The Story of My Assassins

by Tarun J. Tejpal

  ‘Found it, mr peashooter,’ she said. ‘Found it. And tell me when you want me to share it. I’ll be happy to.’

  When I told Guruji about all this, he laughed. ‘She’s a spirited one! Blessed are those who choose to do. But doing without thought can often be worse than non-doing. One must understand the lesson of everything. When the guru sends his disciple to empty the ocean with a mug, he is not teaching him the virtue of perseverance, but the lesson of futile action. The stupid disciple empties the ocean for the rest of his life and finds his peace; the intelligent disciple finds wisdom, throws away the mug, and moves on in search of more. The disciple must not only perform the task, he must also contemplate the task. Action is god, but so is stillness.’

  Then his eyes laughing, he patted my shoulder and said, ‘And you know two gods are better than one.’

  I was sitting at his feet in his sanctum, in front of the wall stuck over with religious icons. The tiny fairy lights, undraped from the wall, lay rolled in a tangle of wires, heaped in a corner. The doors and windows were open and the last light was pouring in. The splash of sky through the window was shiny orange with the dying sun. The guttural cries of oxen being steered by men cutting the final plough line of the day wafted in from the fields. Bird sounds flowed past in a rush—screeching parakeets, warning crows, questioning lapwings. Guruji was clad as always in his dhoti, luminously frail, his skin, from cheek to ankle, stretched taut over bare bones. His hair was tied, a basanti safa wound around it.

  I said, ‘So what is the lesson in all this? Is it for her or for me?’

  His eyes laughing, he said, ‘That is for you to find out. The guru can give you the mug but you have to empty the ocean. The guru can show you the path but you have to walk it. Truth cannot be taught, truth must be experienced. The good disciple walks paths even the guru has not, before arriving at the same truths. And sometimes even different ones. That is the wonder of the world, of all creation, that the journey to truth is a pathless one. There are countless ways of feeding the soul, just as there are countless ways of feeding the stomach. Some foods feed us well and thrill us, just as others taste bad, wreck our digestion, and destroy our health and sense of well-being. You have to discover what fits your palate, stomach and body. It may be the same as her, and it may just not.’

  His eyes were laughing. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t dead serious. It’s how he addressed everyone’s problems—except on the night when he became the great Pir of Machela. ‘Remember,’ he always said to the complainants at his feet, ‘there’s always someone with a deeper well of sorrow just around the corner.’

  I said, ‘So shall I say nothing? Shall I just go ahead and let her keep doing what she is doing?’

  He said, ‘Of course you must not keep quiet. It is about you too. Silence has to be a strategy not a refuge. A weapon, not an escape. Listen to her for a bit, go along with her. She cannot help it. She has to vent the great noise so much education has filled her up with. It is bursting her insides. When it is spent there will be space for wisdom to flow in. In any case, you must never fight a woman if you can avoid it. Bring her to your side, or go over to hers. She is the greatest ally, and the most corrosive enemy.’

  Guruji. Doctor of souls. Physician of the practical.

  On the other hand, Jai, who didn’t know Sara, did an about-turn. He said, ‘Actually I am not too sure about the talc any more. Your hammer boy doesn’t sound like someone who could be set up easily. And I don’t think we can credit these buggers with such fine efficiencies. The government, we know, leaks like a sieve at the best of times. After seeing these five jokers in court, I doubt these government guys would have the audacity or competence to set them up. They can barely get simple things right, leave alone an elaborate frame-up involving dozens of people. You would need home ministry guys in the loop, police guys in the loop, judicial officers in the loop—too big a sieve, impossible to plug. Bound to leak, and no one could run that risk. My friend, rejoice! I am beginning to believe you may really have genuine assassins on your ass!’

  SI Hathi Ram said, banging together biscuit halves like cymbals, ‘For a few rupees. In this country anyone will kill anyone for a few rupees. Sons will kill fathers, brothers will kill brothers, husbands will kill wives—what is it to kill a stranger! Anyway, the bastards are beginning to sing. First they will sing like bathroom singers, slowly, badly, out of tune—difficult to understand what they are singing. Then they will become drawing-room singers, full of melody and confidence, full of pleasing sounds, too polite to be trusted. And finally they will be like the great qawwals at Nizamuddin, swaying to the god deep within them, chanting in frenetic unison, loud and long, in a wonderful trance of truth-telling.’

