How to Kidnap the Rich

by Rahul Raina

  Islam is out of fashion at the moment, with the government, with the people, but that doesn’t stop people turning up to the things the Muslims built and claiming them for their own and wasting their children’s afternoon while they are doing it.

  Everyone knows the water is running out, knows it right in their gaand. Everyone thinks the Pakistan shit is about freedom and religion. Nonsense. It’s about water. Culture? Patriotism? Self-determination? Those are Western issues. Give me an honest fight about natural resources any day.

  First we fuck Pakistan. Then we’ll fuck each other, region against region, city against city, Dravidians against Aryans, the grudge match we’ve been delaying for five millennia. Every country will do it eventually. We’ll just do it first, like how the Vedas invented the nuclear bomb and the computer, and the white man, that laggardly shit, took four millennia and an Enlightenment to catch up.

  The tomb sat squat near the river, which was ugly and brown and smelled like death. From our vantage point, it loomed in the background over rusted chemical pipes, large concrete biers, abandoned shipping containers, long-dead fires. In ten years they’d probably build a prestige shopping destination and call it the Babur Arcadia.

  It was an easy place to observe: one slip road off and back onto the highway, traffic going only in one direction, a giant trap, Bhatnagar said. We would watch the handover from the Qualis, which was partially hidden behind a motorway arch. The dashboard of the car was festooned with Hindu gods, who looked mildly perturbed by the Islamic desecration of their beloved, holy, filthy River Yamuna.

  Bhatnagar sat in the front seat and watched Aggarwal, who’d driven there in his SUV, through a pair of binoculars. She was dressed in her uniform, tan khaki like the police. Pratap sat beside her and said nothing.

  “Aggarwal is reaching the handover point,” said Bhatnagar.

  The air was cold and made us cough. The traffic above us thundered along.

  “Just a few more seconds,” she breathed.

  Priya had her eyes on the foggy horizon, fingers gripped white on mine. We couldn’t see a thing out there. Potholes and reeds and massive lumps of abandoned concrete.

  “Soon, soon . . . now!” said Bhatnagar.

  She applied the accelerator and we gunned out across damp grass and marshy banks, out onto the concrete ramparts that had been built to stop the city sinking into the toxic filth of the river, where broken cranes towered above us and huge warehouses stood open, gutted, the windows blind from breaking.

  Bhatnagar had Sumit in handcuffs within seconds. He turned his face away from mine. His eyes were red from lack of sleep, and he looked more pathetic than I did when I was a kid. Pictures were taken, for evidence, for the press conference. You could see Bhatnagar constructing the lies she would need to tell. Chai was consumed from thermoses in big wet gulps.

  Rudi hugged Priya.

  Priya hugged me.

  Abhi hugged his father.

  Pratap glowered at me.

  Aggarwal wept tears of joy, clutching the bag of ransom money between his son and his chest, probably hoping he could run away with it. He cried with meaty wails, “My boy, my boy,” his cummerbunded girth totally overwhelming his kid, along with his many protestations of eternal love. “I’ll even donate to Congress now,” he said. My God! No need to go that far, man, there’s no crime in the world serious enough that its price is giving Rahul Gandhi money!

  See what effect I was now having on people’s lives? I was bringing on reconciliations and love. Admittedly through terror and violence, but still. I allowed myself a little pride.

  Sumit sat on the ground weeping miserably, his sports vest covered in dirt and shit. Under any other circumstances I would have found it funny, but now I felt guilty. He had come to me, he had begged me for help, and I, a man who had made it big, had done nothing.

  “This kidnapping is the worst thing I have ever done,” he said.

  “Why did you do it?” I asked him. Priya was standing beside me and gave him a pitying look.

  “I was desperate. Please. We came from the same place. All I needed was a little help. I needed money. I came to you, and what did you do? Nothing.”

  “Is that true?” Priya said.

  “He got rich and mighty,” said Sumit, his voice growing even more pathetic. He saw a pretty girl, and he had to put it on. “He forgot about his old friends, the little people. Like me.”

