by Arnab Ray
Never had Arjun ever felt that Bangali had resented his rise in the business, for nothing had ever changed between them. They were still friends, still brothers.
Maybe he had been wrong, he thought now as the drunk stood near his window, maybe the worm had stayed in Bangali, eating away at him as it does an apple, while he smiled and backslapped and drank and drove and argued, gouging out slowly whatever there had once been.
Why had it been him and not Bangali? Bangali had gone through college, was good-looking, personable, strong like an ox, well read, well spoken and had had a head start in the business. But he had a big flaw, and that wasn’t just that he drank and went after women or got into drunken brawls. It was the fact that he was too foolish, too filmy. And that’s why Arjun was alive while Bangali was dead, a hole in his forehead where once had been a future.
‘I didn’t cheat you out of your business. I was better than you. I took it,’ he said out loud to no one in particular.
He believed it. He was better. Better than his father. Better than Sandhu. Better than Jagan Seth.
‘Does it ever bother you,’ Bangali had once asked, during one of their long journeys through the night, his words slightly slurred from the cheap country liquor, ‘that what we do kills? That you and I, we put the fire to the haystack, and sell the ashes? I mean I only heard about the riots growing up in Darjeeling, but you grew up in them. Doesn’t it make you feel…I don’t know…a bit guilty?’ Arjun remembered the answer he had given, for he had meant every word.
‘No, it doesn’t.’
Bangali had always been like that. Trying to poke and finger him every which way, get him to react.
When he was twenty-three, Devinder Sharma asked him to marry his only daughter, Preeti. Preeti was a year older than him, and she was a nice girl, homely, a few kilos more than what would be considered more than required, with a hairy upper lip she always struggled to keep under control. She would sometimes come to the garage and look at him as he worked, blushing and fluttering her eyelashes. Baljit, another worker in the garage, had a name for her. Lorry. They used to tease Arjun – ‘The Lorry will run you over, Ustaad’ – and he would make a face of disgust in response. Yet when the proposal came, as he had thought it would, he agreed. The dowry was fifty thousand rupees, twenty tolas of gold and a bike. Plus, Devinder didn’t have any son, so that meant Arjun would inherit both the garages, small and big. This was too good an opportunity to let pass. It gave him a base in New Delhi, money to add a room and more to his house, and a safe fallback in case his business failed.
Here too Bangali had his conscientious objections.
‘Does it not bother you that you are marrying for money? I know you, you won’t screw around with another girl after marriage, you are such a Raja Harishchandra when it comes to sex that you didn’t even screw around with girls before marriage. So don’t you feel bad that she will be the only girl for you? It doesn’t play on your mind, not even a bit?’
Arjun’s answer had been the same.
‘No, it doesn’t.’
You hardly knew me, Bangali. You rode with me all those years, we drank, we fought, we killed, and you learned nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Just then, right outside the grille window, a yellow Ambassador taxi pulled up on the street below, dropping a boarder at Adinath Lodge. Arjun stood up and cried out, ‘Hey taxi, you still want to take a fare?’
A voice from inside called out, ‘I am done for the night.’
Arjun said, ‘I will give you meter plus fifty rupees.’ The driver hesitated. Arjun said, even louder, ‘A hundred.’
‘Where to?’ the voice inside asked. ‘Nakul Das Lane.’
He got out of the taxi on the main street. The last thing he wanted was the sound of the car to wake up the neighbours, for curtains to move aside and for sleepily curious people to peer out of their windows. His head swam from the Johnny Walker, and yet he walked straight, approaching 178 Nakul Das Lane with determination. He was hoping the side entrance to the house wouldn’t be locked for then he would have to climb the pipe, which of course he knew he could not, not in his current state. Luckily it was not, and he crept up in the dark, careful not to rouse from slumber the rather formidable lady who slept downstairs. The door was closed this time. There was light creeping through the bottom, a small light, and he knocked lightly. She must be up, he thought.
