Now we were down to forty pages—the magazine was as spineless as a pamphlet—and nearly one month’s salaries in arrears. The investors, Jai’s school friends, three of them, christened Chutiya-Nandan-Pandey by us, had stopped taking our calls, and even their executive assistants, though unfailingly polite—‘we’ll certainly pass on the message’—had frost in their voice. Unusually, the accounts man Santoshbhai, an old-timer with a Hitler moustache and six strands of hair glued across his bald pate, was still very warm each time we called him pleading for a transfer of funds. But, of course, he was helpless. ‘Arre bhai, I only count the money, not earn it. If I could give it, you wouldn’t have to ask twice. Just get me one nod from the chhote sahib’ was all he would say. But chhote sahib, Nandan of Chutiya-Nandan-Pandey, was busy imbibing Scotch and slapping flesh and was nowhere to be reached.
In desperation, not knowing what to do but needing to do something, we’d keep calling Santoshbhai in the crazed hope that one day, suddenly, miraculously, he would be reckless enough to send us the money and explain it to chhote sahib later. Like the old good-hearted family retainer in Hindi films who finally earns the ear of the young Turk.
I have to say I was not surprised things had gone badly. I had always been sceptical of the trio, and I don’t think they liked me either. In his blindly enthusiastic way Jai had been profuse in spelling out their virtues when we first set out. ‘Good guys, have made their millions, not really chasing money any more, want to do social stuff, things for the soul, I’ve seen them since they were in their chuddies, always been decent chaps not rich brats, anyway there’ll never be the perfect investor for what we want to do, these guys are about as good as it’ll ever get, at least they talk our language, at least we’ll be able to hear each other, think of the guy we went to in CP, who wanted our asset sheets—we didn’t even know what he was talking about, think of the buggers we’ve worked for, surely nothing can be worse than them!’
Actually these guys were worse. They were complete fools. Not smart enough to just focus on making the money; stupid enough to have bought this magazine thing from Jai in the middle of a wrist-slitting festival one posh evening.
The very first time Jai took me to meet them, at a hotel bar, I concluded they were chutiyas. Chutiya-Nandan-Pandeys. They were dressed sharply in crisp fresh clothes, with manicured hands and hair, and were awash in cologne. Very briefly, in the beginning, they had American accents—two of them had done university abroad. In between struggling to ask serious questions they had cracked dumb jokes and guffawed loudly, randomly slapping each other’s backs, hands, thighs; they were still in their school dorm getting giggly about the geography teacher’s bra-strap.
They were all garment exporters and had earned countless millions working sweat factories that supplied dirt-cheap apparel for the big stores of the West. Bondhu Ram fashioning Calvin Klein—that sort of thing. Two of them did undergarments and were called Kuchha King and Kuchha Singh (he was a shorn sardar). The third was called Frock Raja, after his special act. Coming from the same posh school as Jai, incapable of much else, they had been set up by their fathers at a time of great export incentives. Before economic playing fields were levelled, they had made enough for five generations. The chasm between Bondhu Ram and Calvin Klein—between Jaunpur and Fifth Ave—was big enough to accommodate vast wealth and all its excesses.
The bar was all burnished wood and glass with windows the size of walls through which I watched a white-skinned mamma working the length of the heaven-blue pool on the other side. She wore a yellow bikini and opened her mouth in a big O each time she broke a stroke. She should have worn an orange burqa and kept her mouth closed. The water in the pool sparkled as if each drop had been diligently polished before being flowed in by the super servile waiters who whispered by our side. Most of India would have gladly drunk it, like sherbet.
Remembering Guruji, I had quickly become the man in the iron mask, dug into the bowl of salted peanuts and settled back to watch the proceedings. Jai had striven to humour his pals with weak smiles and fey ripostes. He had an amazing ability to shrink himself down to the dumbest fuck. Mr Lincoln Goes to the People.
By the time the third round of whiskies had arrived, they were already talking about the first anniversary party—the venue, the music and the starlets they’d like to invite. They had given up trying to involve me and were in the swim of their own happy lake. I had, meantime, fed my entire bowl of peanuts to the iron mask and was now burrowing deep into Jai’s, setting in motion the engines of great flatulence.