  I said, ‘So what’s the story? What have they said?’

  Hathi Ram delicately smelt the pink cream on one half, then banged them together and said, ‘I have no idea. I am just speculating. Making them into great singers is not my work. My job is to only make sure you are safe. Song and dance is the department of gifted policemen. I am only Hathi Ram, a lowly and simple sub-inspector. Named to be an elephant but living like a mouse.’ He sounded like the director of a song-and-dance academy. The choreographer of a thousand weeping confessions.

  I said, ‘So do you think it’s possible these men who’ve been arrested may not really be guilty?’

  Suddenly he became even more still than he was, the cymbals frozen mid-clash. Fixing me with his expressionless eyes, he said, ‘That’s the biggest problem with this country—suspicion. Everyone suspects everyone. Brothers, brothers; husbands, wives; wives, sisters-in-law; sisters-in-law, mothers-in-law; sons, fathers; masters, servants; servants, servants; employers, employees; colleagues, colleagues; farmer, middlemen; middlemen, traders; traders, government; government, the people; the people, the police; the police, the people; the people, the people. We are born khabris. It is in our blood to be informers—for one thousand years we have been informers for kings and for seths and for white men. Now there are no kings and no white men, and seths we can all become, for seths have neither colour nor lineage. But suspicion has still not stopped coursing in our blood. We suspect those we love, we suspect those who love us, we suspect those we work for, we suspect those who work for us. And we suspect those who save our lives, and suspect those who guard us. Be in no doubt ever, those men were paid to kill you, and given enough weapons to kill fifteen of you.’

  Dolly/folly said, her eyes dilating, ‘Be careful, please.’

  My fat mother-in-law said, ‘Who went with you to the court? I hope that Usman fellow was not there?’ She knew the names of the shadows better than I did.

  My mother wailed, ‘Why did you have to go to court, my son? I hope those low-caste killers didn’t see you! Every curse be on them and their families! May worms eat them as they live! May their teeth rot, may their hair fall, may their skin shrivel! Tell me, did they see you, my son? Will they be able to recognize you now?’

  My father said, from behind his curtain of newspapers, ‘Did they make you sign any papers?’

  Dolly/folly’s father said, from behind his curtain of newspapers, ‘Did they make you sign any papers?’

  Sippy said, his fly buttons unaligned, his eyeballs swimming in a soup of yellow and red, ‘Sirji, I believe you went to the court and saw the murderers. You should have taken me along. I too would have liked to see who these fannekhans are who think they can kill you. Don’t these chutiyas know that Kabir has said, Jaako raakhe saiyan, maar sake na koye!’

  Kabir, not Wystan Hugh, is what Sara needed.

  None can bring distress to he whom the lord protects.

  The next time I was lying naked in front of Napoleon, I said, ‘They could actually be innocent, couldn’t they?’

  Sara had finished sluicing me off her body and was pacing the room, photo arms crossed across her chest. Yet again, she had gone up the wall and come off it with minimum ardour, and it was clear to me that it was time to take Guruji’s advic
e.

  Without breaking step, she said, ‘Of course not, fucker, why would they be. They kill just like you shoot peas! For money and pleasure!’

  I said, ‘Do you think that Bhandariji will be able to get them off? He’s a sharp guy, but Hathi Ram says the police have a strong case.’

  She said, without looking at me, pacing away, ‘Of course he won’t. Men like them die every day in this fucking country. It’s the peashooters who live on.’

  I said, ‘I think we should help him.’ She said, ‘With what? Selecting the right rope or the right hangman?’

  The hair in her crotch was dark and lush. She never trimmed it, it was long and shiningly shampooed, gathering in an even richer black line in the middle.