  “Ramesh,” Priya said.

  “I’m going to give young Sumit here a job,” I said. “I’ve changed. That was the old me.” And quite bizarrely, I seemed to be telling the truth. It didn’t even matter that Sumit was smirking out of Priya’s sight.

  He saw sense. “I am sorry for my earlier insolence, Ramesh bhai,” he said. “I should never have betrayed you,” and whether he meant it or not—for who really knew with people like that, people like me?—I nodded my head in silent acceptance. Rudi and I picked him up and deposited him in Bhatnagar’s jeep.

  A fisherman passed by on the river down below, and barely looked at the police truck on the bank. He simply threw his net in the air as if he’d seen enough deals, executions, and double-crosses to last a lifetime.

  We thought we were in the clear. We were about to say goodbye to Aggarwal and do all the little pleasantries.

  And then, with the door of his SUV jutting open, he said, “Do you think I’ve forgotten?” He gave us both a venomous look. His rings glinted in the morning light. “Regardless of the double-crossing, you still humiliated my son on national television.”

  Yes, we did.

  The bloody rich.

  “What are we going to do about it?” said Aggarwal.

  What exactly?

  I started to speak. Always me with the answers and the plans and the—

  “The video, of course,” said Rudi. “Ramesh, do you still have it?”

  Where did that come from?

  I went over to the car, reached into my backpack, past the knives, and pulled out the memory card. Rudi held out his hand and took it, and then walked over to Aggarwal. He pushed it into his hands and gave a little bow.

  “I hope that will be all, Mr. Aggarwal,” he said. “Maybe we can have Abhi appear on our show one of these days. A grand reconciliation. I’ll have my people talk with yours.” Then he turned and gave me a wink. That little shit.

  Pratap glared at me. If there was one thing that upset me, it was that I had not been able to establish a rapport with him. We were both men of the world, forced to do things we didn’t want to by forces out of our control, so very similar really . . . All right, I’m joking.

  “Capital,” said Aggarwal. “Your secret will go with me to the grave.”

  He closed the door of his car, drove off in a cloud of self-obsession.

  I watched the men who had beaten and tortured me leave without any punishment at all.

  Politics. The greater good. Maturity. I was getting sick of it. Priya gave me a reassuring hug as we walked back to the jeep.

  One complication down. Many to go.

  “We need to hold the press conference tomorrow,” said Bhatnagar. “Get our story out. Start a manhunt for Oberoi, hope we catch him before he’s stupid enough to do anything.”

  We drove back to the safe house. I promised Sumit he’d be developing Rudi’s personal fragrance line after all this was over.

  “Thank you, bhai,” he said. “I knew we would be partners one day.”

  I slept soundly that night, safe in Priya’s arms.

  And then the next morning, our lives changed in ways we could never have imagined.

  Seventeen

  Rudraksh Saxena is Pak agent, says producer.

  Fatherfucking unbelievable.

  Oberoi was plastered like a windshield-spattered bug all over the TV channels and websites, with giant photographs of him and senior politicians hugging and being garlanded and doing pious namastes in different poses.

  We had been back at the safe house, enjoying a nice relaxi
ng morning, congratulating ourselves a little after successfully dealing with Aggarwal. We were breakfasting on coffee, juices, and muffins, like we were in some nineties American sitcom. (Of course I have watched them, you cannot understand half of these Western jokes without them. Is it the last thing holding the West together? When the last memory of Friends has gone, will they turn on each other and finally have the civil war they have been itching for?)

  We turned on the TV. Just the usual, fifteen people on split screen denouncing some Western actress who had named her cat India.

  And then . . .

