The Story of My Assassins

by Tarun J. Tejpal

  Rajbir said, ‘How is Guruji?’

  That’s how Donullia was now known. The years had taken him beyond the categories of outlaw and terror. His name still froze the blood—and his men slaughtered a few times a year to keep the fear coursing—but his deeds of generosity and kindness, of giving and facilitating, had altered the account books. In the current audit he was more patron than predator.

  Gwala said, ‘If you had come yesterday, you could have met him …’

  ‘Is he keeping well?’

  ‘Well, he is no younger, as you know. But he still runs through the jungles and ravines with the youngest of them, and still sleeps on the ground with the stars above, and often with uncooked food in his stomach. Meanwhile, we who do nothing and exist by his grace live in these pretty cake-like houses, eating motichur laddus and oiling our bodies.’

  Rajbir said, ‘It is the way of great men. To suffer for the good of others.’

  Gwala said, ‘He is opening a hospital and an orphanage. He said to me, “Gwalabhai, the government can say the worst about us and they need to do so all the time because they need to look good in comparison. But we know what our duty is. It is to always serve the people, the poor and the needy and the suffering. Do I live the life of a fakir in a jungle because I enjoy it? I do it because it is my karma. It is the will of Shiv-Shambhu—the lord of all creation and destruction, the richest ascetic in the world, the keeper of insects and animals, of djinns and men. If he wanted me to be you, Gwalabhai, he would have made me you. He made me Donullia so I could fight against injustice and protect the weak. He made me Donullia so I could do his work in this transitory world. When I run in the forest with the rifle in my hand I feel him running by my side.” ’

  Rajbir said, ‘He is a great man. And it is the way of great men: to suffer for the good of others.’

  Gwala said, ‘And what can I do for you, our old friend?’

  Rajbir grasped Vishal’s wrists and said, ‘I have an offering for Guruji.’

  Gwala said, ‘Is his heart as big as his body?’

  Rajbir pulled out the thin-stemmed hammer from the boy’s bag, and said, ‘He just made kachumar of three heads. Even their mother couldn’t recognize them. They had raped his sisters.’

  ‘And he will strike in the service of others as he has done for himself?’

  ‘Gwalabhai, he is a boy unlike any other. I would not bring you a mule dressed up like a horse. You know I have seen the world, of men and of boys. Guruji will find in him all the virtues of the Alsatian dog—strength and courage, love and loyalty.’

  Gwala looked at the boy sitting upright on the edge of the sofa, the fair broad face expressionless, the eyes steady, the muscles bulging. His great brother could tell the truth of a man in a single look. But he himself had no such gift. He had to feel his way around, make risky guesses, hope for the best.

  Gwala said, ‘This is a life of no pleasures and no rewards. It is a life of daily danger and hardship and selfless service. It is Shiv-Shambhu’s work. Can you do it?’

  Vishal Tyagi nodded.

  ‘Can you kill, not out of anger and enmity and greed, but for the greater good?’

  Vishal Tyagi nodded.

  ‘You do know that once you become a soldier of Guruji, a devotee of Shiv-Shambhu, you cease to be detained by other ties of family and friends.’

  Vishal Tyagi thought, this is such music to my ears.

  For the first several weeks, his allotted space was a charpoy in the garage that lay at the end of the short tight driveway. At the back was a bathroom, and a small windowless store stuffed with weaponry. Swords, spears, axes, several substandard rifles from Indian ordnance factories, nearly a dozen tamanchas, unreliable local pistols, the barrels made of sawn-off water pipes. There were also a few .303 Enfields, taken off the police, heavy and destructive; one black carbine, hung on the wall, its holes sinister, its magazine clamped into place; one Webley & Scott revolver and two 9mm pistols; and in a small wooden box kept on a high ledge, half a dozen plump grenades.

  The store was kept locked, the key under the soap dish in the bathroom. It was only after two weeks that one of the men, Gainda—rhino—opened the door and showed Vishal the tools of the trade. The three men did not know how to work the entire armoury, and were under orders to not stupidly fiddle. Their comfort zone spanned the non-firearms and the local rifles and tamanchas. Each of them carried one of each. Not a single piece was made available to the boy.

