The Story of My Assassins

by Tarun J. Tejpal

  In the course of a day, in six slashes of a knife, the equation had changed irrevocably.

  By the time they crossed the Gurari nullah, on the east of Shikarpur village and clambered up the muddy incline, they had no more wind left in them. They stretched out flat on the grassy knoll, hearts pounding like wedding drums, their clothes wet and muddied, the sky and stars swimming above them in a haze of exhaustion, ready to die where they lay. Chacha actually held Tope’s forearm as he wheezed in loud cycles. ‘I don’t know about Bhupi,’ he said, ‘but I think you’ve certainly killed us.’

  No sooner had he spoken he was struggling to his feet again. When Tope suggested they linger a while longer, Chacha folded his hands and begged him not to argue: ‘O great Chaakumaar, let us just start walking. It’ll keep our legs from cramping, o prince of bundpangas.’

  Chaaku liked the sound of that. Asshole-scrapper. Made him feel like Sukha. Footloose and tough and irreverent.

  The walking proved tough work. The panic of the mad run had been much easier. The night breeze worked their wet clothes into a chill, and the ache in their limbs oozed to the fore. They walked stiffly, soaked cloth shoes squelching, slipping as they tried to stay on the mud bunds. The fields lay luminous; the silence of deep night ripped open occasionally by the cry of a nightbird. Through the slip and scuff of their feet, the two men kept their ears trained for danger, but they didn’t hear a single sound in pursuit.

  As fear receded, hunger intruded and began to grow a hole in their bellies. But there was nothing to be done. There were no great familiarities this far out, and to risk the boundary of any homestead at this hour would be foolhardy. It was dangerous even to wander into the guava groves. The dogs would be unloosed and noisy and would not be calmed till the watchmen were roused. Without being asked, Chacha said, ‘The great thing about hunger is it kills itself after some time.’

  Tope turned around and looked at him with a surge of affection and pity. His Chacha was born to lose. Damned both by genes and environment. What he had done today was against the grain, extraordinary. A show of his love for his nephew. He put out his knife hand and squeezed his uncle’s narrow shoulder. With a smile he said, ‘The great thing about life, Chacha, is that it kills itself after some time.’

  Without breaking step, Chacha said, ‘And if you become a bundpanga champion then it does so in no time at all!’

  Instinctively, they didn’t take the straight line to the highway. The two bus stops that flanked the point where the dusty village road opened itself out onto the Grand Trunk Road were dangerous places to head for. One fronted a cluster of shops—puncture and motor repair, tea and biscuits, paan and cigarettes. The other was at Gharyali village, opposite the graffiti-painted back wall of the school. These were among the first places the sardar’s men would head for.

  Instead, they walked at an angle, heading off to the right. As the scream of traffic from the road that never sleeps began to grow, their path became increasingly angular. Soon they were walking parallel to the highway, behind lines of ghostly eucalyptus standing in swampy ditches. The sound of the hurtling trucks and buses was deafening now, and the play of their full-beam headlights mesmeric. Heads cocked, the man and boy watched and walked, in single file, so tiny against the trees, so slow against the road.

  At the edge of the highway, at this hour, there was nothing that offered itself up to the stomach. Not a guava tree, not a shahtoot tree, not a ber tree. No field of tomatoes or radishes or carrots. No melons. The cane was gone, the mangoes had not come. And his Rampuria was now scraping his pubic bone steadily, working up a bad sore that would not heal for weeks.

  Chacha’s game plan was the oldest one in the world: to run as far as you possibly could. He had heard that these days, because of police and political interference, they broke the bones of offenders in all kinds of innovative ways. The popular method was to remove the iron handle of a water-pump, wrap it in strips of cloth, and then lay this muffled club where the occasion, or individual preference, demanded. Fibula, tibia, patella, femur, ulna, radius, humerus, carpals, tarsals, pelvis, phalanges. Broken singly or in combination, depending on whether the victim was expected to return home on his knees, his hands, or flat out on a stretcher. Later there were no telltale marks, no incriminating weapons, just the mind-bending pain that nothing could quell. Just the unmuffled screams, the crooked limbs, the abiding fear. And the weapon was replaced, screwed on to the pump, and a myriad hands worked it up and down, and the water gushed forth, so clean and cool and pure.