  I said, ‘We can bank on the police screwing up. What we have to ensure is that Bhandariji does his best. Chances are he’ll get bored, the case will drag on, the cops will soften him up, and these five jokers will have no one around to chase him down. We know lawyers go to sleep if the client goes to sleep.’

  She said, ‘So do you want to tell the cops that you want to now actually protect your murderers? And instead of protecting you from them, the police should now protect them from the police?’

  No one, I thought, should ever trim their hair. American porn like American food undid all curiosity, all good taste. Everything standardized, everything cut from one mould, everything drained of subtlety. All of it served up like a smooth slab of meat.

  I said, ‘You are doing the right thing by getting fully involved. I obviously can’t, but if they are being framed, we could save them yet.’

  She said, ‘Don’t make me weep, mr peashooter! Your concern is twisting my heart!’

  It was not just the way it looked, so full of mystery and seductive promise. It was also how it smelled, so sensually ripe. The aromas opened up slowly, as you burrowed deeper, and filled your head.

  I said, ‘I am sure we could even talk to some friends about raising a small fund to support the case. This Bhandariji will lose interest unless some decent money is put on the table. And except for that Tyagi guy, the rest don’t seem like they could have any.’

  She broke step, looked at me, and said, ‘I think you should stop now, and go home. Miss Dolly might restore you to your good humour with her black-black eyes and white-white skin and little pink-pink you-know-what!’

  Guruji was not the master for nothing.

  The next time we met we didn’t go into the bedroom but sat in her living-room, on her second-hand cane sofa, streaked black where the cane was rotting, and we talked. She was wearing a turquoise wrap patterned with plump green fish—something she’d picked up on a beach in Goa—and a white sleeveless cotton slip. She sat opposite me with her legs crossed under her, using both her hands to rub her bare feet, which were flat and knobby, with none of the grace of her torso. Maybe it was her parents. A stout, fleshy father and a slim, delicate mother—nature’s cruel idea of affirmative action. And the genes had neatly claimed one half each. Mercifully, the division worked. The other way around would have been a disaster.

  She was talking. Telling me what she thought, what Bhandariji thought, what might really be happening. Her tone was quiet, ruminative, the way I’d heard her one time when she’d spoken about her childhood growing up in the hills. Sara was for all purposes a fulltime dragon, scorching all who crossed her path. I knew that even her colleagues who worked with her in their small gender advocacy group wore asbestos around her. Everything set her off. You could almost never say the right thing. Those who befriended her did so for the scourging she handed out. Either punishment was their thing, or they were on some self-improvement trip. I was there for the pleasure that arose from some complex mind-body alchemy in her that I had not been able to unravel.

  For the rest, I thought she was full of bullshit.

  I didn’t care a damn what she thought of the brain-curry man and his four johnnies, and what she wished to do to save them. I just wanted to reignite the frenzy in her body. I had become addicted to her high-wire act. The music of abuse, the wantonness and denial, the electrified body, the exploding finale. I craved it with the desperation of the young wasted needle-men scavenging in the dark mouldering alleys of Chandni Chowk.

  I also knew by now that I could not reignite her by labouring on her body. I had to open up the engine—her mind—and tinker with its peculiar valves and wiring.

  Now she was talking. Her arms were no longer folded across her chest. We were drinking tea in her big heavy ceramic mugs—enough of it to wash your face and ass with. She drank from these mugs all day. If I had two back-to-back I could piss a hole into the ground. Maybe it was the gallons of tea that kept her so wired. At the moment I didn’t care. I was relieved. I was back inside the charmed circle, the tight small circle outside of which lay the vast universe she held in contempt. As ever, I wore an intensely attentive look while barely listening to what she was saying. I admired her sharp opinions and quirky mind, but hated her ceaseless droning. Many would not agree I suppose but this too was a kind of love—to work hard at practising deceit in order to find ardour.

  It had to be a kind of love.

  I certainly felt it so.

