by Gabriel Khan
Gupta fell to the ground, howling in pain. He had lost his hold on the gun, and it had clattered away and come to rest a few feet from him.
The men around me moved swiftly to accost Gupta. One of them picked up the gun and came to me. It was Rahul. He spoke almost reverentially, ‘Sir, are you all right?’
‘Of course! I’m fine,’ I said. I got back to my feet and started barking out orders. ‘Take Gupta into custody, and someone try and calm down that girl. I want ten men to clean up this area now and control the crowd. Rahul, get on the wireless and call for an ambulance. Gupta’s not going anywhere now.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Rahul and dashed off.
My role here was over. As I was walking away, I heard the new kid whisper to someone else, ‘Man, this guy is the real deal! Did you see what he just did?’
I could tell that he was awed by what he had just witnessed, and judging by the faces of the others around, they were pretty impressed too.
I smiled to myself. A job well done.
3
Games of Fate
His heart thudded, pounding its protest and registering his fear against the wall of his chest. He could see all the way down, right down to the street, three storeys below. Well, not the whole street, only the parts of it that were bathed in the bright circle of light falling from the streetlamp. The rest was all swallowed up by night. If he fell, he might melt into that blackness. Or maybe not.
This was not a place to be, thought Ajay. This was not the place for a fourteen-year-old. What the hell was he thinking?
When he’d planned this earlier, it had seemed so easy, so clear! Of course, that was down there, with the safety of the ground beneath his feet and the daylight lending him a fickle bravado. Right now, it was flickering unsteadily under the steady contemplation of night.
For some months now, this downtown neighbourhood had been suffering from an uptown affliction – burglary. For some strange reason, the thieves seemed to have tired of breaking into mansions and palaces and stealing valuable stuff, and were trying their hand at robbing the less rich, less fortunate families of the slums of Sion Koliwada. Maybe they were just practising their skills on easier targets, because of course people here didn’t have fancy alarms and jigsaw locks. They did, however, have a propensity to run down an escaping burglar with sticks and hammers and shovels and cricket bats and whatever else would assist the breaking of a few bones. But then, that was an occupational hazard.
A wide-eyed Ajay had heard the stories, listened to the grown-ups in the neighbourhood speak of how the law didn’t care for them, didn’t bother if some poor family got robbed. Nothing in it for them, they would say, why should they care? But Ajay knew that wasn’t the truth. A long time ago, before his mother had walked out on them and his father had gone all silent and broody, he had told Ajay that all the cops in this part of town were lower down the ladder, with cheap and greasy palms. Anyone else would have generalized from there on, applied this to their own unfortunate situation and then to the rest of the police system, but not Ajay. He believed, albeit vaguely, that when it came to the big stuff like fighting for the country, or perhaps even the big money, the cops in the better part of town, at least, wouldn’t be the same. They would be honest, upright and principled. It wasn’t a feeling that went around a lot in this area, but it kept him going. And he would prove it. He would catch the robber himself, hand him over to the police and show them that the law could be trusted.
So, he’d spent that whole week planning and practising. He’d even skipped his homework after coming home from school, and it still nagged at him, that there was a pile of arithmetic problems he hadn’t yet solved. But what he was doing was for the greater common good, wasn’t it? He was helping to protect the neighbourhood. And that meant he was helping his country. He was one of the good guys!
None of that worked up here, in this enveloping nothingness of night; there was barely enough moon in the dark sky to help him make out shapes. Shadows and shapes were scary, sure, but this near jet-black darkness was scarier. It was dawning on the teenager that his plan might not be the best.
But he was here now, and he would wait it out. He slowed down his breathing, trying to calm his mind, the way he’d learned to do when he missed his mother, or every time he found his father sitting still, wrapped up in his sorrow, staring into nothing. His beating heart steadied, his hands stopped trembling, and the sound of the blood pounding in his ears gave way to the noise of the night.
