The Story of My Assassins

by Tarun J. Tejpal

  She said, ‘Moron, why didn’t you tell me?’

  She must have turned on the television after I left.

  I said, ‘There was nothing to tell.’

  I sensed the activity even before I turned the car into our lane. There were several unfamiliar vehicles parked at the corner, and men hanging about under the shade of the massive peepul, at least two of them in uniform. I took the turn slowly. Under the overhang of the tiny porch of my house a small crowd milled. The iron gate was wide open, and a police Gypsy was parked right in front of it. Jeevan was checking out its radials with his good eye, wagging his tail and spurting piss.

  I walked into the tumult to a chaos of greetings, questions and blessings. I could see family, friends, colleagues, neighbours, cops, and media men with eyes growing out of their shoulders—a mad democracy’s ever-open third eye, marrying us all in a grand collective of sorrow and celebration, lament and lust, brands and stars. The masterly sleight: conformity through freedom. What Mao and Stalin could not pull off through violence and coercion.

  Mother leapt on me like Tom on Jerry and clung to my midriff, mewling, even as I staggered about shaking hands and making incoherent noises. Everyone held a glass with clinking ice; nimbupani was doing the rounds. Everyone had the same questions. What happened, how did it happen, who were they, what did you do, where have you been, are you okay, can I do anything.

  Yes please, turn around and get the fuck out.

  My wife was leaning on the door jamb, slim, tall, fair, expressionless—as ever, uncertain of what to do around me, all beauty flattened by joylessness. Her fat mother, eyes red-rimmed with forced tears, was holding her daughter’s right forearm and stroking it. Her balding father sat in the living-room, shrunk into the chair, timidly awaiting his moment. A clerk for all occasions.

  A portly, round-faced man in a cream-coloured bush shirt, with close cropped hair and a bushy moustache, whom I had never seen before stood to a side, arms crossed on his chest, benignly witnessing the circus. Beneath his loose trousers he was hoofed in pointed black leather shoes. Beside him stood a tall fair young man, almost a boy, with hairless cheeks and a coiled air about him. The loop of a nylon lanyard was visible just under the right edge of his grey safari suit. I shuffled up to them—Mother still draped around my midriff—and gave the portly man my hand.

  He said, with an understanding smile, in a low flat voice, ‘Shall we sit inside?’

  When I had ushered him into my chokingly small study, I stood outside the closed door, peeled my mother away from my body and told her to bugger off. My pretty wife and her ugly mother were hanging by too. I told them both to bugger off as well and to encourage every idiot present to do the same. The party was over. My mother opened her mouth to let out a monster wail but I clamped my hand down hard on her mouth and looked at her with such venom that all three of them quietly melted away.

  I took the plate of orange-cream biscuits Felicia had brought for us and latching the door behind me sat down on the frayed sofa. He was sitting on one of the two wooden chairs in the room—the one in front of the small work table I sometimes used. He had taken a book from my shelf and was looking at its cover. The Naked Lunch. I set the plate down next to him.

  He put the book down on the table, took a biscuit in his left hand and gave me a limp right hand. He said, in his low flat voice, ‘We all admire you—you are doing very good service to the nation.’

  I said, ‘We all do what we have to do.’

  He said, ‘No, we do what we are told. You are doing something different, something great, something for the country.’

  I said, ‘You do very important work.’

  He picked up The Naked Lunch again and started to caress it. Between slow biscuit bites he said, ‘We do what those above us in the department tell us to do. And they do what those above them tell them to do. And what they tell us is not always right. But it’s not our job to ask why. If we all began to ask why, there would be only a mountain of whys, and no department. When I joined the force our instructor told us every day to always remember that in our line of work nine right and one wrong is wrong, but all ten wrong is right. And so we do what we are told and we are always right even though we are often wrong.’