  “New Delhi,” shouted the female reporter. She was screaming at a thousand words a minute, so it was either a celebrity’s nudes being leaked, Katrina Kaif getting cast in the next James Bond, or something about Pakistan. “Shashank Oberoi, producer of Beat the Brain, alleges today that Rudi Saxena is an ISI agent. In league with him is his manager, this man”—insert zoomed in, pixelated, cropped, utterly unrecognizable Instagram image—“Ramesh Kumar, aka Umar Chaudhury, a captain in the subversion division of Pakistani intelligence. We will share more news as we get it.”

  We sat openmouthed, staring at the television.

  “That lund,” said Rudi.

  So that was where the bastard had gone to. You had to give him credit. Three days, and look what he’d managed.

  I looked at Priya. Her face was whitening-cream-advert pale.

  This was it. I was finally exposed. Our future was gone.

  I willed myself to pretend that it was going to be all right.

  “It’ll be fine,” I said. “We’ll get through this.”

  “You’re famous now, Ramesh,” said Rudi, trying to keep a brave face. “Congratulations.”

  A news conference followed shortly after the breaking news.

  Oberoi, flanked by the usual saffron-garlanded politicians, sat before a gang of photographers grappling for space. White walls, tube lights, linoleum, and wall-hangings celebrating the festive season.

  He read out a statement, stopping every sentence for a gulp of water, and giving pathetic, choked-sob stares to each of the eight television cameras, from left to right and back again.

  “I was tricked.” Sob. “My patriotism was abused.” Sob. “Just because I wanted to celebrate”—so you get it, the dramebaaz was in full flow—“the academic excellence of this country. They threatened me every day. I had to speak out. When they realized what was going to happen, the ISI orchestrated a fake kidnap to extract their agents. Then they tried to kill me. Their other controller, Hassana Ali”—no prize for guessing whose picture was held up here; they had to use a shot of her on a night out, for that was the only way a Pakistani agent could ever have tricked us, through glamour and seduction—“who was working as my producer, also tried to turn me into a double agent against the country I love. In this festival of lights, our enemies wished to shroud our country in darkness.”

  Respectful nods from the politicians. Manly back-slaps. Oberoi continued. He had to; his country needed him to say what had to be said. He smoothed his moustache. His hair had turned streaky with gray, which made him look like he’d undergone the second-act mental collapse that mothers do in films—the ones where their kids have married spunky Punjabi girls and put the family fortune in peril.

  “But they figured wrong. I love this country. I could never harm it. Not for all the money they offered, not for the houses or the yachts. My love for nation, for tradition, for community is stronger than any fortune.”

  He finished. The light went out of his face. He did a half bow to the cameras. The flanking politicians nodded. I wondered if they knew or cared what the truth was. They moved like twins, batting away questions, waving their meaty forearms, their lips sprouting spit and “no comment.” They had black hair, distended stomachs, and their four eyes perpetually looked into the middle distance of a glorious Vedic future based on mass conversions and respect for elders on WhatsApp groups.

  The horrendous pixelated picture of me floated up on-screen again. Umar Chaudhury. It could have been anyone, the eyes and mouth three dark depths, like the Black Hole of Calcutta. Priya’s photo was of her in some bar. She would be the queen of the Pakistanis on Twitter by now, the masturbation material of a hundred thousand horny uncles from Gujranwala to Gwadar, the foxy lady agent who had humiliated the great enemy.

  “I need to ring my parents,” Priya said, when the broadcast had finished and the invited panelists began jabbering about subversion. Her call seemed to take an eternity to connect, but finally she could say, “Mama, Papa, something terrible has happened. Don’t believe what you see. Please go to Uncle’s. Don’t ask questions. Please just go!”

  She wept on my shoulder afterward. I held her as she shook. “I’m so sorry,” I said again and again.

  I made myself confident again. I made myself play the part. “You should move to Pakistan,” I said, when she had stopped and my shirt was sodden. “Hassana, I’m telling you, you’ve got a hell of a career ahead of you there.” She looked up at me, her grim expression turned to a smile for the merest second, and that was more than enough.

  I put my thumbs to her eyes and rubbed the tears from them.