Ajay usually loved night-time. True, he had never spent it all alone on top of a building in a potentially dangerous situation, but from the safety of his room, he would listen for hours to the night speaking to him – the bark of a dog, the snores of the old man next door, the distant sound of car engines, the passing of a train, the occasional chirping of a hesitant cricket, the hoot of an owl.
Slowly, as Ajay came back from somewhere beyond the fear to himself, the sounds returned to him and the familiar night welcomed him. Though it was still a bit darker than he liked it, the sounds were all here. Well, maybe not of the owl.
Just as he was beginning to enjoy himself, a shadow moved nearby, and things suddenly got very real.
On the roof opposite him, a man was moving silently. Ajay couldn’t make out his features, but a man wearing black, carrying a black bag and moving stealthily over a rooftop in the dead of night signified only one thing. This guy was up to no good.
To his surprise, Ajay realized he wasn’t petrified – which he would have been a few minutes earlier at the thought of black-clad men, carrying black bags and moving stealthily on rooftops. His heart was beating faster, but this time there was no fear. Only the anticipation of executing a well-laid plan.
He stuck out a foot, and very carefully dislodged a tile, not enough to make a loud noise that would alert anybody else, but enough to catch the man’s attention. The tile grated against another, and there was a sharp intake of breath. The man was now looking directly at him. His hand moved, and there was a flash of steel. A knife appeared in his hand.
All right, thought Ajay. Come on. You and me, over these roofs. Come on, catch me if you can.
Moving slowly, the man slung the bag over his shoulder. Then, with a low growl, knife outstretched, he leaped across the narrow gap.
The knife swished through the air, but Ajay was already scrambling up and running over the roof, his bare feet making hardly any noise. The man followed him.
Ajay ran to the edge and vaulted over the low wall, landing on his feet, and was up and running again in a second. Behind him, the man jumped over the wall, clearing it without difficulty.
Ajay ran on, dodging through the washing hanging on the clotheslines, ducking and weaving through the wires that dangled at varying heights. He had spent all his life on these roofs, often being scolded off them. He never really liked playing with the other boys, and they thought him strange because he liked his books better than a football. But his solitary wanderings had familiarized him with the exact placement of the roofs, their layout, and how the clothes were hung out to dry, who hung what out and where.
His follower didn’t know any of this. Soon, Ajay heard him fumbling with the clothes, flinging them out of his way as he tried to catch up. There went Mrs Chavan’s new sari across the parapet, followed by Mr Aiyar’s veshti, trampled underfoot. The Aptes’ clothesline was well-placed, allowing the shorter boy to duck beneath neatly and then almost taking his pursuer’s head off when he barrelled along immediately afterwards and ran straight into it. But the man was relentless, getting back on his feet immediately.
Ajay didn’t hesitate once. He made his way out of the laundry-laden maze of hazards, ran to the edge of the roof, and without breaking stride, leaped, sailed through the air and landed on the parapet of the next roof. He knew the man would follow him – it wasn’t a big gap – and sure enough, five seconds later, he heard the grunt as the man landed.
Ajay ran on. Right here, left here, duck under the pip
e, right again, duck under the tank, get up, jump the gap, down the ladder, left, keep going, almost there, almost there. The man kept coming, and he was gaining ground.
Right, left, straight dash, then right by the water tank, and stop now!
There it was, the yawning eight-foot gap leading straight down into the unused warehouse. The place was full of planks of wood and buckets, and every noisy thing Ajay could find. He flung himself down behind a barrel and waited.
The man saw Ajay making the blind turn ten feet in front of him and ran harder. He came out of the turn at full speed and saw two things.
One: Ajay grinning at him from behind a barrel to his right.
Two: the gap right in front, which he’d had no way of seeing until it was too late.
He fell, crashing into the planks and the empty steel buckets, creating a noise that was heard across at least three buildings. Down, down, down, falling, breaking a few planks and denting a couple of mugs along the way, the man landed on the ground amidst raining wood and steel, dazed and hurt but quite alive.