  He said all this in his low flat tone, without a single inflection. His name was Hathi Ram—his father had served as a soldier in the British Indian army in Burma and developed a fascination for elephants. His father had told him to be like a hathi, gentle but strong, obedient but incapable of being pushed around. He said his father was a fool, a simple army man, from another world and time. In the force these days you had to be a bahurupiya, a quick-change artiste, a master of impersonation, capable of putting on a face for every occasion. A mouse in front of seniors, an elephant in front of juniors, a wolf with suspects, a tiger before convicts, a lamb around politicians, a fox with men of money. So he was not always Hathi Ram—sometimes he was Chooha Ram or Lomdi Ram or Sher Ram or Bakri Ram. In the force these days who you were depended on who was sitting in front of you.

  I said, ‘So who are you now?’

  A full smile cracked his face. His close cropped hair was more grey than black, though his bushy moustache was dark with dye. Thick salt and pepper tendrils spilled out from his open shirt collar. He riffled the pages of The Naked Lunch like a pack of cards, and said, ‘Now I am Dost Ram. I am here as a friend. We have to look after you. We don’t want any harm to come to you.’ Through his avuncular pudginess, his eyes were still and hard.

  I said, ‘What’s happening? Who’s trying to get me?’

  He said, ‘We don’t know too much. We are still trying to find out.’

  I said, ‘But surely …’

  He said, ‘I told you, sahib, those above us order us and we do. Our job is not to ask why—otherwise there will be a mountain of whys, and no job.’

  I said, ‘How many were they?’

  He said, ‘I think five, but I only know from what I heard on TV.’

  I said, ‘Hathi Ramji, if you know nothing, then why are you here? Surely not to find out from me?’

  He said, ‘Sahib, I did not become a sub-inspector by going to big colleges and answering three-hour examinations. The force is full of lovely boys whose teeth are still milky white and pubic hair still boot-polish black, and I am sure they know things of which I know nothing. I became an SI by dragging my khaki ass through the alleys and byways of this benighted city for thirty years, and one of the things I learnt, wearing out my soles, is that nothing in this city is what it seems. But I also learnt that one of the best ways to deal with things is to keep them simple. Small men like me can go deranged trying to figure out the motives and the means of big men. There are people in the force who spend all their time trying to find out these things. They take news to big men, and they bring back instructions. I don’t. I just do what my officers tell me. I am not washed in milk and I am no angel. But I am a bahurupiya out of necessity, and no more. Sometimes I do right and sometimes I do wrong. But I do it in the line of duty, and it is not for me to judge. I simply follow the Gita. Do what you have to do. Do you think it was right for Arjuna to kill the great Bhishma by shooting from behind Sikhandin? Do you think it was right for the noble Yudhishthira to speak a lie so that the great Dronacharya could be killed? Lord Krishna made them do these things. The Lord alone knows what is right and wrong. Men can only do their duty.’

  Not one inflection, just that low flat tone, and a continual riffling of The Naked Lunch. When he finished he picked up an orange-cream biscuit, opened its two halves and put into his mouth first the less creamy one and seconds later, the other.

  I said, ‘And what is your duty today?’

  He said, ‘To make sure you are safe, and you stay safe.’

  2

  REIGN OF THE SHADOWS

  I did not see SI Hathi Ram again for several weeks, but the fair boy with the hairless face and the telltale loop of the lanyard became a daily fixture in my life. His name was Vijyant, an
d he was shy, wide-eyed and young enough to take his job seriously. He sat outside each door I was inside—office, home, restaurant—and leapt to action the moment I appeared, looking right, left, all around, and beating down with his eyes anyone who glanced our way. In the car he rode in the back while I drove and was always out of his door and covering me before I had killed the engine. He kept his big, black, slightly worn-looking, 9mm pistol tucked into the front waistband of his pants, the business end of it presumably nestling cold and deep in his crotch. Sometimes when I pulled aside the bamboo chik to look out of my study window I would see him sitting in the tiny porch, the 9mm in his lap, caressing it gently with his fingertips and humming the Mukesh number, Chal akela chal akela chal akela, tera mela peechhe chhuta rahi, chal akela.