  Minor transgressions received the standard treatments. A few incisors and molars dislodged with a screwdriver or yanked out with a pair of pliers; a spoonful of acid poured into one eye, or into both; a couple of fingers processed through the fodder chopper, mixed with the fresh greens; the rectum burnt from dirty brown to char black with the steady flame of a candle; and if the purpose was to create some theatre, then a chopped nose or ear wrapped in paper, gifted back to the victim. If the idea was to produce humiliation and pain without damage, then rape—of wife, daughter, mother; or bright red chilli powder up the ass, with finger and stick; or a firm tapping of the testicles with a hammer; or red ants under the foreskin after the knob had been dipped in sweet syrup; or simply plain old gang buggery, with the farmhands being allowed a last go.

  Chacha had heard all the stories. The landlords against the tenants, the Jats against the Jats, the Sikhs against the Muslims, the high-castes against the low-castes, the low-castes against the lower-castes, the landlords against the landlords, the Jats against the Sikhs, the Muslims against the Hindus, the landlords against everyone, everyone against everyone—there was no possible combination that had not squared off against each other and wreaked vengeance. This being Haryana, the super heavyweight in this arena was the Jat landlord, with a truly superior clout and capacity for cruelty. His chief challenger, the Sikh landlord. The others worked at lying low, quietly tending to their jobs or a few acres.

  Fauladi Fauji had never had trouble before, not because he was a former army man—the area was full of them—but because he owned only a few acres, and he kept to himself. An eccentric old army man, he posed no threat to anyone, and was allowed to keep his dignity. It was no different for Dakota Ram, his son, accorded his stature as the itinerant tank man. The younger stunted son, Tattu—a mule in comparison to the older who was an aeroplane—received contemptuous affection. There was space and dignity for everyone as long as you never transgressed the lines. The world had order unless you chose to break it.

  Now as Tattu hobbled after his equally runty nephew, blinded every few seconds by a charging headlight, he knew his world had been ruptured forever. He was going to walk as far as he could, in the lee of the trees, and when the first light of day began to spread across the world, he would get on to the screaming road, cross over to the other side and jump on to the first vehicle—bus, tractor, truck, van—and get off only when it either stopped or the road forked nearly a hundred kilometres on between Amritsar and Chandigarh. On the outermost wedges of Chandigarh where Punjab lapped at the city’s modular borders, there was a new town being born, and there was a man there who could help. He was old enough to recognize an emergency, and strong enough to face it. The man was his mother’s youngest brother, and Chacha—Tattu—hoped he would also be generous enough to extend his hand.

  Sardar Balbir Singh, Bhupi’s burly father, personally led the army that trashed the farm by the embracing palms.

  In times of crisis, like this, the various extensions of the Singh clan came together. Sardar Balbir Singh’s three brothers who, over the years, had gone their separate ways to manage their large holdings—they had hundreds of acres amongst them—were at their sibling’s farm, with eight of their sons and scores of farmhands, well before the sun had begun to sink. By now the slashed boys were at a private nursing home in Karnal, being stewarded by Balbir’s father and wife. They were in disgrace for having given such a poor account of themselves. The police-in-ch
arge from the chowki was ensconced in Sardar Balbir Singh’s sitting-room, sipping his third cup of tea, cap on the table, legs stretched out. The FIR was to be registered only after he was given the go-ahead: it would be more fitting if the Singh clan delivered justice without police intervention.

