Sultan of Delhi: Ascension

by Arnab Ray

  – froze. It seemed that he had not expected Arjun to start firing

  without replying to his taunt.

  Arjun whirled to the side and his Colt roared again. By this

  time, the second man, the novice, had got in his shot, but just as

  Arjun had expected, his rifle kicked up the moment he pulled the

  trigger. The rookie missed his mark. Arjun’s bullet did not, searing

  through the fleshy part between shoulder and chest. Perfect shots, he congratulated himself, just like those pigeons

  back in Lahore.

  And then he heard a cry, a stifled scream of monstrous pain.

  It had come from behind him.

  He turned around. Chottu’s lifeless eyes stared back at him in

  deathly surprise, the bullet from the missed shot having gone clean

  through his forehead, from which blood streamed down in ugly

  criss-cross lines. While all this drama had been going on, Chottu

  had somehow crept from the back to the top of the truck to see

  what was happening. That decision had killed him.

  The world seemed to go still for a fraction of a second.

  Then Arjun fired again, this time at one of the men with the

  bamboo lathis. Even though he was pretty sure that this was not

  a policeman, he did not shoot to kill. The man with the cheap

  sunglasses suddenly seemed to remember that he had a gun too

  and reached behind to bring it out. But he was too late on the

  draw. Bangali had sprung upon him with an agility that belied

  someone of his size. The man was no pushover himself. With a

  solid blow to Bangali’s arm, he was able to knock the metal pipe

  out of his hand before they fell together on to the ground, a mass

  of elbows and knees and half-finished curses and dust. Bangali used his weight to knock the man on to his right, pinning his gun hand below. The man tried to free himself, only to find his arm twisted. The gun dropped from his hand and made a clattering

  sound as it landed on hard rock.

  ‘Don’t kill him. We need him alive!’ Arjun shouted, just as

  Bangali brought his right fist down on to the bridge of the man’s

  nose. The man doubled up in pain, swearing and shouting, holding

  the place where the bone had shifted to the side. Bangali took the

  leader’s gun and threw it away. He then stood up and reached for

  the lead pipe.

  Now there was only one left. The second man with the lathi. He

  had been hovering, not knowing what to do. Now seeing his leader

  lying on the ground, paralysed by pain, he finally forced himself to

  move, approaching Arjun gingerly, twirling his bamboo lathi, the

  fear plain on his face. It was not his battle any longer, but one that

  he was bound – perhaps because he was due payment – to finish. Bangali grinned. ‘This one’s mine.’

  The lathi whizzed past his head as the man struck, and Bangali,

  who had grown up fighting with lathis, nimbly stepped aside,

  throwing his head back. Arjun remembered how he had seen

  him years ago doing the dhunachi dance during Durga Puja. His

  movements were graceful, measured and confident. The man

  reversed the lathi immediately for a return blow, but Bangali knew

  that trick too. He waited till the last moment and dodged, the lathi

  cutting through the air without making contact.

  ‘Enough fooling around. Bring him down.’ Arjun knew that

  Bangali was now showing off.

  The man grasped the lathi tightly with both hands, knitted

  his brow in concentration, and lunged forward. Yet again Bangali

  moved away, light as a cloud, but now the man’s side had opened

  up, and Bangali swung the lead pipe, hitting him square on the ribs.

  The man clenched his teeth and his hand went to his side, dropping the lathi. Bangali charged leisurely forward and brought the pipe up in a smooth arc, striking him just below the jaw. The man

  stumbled backwards, his face now a display of blood and bone. ‘Enough!’ Arjun yelled.

  ‘They killed Chottu. What are you saying? We let them go?’

  Bangali stood, the pipe raised above his head, poised to bring it

  down on the man’s skull.

  ‘I said, enough!’ Arjun shouted even louder. ‘Any of you so

  much as move this way or that, khopdi uda doonga, madarchod.

  And you know I can.’ He walked forward and picked up the gun

  that Bangali had thrown away, the one that had belonged to the

  leader, who now nursed a broken nose.