The parting was demonstrative, with effusive hugs and loud wisecracks. Mr Lincoln was flung from embrace to embrace. On the granite-floored lobby of the hotel there was much of this, very similar, noisy happiness reverberating all around. The fastest growing national affliction: opulence euphoria.
I had pumped hands, sick with the peanuts.
When they had been driven off in their Mercedeses and Pajeros, and we were waiting for our small cars in the foyer, Jai said, ‘So what do you think?’ I said, ‘Chutiya-Nandan-Pandeys.’
Jai had laughed and said, ‘Who else would back crazies like us?’
The next time, we were invited to meet them at Frock Raja’s farmhouse. It was five acres of la-la land, just behind the boxy Vasant Kunj flats where Sara lived. There were water-spurting Scandinavian marble mermaids with large Indian breasts, a topiary of dinosaurs, a swimming pool shaped like a flounced skirt—with a submerged bar at the waistband—bulb-lit Halloween masks on pruned branches, undulating manicured lawns with colourful steel birds poised for takeoff, lines of mast trees trimmed to precisely the same height flanking every pathway, piped Clayderman tinkles at every corner of the garden, a Yeats pond with the fifty-nine swans of Coole, a dining-room in a mock stable with two handsome horses tethered in a corner for atmospherics, so you could chew to the music of shuffling flanks and scuffing hooves.
Inside was an equal riot of the imagination. A mad medley of statuary, paintings, carpets, fabrics, lamps, furniture, antiques, waterfalls—far eastern Buddhas, Greek Aphrodites, Wild West saddles and sombreros, old flintlocks, Japanese silk screens, Amazonian machetes, African masks, a massive ebony rhinoceros, Persian rugs. You negotiated your way through the decorative traffic, bending and braking. Mr Lincoln made slippery sounds of appreciation as Frock Raja guided the tour with practised aplomb. I had jumped into the iron mask at the sight of the first big-breasted mermaid in the driveway.
After we had been led through many sitting-rooms, many dining-rooms, many bars, many enclosed verandas, we repaired to The Stable—the bar-cum-dining hall where the horses shuffled. The two large handsome chestnuts were tethered beyond a low glass and wood partition, slightly lower than the planked floor we sat on. I suppose so you could—if that was your thing—look deep into their sad eyes. Their skin shone, the tart smell of horse flesh was contained to a minimum; they had probably been hoovered for the party. Mr Lincoln asked searching questions about their breed and speed. Mr Lincoln Goes to the Races.
I fed my mouth fistfuls of roasted cashew-nuts. Iron Mask Inaugurates the Flatulence Factory.
Kuchha King, Kuchha Singh, and Frock Raja guffawed and slapped each other wherever they could. Messrs Chutiya-Nandan-Pandey Discuss Bra Strap of Geography Teacher.
At one point, Frock Raja used a remote to turn off all the lights. Suddenly above us shone thousands of faux stars and galaxies. Given the snorting horses, we could have been out in the Wild West, under the open sky, preparing for a gunfight at OK Corral. It was quite something. Mr Lincoln broke into appreciative mewling noises. Frock Raja spoke of the peace of the universe, and gave many loud sighs of satisfaction.
Then the lights came back on and everyone fell again to slapping flesh and to debating the virtues of different single malt whiskies. Highland, lowland, speyside, backside, bog, peat, nose, palate, amber, gold, glen, fen, dour, sour, bouquet, shouquet. And Michael Jackson! That befuddled me, till I realized it was another man and not the
dancing alien. Throughout, Mr Lincoln dazzled—all waving arms and burning eyes. Fully worthy of the bloodshed of unsuspecting investors.
The happy exchange of loud claims and famous names only shifted when Jai tentatively brought up the specifics of the deal, the money needed for the project, the equity split. In the next hour all the expansiveness of big-breasted mermaids and thigh-slapping jokes and star-spangled firmaments and glen-fen dour-sour faded as the three of them systematically disembowelled Jai.
Mr Lincoln was reduced to a gawky, gangly, uncertain Abraham to the sound of shuffling horse flanks, and while the man in the iron mask ruthlessly destroyed every cashew-nut in sight, a deal was concluded that gave us barely a third of what we had been hoping for. We all leaned forward and shook hands to mark the partnership. Then the three fell once again to slapping flesh and guffawing. By now Abraham was in short-pants, all eloquence a faded memory.
