Sultan of Delhi: Ascension

by Arnab Ray

  The contact had met him at the bakery of Le Meredien and Riti’s story had, to Arjun’s surprise, checked out.

  ‘An anarchist,’ the contact had said in a thick accent Arjun had difficulty understanding. ‘Your friend here belongs to a network of anarchists.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Arjun had asked, because he had never heard that English word before.

  ‘To put it as simply as I can, he wants to break down the system. For him democracy, capitalism, communism – they’re all the same. They are all systems. So he wants a state with no laws anywhere. A whole world that’s like Delhi traffic.’

  Arjun laughed politely for the big white man had made a joke.

  ‘The bastard really got behind our defences. The stuff he stole even the KGB haven’t been able to get at, and they have been trying. For years. He was going to break into the trading system on Wall Street next. If he had been able to go through with that… shit, say hello to the fan.’

  ‘If he was that bad, why did you let him go? Don’t tell me the CIA has a conscience.’

  ‘Killing him would have been easy, I guess. If it was me I would have done that. We fuck up too many times trying to sleep with the snake. Nicaragua. Cuba. Too long a list. But what would I know? The suits back in Quantico believe that the good doctor is about ten years ahead of the NSA. They might not value his life any more than I do but they have put a big tag on his brains. If he cannot be worked on now, that doesn’t mean he can’t be a few years down the line. So it would be better that he’s sent back to India, where he will not have the tech to go after our computer networks, at least for some time. Let him play around here, and then maybe with the weather and the traffic and no Melrose Place on TV, he will want to come back to America. Then we will talk again.’

  They had given Arjun the tapes of Arijit’s interrogation and he had gone through them twice already.

  ‘The world needs to know about your financing of dictators all over the world and your citizens need to know where their money goes.’ Arijit’s words had a slight Bangali accent.

  ‘Lay off the bullshit,’ the American voice said and there was someone else mumbling, whose words Arjun could not catch. ‘Just answer the questions, governor. We got time.’

  ‘No, agent,’ Arijit said. ‘You’ve got no time. A few years and what I just did would be like a little paper cut.’

  ‘Tough talk. Tough talk. I will see how much of the tough talk stays when we put you into federal.’

  ‘You are not going to put me in jail or you would have done so already. You won’t kill me or you would have done that by now also. We both know what you want, so why don’t you lay off the good-cop bad-cop routine? I watch Hollywood too.’

  They must have had him in a dark room with a light on his face. Maybe even with his hands cuffed. He must have been terrified, and yet he had not broken down, instead keeping a quiet confidence in his voice. Somehow, and he did not know why, he was filled with a sensation of slow dread.

  I am being paranoid. He is just a kid, and you are…

  He remembered Riti crying as she had told him about Arijit while he had kept his voice firm and authoritative. ‘It’s not going to be easy explaining this to your mother and brothers and you know that. You going and falling in love like this, and not telling us, and we have a match fixed, and oh, this is all such a mess. I need time, you understand that?’

  She had nodded her head.

  ‘For now, you are going back to the US, you are not talking to anyone about this, and you are not coming back till I tell you to.’

  ‘But…’ she had started to say and he had put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Finish your studies and if it is meant to be, he will be here.’

  Riti had been in Delhi for two more days, which she spent mostly at home and then she had been made to board the flight back to New York. What she didn’t know was that two of Arjun’s best men had also gotten on to the flight to keep an eye on her and that she had men tailing her in New York, in case Arijit was stupid enough to try to get back to the US.

  But how long would that last? He could hear Arijit’s voice in his ears.

  ‘You’ve got no time.’

  Sooner or later, this whole affair would need to be resolved one way or the other. Trying to reason with his daughter was impossible.

  Should he deal with Arijit directly?

  No, he could not. For one, he was not sure whether Arijit was actually attacking him. He needed to be sure about it. If indeed he was attacking him, he might be working with someone and he needed to know who that was.