  Yes. It was police issue too.

  Acting quickly, Arjun made all of them sit on their knees in a

  straight line on the road. They groaned as blood dripped down

  their faces and bodies, soaking through their clothes. Then Bangali

  brought rope from the truck and he tied their hands securely

  behind. The policemen all had their identity cards in their pockets,

  genuine with the official government seal, and Arjun looked at the

  leader, and then back at his card.

  ‘So Head Constable Ramdayal Mishra, how did you know we

  would be here at this time?’

  Ramdayal Mishra looked defiantly back, the bridge of his nose

  bloodied and visibly dislocated. ‘Your mother told me. A noisy

  one, that kutiya, when I take her gaand.’

  Bangali caught Mishra by the back of his collar. ‘We should

  kill them right here.’

  Mishra’s eyes had a nasty glint in them and whatever pain he

  felt, he was brave enough not to show it. ‘You know you won’t.

  Because your friend knows you can’t kill men in uniform. You

  kill one, and the whole force becomes your enemy. You kill a

  Brahmin and you are going to hell. Now are you willing to risk

  that?’ He then turned his eyes upwards to Arjun. ‘You got lucky, behenchod. But I am going to find you. And I am going to shoot you down like the pig you are. Remember, I am a policeman. No

  one messes with me.’

  ‘Get me your camera, Bangali.’

  ‘What?’ Bangali asked. ‘My camera?’

  ‘I want everyone for a hundred villages to know the bravery of

  Head Constable Ramdayal Mishra and his boys. So that the next

  time they need a bunch of men to dance dressed as girls in red

  ghaghras and cholis and payals on their feet, they know exactly

  who to call for a chamiya dance.’

  Bangali nodded his head. ‘Haan, chalo. Inki izzat lootte hain.’ Arjun kicked and punched them, keeping them on their knees

  while Bangali took pictures. He pocketed their identity cards and

  took away their service rifles and guns. Ramdayal Mishra spat at

  him once, the froth hitting Arjun on his shoes, and Bangali put

  the gun to the side of his head and let loose a volley of abuses, but

  all of them knew he wouldn’t use it.

  Finally, Arjun and Bangali brought Chottu’s body down from

  the top of the truck and wrapped him in the blankets they carried

  with them for nights spent out in the open. The skies had let loose

  above them and large drops of rain came down hard and heavy,

  in wind-slanted lines, drenching them to the skin, making their

  shirts cling to their bodies. Blood ran out from every wound, in

  small rivulets into the mud, and the injured back on the road, tied

  up like pigs, cursed and begged for mercy.

  Chottu remained silent and so did Arjun and Bangali. The truck rumbled forward into the s
torm with Bangali at the

  wheel. ‘So we just let them go? His death counts for nothing?’ ‘Let’s just get Chottu some wood and some fire.’

  ‘What about Ramdayal Mishra?’ Bangali made no attempt to

  hide his anger as he drove through the storm. ‘Are you going to

  just forgive and forget?’

  Arjun had kept Chottu’s head on his lap, and was wiping away

  the blood as best as he could with a torn towel.

  ‘I don’t forget easy, Bangali, and even when I do forget, I never

  forgive.’

  The Senior Superintendent of Police looked down at the blackand-white pictures spread out on his table. He was trying to be as calm as possible, but Arjun could see the worry on his face.

  No, Arjun thought, not worry. Fear. Which meant things were going as per plan.

  The SSP knew Arjun and what he did for a living. He had been posted as the head of the police district five months ago and Arjun had sent him a welcome packet, a Samsonite full of currency notes, and then had followed it up with an expensive gold bangle and necklace set for the ‘family’. So when Arjun had showed up at his office, he was obliged to grant him an audience. Arjun told him the story of what happened in the fields of Deoria as truthfully as he could, with some changes.

  Like the caste of Chottu, from a barber he made him a chamar, the tanner. They were both Dalits, lower castes, the barber and the tanner, and the main reason for the change was that the SSP came from that caste himself.