  Rajbir had left two days ago, but the boy was calm. He was happy to sit at the gate and watch the street flow by, to observe the line of visitors who streamed in and out of Gwalabhai’s house. Many were questioned, most frisked, but a few strode in as if they owned the place. Beefy Gainda, his neck thick as a thigh, would often try and impress him with the significance of some of them. Director of public works, chief engineer, subdivisional magistrate, deputy superintendent of police, the local president of the low-caste party, the local president of the high-caste party, the local president of the national party, the chairman of the temples committee, the imam from the local masjid, the seth who presided over the grain mandi, the principal of the local inter college, the businessman from Lucknow who was whispered to be worth five hundred crores.

  The boy was not impressed by any of them. He only stayed alert for that one man who might suddenly show up—fully aware that he might come in any manner of guise. Each time a visitor arrived, he scanned him carefully—looking for other signs, of weapons, accomplices, anything that might give a clue to his true identity. In the beginning, Gainda and his two buddies pretended they had seen him and met him, but soon it became clear to the boy that they too were still awaiting their first sighting. And they had been there for years.

  Gainda told him hilarious stories of the false sightings at the gate. Once, he said, the three of them had fallen at the feet of an ochre-robed mendicant convinced that it was Guruji. They had been told the telltale sign was that he always wore keds, and since the mendicant was also carrying an iron trident—Shiv-Shambhu’s weapon—they were carried past all doubt. Only when Gwalabhai dismissed him with some alms did the three of them stop grovelling at his feet.

  Gainda said, nodding at the house, ‘I don’t think even he has seen him for years. Some say there is no Donullia Gujjar any more. That he was injured in a police encounter five years ago and died in the ravines. His name is kept alive so that the fools of this area keep their pricks inside their trousers and don’t start getting grand ideas about themselves. Didn’t Gwalabhai tell you he was here just the day before? He says that to everyone who comes and makes an inquiry. It shrivels up your testicles some more. The thought that he was just here, that he can so effortlessly pass through the lives of men, like a shadow in the night, like a wispy djinn from a magician’s lamp. If anyone asks us, we too say that he was here just the other day. The truth is we have seen him as often as we have seen Alexander the Great! Listen, there is no Donullia any more. Gwalabhai and Bajpaisahib keep him alive, and it is our job to do the same. You may have made brain curry out of three men’s heads—and you look like someone who could—but just remember that, like us, you will stand at this gate for years, and you will be looked after well, and whenever anyone asks you will say, he was here just yesterday, but you will never see him because he has already gone where we are all headed soon.’ And he looked up at the sky and waved his right hand cheerily.

  Gainda was wrong. Six weeks after Vishal’s arrival, Gwalabhai summoned him and said, ‘The sub-inspector came by, son. It seems the police have some idea of your whereabouts. It’s time for you to move out of here.’

  A man waited outside on a red Yamaha motorcycle with two big rear-view mirrors, like an insect’s antennae, on its steering handle. Gainda gave the boy a farewell hug and said, ‘If you see him, tell him you can punch out thirty-two teeth in one blow, and can suck the blood of a man like Coca-Cola!’ Then he laughed aloud—the veins in his thick neck jumping—and said, ‘And don’t fall at the fee
t of any old man wearing PT shoes!’

  The man driving the motorcycle was not young. His crew-cut was grey. He wore a white dhoti and a blue shirt and his sock-less feet were encased in rough leather juttis. He said, ‘Hold on tight,’ and then sheathing his mouth and nose in a white bandanna, roared off in high gear, zigzagging through the busy streets, blaring a power horn worthy of a big truck. Soon they were out of the town and on a narrow country road, shooting past small villages. The man drove them deeper and deeper into the country, rattling and scudding over semi-tarred lanes, fields and throbbing tube wells on either side, meeting only, as the evening waned, the odd ploughman, lines of shuffling cattle, or a struggling bicycle. Soon the last tarred road was behind them. The dust was now a moving cloud, choking Vishal’s eyes and mouth and nostrils. He shut his eyelids tight and held on, feeling the machine’s heart move through his muscles, aware of the man’s holster digging into his wrist.

