his men, demanding to know how it could have happened. Donullia may be a great dacoit, but he is only a Gujjar—a very cunning Gujjar, but nothing in the face of the cosmic wiliness of a Brahmin.’

I said, ‘I don’t understand.’ I felt I needed to immediately put Guruji, Sara, Hathi Ram, and the rodent on the speakaphone to make sense of this one. And the king penguin, Sethiji, to read out my legal rights.

He said, no longer smiling, ‘Bajpaisahib. The Chanakya of politics in our area is Bajpaisahib. For years Donullia and he were partners. Donullia ensured no one ever contemplated challenging Bajpaisahib’s political hold in our area; he ensured the votes fell as Bajpaisahib wanted. And Bajpaisahib ensured no police officer could keep his chair if he dared to set his sights on Donullia. They were also business partners. Donullia’s brother, Gwalabhai, was his front-man. Gwalabhai lives like a real seth while his brother sleeps under the stars and trees. For many years Bajpaisahib was aligned with the
Yadav supremo of our state; and as the Yadav came to power and prospered so did Bajpaisahib and Donullia. The dacoit often sent his men to the Yadav’s aid in other parts of the state. Together, Bajpaisahib and Donullia were a lethal combination—political power, money, and the gun. But you know, while Allah gives men hope and paradise, he also gives them a chance to make a fool of themselves. Gwalabhai, sleeping on the soft beds made out of his brother’s hardships, woke up one morning and decided good food and a good life were not enough, he too wanted political power. Cars with red lights, government bungalows, his picture in the newspapers giving speeches and cutting ribbons, and the superintendent of police and the district magistrate jumping to his instructions. Why should Bajpaisahib alone have it all—especially since it was obtained on their muscle? Do you want more Coca-Cola?’