by Arnab Ray
Arjun sat silent, stony-eyed, weighing his options. How much did she know? Enough to attempt a shakedown. He sure got this one wrong.
‘I did not kill your husband.’
‘Oh sure you did,’ she said, her eyes cutting into him like a razor. ‘Please stop pretending that you didn’t.’
Arjun repeated firmly. ‘I did not kill your husband.’
She appeared not to have heard him. ‘He told me all about his arrangement with, what’s his name, I have forgotten, some sardar. They were going to kill you. When he didn’t come back for two weeks and you came here instead, I put two and two together. The fool must have gotten himself killed. He was never very bright.’
‘So this is your attempt at a shakedown? I am afraid you aren’t too bright either.’
‘Oh no, no,’ she said. ‘I am not blackmailing you. If I was going to blackmail you, I would need some proof. I don’t have any. Plus I know you have good relations with the police from here to Nepal, constable to bade sahib, everyone gives you salaam, so who would trust a word of what I say? And then if all fails, you can shoot me dead, and with corpses washing up every day, what’s one more? I am not very educated, but I am not stupid. If you could knock off your best friend, who am I?’
‘Then why should I pay you?’
‘Do I have to spell it out? I thought men liked to say these things. Mardaangi. Isn’t that the word you use?’
‘I am not sure I follow.’
‘All right then, I will spell it out for you. You pay me for sex. Sex. I am sure this is the first time you have ever heard a woman use the word. So I will say it once more. Sex. You can do whatever you want with me, and I won’t say no. And if you have no idea what you want to do with me, I can tell you what you would like.’
Arjun felt hot. For a second, he wanted to rush out and breathe the air outside. His heart was beating hard at the possibility suggested and then again, he felt the strong sensation of shame.
‘I am a married man.’
‘That I knew from the moment you came in, the way your eyes froze on my chest. Only married men have such singular focus. Your eyes, the size of aadhulis, fifty-paise coins – a kid in front of a jar of peppermint lozenges.’
Just then the waiter came in carrying a tray with a teacup, a metal container full of sugar cubes and a bottle of Coca-Cola. She took the bottle, touched it to the side of her cheek, and Arjun could see the water droplets condense. She looked up at the waiter and said, ‘Good. That’s what I call cold.’ Then she smiled and the waiter seemed to forget whatever it was he was thinking, and turned away. Then he turned again and asked, ‘Shall I get you something to eat?’ He started rattling off the names of items like an automatic machine gun.
‘Veg pakora, chicken pakora, double egg omelette, egg roll, chicken roll, mutton roll, veg cutlet, chicken cutlet, mutton cutlet…’
Nayantara disturbed his flow and raised her finger. ‘Don’t you have kabiraji cutlet?’ The waiter nodded. ‘Then bring me one. And don’t skimp on the egg. And pack one kabiraji cutlet also.’ She looked at Arjun. ‘What will you have?’ Arjun’s stomach was tying itself up into knots. Food was the last thing on his mind. ‘I am good,’ he murmured.
‘So what will it be?’ she asked once the waiter had left.
Arjun reached into his pocket for a cigarette. He had been trying to quit for some time, but today he desperately needed the nicotine. ‘You can’t blackmail me now because you don’t have proof. Once you become my keep, which is what I think you are saying you want to be, that won’t be a problem. You will then get proof. Maybe a photographer friend will take a few pictures and I get an envelope of prints in my mail. Then you shake me down for more money, else my wife sees the photos. Or worse, I will be forced to marry you – that way your son gets his share too.’ He brought the cigarette out and put it to his lips. ‘Seen too many people get trapped by pots of honey for me to not know how this works. Played this game too many times to not know how this all ends.’
Nayantara was observing him with an air of gentle bemusement. ‘You have a high opinion of yourself to think that I would even want to marry you. I don’t want to marry anyone.’
‘But you married…’
She interrupted him. ‘I married Nilendu, your Bangali, because, I don’t know, I was twenty-one, a little silly and romantic. I regretted it within months. He blew his money on women and drinking while I cooked, cleaned and took care of the baby. Why? Because I was the wife and that was my lot. Well, I am over that. My son is the only person I want to take care of right now. And about blackmail, well, you just have to trust me on that. If you can’t, then fine, I take my envelope, we shake hands, and that’s about all the touching you are going to get.’