  ‘I can’t do much about this officially. Plus Mishra-ji is quite powerful among the inspectors. Why don’t you just settle with him…you know, pay something and get him out of your hair,’ the SSP said without making eye contact. ‘I mean I should not be the one teaching you how to do your business.’

  Arjun collected the pictures and started arranging them into a pile.

  ‘SSP sahib, if you order me, I will settle. I honour every word you say. But my heart won’t be in it. I can’t let a Brahmin murder a chamar and get away with it, like they have for centuries. ‘

  ‘I don’t want those pictures in the papers. Promise me that won’t happen.’ The SSP was worried for a good reason. He was new to the post, but he had been there for enough time to know that Arjun paid money to the reporters of the local Hindi and Urdu newspapers, and if those pictures, of policemen bleeding and kneeling, tied like chickens at the butcher’s, made it to the papers framed with headlines like ‘Policemen become criminals, criminals capture policemen’, his bosses would have his head on a plate. The only thing that was expected from SSPs was to keep a semblance of order in their areas. Pictures of captured policemen, high-caste Brahmins no less, would definitely establish more than an acceptable level of lawlessness, even by the standards of Uttar Pradesh. The transfer letter for the SSP would come within hours. Since the SSP was making quite a bit on the side from regular payments from the girl-runners and the liquor distillers and the railway contractors, a transfer at this time was not a pleasant possibility.

  That’s why Arjun had taken the photos. To keep the SSP honest.

  ‘Of course they won’t leak. I just took those pictures so that you believe what happened to us. Otherwise who trusts the word of petty crooks? I will destroy them right after I leave.’

  Arjun had no intention of doing so. And the SSP was smart enough to know that. ‘I know I am a small man but if I may, can I say something?’ The SSP nodded.

  ‘You are too nice a gentleman for these times. These people are animals. Just animals. The British left twenty years ago, and yet they haven’t been able to let go of their old ways. You understand what I am saying?’

  It was clear from his silence that he did. The SSP was among the first batch of those that had once been considered untouchables to have made it as a policeman, thanks to the policy of reservation in post-independence India. It had taken twenty years for things to change but finally they had. But those lower in the police hierarchy, those who were of higher castes, deeply resented this. They made fun of the SSP at the police chowkis, referred to him as ‘chamar sahib’ behind his back. Once when the SSP had visited a chowki, the head constable, who was a Brahmin, had pointedly changed his position such that the SSP’s shadow did not fall on him, for even the shadow of a Dalit was considered to be an ill omen. This act of defiance had subsequently acquired the status of a fable, told with embellishment and exaggeration at every police chowki in the state. The SSP obviously knew about this, and Arjun was sure that he had not forgotten the humiliation. And now he was going to offer the SSP a chance for revenge.

  ‘You need to teach these animals a lesson,’ Arjun said, with an animated expression of concern. ‘Their time is gone, and someone has to show them that.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ the SSP asked hesitantly, and Arjun knew he had him exactly where he wanted.

  ‘Nothing, sir. I will do what needs to be done. After all, he killed my friend and tried to steal from me.’ Arjun fiddled with the clasp of the heavy leather bag he had on his lap. ‘All I want is that you don’t take this personally. There is a reason why no one touches a policeman…every policeman then becomes your enemy. I just don’t want that to happen.’

  ‘It won’t.’ His jaw hardened with determination. He opened a file that lay on his desk, trying to look official. ‘Be assured, their uniform won’t protect them. Not any longer.’

  Arjun slapped his hands on the chair handle. ‘That’s what I was saying, show them who they work for. Make them smell the leather of your shoe.’ Arjun paused, letting the words sink in – for chamars used to work in tanneries with leather – before continuing. ‘Food or water, we can live without. But self-respect… that’s worth killing for.’

  ‘Leave it, enough of this horrible business,’ Arjun continued. ‘We should talk about better things. Your daughter’s birthday is next week, isn’t it?’