  Hathi Ram alias Dost Ram had said, ‘Golden boy! He’s my golden boy! He’s a jaanbaaz—would punt his life in a moment. When we got him I told the inspector, Where is the kiln this one was baked in? I need some more like him. The inspector said, Give him a year, then we’ll talk! But the inspector was wrong—even we have failed to corrupt the boy. He could be with ministers, MPs, VVIPs, but no, I want him to be with you, because for me your life is more important than theirs.’

  All this had been said within earshot of the boy. When he’d finished he’d looked at him, standing slim and coiled in his safari suit, and said, ‘Why? Have I said anything wrong?’

  Vijyant had smiled shyly and patted his iron crotch. ‘It is my duty.’ The boy was as educated as I was—a BA, a Bachelor of Arts—and had graduated in the same subjects, political science and history. It was quite possible he had scored better in his college exams than I had. The difference was that he’d have studied in Hindi, in Hapur, and when he finished his father would have urged him to try for a government job. After all, the government, the sarkar, was maibaap—father, protector, keeper.

  Once you became part of maibaap, you were invincible. Cyclical storms of joblessness could not touch you; germ and disease would find their match in government hospitals; soaring real estate prices would tiptoe past maibaap’s houses; sarkari schools would ring with the happy cries of your children; and when your hair fell out and your limbs grew infirm, maibaap would let you go home but keep sending you a cheque every month for your old age. Once you entered the embrace of maibaap you were taken care of till your very last day, till it was time to be thrown onto bamboo sticks and be carted off to the cremation ground. And by then, if you were truly blessed, your children would already be in the secure lap of maibaap, steeled against the depredations that blighted other ordinary lives.

  From the tiny eyehole of Hapur—with its forsaken streets, sludge gutters, dimly lit shops, coagulated traffic, and the thick rough blanket of dust on everything—from remote Hapur the world would have looked dangerously non-negotiable: much too large, much too complex, much too malevolent, and much too full of very smart, very rich, very powerful people. Hapur was too small for a smart boy; the world too big for a small boy.

  His father would have been terrified of sending him out of Hapur with scarcely a weapon for survival; most likely Vijyant himself would have been terrified of venturing out too. Government, sarkar, maibaap: father, protector, keeper: that was their only hope. In the grand monument of maibaap you did not need to command a bedroom or an office—even scuttling rats had a space and were secure.

  A search would have commenced; a journey. First, for someone—a relative, a friend—who knew someone in Delhi. Ideally in government, a broker or a fixer. Yes, the boy was good and might make it on his own, but did you want to take a chance? Never!

  They would then have been handed down a chain—in which each man laughed and said, ‘Hapur! Hapur ke papud!’—till they were finally facing the man who would spell out the deal.

  This man would be an artist, well aware of his place in the universe, the keeper of the doorways. He would have styled himself—gestures, tone, the movement of his head—on a film star—Dev Anand, Dilip Kumar, Raj Kapoor—of his youth. By turns he would be voluble, phlegmatic, withdrawn, haranguing, dismissive, comforting, and philosophical. Always philosophical. Jugglers of morality, dribblers of ethics, need philosophy more than priests and professors. He would leave no doubt that he was the enabler, the altruist; the corruption and greed all belonged to the men who had come to his door.

  Many bargains, pleadings, assurances, counter-assurances later, the father would have returned to Hapur to rustle up the pay-off.

  Because the boy was a simpleton, likely to raise an innocent question, he would be kept out of the process, told to just prepare for the physical examination. Push-ups; sit-ups; litres of bubbling milk.

  Because his father did everything right, because the artist of the doorways exercised his munificence, Vijyant would be embraced by maibaap, given the rank of a constable, his lifelong cares taken over by the sarkar, fully secure to scuttle in maibaap’s mansion for the rest of his days.

  Now all he had to do was guard me. Against I did not know what.

  Nor was he the only one. He was the first to show up on that Sunday morning with SI Hathi Ram, but then over the next few days two more were assigned to look after me. Both of them were much older than Vijyant—crusty veteran thullas, with bellies and phlegm—but for some reason I always assumed that the young boy was in charge. The three of them were supposed to rotate work in eight-hour shifts, but had hammered out some complicated timetable among themselves that would see them on duty for anything between twelve and twenty-four hours. I never knew when they would change shifts and who would be coming on next. Nor did I care.

