Sultan of Delhi: Ascension

by Arnab Ray

  The trunk opened and Arjun felt it then, as if his heart was in the grip of a monstrous vice and someone was turning the lever.

  Right on top was his shirt, the one he had left behind the last day, folded and neatly ironed. He took it out and placed it on the ground. Below that, there were piles of saris that they had bought for her together, and between the folds he found the framed picture that used to be on the wall, of him and Bangali. There was another picture, not framed, but he recognized it immediately, from the one time he had taken her to a studio on Park Street. She had hated all her pictures except this, and he looked at it, and there she was, as heart-wrenchingly beautiful as always. Arjun ran his index finger over the picture and then he put the black-and-white photo in his shirt pocket.

  The journey had been worth it.

  He riffled through the rest of the trunk, hoping to find something there, maybe another picture, just something more he could take back.

  Then he felt it. An envelope.

  Was there a note in it? Had Nayantara left for him a last message, a goodbye, in a trunk which only he could open?

  He quickly opened the flap. There was no letter inside.

  Instead there were movie ticket stubs. Ten, twenty, perhaps more. Every movie they had ever gone to together at Roxy, Tiger and Globe.

  Arjun recognized them all. He turned the envelope over, and that was all there was. Movie ticket stubs. Little scraps of what had been the best time of his life.

  He sat there on his knees for some time, not moving.

  And then he curled into a ball on the ground and wept like he never had in his life.

  It was late at night, close to two, when he returned to Taj Bengal. The receptionist at the front looked at him with an expression of concern.

  ‘Sir, there were several calls for you from your residence in Delhi in the past thirty minutes. They said it’s very urgent.’

  Arjun didn’t want to talk to anyone back home, not tonight anyway.

  ‘Sir, I insist. Please call home. It is very, very urgent.’

  ‘Did they say what it was about?’

  She shook her head.

  He dialled the number. It rang and then rang some more.

  Strange, he thought, where are the servants? Where is security?

  He tried again. This time someone picked up.

  ‘Hello,’ he said into the receiver.

  From the other end came deep, laboured breathing, and then Preeti spoke.

  ‘Come home, come home, please.’

  ‘Why? What’s happened?’

  ‘It’s Sudheer…he is…they…’ and her voice broke into heavy sobbing.

  14

  Sudheer stood outside, holding on to the pillar for support, as the driver pulled the red Jaguar out to the front and on to the gravel. He tottered forward towards the door, and yelled, ‘Aye, you at the wheel, get out.’

  The driver, a young man with a small moustache, looked back at him alarmed.

  ‘Sahib, you cannot drive now. Let me…’

  The other drivers were standing there, all looking at this little scene in amusement, the fat man in the inappropriately tight shirt, wheezing from the excitement and the drink, shouting at the top of his voice at this small driver. They knew who he was and so they stayed back, and they were happy that they did, because Sudheer reached to the side of his trousers and brought out a gun.

  ‘Madarchod, now will you let me drive or will you not?’

  The driver obediently opened the door and stood to the side.

  ‘Get in,’ Sudheer said, still brandishing his gun. ‘You are going to sit there.’ He pointed to the back seat.

  ‘Sahib, I will go home on my own.’ The driver, who had just joined a month ago, wanted no further part in this.

  ‘Main maalik aur tu naukar. Samjhe? Main jo bolunga, tu woh karega. Agar gadi ki exhaust pipe ko apne gaand mein ghusaane ko boluun,pant utaarke ghusayega. Samjhe? Now get in the fucking car.’

  The driver obeyed, turning once towards the other drivers and security, hoping for some help. Some looked away, some smiled, some shook their heads.

  They sped out of the gates towards the Gurgaon–Mehrauli highway. Despite being drunk, Sudheer felt steady at the wheel, though at this hour of the evening on a weekend, the roads were not crowded, and even the cars that were there were pushed to the side in front of the speeding Jaguar.

  ‘You know why I am driving?’ asked Sudheer, his words slurred. ‘And why you are sitting in the sahib’s seat?’

  The driver shook his head. ‘No, sahib.’