  The first thing Sardar Balbir Singh did after crossing the stream was to shoot the two baying farm dogs. They were whippy brown mongrels from the same litter. As they ran up snarling, the sardar without breaking step put his double-barrel gun into the mouth of one and squeezed a trigger. The sound was a bit muffled but the canine’s brains flew out, flecking the clothes of the posse. When the other one wheeled to run, with a loud whine, the landlord pulled the second trigger and caught it by its left ear, this time with a loud bang. Its head vanished too. Without pausing, he broke the gun, pushed in two lurid red bullets that were handed to him, and snapped it shut.

  The small tube well throbbed, meshing the sound of the belt and the engine. In the far left corner of the mud-and-dung washed front yard, from behind the half wall of mud, lines of smoke curled up from food fires. Under the neem tree, the charpoy lay empty.

  The farmhands had all run away into the fields and beyond. They had begun to melt away hours ago, soon after news of what had happened in the guava orchard began to circulate. There was no sense in ending up as casual victims. Only Pappu, the twenty-two-year-old son of their old retainer who had died of malaria years ago, remained. He stood by the bundles of unchopped fodder, trying to stay inside the lengthening shadows. The sun was dying in a splash of violent orange. Fauji pulled on his hookah unsteadily, one bony leg tucked under him. Tope’s mother and grandmother and Chacha’s wife were huddled around his charpoy by the fodder chopper, their dusty dupattas pulled over their heads and eyes, the two younger women cowering behind their mother-in-law.

  Sardar Balbir—with a rotund belly, and a dark beard waxed and pulled tight under a net—sat down at the foot of Fauji’s charpoy, where the ropes were strung, the two barrels of his upright gun extending past his big blue turban. Between the rest, there were only two more firearms: one compact black German Mauser and an Indian ordnance single-barrel rifle. The man with the rifle had a bandolier of red bullets strung across his chest. The Mauser, worn by Balbir Singh’s younger brother, was in a shiny brown, leather shoulder-holster, its flap buttoned down. The rest had swords, not strung around the waist but held inside their scabbards in their hands. Others were armed with lathis and gandasas, the curving blades at their head freshly whetted. Everyone but the landlord stood loosely ranged around the yard, looking in different directions.

  In a flat voice, the sardar said, ‘Where is the boy?’

  Fauji gurgled his hookah, bony hands trembling.

  The sardar waited. Fauji was now shrunk into himself, both his spindly legs pulled under him, the thick tendons on his scrawny neck jumping. He said in a low, slow voice, ‘Boys make mistakes. Boys make mistakes. That’s why they are boys.’

  The sardar said, ‘Where is he?’ His left eye was twitching. The posse knew the sign. A slight ripple went through them. The three women, faces covered, had literally fused into one behind the patriarch. The old man could not pull on his pipe any more, his hands shook so much. He put his hands together, the brass nozzle of the hookah between them, bowed his close-cropped grey head and said, ‘I promise you, sardar sahib, he is not here. He never came back, and I don’t know where he is.’

  In one fluid movement Sardar Balbir Singh pulled his gun into his hand, placed its two-mouthed head right under the old man’s ass and detonated a barrel, blowing a hole through the ropes and into the ground. The report was deafening. The old man leapt into the air with a wild cry, holding his singed pajama. The three-in-one women set off a mad wail as if they’d been shot.

  Leaving the gun head resting on the ropes, the sardar again asked, ‘Where is the boy?’

  The hookah pipe now lay where it had fallen on the paved mud floor, a curved dead snake, the grey-black-red embers from the cup sprayed all around. The old man’s limbs were shaking like those of a puppet whose master was having a malarial fit. He had never heard a bullet strike so close, not even as a young man in the army. His rheumy eyes were watering copiously and his jaw seemed unhinged, out of control, the ill-fitting dentures rattling loosely. The three women fused even closer, squatting on the ground, all strength in their legs gone.