Outside, on the driveway of mock stone, Abraham was flung from embrace to embrace, while the mermaid ran clear water from her mouth. Trailing them all, I grabbed a quick feel of a faux Venus de Milo’s alabaster breast. It fit in my palm and felt quite good.
When we were safely out of the big iron gates and nearing the concrete boxes of Vasant Kunj, a recovering Mr Lincoln, climbing back into full pants, said, ‘Sad bastards! Sweatshop merchants! Bloody chutiyas! Anyway we got what we wanted!’
I looked at him, and sick with the salted nuts, rumbled my stomach in response.
I didn’t tell anyone any of this. My parents I hadn’t spoken to about anything substantial since I started earning my first rupee. Dolly/folly was simply too dumb to ask anything or to be told anything. And the narrow world of in-laws, recurring deposits and school reports that my sister inhabited had no room for anything but our annual transaction of the rakhi. This time I left even Sara, my usual confidante, out of it. I knew she would break into an uncontainable rant if she heard about the horse dining-room and the marble mermaids. And this time it wouldn’t be foreplay for the nailing on the wall, but genuine disgust. I could intuit where the line on these things lay with her and the three bozos were way beyond the boundary.
All I told her was that the investors were friends of Jai, and I had christened them Chutiya-Nandan-Pandey. That pleased her a great deal. She said, ‘Good! Abuse is the revenge of the proletariat.’
I didn’t tell anyone—bar Guruji, that is. Over time I had learnt to keep nothing from him, not even Sara. He had a way of divining all that was happening in my life; and this time I desperately needed his guidance. Before we signed the shareholders’ agreement, I jumped into the car one evening and hit the Grand Trunk Road. By eight o’clock I had turned off the Markanda bridge, skirted Shahabad to my right, and in the luminous dark found the old banyan that marked the dirt track to his ashram. With the many lengths of flapping red cloth—some new, most fraying—tied to its branches it appeared alive and moving. Guruji’s followers were growing, their wishes draping the ancient tree.
I drove slowly, in second gear, the car heaving like a boat on choppy waters. The rains and the tractors and the bullock carts—with their harrows and trolleys—had gouged holes and gullies in the track, and you had to be careful where the wheels went. Each time you got the alignment wrong and hit troughs on both sides, you heard the sickening sound of the undercarriage dragging the ground. The headlights dipped and skewed in a sea of black. Dust rose in small explosions, drenching the car. A few times I had to stop dead for it to settle, so I could see the way ahead. When I stopped I could hear, distantly behind me, on the main road, the screech and roar of tearing trucks.
Soon the lights of Guruji’s dera were visible. Four of them: one, strong, on the roof; and three, diffuse, catching the extremities of the boundary walls. There was a sentry at the iron gates, and I had to lower my window so he could recognize me. He was an old man with a flowing white beard and a blue turban loosely wound around his head. He carried an old double-barrel with two triggers, its strap made of thick green canvas. A bandolier of red cartridges was slung across his chest.
Guruji said the covenant of spiritual power was unchanging and clear: he could protect others but not himself; he could enrich others but not himself; he could heal others but not himself. He alone could take care of the multitudes; but the multitudes, collectively, needed to take care of him.
It was the answer I would have given to the cynicisms of Sara and Jai, if I could be bothered about them. The vanities—and limitations—of reason.
The dera was rudimentary. Just naked bricks pressed together untidily with grey cement. I parked the car by a makeshift shed of six slim pillars capped by corrugated iron sheets. A part of the open shed was taken up by Guruji’s white Sumo—gifted to him by a grateful flour-mill owner from Yamunanagar, whose truant daughter’s marriage he had salvaged—and the rest was stacked with charpoys that had been stood on their sides. During the day these charpoys were dragged out and clustered around the large neem, each one laden with many a peasant body.
At this hour the dera was muted. Guruji withdrew from the throng at six every evening to meditate in the inner sanctum and then was only available to some, selectively, after eight, once he had emerged, bathed with cold water and eaten his dinner.