  ‘Because I will become a driver, that’s the only thing I am good for.’ He laughed out loud. ‘That’s all my father thinks I am good for. You, madarchod, are my first ride.’ He moved one hand from the steering wheel and made a mock salute.

  It was only yesterday that he had come to know of it. Arjun had removed him from the big airline deal after all the work he had put in. He had wanted to meet his father, but even that he could not do nowadays without going through his underlings. In desperation, he had called Arjun.

  ‘I am not taking you away from anything. I only want you to go through Mathur. He has his men in the civil aviation ministry, and he has worked there himself,’ Arjun had said.

  Sudheer had interrupted angrily. ‘Stop lying to me, papa. You are giving me a minder.’

  ‘Whatever you want to think,’ Arjun had said brusquely, and then paused, as if deliberating on what to say. ‘And if you do want the truth, yes, you have screwed this whole thing up so far. But then, what’s new?’

  ‘So what can I do to make it up?’ asked Sudheer. ‘Drive Mathur around? Carry his files? Polish his shoes? Drop his children to school?’

  ‘The problem with you, among a hundred, is that you don’t know how to finish a job.’

  I will show you, when I pull the deal with the Mehtas and make crores for my father-in-law and RP. I will finish this one good.

  Sudheer rolled down the window and took in the night air. Usually a night of drinking helped relieve the pain, but not today. He was already feeling hung over when he should have been feeling high, his stomach churning like a fifteen-year-old’s after downing his first Bacardi.

  It was the party. He just shouldn’t have come. This was the crown jewel of Rocky’s farmhouses, the biggest by far in Chhattarpur – a large swimming pool and acres of sprawling lawns with large marble statues of naked Greek gods scattered intermittently along its length. Since this was Rocky’s party, Rishi would not be invited. They had a beef from college, something silly about some bet on a cricket match that Rocky had not paid up, and any time their groups met at a club or at a party, there would be words thrown and sometimes fists. Mohan also had backed out with some mumbled excuse, which meant he was screwing one of his girlfriends tonight, the lucky bugger, or staying home with his toy trains and jigsaw puzzles, and Sudheer could never figure out why Mohan did that. The Khanna brothers had gone to London for a wedding, Puneet was on his honeymoon in Pattaya, and Surinder, God knows where he was passed out, because he didn’t pick up the phone. So here he had come, without his posse, and the party list was of course mostly Rocky’s friends, and the usual hangers-on one gets used to seeing at these parties – the models, the small-time actresses and star-struck college girls, none of whom he cared to know or fuck, which is why he had sat at the bar all evening, drinking and sulking, and looking towards the dance floor at the swaying hips and jiggling boobs from time to time, before sinking back into his glass.

  Then the DJ started playing a remixed version of ‘Saat Samundar Paar’, and it must have been the tequila shots or just that he loved the song, but he had gotten up, slammed the drink on the bar table, and stomped over to the dance floor. Then he had started to dance, and within seconds, his shirt was drenched to the skin with sweat and yet he kept shaking every fold of fat in his body, huffing and panting from the effort. There was a little circle for him now, people were standing around, with Sudheer swaying his arms and his
legs every way, which is when ‘Saat Samundar Par’ melded into ‘Tu Cheez Badi Hai Mast’. Sudheer went to do the Akshay Kumar pelvic thrust, when right at that moment a little edge of the whisky hit his head, his legs flew out below him, and he landed on the floor with a heavy thud and rolled ingloriously to the side. He looked up, everyone was smiling, and there was this one man, standing between two girls, holding each of them by their waists, who just exploded with laughter.

  ‘Look at that fat pig. Just look at him.’ He slapped one of the girls on her butt. ‘Get up, get up, piggie, and shake your tail.’ He reached into his wallet, took out some currency notes and circled them around over his head. The two girls seemed to find that very amusing, and all that Sudheer heard, over the music and the giggles, was their laughter, and, just like that, the whole world seemed to be laughing at him at once.

  He got up, struggling against the lightness of his head and the slippery floor below his shoe, reached to the side of his trousers, and, still off balance and tottering, fished out his .22, disengaged the safety and pointed it straight.

  He saw the man properly now, big eyes bulging out from his forehead, dressed in his fifties like he was in his twenties. The girls were moving away, colour drained from their faces in fear, and the man took a few steps back.