Within minutes, people were up and about, not a single hand without a makeshift weapon improvised from household paraphernalia. From above, Ajay watched them pick the man up bodily, understanding at once what he was up to, and dealing him a few blows. But then, seeing he was pretty banged up anyway, they dragged him away towards the local police station, a few people doling out a few half-hearted blows en route just for the heck of it. Nobody noticed the satisfied boy watching from the top of the warehouse.
That satisfaction stayed with Ajay right until the day he started his first job. After that, it turned into something else.
With his father’s help – meaning that he hadn’t said an outright no – Ajay put himself through college, paying his fees with the help of odd jobs and errands while the other boys were out in the fields playing cricket. His eidetic memory and prodigious intelligence earned him recognition among the teachers but did not impress his peers; typically, he was known only as the super-intelligent geek who kept to himself, a born loner. Some tried to befriend him, but were always gently dislodged and shunned, though never rudely.
To tell the truth, Ajay wasn’t interested in making friends, not just then. He had discovered his passion, and was trying to see if it would find him a job with the country’s lawmen. And anyway, those who approached him were clearly doing so out of curiosity more than a spirit of genuine friendship. After a couple of times, Ajay gave up trying to find someone who could actually interest him. Sure, the girls were pretty and the guys had lots of money, but none of them understood him, and it didn’t take long for them to be exposed in their mediocrity.
Finally, with a sparkling academic profile and an unblemished record under his belt, Ajay approached the CBI.
He had long sought to join the elite investigating agency. Common sense told him that he would be better off trying for the local police force, but his passion led him to sit for the entrance and aptitude exams for CBI recruitment. On the day of the exam, his trepidation as he waited with thousands for the question paper, finally turned into delight as he wrote the exam, knowing he would crack it with ease. A few days later, he got the score – he was among the top twenty.
But Fate can be cruel to the innocent. For despite his intelligence, Ajay was still naive.
Not for long.
One fine October morning, Ajay strode confidently into the interview room, where the candidates who had qualified in the written test were being tested. There were two men in the room, sitting at a table. Ajay sat down in the chair opposite them.
One of them spoke. ‘So, Mr Singh, you scored brilliantly in your exam.’
Ajay smiled. ‘Thank you, sir.’
‘You seem confident. Do you think you can crack this interview?’
‘I hope so, sir.’
‘Good. Why do you want to join the CBI?’
‘To serve my country, sir! To uphold the law and fight for justice!’ Ajay’s answer was instant, no hesitations.
‘Good, good. And how do you propose to do that?’
Ajay’s answer was not so quick this time, but he was still not unsure. ‘I shall be truthful, honest and just. I shall follow the law and live by its rules. And after my training, I shall stick by what I have learned and try to do what I’ve been taught, sir.’
The other man spoke. ‘Mr Singh, do you have fifty thousand rupees?’
This was unexpected. Ajay’s face screwed up in puzzlement. ‘Fifty thousand rupees, sir? What for?’
‘That is for us to know. Do you have fifty thousand rupees?’
This was difficult territory for Ajay. He earned barely a hundred rupees a month doing odd jobs, and he spent it to keep his father and himself fed and clothed. He said, ‘I’m sorry, sir, I don’t have the money on me now.’
‘That’s too bad, kid. Thank you for coming,’ the man said, and looked down at the papers in front of him dismissively.
Ajay was thunderstruck. He couldn’t understand what was going on. Why the money? He knew they’d checked him out, they knew his background, they knew he didn’t have the money. But wait! ‘Is this a test, sir?’ he said, smiling uncertainly.
The first man spoke again. ‘No, this isn’t a test. Either you have the money or you don’t. If you don’t, you can leave.’
‘But why, sir? I scored well in the exam. I promise you, sir, I will make you proud, just give me a chance!’ Somewhere deep down, Ajay realized with a shock that he was pleading with them, something he had never done in his life.