He flicked open his carton of 555 and turned it towards her. ‘Smoke?’ he asked.
She looked at the proffered cigarette. ‘No, thank you. But why do you think I smoke?’ She made a mock ‘I am thinking’ gesture. ‘Oh, I get it. Because I am one of those modern women you see in Hindi movies. Like Saira Bano in Purab aur Paschim before she gets tamed by Manoj Kumar. Right?’
‘Oh, you watch Hindi movies! Your husband used to sneer at them. Too low class.’
‘My husband sneered at everything. He used to sneer at Kishore Kumar. Can you believe that?’
The reference to Kishore Kumar broke the ice between them. As she sipped her Coca-Cola and he drew on his cigarette, they started discussing movies. He loved Hindi movies and so did she and they seemed to have exactly the same opinion on things. Both of them adored Shammi Kapoor, had mixed opinions about Raj Kapoor’s acting abilities, and hated Rajesh Khanna with a passion. She had seen Gunga Jumna thrice, he had seen it four times, and she was of the opinion that the second lead in Anand, this tall man with a deep voice, by the name of Amitabh Bachchan, would become a huge star one day. She hadn’t seen Anand yet but loved the songs. The kabiraji cutlet came. He ordered a plate of vegetable pakoras. They kept talking. Arjun felt slightly drunk now, swimming in that nice warm buzz you get if you stop drinking at just the right time, when you lose your inhibitions but you are still all right. He felt like sliding across the table, shaking his head and singing ‘Yahoo!’ but then he chided himself for he was a married man with three children, and he was thirty-five years old.
A voice from somewhere deep down was telling Arjun that he was making a mistake, one that he would pay dearly for. But that same voice was also telling him to do unspeakable things right here, before the waiter returned with another greasy kabiraji cutlet and gave them both a don’t-do-what-you-want-to-do-in-this-cabin stare. Arjun locked eyes with Nayantara and the contract was made between them, without any words, then and there, witnessed only by the lonely grey lizard that balanced itself precariously on the wall, shaking its ugly spotted tail from side to side.
3
It was twelve at night and sleep remained elusive yet again.
Arjun sat in his ‘deluxe luxury’ room on the second floor of Adinath Lodge, lights on, looking out through the rusty iron grille. There was not much of a view, a tree right in front of the window mercifully obscuring what would have been a panorama of slum hutments and a rickshaw stand. Somewhere in the distance, a drunk was singing an old K.L. Saigal song tunelessly. Arjun held a glass of whisky in his hand, swirling it around absent-mindedly. On the table in front of him lay his gun, his favourite, the Colt Python. He had been whirring the barrel around, greasing the bore, engaging and disengaging the safety, and now that the exercise was over, he had laid it down. Guns fascinated him, as did cars. They were similar in many ways, a good car and a good gun – gears, heat, rotation, propulsion, precision, speed – and it was because he was good with both that he got into this business.
And that’s how he met Bangali. Somehow today he could not stop thinking about him.
He remembered that first day and it was funny because he had never really thought of it like that before. The first day. As if he were a woman or something. It felt kind of se
ntimental and silly, but then that’s what happens when you are a few pegs down.
What year was that? ’55? Or was it ’56? Definitely after Shree 420. Must be ’56 then.
They called him Ustaad at Sharma’s garage because he was good under the hood. Arjun hated the work and he hated the name Ustaad. There was no dignity in toiling underneath someone else’s car and coming out with grease and oil and soot all over your face and then let that humiliation define who you were.
‘Koi kaam chota nahin hota, beta,’ Devinder Sharma, used to say. Yes, if no work was too small, one wondered why he never got dirty.
But why would he? Devinder Sharma was the owner of the garage.