  I wanted to tell her that I wished I’d never brought her into all of this. That we’d manage it somehow. We’d escape somewhere, somewhere foreign and clean and boring, like Minnesota, and never look back. We’d have three children and nobody would ever hurt us, and we’d go sailing in our boat at the weekends and eat corn dogs by the score.

  But I knew that would be a lie.

  Bhatnagar returned to the safe house ten minutes later. “This place isn’t safe anymore,” she said as she came in. “The politicians will be looking for us. We have to assume that my department is compromised. I couldn’t get one morning of peace with these people around. In my next life, I promised myself I’d steer clear of the rich. We’ll go to my house. It’ll give us some time. Let’s walk to the nearest market and order a taxi from there,” she added.

  “Is there anything you can do for my parents?” Rudi said, and quite suddenly he began to cry, standing alone in the middle of the room.

  Bhatnagar didn’t seem to know what to do. She bit her lip in pity. She slowly crossed over to him, held him, hugged him.

  “Where are they?” she said, her hand rubbing his back.

  “Norway, I think,” he blubbered.

  “I can get a message through. They need to stay in Europe for as long as possible.”

  She pulled out her phone, and made the call. I went to Rudi and put my arm around him.

  I really had been wrong about him.

  We put on our outfits and wigs, the synthetic hair stiff with dried sweat, Rudi’s clothes wrinkled and stained with dirt. At least with Priya’s help his makeup looked better than my juvenile but heartfelt attempts.

  It was becoming such a part of my life that I almost looked forward to it. Glasses. Wig. Sari for Rudi.

  Priya hid under a shawl. Bhatnagar donated a pair of sunglasses. She looked impossibly vain. People would stare, but at least she would be unrecognizable. I said nothing to her. Anything out of my mouth would be a lie, and what would that make me?

  As we left, we squeezed each other’s hands, and that was enough.

  Outside, there was a riot going on. A full-scale free-for-all. Threats, oaths, everything. And all because of us. They must have been sitting there, these men, women, and children, watching the broadcast in incredulity in coffee shops, in their homes, and burst out onto the street.

  There are riots in this country at the drop of a hat. We are primed and ready, and what do you need but a few sticks and rocks, and young men fired by millennia of poverty with no end in sight?

  We were in a fairly rich neighborhood, though. There were not meant to be riots. Up and down the main market, a crowd bristling with bats shouted, “Down with Pakistan!” “Down with Islam!” “Down with Saxena!” Placards had appeared with mysterious speed, bearing photos of me and Rudi.


  I heard snatches of conversation as we moved through the crowd. “I never trusted him,” said an aunty, skin the color of gulab jamun, watching from her auto, stopped both by traffic and because its driver had joined the riot. “He always seemed false to me,” said her friend, blotting her face with a sodden handkerchief. When you have lost the aunties, you have lost India.

  It was a few days before Diwali, so everyone was primed for a little madness and had bought their fireworks already. I tell you, this country cannot plan space satellite launches or solar energy farms or infant vaccination, but when it comes to festivals, the phooljhadis, the patakas, the food, they are all taken care of many moons in advance with military precision.

  Young boys, blind with anger, were lighting rockets and sparklers and letting off flash-bangs. Our lungs filled with saffron and red powder as we tried in vain to find a cab. Dark skin, light skin, young, old, Brahmin and Shudra, united in hatred of us. What socialism and development policy had not done, Ramesh Kumar had accomplished.

  Families who usually wouldn’t be able to get near the neighborhood were using the riot as an excuse to see how the other half shopped. They went in with upturned noses to the stores that barred their way normally, and the guards let them pass, the threat unsaid that any one of their new visitors might start torching the place if they were denied entry, might shout out to the crowd that a Pakistani owned this place, that they had seen a picture of Imran Khan on the wall or a hot beef samosa behind the sales counter.

  We moved away from the market, clearly no place to hail a cab. The street scene would be mirrored throughout Delhi, throughout India, ten thousand times over. That hatred could power the whole country for a century if you could store it somehow.