  In the beginning there was the novelty and the unease, like suddenly having a beautiful woman on your arm. Everywhere you went you were aware of this presence by your side, and every moment you felt all eyes were on you. Then swiftly, as with beauty, the novelty and the unease faded, and I soon ceased to be aware of them. In a few weeks they had become nothing but shadows—they went where I went, moved when I moved, vanished once I went indoors; dying in the dark, materializing in the light.

  Because they were never in uniform, a loosely hanging shirt being the only constant, it was even easier to forget their presence. In any case, I ensured they remained true shadows, never speaking unless spoken to, managing their meals and ablutions in the inadvertent gaps my life afforded them, actively discouraged from asking questions about my schedules and plans.

  After the initial curiosity about Vijyant, I decided I didn’t want any intimacies with any of them. It was best if they remained faceless, nameless, storyless. I didn’t want to know about the villages they came from, the schools they went to, their family problems, their struggling parents, their working woes, their caste, their religion, their dialect, their opinions on politics, nationhood, the economy, Gandhi, Nehru, corruption, crime, cricket, Hindu, Muslim. Nothing.

  There was just too much opinion in this country, too many sob stories. Nobody wanted to put a lid on anything; everyone wanted to say it all, about everything. If you as much as said hello to someone on a train or a plane, you were in for the unexpurgated memoirs. Nehru in 1947 had declared us a nation finding utterance—but in fifty years the utterance had become a mad clamour, a crazed babble, an unending howl. We were a nation of Scheherzades, afraid we’d die if, for a moment, we shut up. For myself, I’d mastered a face of steel, and an inscrutable nod. It did not always shut everyone up, but it did to some extent dam the ghastly flow.

  The irony was matters were being constantly worsened by those in my business. Desperate bleeding hearts, agents of hype and frenzy, they thrived on the purple phrase, the overblown image, the apocalyptic analysis. They helped create a public mood of weep and lament and chest-beating. A great great noise. It was grotesque, the continual emotion-letting, the rona-dhona, in private, in public. It was as if no one knew a thing about the Hindu mind that was their inheritance.

  When Gudakesha, the great Arjuna, scorcher of foes, archer beyond compare, first among equals, stranded between the
arrayed armies of the Pandavas and Kauravas, grief-stricken in his moment of emotion-letting, told Krishna, ‘I will not fight’, then Hrishikesha, Govinda, Krishna, the all-knowing, the Lord, smiled and said, ‘You speak as if you are wise, but you are grieving for those that one should not sorrow for. The wise don’t sorrow for those who are dead or those who are alive. It is not that I, or you, or these kings, did not exist before this. Nor is it that we won’t exist in the future. The soul passes through childhood, youth and age in this body, and likewise, attains another body. The wise don’t get bewildered by this. O son of Kunti, because of contact between senses and objects, feelings of warmth and cold, pleasure and pain result. But these are temporary and are created and disappear. O descendant of Bharata, therefore, tolerate these! O best among men, the wise person who is not affected by these, and who looks upon happiness and unhappiness equally, attains the right to immortality.’

  But we had become a people who could neither question with the humility of Gudakesha, nor hear the wise words of Hrishikesha. We just wanted to let it all hang out, as in the confessionals in teen magazines, as too, increasingly, in the breathless pages of high-sounding newspapers. Cosmo meets Bollywood meets MTV on the hallowed plains of Kurukshetra for the great battle of the Mahaphuddus!

  I became so indifferent to the two new shadows—belly and phlegm—that I didn’t even register their names. Not that they were the sort who cared. Both of them came and went with barely a nod, no doubt disappointed at being made PSOs, personal security officers, to a lightweight like me. Often enough they’d let me know the names of the high-wattage politicians they had been attached to—men who commandeered the fates of millions, outside whose doors the rich and the influential bowed and scraped, who could transfer officials with a nod, grant licences with a squiggle, make and break careers and fortunes between the taking of toast and tea.