He was a decent man, Arjun remembered, and he used to pay a decent wage, and after years of working in construction as a boy, it was less back-breaking than lugging cement. For all his decency though, Devinder Sharma had a mouth on him, even by Delhi standards, slapping and kicking the mechanics around when it pleased him. Yet he never touched Arjun, because even though he was as poor and dirty as the others, Sharma seemed to care about the difference in pedigree between him and the rest. Which was also why Arjun was the only mechanic given the key to the cash cabinet. It had, besides currency, a shining Smith & Wesson. Once, when the other mechanics were not around, he had kept two cars running, one of which had its muffler broken and, in the din, shot two bottles he had placed at the far end…a bullseye both times. He was worried that Sharma would notice two bullets missing, but he never checked the gun cabinet nor did he ever use the gun. The local inspector was well tended to by Sharma and the criminals there knew that.
One hot June afternoon, Sharma had dropped in, which was strange, for he never came in on Fridays. What was stranger still was that he was not alone.
There were three men with him. Two of them had come in Sharma’s car and the other in an expensive Ford. It was the man in the Ford, an elderly gentleman who could not have been below sixty, who caught Arjun’s attention. Sharma seemed extremely eager to show him respect, walking in front with folded palms, which meant he was someone important, at least more important than the owner of two garages. Arjun found him cartoonishly funny, this old gentleman, for he seemed to have walked straight off a movie set, the perfect villain in a perfectly starched white suit, gleaming black shoes polished an hour ago it seemed, a white hat, and a cane with a big silver top.
The men with him also looked very henchmen-like. One was a tall sardar, unsmiling and stern, in a loose kurta with the sleeves rolled up – the type that lived on a diet of badaam sherbet and eggs, who would spend two hours in the morning pumping weights. The other was as tall and as well built but younger, closer to Arjun’s age of twenty, in a light blue shirt and a spotless white dhoti. He had an easy air about him, and he smiled at Arjun as their eyes met, though Arjun did not smile back. Sharma led all three of them to the back room and then, ten minutes later, came out with quick steps. He shouted to the only other mechanic to drop the shutters and go out for an hour, then turned towards Arjun and said, ‘Come inside. These gentlemen want to talk to you.’
Inside the back room were two chairs and a table and the gun-and-cash cabinet. The older gentleman was sitting with the silver cane lying across his lap while the two henchmen stood to attention on either side.
‘Here he is,’ said Sharma obsequiously. ‘They call him Ustaad. The best mechanic in Delhi. And very sharp.’
The man with the silver cane had a deep voice. ‘So Devinder was saying that you are from the Bhatia family of Lahore. Are you?’
Arjun nodded. Sharma added, ‘The only one of the sons left.’
‘You can see tehzeeb. You can see class,’ the old man said with an expression of delight. ‘Good clean blood. See how he stands with his eyes down. Respectful. I like that.’
‘Smart boy, I told you, sahib,’ Sharma said with a small, fearful smile. ‘He knows that in Delhi, when the powerful stand in front of you, you keep your eyes down to give respect.’
‘And raise your eyes only when you want to fight, isn’t that so, boy?’
Arjun nodded, knowing that was what was expected of him.
The old man suddenly seemed agitated. ‘You know the problem with the world today, Devinder? You can’t tell the high from the low. It’s not like how it used to be, when you could spot a Brahmin from a Bhangi from a mile away.’
Devinder chimed in. ‘Yes, sahib.’
The old man shook his head sadly. ‘Now they all wear the same clothes, eat at the same place, cut their hair the same way, travel in the same train.’ He touched his finger to his nose. ‘But I know. I always know. Because I can still smell blood. Bad blood. It stinks. But this boy, this boy, my nose likes.’
Arjun hated being called a boy even more than he hated being called Ustaad. But he stayed quiet – for this was a man to be feared – even Devinder seemed to be nervous, on the edge, and he could not remember having ever seen him like that.
‘There are two kinds of men in this world. Those who run scared. Every breathing second. The bars of jails, khaki uniforms, funny black coats, little white topis, a bullet to the head. Everything. They are scared of everything. Then there are those who know that the law is just a fairy tale to frighten little girls, written by crooked bastards and told by bastards even more crooked, and that everything, from the lead in the bullet to the stars on the uniform, is for sale. And that the only thing to fear, as the Amreekan President Roosevelt had said, is fear itself. So my question to you, boy, is what kind of a man are you?’
Arjun looked up, and his eyes made contact with the man’s.