All around, green fields washed right up against the brick walls of the dera. The fields were in ankle-deep water now—to grow paddy—and the pulsing moonlight bounced off them tantalizingly. Now and then one heard the guttural query of a bull-frog, picked up and loudly repeated. Sometimes this was followed by a tiny splash as one of them decided to take a swim. The hum of cicadas underlay it all. The main road was not visible from here, but occasional screams of traffic wafted through.
Someone called out to me from the roof, leaning out over the low cement railing. The straight, steep flight of stairs, without a protective balustrade, was around the back. When I walked around the main hall, where Guruji received his disciples, I could smell the acrid dung cakes being burnt in the open kitchens. There were enough chullahs here to prepare a repast for more than a thousand people—an event which happened twice a year, on Guruji’s birthday and on the samadhi day of his Baba, 31 December.
Last year, from her little eyehole of Anglo activism, Sara had attacked me. ‘You are as dumb a dick as the guys who prance around at idiotic parties shouting Happy New Year! You want to get your rocks off doing some pseudo mystical shit with pirs and babas! You may as well go and jerk around at Djinns! Get a proper mix of pseudo modernity and pseudo mysticism!’ She was angry. She wanted us to usher in the new year sitting in bed watching Costa-Gavras’s Z. Followed, presumably, by an invective carnival. And at the stroke of midnight I would scream, Saali randi!
Instead, at the midnight hour, I had chosen to witness a greater frenzy at Guruji’s. As his devotees jammed the dera in their hundreds—wrapped in coarse blankets, faces hooded against the biting cold, children asleep in their arms, sitting, standing, huddled everywhere—as they chanted in a growing fervour, in his small inner room Guruji had begun to sway like a palm tree in high wind.
He was seated on the old maroon satin cushion with gold tassels that had once belonged to Babaji and was his to sit upon only one night in the year. On the wall behind him were framed pictures of Hindu gods and goddesses, of Buddha, Mahavira, Jesus Christ, and in Persian calligraphy, the praise of Allah, all lit up with special garlands of tiny twinkling lights.
Guruji was naked but for his dark red dhoti, his body splendid in its spareness, the ribs etched clean, the sinews taut wires. His long thick hair streaked with silver was loose, and in flowing motion, as Guruji rotated with gathering speed from the waist. His legs were crossed—the ankles clear over the thighs—and still as stone. His torso was rubber.
He sat on a wooden dais. There was no one near him but his old mother, a tiny insect of a woman with delicate features and radiant eyes, her snow-white head covered with a white dupatta. A gold stud shone on her nose but her arms were bereft of bangles. She held on to Guru
ji’s left ankle with one bony hand. She was there to hold on to him; to keep him, when the moment came, from ascending into unreturnable regions.
Just six inches below him, off the dais, the room was packed with his most loyal and intimate devotees, some cross-legged, some on their haunches, and some on their knees. Hundreds of incense sticks created a slow swirling mist, drowning out the smell of sweat and blankets.
I was fighting to retain my position at the open door, which was jammed with people wedged in sideways. My right hand was clamped to the wooden frame above to anchor my place. The small open window opposite was crammed with a dozen wide-eyed faces. Behind us, all the way through the narrow corridor, out into the open courtyard, packed bodies oscillated gently, pushing forward for ingress, being pushed back, their movement keeping time to the chant: Bhole, bhole, bam bhole! Bhole, bhole, bam bhole! Old-fashioned, open-mouthed loudspeakers made of tin were lashed to the pillars and trees, and someone was at the microphone, pacing the believers.
As the minutes ticked to the stroke of midnight, the chant went into allegro and Guruji—in a meditative trance—began to rotate faster and faster at the waist. His old mother held true to his ankle, her eyes washed with the same wonderment that was reflected in every eye in the room. All fidgeting, every distraction, had died. The room was barely breathing. Suddenly, inexplicably, Guruji’s wiry body began to lose speed, every rotation a little slower than the last. The mother looked at her son, concern filling her face. Then she turned her head and motioned with her eyes to one of the loyal minders, Bhura, a middle-aged Majhbi Sikh with a polio leg, who lived at the dera and served Guruji at all hours. Bhura scanned the window, the door, the room. At the far corner was a group of six-seven women, of all ages, very old to young, huddled close together under brown blankets, faces covered to their eyebrows.
The Story of My Assassins Page 6