  ‘You know who I am, behenchod?’ Sudheer waved his gun around unsteadily. ‘My name is Sudheer Bhatia and…’ He reached to the side to stop his trousers from sliding down further, held as precariously as they were by the rising slope of his butt.

  The man threw his hands up, and the floor was emptying fast now, the shrieks of girls rising above the thump of the music.

  ‘Come on, yaar, thodi masti kar rahe the.’ The man had raised his hands in surrender. He was scared.

  ‘Tab,’ Sudheer had said, ‘tu mast hi marega.’

  Was he going to press the trigger? Of course he wasn’t, he wasn’t that far gone, but then that bastard’s scaredy-cat face made the charade worth it.

  Maybe I would have shot him, thought Sudheer, had not the bouncers gotten to me first. Those bastards had been too strong. Rocky had run in from God knows where he had been, and then they all had led him away to a private room.

  Once the door had been closed, Rocky had shouted at him, without even a bit of respect for who he was. ‘Are you out of your mind? Do you know who that is?’

  ‘All I know is that chutiya is alive whereas he should be dead right now,’ Sudheer had slurred.

  ‘Fuck you, man,’ Rocky had said in that accent of his, which somehow reminded Sudheer of his sister, not just because it was heavily American but because his voice was like a girl’s, which he always found funny coming from the mouth of a man named Rocky. ‘That’s James Maharaj.’

  ‘What? Who the fuck is that? And what kind of a name is James Maharaj?’

  ‘He is Gulati’s daughter’s boyfriend, that’s who he is.’

  ‘Defence minister Gulati?’

  ‘No. The milkman.’ Rocky slapped his forehead. ‘Yes. Of course. The defence minister. What were you thinking?’

  ‘Which of those two girls was the defence minister’s daughter? Doodh ki tanker on the right?’ Sudheer cupped his hand in the air over his chest, ‘or registaan on the left?’

  ‘Neither.’

  ‘Haha, Gulati’s daughter would have thanked me for killing him then. Hell, she might as well have licked my ass.’

  ‘You are drunk.’ Rocky gestured to his bouncers who had followed him into the room. ‘You there, call his driver and get sahib out to the car.’

  ‘Yeah, I should go home.’ Sudheer had brushed aside the bouncer who was reaching out for him. ‘Your party sucks worse than your mother.’

  Sudheer smiled at the memory of having told off Rocky. Maybe the party hadn’t been that bad after all.

  ‘Are you all right, sahib?’ the driver asked from behind, leaning forward towards the driver’s seat. ‘If you let me, I can drive the rest of the way.’

  ‘What’s your name?’ asked Sudheer, lowering the volume of the music system.

  The man hesitated.

  ‘Or do you want me to call you sahib?’

  ‘Satyaprakash Jha.’

  ‘So Satyaprakash Jha, what music do you like? I am guessing not what’s playing in this car.’

  ‘Sahib, please let me go.’

  ‘Arre,’ Sudheer said cheerfully. ‘What’s to let go? Tell me, who is your favourite singer?’

  ‘Sahib, chodiye na.’

  ‘I asked you a question.’

  ‘Kumar Sanu.’

  ‘Waah waah, kya baat hai. Sing me a song of Kumar Sanu. And in his voice.’

  He turned the music system off.

  ‘I can’t sing.’ Satyaprakash was sitting, hands folded, trying to check where Sudheer’s gun was.

  ‘Sing me a sad song of Kumar Sanu.’

  ‘I can’t sing…please.’

  ‘Ten thousand rupees.’ Sudheer pointed to his wallet. ‘One song. Chal guru ho ja shuru.’

  Satyaprakash Jha coughed once, and then again, clearing his throat nervously.

  ‘Abey, bahut ho gaya nakhra,’ Sudheer yelled. ‘Gaana chaloo kar.’

  ‘Ab tere bin jee lenge…’

  That’s when it happened. A sharp boom, the sound of breaking glass, and then a warm burst of liquid hit Sudheer on the back of his head. Satyaprakash Jha’s body flew forward, his head hit the back of the passenger seat, and there were bits of his brain and skull all around, on the windows and the upholstery and dripping down Sudheer’s hair and his shoulder.