‘What’s the job?’
The old man nodded his head with a smile of satisfaction and pointed his silver cane to the handsome man in the blue shirt. He reached his hand out, though there was no way to shake hands, since Arjun was near the door and he was at the other end. ‘My father named me Nilendu Banerjee, but my friends just call me Bangali. And my silent friend here is Sandhu.’ The muscled Sardarji kept looking straight ahead.
Funny it slipped my mind, thought Arjun, touching his head to the grille of the window, I had met Sandhu the same day I met Bangali. How could Bangali have betrayed me for Sandhu? What could Sandhu have said that was so convincing, when that madarchod barely spoke a word, that would make him want to kill me? Wasn’t Bangali the one who used to keep saying, ‘It’s less painful to get a lund into a kunwaari than a word out of Sandhu’s mouth?’
Arjun laughed a little and took another sip of whisky.
Damn. It felt like ages ago.
He remembered Bangali that first day, over-explaining in the same way that he would later the craft of Satyajit Ray and those other directors whose movies Arjun never wanted to see, what it was that Arjun was getting himself into. It was not very difficult, the business they ran. They transported arms from the Nepal border and sold them to buyers from Rajasthan down to Bengal. The consignments travelled at night and Bangali drove the delivery vehicle. Two weeks ago while in Etawah, Bangali had to drive offroad to avoid a police patrol. The vehicle had broken down in a ditch. Bangali had panicked. He could not call for help nor was there a garage nearby and even if there was one, you didn’t get a stranger to play around with a car in which guns were stashed. After this incident, they realized that they needed a mechanic to ride with Bangali so that running repairs could be done if needed. The money was very generous and the work sounded exciting – for what could be a better job for Arjun than one which involved cars, guns and money?
‘So, boy,’ the old man had asked, ‘you aren’t afraid of the law are you?’
He wasn’t. He wasn’t afraid of the law in the same way he wasn’t afraid of God. It’s not that he didn’t believe they existed; the law, after all, was there in the books and God was there in the temple. But when you needed them, like he had in Lahore, they never showed up. And if they didn’t care for him then, why, he wasn’t afraid of them now.
‘No, I am not.’
And then finally, afte
r some more small talk, the man with the silver cane had gotten up and given Devinder Sharma a fifty-rupee finder’s fee, which he had accepted with the most heart-warming of toothy smiles. On the way out, the old man tapped the frame of the door with his silver-headed cane and said, ‘Boy, if you ever get into trouble, remember me.’ He took a dramatic pause, as if there were a camera panning to him in the room, and said, ‘Jagan Seth. Jagan Seth is my name.’ Arjun had almost laughed out loud. When your life becomes a Hindi movie, that’s as close to perfection as you can get.
The whisky bottle was almost finished and his head was feeling woolly. The drunk who had been singing K.L. Saigal was now singing Pankaj Mullick, his slurred words becoming more and more clear as he came closer.
Bangali used to love Pankaj Mullick. He had had a nice voice too, and Arjun thought of those nights, the motion of the tempo bumping and pitching forward on the rough country road, the breeze blowing through the hair, the rumble of the motor, and Bangali humming ‘Piya milan ko jaana’.
They had had a nice run, the both of them. It had not taken much for Arjun to realize that Jagan Seth was too preoccupied with women and afeem and the affairs of his extended family to keep much control over his business. Bangali and Sandhu were running the show, making their routes, taking delivery and getting the consignments to where they were supposed to go. But even they were so occupied by the little things, the profit they made today, the women they took to bed tonight, the daroo they drank this evening, and their small petty scores, to think of the big things.
The business.
But Arjun did, he always thought. Bangali fell sick with typhoid and then jaundice, and for six months Arjun was operating solo. Profits soared. Jagan Seth took away routes from Sandhu and gave them to him, making it clear to Bangali and Sandhu that Arjun had ownership. In a year, Arjun was making ten times what they had been making before. Sandhu had fumed and threatened till finally he dropped out of the arms business and went over to transporting Nepali women to brothels, a dirty job if there ever was one. After Sandhu, it was their competitors who were dropping like flies, till Arjun had a monopoly over all the arms-smuggling routes.