  He thought about it once again. No, he was not as scared of Arijit as a person, as he was afraid that in trying to deal with him, he might lose the love of his daughter.

  There was too much emotion here. And emotion, he knew, always led to foolishness.

  And fools…they die.

  After sitting quietly for a few minutes and staring at the ceiling, he picked up the phone, and with his heart beating harder than it had in years, mumbled into the mouthpiece.

  ‘First class return to Calcutta, please.’

  The rain came down in gun-barrel straight lines, exploding on the sidewalk and on the walls in little sprays of violence, beating down on the roof of the taxi, and on the glass window.

  ‘We are here,’ the Sardarji said gruffly, half turning towards the back seat. This was the second time he had said the words, and yet his passenger sat, silent, looking out at the house to the right.

  It was a small one-storeyed building, freshly whitewashed walls turning blue with the damp of the rains, with piles of wet sand and cement and a broken shovel lying to the side near the open iron gate. Arjun had never been to this part of the city, and yet he felt he had been here before, so comfortingly familiar was everything.

  The driver reached back and gently shook Arjun by his shoulder. ‘Oye, look at the meter.’

  So accustomed had Arjun become to being driven around in his fleet of foreign cars back in Delhi, that he had almost forgotten that as opposed to a well-heeled chauffeur, a taxi driver did not automatically step out, open the door, and stand to attention whenever the engine came to a stop. With a mild, apologetic chuckle, Arjun shoved a wad of notes into the Sardarji’s hand and stepped out.

  He immediately realized that he had also forgotten to bring an umbrella. The rain lashed down so hard that Arjun wanted to bend forward and rush towards the gate. Then he heard her voice. She was singing. It was a Bengali song the words of which he did not understand, but it was beautiful and sad, and he stopped to listen, turning his face to the grey sky and letting the water rush over. The shirt clung to his body, the hair to his scalp, and he was back, it was ’72 again, and for a second, all was washed away, all that had come to pass, and that second became another, and yet he stood in the rains, looking up at the wet crow pecking away at a tendril of rubbish. Then her song finished, and there was just the rain. So he took a few steps, raised the latch of the gate, and used it to knock on the door of the house, his heart now in steady resonance with the rhythm of the water.

  The door opened. There she stood, her hand holding on to the side of the frame, lit from behind by the light. They said not a word, for there was nothing to be said, till the silence was broken by the distant rumbling of thunder. As calmly as if Arjun had gone out to get a cigarette without an umbrella and had been caught in the rain, Nayantara motioned him inside. ‘The bathroom is to the left. Take the white towel.’ He followed noiselessly, dried his hair, feeling still strangely at home, and again when her arm materialized, laying a white shirt on the towel handle, he changed into it without a word, walked out and sat down in the living room. This was a new place, not as posh as the Ballygunje Circular Road apartment nor as dingy as the Nakul Das one, but still clean, airy and nicely maintained. On the wall was a framed picture of Bangali, a fresh tuberose garland around it and a half-burnt agarbatti stuck to the side, his face frozen forever in the way that Arjun would remember him, never to grow old, never to cha
nge. He looked around: the old picture of him and Bangali that had once adorned the living room was gone. On the cupboard stood three framed pictures of Arijit, one accepting an award from the American president, the second from when he was much younger, with a hint of a moustache and wearing a school uniform, standing with his mother who was holding a trophy. The third picture was taken in Times Square in New York city – Arijit in a long trenchcoat with his arm thrown casually around Riti’s shoulder.

  ‘How have you been?’ Nayantara placed the tray with tea and biscuits on the coffee table. Arjun turned to look at her and noticed the change; she was not the way she used to be, not the same as she had been etched into his memory. She was still a strikingly beautiful woman, the kind that would make heads turn, and yet she looked pale and broken. There were purplish-black circles under her eyes, and her hair, once a waterfall of dense black, had thinned away to scrawny streaks of grey and white.