  The SSP looked up eagerly from his file. Arjun pushed a red jewellery box across the table. ‘I won’t be in this area next week, so please accept this small gift for Munni.’

  The SSP looked at the box and said nervously, ‘There is no need for this.’

  Arjun made a face. ‘What sir? What need? Can’t I give Munni something?’

  The SSP mumbled a vague refusal as Arjun pressed the box into his hand. ‘You are her father. Throw it away if you want. But you can’t stop me from giving the little girl something. Please. That’s my right as an uncle.’

  The SSP quietly lifted the lid, looked inside, and then closed the latch. For the first time, his pudgy face betrayed happiness.

  Arjun stood up and made a quick bow.

  Ramdayal Mishra sat on a broken wooden chair, his arms and legs hog-tied securely with firm coir rope. There were four others in the room. There was Arjun. There was Bangali. There was a thin teenager with a faint moustache and exposed ribs standing absentmindedly while pointing a gun at the back of Mishra’s head. And then there was an old gentleman with silver Gandhi spectacles, who had on his lap a leather pouch that had been opened to reveal a set of gleaming knives. There were also cows, white, black and brown, thin, with their ribs out like the teenaged gunman, moving about the straw bed, mooing from time to time, shaking their tails to shoo away the flies that swarmed from cow to warm dung to human and back to cow again. They were in a tabela, somewhere far away from where the roads ended and from where the screams of humans reached only the ears of those that did not speak. Mishra’s broken nose was bleeding profusely through the bandage, his nose and lips a waterfall of bright red, and yet his eyes stared defiantly back at Arjun.

  ‘No one gets away with touching a policeman,’ he snarled and a fresh stream of blood oozed out. ‘No one.’

  Bangali was pacing in a state of great agitation, with a handkerchief to his nose, more concerned with the smell of the pools of fresh cow dung than the man tied up in front.

  ‘Do you hear police jeeps outside? Do you hear someone shouting into the megaphone “Come out wit
h your hands above your head” like they do in the films? No, right?’ Arjun leaned forward, getting into Mishra’s face. ‘It’s been a week since your friends were shot down like the dogs they were, and here we are, the ones who shot them – all of us are walking about in broad daylight. If there was anyone who was hiding in a hole and had to be flushed out, it was you. Wasn’t he, Bangali? Our policeman here? Mishra-ji? Hiding like a rat?’

  Mishra’s fellow policemen had been brought out from the government hospital, at gunpoint, taken to a ditch outside, made to kneel down and been shot there at two in the afternoon. Getting Mishra had been tougher. As soon as news about the fate of his cronies had reached him, he had fled. Arjun had to send a few more suitcases full of cash around, make some personal calls, and spread his men far and wide before they finally found Mishra in an old abandoned temple in the jungle.

  Arjun lowered his voice. ‘You can walk out of here with your life and all of your fingers and toes, you can walk out of here with some fingers and some toes, or you can leave without your head. The choice is yours. So let me ask you once again, how did you know we would be there? Who told you?’

  ‘Your mother, jab main uski gaand maar raha tha. Sooar ki tarah chillati hai, saali budiya. But I already told you that day, didn’t I?’

  Arjun gestured to the old man. Within minutes, the struggling Mishra’s hands had been placed on a slab of stone and the old man had brought out a large steel butcher knife with a curved handle from his leather pouch. He raised it in one swift motion and was just about to bring it down on Mishra’s forefinger when Mishra burst out, ‘I want money. Twenty thousand. Give it to me and let me go and I will tell you everything.’

  Bangali exploded, ‘Cut off all his fingers. Now. And his balls while you are at it.’

  Arjun raised his hand, asking the old man to stop. ‘Twenty thousand it is then.’

  ‘What?’ Bangali yelled. ‘We are going to pay him twenty thousand? I am telling you unke ande se omelette banake usi ko khilate hain.’

  Ignoring Bangali’s outburst, Arjun kept looking at Ramdayal Mishra, while he gestured for the other two men to leave the room. They seemed only too glad to go out and get some fresh air.