  He was jolted out of his rhythmic trance when he realized the bike had come to a halt and the engine had died. He first heard the barking of dogs, in several registers; followed by the clucking of hens. In the supernatural light of dusk he saw that the farmhouse in front of him was made of naked brick and mud and dung. There were two ageing trees to one side, a shisham and a neem, both with spare branches and fraying leaves. Unusually the house was two-storeyed, and the small open windows were like watching eyes. On the flat roof, like a single hair, stood a television antenna.

  All around the house, for several acres, were open fields, clear of all vegetation. Beyond that, to one side, green blocks of sugarcane rustled. On the other side, much further away, the tree-line of the jungles was visible. It was not possible to sneak up to the house without being seen; at the same time, it was possible to make a run for the cover of the cane and the forest if the need arose.

  There were five dogs, and they were all around the visitors, sniffing and assessing. The motorcycle driver gave the snuffling-growling canines a hard push away from himself, but Vishal found himself running his hands over their graceful brows and napes, feeling their rough warm tongues lick his skin. The tall old man who had emerged from the house in a white dhoti, wearing wire-rimmed glasses, a turban around his head, holding a short stick, said, ‘The love of the beast! If they don’t love you, they won’t let you survive, and if they love you, they won’t leave you alone! My friend, you are in trouble!’

  The motorcycle driver said, ‘Shall I leave?’

  The old man said, ‘Unless you want a cup of tea.’

  The driver wrapped his scarf around his face and said, ‘Old man, there is much better company in the world than yours! Keep him alive till some use is found of him!’

  Vishal Tyagi was given a charpoy and bedding in a room on the first floor. There were nails on the wall for clothes to be hung. There were two other charpoys in the room, but they were propped on their side—this was clearly a transit space. In one corner stood a few sacks of grain, one of unshelled peanuts, and one of black-brown gur. On the wall next to the door was a big smudged mirror, which caught and reflected the sunlight blindingly during the day. On the other wall was a calendar with an image of a smiling Shiva, sitting on a tiger skin, hand resting on his trident, the Ganga flowing out of his matted hair. The calendar was four years old.

  Placing the long-stemmed hammer under his pillow—for no reason other than a vague sense of security—he looked out the window. The boy could see the forest-line. At night he heard the baying of wolves and jackals fill the air. From that day on, on nights that the moon was high, he would sit by the window for hours and imagine the animals moving in the thick forest cover. The old man said there was a time when tigers routinely wandered through, but now that men were mice, tigers too had become jackals.

  As far as the boy could tell the only permanent inhabitant of the house was the old man. He cooked in a makeshift outdoor kitchen, much like his mother did, to keep the woodsmoke from filling the house. Each day, early in the morning, he put a dal to simmer in a burnt pot, and they all ate it, with raw onions and mango pickle, with parathas for breakfast, rice for lunch, and rotis for dinner.

  There was also milk to be drunk, but it was cow’s milk and Vishal didn’t like it. He was used to Shanti’s thicker buffalo fare. It made even the tea taste wrong, and it took many days before he could adapt his palate to it. The old man told him he had it wrong: ‘Buffalo milk gives you flab, cow milk builds your muscle and bone.’ Then he looked at the boy’s huge shoulders and rolling biceps, and said, ‘Twice as big. You would have been twice as big, if you’d been drinking cow’s milk.’

  Leave alone the milk, Vishal found the cow no solace either. He tried to get it to lick his head—kneeling in the dust and offering up his scalp—but the beast had no gift of empathy at all.