  Sudheer heard another shot and on instinct, he swerved the car to the right. The bullet hit the door on the driver’s side, missing the window. He turned his head in the direction of the shots, and saw that there was a motorcycle on that side, and two men sitting on it, but that’s all he could make out in the darkness outside.

  The drink was gone, and Sudheer felt surprisingly lucid. He pressed on the accelerator with every ounce of his weight. The road was deserted and the Jaguar sped forward, which is when he heard another shot, and this time the car jagged crazily to the side. Sudheer smelt burning rubber. They had shot out a tyre.

  The Jaguar careened forward, driving on metal, and though he could not see them, Sudheer knew they were on his tail. Holding the steering wheel with one hand, he reached to the side to get his gun out, when he realized it was useless. He would never be able to get a shot at the target while it was moving. So he kept the gun near the gear box and moved his hands back to the steering.

  He was going to outrun them, Sudheer told himself, this was, after all, a Jaguar. And that bike…God knows what desi shit that was.

  The gun fired again and again. The driver’s window shattered into small shards of glass and Sudheer felt the bullets sinking into him, like two lead caterpillars burrowing slowly in.

  Madarchod. They shot me.

  He saw the men clearly, handkerchiefs round their faces, one of them bald, and he turned the wheel sharply to the right to hit them and they shot again and missed, trying to protect themselves from being run off the road.

  The Jaguar again raced ahead till they shot out another tyre. In the distance, Sudheer could see the headlights of an oncoming truck.

  No, make that three trucks. Right behind each other.

  Sudheer felt nothing. Just a creeping sensation of wetness, and he knew it was his blood. The men were now at his side, and the pillion rider extended his arm to get his gun as close and as steady as he could. Sudheer turned his head and, over the roar of the car and the bike and the rumbling of the approaching trucks, picked up the gun and emptied the magazine blindly in the direction of his attackers. ‘Ma chode tere. Ma chode.’

  Then he felt the searing pain of another bullet shattering his collarbone, and he clutched hard on to the steering wheel. The Jaguar started turning in a circle, one turn then a half, in a cloud of sparks and fire. He tried to step on the accelerator but the car did not respond. As the truck came straight at him,
he could smell petrol and burning metal, and heard the rumbling of the bike moving away. He tried to lunge against the door, but his body, ridden with bullets, refused to budge.

  ‘You amateurs don’t know how to finish a job.’ Sudheer leaned back into the driver’s seat, a little smile on his lips. His voice was now a low murmur, ‘As papa would say, you are just like me.’

  Arjun sat in the VIP waiting room of the All India Institute of Medical Science, hunched forward on the couch, head in his hands. They had come all through the night and into the morning, ministers and businessmen, and he had thanked them all for standing by the family in this hour, and then had politely sent them their way. Just an hour ago, he had finally convinced Preeti to go home, along with her extended family. She had to look after Nimmi as she was with child and needed special attention, that was what Arjun had said, and after Preeti had left, he had given specific instructions to call the family doctor and get him to prescribe something that would let her get some sleep. Preeti seemed to have aged ten years in these last twelve hours, and when she had left, her eyes were so swollen from crying that she could barely see. Arjun had felt a sense of relief once she agreed to go home for there would be people there to watch over her.

  As he watched her go, he remembered what she had asked him to promise – never to go to meet Nayantara. On Sudheer’s head.

  She was dead when I went. And I never promised on Sudheer’s head. And all this is nonsense anyway. Whatever it be, she will never find out. No one will.

  Only his security was left, discreetly manning the perimeter and the entrances of AIIMS, and so was Mohan, standing all this while at the door, looking out at the passage. He had not cried, he had not said much. The only difference from his normal behaviour, Arjun observed, was that he was pacing nervously about.

  ‘Mohan, don’t hold it in, beta. It doesn’t help to keep it inside.’

  ‘Sudheer will pull through. I know that.’

  ‘Then why are you…’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Mohan said with sudden energy. ‘Arijit tried to kill Sudheer and we are sitting here, like helpless women, doing nothing.’