He knocked lightly again and the door opened. Nayantara took a step back in terror, and in the light of that bulb, she looked like an exquisite deer that had wandered into its hunter’s tent.
‘You? Here? Now?’ she stammered and took yet another step back.
‘Where is your son?’
Her eyes seem to glow and wane with waves of fear. ‘Please… please don’t hurt him.’ All the confidence of the afternoon was gone.
‘Is he asleep?’ Arjun asked, as his hands went behind him to shut the main door.
She nodded and clutched her sari around her shoulders, ‘Yes… he is. But why are you here? Now?’
He strode forward without hesitation.
‘Are you crazy? What if anyone has seen…’ The words were sucked out of her mouth by Arjun’s lips as he pressed them hungrily against hers, his hands curling around her waist. She leaned back from the force of his aggression, his chest pressed harshly against her breasts. She tried to speak but that just made her open her mouth wide and his tongue invaded hers. They wrestled for a while, till she had been backed against the wall. He kept kissing her, and she could taste the whisky off him, and now even her head was spinning. Then he disengaged and stepped back, and she was breathing heavy, and they kept looking straight into each other’s eyes.
‘Please don’t wake him up,’ she said. Arjun grunted, and by this time he was clutching the anchal and pulling at it, and she spun around gracefully, the sari running off her hips in one swirling motion, till it hung to the waist of her petticoat tenuously, and there he left it for now, admiring her in her blouse and petticoat, the sari trailing away like a lover’s sigh. Her arms curled up to cover herself and then she dropped them without being told. He squeezed and mashed her breasts, not believing anything could be this perfect. Then she was twirled around again with force, her back towards him now, and even though he would never be Bangali, never have that film-star smile and those sleeve-straining muscles and that aura of overwhelming masculinity, he knew he was not weak, and he wanted her to know that.
The hooks of her blouse provided little resistance, even less her threadbare blouse, worn thin through repeated use, as he ripped it off and tossed it dramatically away. Today there was a brassiere underneath, and he saw it was also old and discoloured from repeated washing. She looked back at him in shame, but not for her nakedness.
‘Please don’t rip that off. I only have one more.’
He nuzzled the nape of her neck, kissing and licking the length and then biting lightly her earlobe, from where hung a simple gold hoop. Arjun whispered, ‘He didn’t take care of you. I will. That’s my promise.’ The petticoat slid noiselessly to the floor and he watched how she stepped out of it, her body lithe, like a dancer’s. The panties were down in one tug and then one strap and the other, forming a silent lump on the floor. Arjun stepped back to admire Nayantara, now divested of all clothing. His eyes trailed up and down the length of her body and locked with her eyes, as she turned around with her back to the wall. He took off his shirt, and then his trousers, and then stepped forward. They stood and kissed and this time he felt her tongue too was moving while his hands glided all over, savouring every curve, every crevice, every bit of silky warm smoothness of what he knew was now his. Arjun picked her up suddenly in one swoop. She was light and she didn’t resist, though she threw her legs once in the air. Her eyes went to the small broken chowki near the window that was now shut, to guide him to where she wanted for this to continue. He didn’t take her there.
He lay Nayantara on Bangali’s study table. It was a large wooden antique – a grand table with
ornate carvings that ran down the legs. It had seen better days, and even with the varnish gone and the wood blackened through age, it was by far the most regal thing in that small room. She was put down, her breasts flattened against the wood, her rear pushed enticingly up towards Arjun. She turned her head to the side, and said, ‘Please don’t wake him…’ Arjun’s hands went to her mouth and he said, ‘He won’t hear.’ Then with one thrust, he was inside her. He had thought it would be painful but she was ready for him and they started moving in rhythm, slowly at first and then quickening to a steady pace. Nayantara moaned and Arjun had never heard music sweeter than that, though he stifled her sighs with his palms. As his pace quickened, her teeth bore into the flesh of his palms, biting and scraping like a needle on a record, while he tore into her, their intertwined bodies forming a closed loop of pleasure. The table creaked, and one of the socialist magazines slid to the side as he kept on, his hands now sliding down the curves of her sides. Finally, he flipped her around. Her eyes were glazed over, and she reached her arms out, held him by the neck and pulled his mouth down to her. Then it began over again. She bit her lips, trying desperately to control the pleasure she felt, and he silenced her this time with a kiss. They came, both of them, synchronized, their bodies coupled, clinging to each other as if for dear life, and Arjun finally felt what real sex was like – what Bangali used to rave and obsess about all day. He understood it now.