  Instead, the boy found friendship with the dogs. He stroked their throats and caressed their flanks till they fell asleep; he fed them rotis soaked in dal with his own hands; and occasionally, when the old man was not looking, poured them some milk to drink. Soon they were licking his hands and face, and trailing him wherever he went. Then they began to clamber on to his charpoy in the night and array themselves around him in various ways. The boy loved it. Their warm bodies, their steady breathing, the sudden shake of their head and the whisk of their tails, bred in him the same sense of calm that Shanti’s tongue baths once had. One morning, as he walked down the stairs covered in dog hair, the old man said in disgust, ‘It’s only a matter of time before you open your mouth to talk and begin to bark! Bowwwww!’

  The days turned to weeks, and the occasional visitor transited through. The dogs would begin to bark and sprint as soon as anyone set foot in the penumbra of the open fields—on foot, or cycle, or motorbike. The old man would welcome him after his acerbic fashion. The stacked charpoy in Vishal’s room would be dropped on its feet and a heap of bedding unrolled. The protocol was to keep conversation down to the minimum. To the weather, the dogs, the food. Always, the transiting men carried firearms, but they remained unremarked, like routine articles of clothing.

  One evening the dogs barked wildly as the motorcycle man with the white bandanna arrived. Gruffly, he said, ‘Gwalabhai wants to know if the boy is okay.’

  The old man cackled and said, ‘Tell him he is doing very well, and is growing bigger and tougher on cow’s milk and dog hair! Next time he will crack open six skulls with his hammer!’

  The motorcycle man ignored him and continued, ‘Gwalabhai says the police has put a sum of twenty-five thousand rupees on his head. His uncle is baying for revenge and is trying to target Rajbir.’

  Vishal said, ‘So what should I do?’

  ‘Do?’ snorted the motorcycle rider. ‘Do nothing! Plunder the old man’s dal, and pull at your small willy! You don’t need any help with that, do you?’

  Later, the old man said, ‘He puts on arrogance because he is actually Guruji’s uncle—his mother’s brother. But in reality he’s like the rest of us, only a disciple.’

  Vishal said, ‘Have you ever met Guruji?’

  The old man laughed. ‘What do I look to you? A chick hatched yesterday? I knew him before he was Guruji, and I knew him before he was Donullia! His father was my cousin. I knew him before he had learnt to stand up and piss!’

  As he saw the boy assessing the information, he quickly added, ‘But now I am like all of you—merely a disciple. Just because you knew the foal before he could walk doesn’t mean that you will still outrun it when it’s a horse! Today he’s my Guruji too, and we all live on his generosity and mercy.’

  Vishal said, ‘When did you last see him?’

  The old man said, ‘Just the night before you arrived.’

  Vishal looked at him sceptically. He was at peace in this lonely farmhouse—especially with the dogs—but his arms had begun to ache with inaction. Near the tube well he had found a smooth, heavy rock to use as a shot and spent long hours twirling and hurling it, but he found himself missing that moment of high when his ham
mer had smashed through the skulls of those three bastards. Never in his life had he felt more pure, more powerful, as he had then. Even as he was fleeing to Donullia Gujjar’s realm, his head was bursting not with the prospect of escape but with the excitement of meeting the famed brigand and being commissioned into action.

  But the weeks had rolled into months and all he had done was strain different charpoys, eat heaps of dal, sleep with the dogs, take long excursions into the cane fields, and hear endless accounts of the man who had a thousand faces. Maybe Gainda was right: maybe there was no Donullia Gujjar any more. He was merely kept alive by those who needed his protective shield.

  The two of them were sitting in the front yard—on charpoys opposite each other, their feet tucked under them. Above, the sky was bursting with stars, and every few minutes one left its mooring and burnt a path through the dark. It was late September and the breeze had begun to sharpen its cold teeth. The moon was slow in rising, but the forest was beginning to howl and move.

  The boy said, ‘So when did he die?’

  A beedi in his mouth, the old man said, ‘Who?’

  ‘Guruji.’

  The old man pulled the beedi out of his mouth and said, ‘You should stop sleeping with those dogs. You are beginning to bark. When you have lived long enough you will realize it is not a good idea to talk loosely about Donullia Gujjar! You will see him when he wants to see you, not when you want to see him! At this moment, of course, he is more alive than you and me! But remember, even when he is dead he will still be alive!’