  So while she dragged on about all the conversations she had had with Bhandariji, I struggled to look intense. I was actually thinking about the accelerating collapse of the magazine. Three weeks ago we had dropped to thirty-two pages, and now two months’ salaries were in arrears. The staff was steadily peeling away like passengers from a bus reaching its last stop. The empty rows grew more derelict by the day. Soon there would be no one, just the waiting depot, just the driver and conductor, just Mr Lincoln and me.

  Kuchha King, Kuchha Singh and Frock Raja had literally disappeared behind the high walls of their farmhouses, beyond all contact, beyond any appeals, presumably under their shining faux galaxy, by the shuffling horse hooves, reconciled to writing off their losses with a small mountain of Calvin Klein undies.

  Jai had been scuttling around, working up his public school buddies, delivering orations on media, democracy and the social contract. How, after indulgence, after excess, after aggrandizement, money must start to produce the moral moment. Mr Lincoln was quite something—capable of stirring bricks and stones and worse than senseless things. But men with money are quite something too. So far he had turned up nothing but a few soft loans that were soaked up by the office like water by parched land.

  A few prospectors had come visiting and had been effusively shepherded around by Jai. They had pumped hands with wide smiles and never returned. There were no cobwebs blocking the doorways yet, but the dereliction of the abandoned chairs, dead computers and unpeopled rooms was enough to strike terror in the heart of any investor. The armed policeman in the sandbagged post outside and an unbuttoned swaying Sippy inside, were enough to close out all remaining doubt.

  We were contaminated by controversy and political scandal, married to commercial vagueness and a tarred balance sheet. In truth Mr Lincoln was casting for a virgin in a bordello. Money, mostly, has no interest in systems of equity, liberty, justice, democracy or any such fanciful notions. Money is only interested in systems that make more money. Jai would close the door behind him and try and talk it all up with me, in a maddening mix of rousing optimism and despondent alarm. To me, he seemed in some state of mounting delirium.

  For my part, I sat in my room on my chair all day with my feet on the table and stared out the window at the dirty blue sky and the scraggly tree—whose great moment of beauty had vanished without a trace. Guruji said life was like the Brahmaputra, the grandest of grand rivers, the very son of Brahma, the creator, ever moving, surging without a pause, unequally distributing joy and distress, seeking finally to merge into a receptacle that was even greater. You had to learn to flow with it. Sometimes you saw something on the banks that you really wanted, and then you beat your arms and kicked your legs and swam for it. At other times you just floated with the current, soaking it up, revelling i
n it, being one with it.

  Guruji had said I was not to worry, the river would take me places, offer up new things. Too much frenzy, too much thrashing about, could be a big mistake. It could leave you in the same spot, struggling but not moving, robbed of the fantastic journeys the currents were going to take you on. Did I wish to tread water or savour the rich unknown? Guruji said, float freely and without fear but keep an eye on the shore. So I was looking out the window, counting the full-bellied planes coming in to land, watching the magpie robins in their shining black and white coats, and as far as I could see there was nothing on the shores for me for miles and miles and the river was flowing too sluggishly to open up fresh vistas.

  I realized she had stopped talking and was waiting for me to respond. I had hardly registered a thought, just some stray words. Patiala House, Tyagi, Bhandariji, Tihar jail, and the names of two of the killers, Chaaku and Chini. She had also mentioned the names of some other lawyers she was considering for the defence team. A couple of names were outrageously famous—men who charged lakhs of rupees for a single appearance, men whose names and pictures filled the newspapers and TV channels, men who could strike fear into prime ministers, save mass murderers, turn evidence upside down so that judges hung by their legs from ceilings and gave out verdicts that had nothing to do with the truth. I also knew with her it wasn’t kite-flying: if she set herself to it she had the ability to reel them in pro bono.

  My assassins could not have been safer than in my lover’s hands.

  I said, ‘You are right. You are right about it all.’

  She said, ‘So should we move on it then?’

  I didn’t know what she was talking about. I said, looking at her intently, ‘Yes, but let’s sleep on it for a day or two. Maybe we can consult a few other people too.’

  She put her forefinger sharp under my chin, and said in a hard voice, ‘Such a weak, indecisive bastard you are! I don’t know why I suffer you!’