He was hard again within minutes. He felt scared by the madness that had taken possession of him, all of a sudden, but he didn’t want to think. He pointed to the floor and then manoeuvred Nayantara into the position, on her knees, one elbow on the ground and the other arm holding on to the table’s leg for support. He took her then from behind, his hands mauling her pendulous breasts as he emptied himself thoroughly inside her once again.
They lay on the floor in silence, looking at the ceiling, sweaty and tired. Arjun realized she was holding his hand and he tightened his grip around hers.
She said, in a whisper, ‘You shouldn’t have come here. If people find out, they will talk and I won’t be able to stay here. This is Shyambazar, everyone knows everyone, and everything is everyone’s business, unless you need help of course. Then no one knows you.’
Arjun wanted to reply, but he found the words wouldn’t form, for inside he was still galloping, his mind out of phase with his body, his breath still coming out jagged.
‘My landlord is horrible, he comes and undresses me with his eyes every time I go to pay the rent, even in front of his wife. If he finds out, God knows…’
‘Why did Bangali keep you like this?’
‘Like what?’
‘Like this. You know what I mean. He earned enough, I know what he made.’
‘I guess his other girlfriends got the rest,’ she said with a short laugh. ‘When you share, it becomes less for everyone. I think they call that communism. Or socialism. I forget the difference.’
They lay still for a while, enough for Arjun to catch his breath. For a second, he thought of putting on his clothes and walking out of the door, but then he realized he didn’t want to.
‘I am sorry about Bangali. He left me no choice.’
He had expected anger but there was none. She said, without any rancour, ‘He was always like that. A moth towards a flame. How can I blame…’ – Nayantara shrugged her bare shoulders, ‘the fire for his fate?’
‘No, you can. Not a day passes when I don’t blame myself for what I did.’
‘He came to kill you himself?’
‘I knew that he would. He had been talking to Sandhu, he had been talking to the Nepalis, he had been talking to the police. Behind my back. I kept hoping he wouldn’t, that something would hold him back, maybe guilt, maybe fear, maybe even love. But then the gun came out and, as I said, what could I do?’
‘Then don’t blame yourself.’
‘He was the only friend I ever had. It’s just that when a part of you rots, when gangrene creeps in, you have to cut it off, even though you know you will always feel that part as if it’s still there. The doctors have a nice name for it, Bangali had told me. Phantom sensations. It’s like that with him now. Gone but yet there. I still feel him. And it breaks my heart.’
‘Not that it helps, but yes, Nilendu used to love you a lot. You told him you were planning to leave the business. He felt betrayed.’
‘I just said I was planning to leave. I was not serious about it. But yes, now I am. I am out.’
‘So what will you do? Put “most famous gunrunner in India” on your résumé and apply for a railway position?’ she asked with a half-smile.
‘I just think of myself as a businessman. I buy things, move things, sell things. Unlike other businessmen, though, I don’t care as to what those things are.’
‘Guns, bombs and bullets. Why would you want to leave such a business? As long as we live, there always will be a demand for death.’
‘Because I am doing small margins. Sure I make money but it’s not worth the risk I take. Not any more. Especially when I am sitting on a goldmine.’
‘What’s that?’
‘My network. Over these last fifteen years, I have built up a network. From the east to the west, policemen, politicians, booth capturers, union leaders, student leaders, businessmen, black marketers, prostitutes, blackmailers, pimps, informers, coal mafia, iron ore mafia, railway contractors. Anyone who needs a gun, and there are many of them. I know what they can do, what they can’t, what they want, and what they absolutely don’t want. Now I want to use this network to extend further into Delhi. For that is where the money is. I have only been scratching the surface all these years. Just the surface.’