  ‘You have lost a lot of weight. Are you all right?’ Arjun asked. She sat down on the sofa opposite, looking back at him with eyes that were as piercing as ever. ‘It’s not a bad thing at our age to lose the baggage of our past.’

  ‘That’s right. Look at me,’ Arjun pointed to his waist. ‘I am carrying enough baggage for the both of us.’

  Yet he wondered.

  There was something not right, though knowing Nayantara, having deflected the question once, it was not going to be possible to make her give him a straight answer.

  At least not right now.

  ‘I knew you were coming some day,’ she said quietly, stirring his tea, ‘and not just because of the two men who have been keeping watch outside since Monday.’

  She was right, Arjun had been having the house watched. He did not want to run into Arijit. Only when his men had reported Arijit getting on the train to Delhi had Arjun boarded the plane for Calcutta.

  ‘So you know why I am here.’

  ‘I think I do, but still, tell me.’ She reached forward to give Arjun his cup, and he could not but notice that her hands shook involuntarily.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked again, and then waited for an answer. Realizing that none was forthcoming, he began.

  ‘This thing has got to stop. There is no future for it, it’s not going to happen.’

  She arched her eyebrow in the way Arjun remembered she used to, and with a smile at the corner of her lips, said, ‘Isn’t that what I said fifteen-odd years ago?’

  He took the proffered cup with a shrug of exhaustion. ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘Why do you think I can stop them?’ She glanced towards the picture of Arijit and Riti. ‘Your children must be very well behaved, if you believe that children care for what their parents say, on things that matter anyway.’ Her fingers, still shaking slightly, went to the lid of the tin can that held the biscuits. ‘By the way, have you told Riti to stop? Did she agree?’

  ‘My children listen to me, maybe not always from the goodness of their heart but definitely from fear.’

  ‘So it’s simple. Tell Riti to stop.’

  ‘I have sent her away to the US, and told her not to come back till I have talked to everyone regarding this.’

  ‘Lying to her is not really the same as asking her to stop, is it?’

  ‘I can handle her, when the time comes. But if your son is determined to keep this going, it will be difficult.’

  ‘You have a problem with love? Or just my family?’ Nayantara asked, and there was no mistaking the sharpness in her tone.

  ‘Not with love. Just revenge.’ Arjun reached forward for the biscuits, and dipped them into the tea. He realized he had not done this for years, watching the arrowroot biscuit melt to softness. ‘How much have you told Arijit about us? And about his father?’

  ‘I have not told him anything. But I would not be surprised if he has figured things out.’ She coughed once – a dry, deep painful cough. ‘As you may have understood, my son is no ordinary man.’

  ‘Did he tell you why he had to leave America?’

  ‘Arijit got into some trouble with the government.’

  ‘He didn’t tell you, did he? Why exactly?’ Arjun then proceeded to explain as best he could, what the Americans had told him. Nayantara listened silently and, so far as Arjun could tell, with a bit of motherly pride. Once that story was finished, Arjun told her his own suspicions about Arijit, that he had been going after his business interests systematically since the time that he had been in India.

  ‘So you see this is not about love. It’s him paying me back. Now your son is free to attack my businesses and I am not here to ask you to spare me from that. But not my daughter, not her, he has no right to bring her into any of this.’

  ‘It doesn’t add up, nothing of what you told me adds up. If Tubai wants to go after you, why did he try to steal the secrets of the Americans? It’s only once they made him leave that he has started – and I have only your word for this – attacking you.’

  ‘America was a testing ground for Arijit,’ said Arjun, ‘in the way South Africa was for Gandhi. They removed him from a train also, didn’t they, and wasn’t that how it all started?’

  Nayantara smiled wryly, rolling her eyes at the comparison. ‘You do think highly of Tubai to compare him to Gandhi. And here I keep telling myself that I am too blinded by my love for him.’

  ‘India is where he has always wanted to be, his target has always been this,’ Arjun pointed slowly to his own forehead.