‘We don’t care what you make us feel. Please leave. There’s no need for you to come back.’
Something shifted into place in Ajay’s brain; he was beginning to understand now. He said, ‘What if I have the money, sir? What if I can get it for you?’
‘Then we might have a deal.’
He finally realized what was happening. ‘So if I can get you the money, you will select me?’ he asked, his hands slowly clenching.
‘We might be… persuaded, yes. Our approval doesn’t come cheap, Mr Singh.’
Ajay stood up. ‘Are you asking me for a bribe?’ he said through gritted teeth.
‘Careful what you say, you little piece of shit. You don’t want to get us angry,’ the second man said, malice dripping from his voice.
Ajay couldn’t believe what he was hearing. This was the CBI! They were supposed to be the best. They upheld the law, and made sure that justice was served, every time. This was all upside down.
He looked at the two men in front of him very carefully. He wouldn’t forget them. ‘We will meet again,’ he said softly, and turned and walked out of the room.
Outside, he felt he could breathe again. But for the first time since his mother had left them for some hotshot jeweller, Ajay felt the pain of betrayal. It was a great effort, but he steeled himself and said out loud, ‘They’re crooked!’
The very men who were supposed to uphold the law, to be inviolate and upright, were corrupt!
The interview shook Ajay to his core. For nearly a week he remained lost in thought, and in that time, the innocence won through. He decided to try elsewhere.
But Fate wasn’t done yet. Over the next month, everywhere he went, every avenue he tried, he came up with the same result.
The police force found him lacking in stature. They told him he was an inch shorter than the regulations prescribed.
The railway police told him his academic record was too good, that he would be wasted on them. Finally, observing his persistence, the interviewer asked him if he would take a bribe.
‘Of course not!’ Ajay said indignantly.
‘That’s why we can’t hire you.’
Even the customs department turned him down, saying he was ‘unrecruitable’.
None of it made sense. Were they all crooked? This was the one thought that assaulted his mind constantly. ‘Do I have to be like that?’ a broken Ajay finally asked Gautam Singhania, the interviewer on the customs board.
Through the haze, the smog of emotions, the sentence penetrated to Ajay’s consciousness. ‘What do you mean, your hands are tied?’ he said.
Now Singhania looked uncomfortable. ‘Look here, you can’t ask such questions. We’re done. Thank you for coming,’ he said, getting up and walking to the door.
Ajay leaped up, slammed the door shut, grabbed Singhania by the lapel and shoved him against the wall. ‘You tell me what you meant, or I promise I’ll hurt you more than you can imagine,’ he said, his teeth clenched, his voice low, his hand pressed hard against the man’s throat.
Singhania saw the crazed look in Ajay’s eyes, debated between candidness and reticence for a second before settling for the former. ‘We were instructed not to hire you!’ he squeaked.
Ajay was stunned, but he didn’t let go. He wanted answers, and by God he was going to get them! ‘Who?’
‘Come on, I can’t tell you that! It’ll cost me my job!’
Ajay squeezed harder until Singhania’s face turned purple. ‘A.K. Gupta! Telecom minister A.K. Gupta!’
Ajay let go, and the man sank to the floor, massaging his bruised throat. But Ajay wasn’t done yet. He knelt down in front of Singhania, and said, ‘Why?’
‘Because he doesn’t like you,’ the interviewer said reluctantly. ‘You misbehaved with his men at the CBI. He wants to get even.’
‘WHY?’ Ajay roared.
‘His brother-in-law. He wanted his brother-in-law to be selected! He paid a huge amount to make sure. Everyone knows that, it’s an open secret.’
‘So? Why did they screw me?’
‘You were one of the best,’ Singhania said in a low voice. ‘He would never have been selected if he’d come up against you. So you had to be eliminated from the competition.’
Ajay was aghast. That was it? That was why his life, his dream, was being snatched away from him? ‘But that was the CBI! Why is nobody else hiring me?’
Singhania sighed. ‘You accused them of being crooked?’