‘But if you are not selling guns, what good will a bigger network be to you?’ She turned to the left, and her breast was now pressing hard against his shoulder.
‘Our kings in Delhi have made rules. A lot of them. Then they have hired people to keep others from breaking these rules. Then these people made their own rules and hired more people. Rules. Rules. And more rules. So what’s a poor man running a business to do? If you want to open a small factory, making, let’s say, pots and pans and cookers, you would need seventy different permits from the government and from ten different departments. You want to import a machine. You need permits. You want to export to Arab countries or to America. You need permits. You want to hire people. You need permits. You need to fire people…’
‘…you need permits.’
‘Yes. Permit pe permit. Maarne ke liye permit, jeene ke liye permit. And what I have been talking about are just central government permits. You need state government permits, panchayat permits. Moving goods from one state to another, octroi on all of it. All this is just the law, on paper and in pen. For every rupee over the table, you put a hundred under. You need to keep the unions happy, you need to keep the local police happy, you need to keep the local MLA happy, the corporator happy, the gram pradhan happy, the MP happy, the ministers happy…I cannot tell you what a mess they have made of things ever since the British left. As a businessman, you could get stuck for years, being shuttled from one desk to another, dealing with strikes and arrests and raids. Or you could come to me.’
‘What will you do?’ she asked with wide-eyed wonder.
‘I will have my settings inside every government department right up to the top, the babus and the papaas and the netas and the thullas. I will tell businesses where to go, whom to bribe, whom to threaten and with what, where to be hard and where to be soft. If a politician or an IAS officer or a cop needs a donation, I will make my client arrange for it. If he wants it in a suitcase, I will figure out how to get it to him. If he wants the money sent to his daughter in London in pounds, I will get it done. If he wants guns instead of money, well, I know all about that. If he wants women, well, yes, that too can be arranged. If he wants someone killed or some legs broken, I am his man. “You come to me, Mr Businessman, and I’ll work and oil the system so that you do what you came to
do. Make your money.” Much of my network is already in place, thanks to my business. The muscle, the shooters, the goondas, the police in the states, gram panchayats, unions. I just need to build a bit more into the government departments, I am weak there. The ministers at the Centre won’t be difficult because I know their men on the ground, the men who get them votes, the men who hold their balls. Within two years or perhaps three, I will be everywhere.’ Then he stopped, and fumbled in the dark for her breast and gave it a squeeze. ‘Or that’s the plan. Let’s see how things go.’
‘So how did you make all of these connections? Seems to be a tough thing to do.’
‘What’s India?’
‘A country. What else? From the Himalayas in the north to Kanyakumari in the south, from…’
Arjun cut her short. ‘Wrong.’
‘Somehow I knew I would be. Please go on.’
‘This country, no matter what they tell you in the newsreels before the film begins, is a patchwork of little kingdoms, of coal mafia kings and iron dons and sugar cane bosses and lunds with more lands than they should have. Each little kingdom makes its own laws. And each little kingdom fights. Hindus fight Muslims, the upper castes fight the lower castes, the lower castes loot them back, contractors fight for railway contracts and anyone with even a bit of ambition fights another with a bit more. There are wars going on, every day, every night, and each of these wars require what?’
‘Guns.’
‘For me, every war is an opportunity. Bangali was happy with things as they were, but I…I wanted to prop a crowbar into the cracks and deepen them. Make them fight more. Make them buy more. That’s how you grow a business. You create the demand.’
‘How do you prop a crowbar in the crack?’ There was respect in that question, and Arjun felt good.
‘If there were two coal dons and one of them was buying from me, I would get one of my men, as a front for me of course, to sell to the other, at a loss. He would buy a lot of guns. Then my man would want to buy more, else he would be wiped out. Then the other would want even more. Now I have two customers where earlier I had one. And their orders? Ek se badkar ek.’