  ‘The problem with you is that you feel you know everything.’ Another attack of coughing made her double over, but then she tapped her chest once, and continued. ‘I don’t doubt you are a smart man but I know Tubai, in the way a mother knows her son.’ Nayantara’s voice tightened with emotion. ‘Tubai sees only injustice, and wherever he sees that, he fights it. He goes for the biggest targets, because he does not know fear, nor for that matter, good sense. There, he had America. Here, you.’

  Arjun started to say something but Nayantara raised her hand slightly and Arjun stopped.

  ‘Though I may seem silly and foolish, hear me out. I don’t deny he has been targeting your business. But it’s not because of what you did in the past, but what you have become now. It won’t be just you he will go after, he will go for everyone that he believes is like you. The oppressors, the corrupt, the puppet-masters in the shadows.’

  ‘Puppet-masters who stay in the shadows? You seem to know a lot about me.’

  ‘I know you just a bit less than I know Tubai. But that still counts for a lot.’ Once again she coughed, and this time, her voice came out broken. ‘I don’t know what you do now, I stay in my little corner of the world. But you once told me where you wanted to be. Remember?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘I always believed you would succeed. I guess you have made it, haven’t you?’

  ‘I have. I suppose. And you are right. I am the bad man. I always will be. But that still…’

  ‘And that’s why he will fight you.’ The lightning flashed from outside, illuminating the side of Nayantara’s face in a moment of blue. ‘It’s not personal, Arjun, it never is with him. He is against the system, and you…you are the system.’

  ‘I get your point. But I am here to talk about Riti, I keep telling you that…’

  ‘That’s love.’

  ‘It can’t be. It just can’t be.’

  ‘Tubai loves the world. When he was in high school, he used to give his tiffin to the guard’s son, every day, without telling me. He stole some of the jewellery you had given me to help a stranger have a kidney operation. Whatever money he makes even now, he gives most of it away. It sounds strange, and to use a favourite word of yours, filmy, but that’s Tubai for you. A man like him, he does not manipulate a girl to settle scores with her father, he just does not.’

  ‘Now you are making him out to be Gandhi,’ sneered Arjun.

  ‘He is not like you and me. Nor is he like his father.’ Her eyes lit up with pride. ‘Tubai is special, in every s
ense of the word.’

  ‘But then Gandhiji should listen to you, shouldn’t he? If he loves the world, why not just let my daughter go?’

  ‘But why should I tell him to let her go? Why should I tell my son to not follow his heart, to not love the woman he loves? You and I have lived our lives on our own terms, done whatever we wanted to, not cared for society nor for anyone else. Then what right do we have to tell our children to do differently?’

  ‘You don’t understand…’

  ‘No, I do. I know why you are here. You are here to save Tubai’s life, to give me a chance to change what will be his future, the chance you wish you had given me for my husband.’

  ‘That’s not what I…’

  ‘But that is the truth. I know it.’ Her voice faltered and Arjun saw her hand shake again. ‘Tubai is going to die. I know that I will have to live with it, as I have lived with the death of my husband. And, if that was not bad enough, I will know that it would be the same man who will have pulled the trigger both the times, the same man I have…’ She looked up at him and sighed. ‘It will break my heart, and the thing about hearts is that they break again and again, but still I don’t care, I will never ask Tubai to stop.’

  ‘Why would you not tell him then, knowing what can happen?’

  ‘Because…’ Her voice was now choked with tears. ‘Because what Tubai is doing is right. I will not tell him to stop caring for people. I will not tell him to stop standing up against injustice. And God is my witness, I will not tell him to stop loving the woman he loves. If he is going to die, let him die in his own dream, than live in the nightmare men like you have made.’

  They sat quietly, save the sound of the rain, and of Nayantara’s heavy breathing, and the occasional car splashing down the road. Arjun slumped forward, burying his face into his hands, till Nayantara spoke.