  As Fauji failed to find his voice, the old woman spoke up, folding her palms in supplication: ‘Please forgive us, sardar sahib. It is no fault of ours. You have known us for years. We quietly go about our small lives and work. We have never harmed anyone. We have always respected the glory and power of your family. The boy has done a very terrible thing. We beg forgiveness for it. We will atone for it. Please, sardar sahib, I beg you, as old as your own mother that I am. Forgive us.’ The fused blob was a strange sight. One face, one voice and three pairs of outstretched arms, hands clasped in abjection. A many-armed goddess fallen on bad times.

  By now the old man had lost all focus. He was looking about him sightlessly. His lower lip hung loose, running drool.

  It was then that the sardar noticed the boy in the shadows by the bundles of green fodder. He gestured with his head. Pappu came forward with his eyes lowered. He was a robust boy, his shoulders and arms muscular with labour.

  The landlord said, ‘Where’s the mongrel?’

  Pappu’s palms were already joined in supplication. ‘I don’t know, sardar sahib.’

  Balbir Singh half-turned his face and said to his posse, ‘Put his hand in.’

  The boy began to scream for mercy even before three pairs of hands grabbed him. ‘Oh bauji, I only work here! I am only a poor labourer! I know nothing about anything. Tope has run away! How can I know where! O my mother, what have I done to harm anyone!’

  But he only began to struggle in complete panic when they had dragged him to the chopper. ‘O bauji save me! O biji tell them I know nothing! I have served you like a slave! I have never stolen a paisa, never done anything wrong! I always told you Tope would do something horrible with that knife! I always told you to take it away from him! Save me my lord, save me!’ One of the sardar’s men caught him on his mouth with the blunt end of a bamboo stave. A short crisp blow that opened up his lips, spilling blood. Pappu’s screaming stopped, and he began to cry like a small boy, with loud sobs, tears of pain and fear running down his cheeks.

  By now the blob of women had also begun to wail and beg for mercy for the boy. They moved without disentangling and with their many arms fell at the landlord’s feet, the old woman’s desiccated hands on his fat knees. Their dupattas were off their faces now, so that their contrition and desperation could be seen. Without looking at the roiling animal at his feet, the sardar said, ‘Vadh doh.’ Hack it. And lifting the right hand that was stroking his netted beard, he raised a fat finger.

  They put the index finger of the boy’s left hand into the iron mouth of the chopper. The dark grey of the square mouth was stained with the green juice of life, tiny shards of grass stuck in it. When Pappu refused to cooperate, wriggling frantically, the man trying to isolate the marked finger said, ‘Shall we chop them all off then?’ To illustrate the point the swarthy Sikh behind him ran the three-feet curving blade of his sword screeching across the mainframe of the chopper. Immediately, all fight went out of the boy and his body slumped.

  Sardar Balbir rose from the charpoy, kicking away the many-armed goddess wailing at his feet, and taking his double-barrel walked off to gaze at the fields. There was a last thin line of orange left on the horizon and the birds were moving in noisy flocks. The fields were bald and hairy in uneven patches as the reaping gathered momentum. He turned his back to the yard and its symphony of screams.

  The two curving blades of the chopper, set at opposite ends inside the wheel, were moist with green juice too, the cutting inch a lighter grey than the rest. The executioner didn’t push the wheel. He went around the other side to catch the wooden handle a
nd pull it towards himself. Pappu was mewling now, his body limp, held in place by two sets of strong arms. Like the sardar landlord, the old man, Fauladi Fauji, looked out unseeing at the day dying across the fields. In fifteen minutes all the poses of a long life had been destroyed. How fragile are the constructions men make of themselves.

  As at the moment of a child’s birth, above and beyond the general moan and noise, one clear piercing shriek announced that the event had occurred. The Jat pulling the chopping wheel was efficient, bringing the blade down in a hard quick move. The finger—strangely so much smaller when removed from the body—was left in the steel mouth, while the boy collapsed to the floor and curled into a wildly sobbing ball. Drops of blood dripped from the chopper’s jaw as from the lips of a feasting animal.

  While Sardar Balbir Singh admired the lyric loveliness of the Indian countryside, the cool evening breeze, the stars beginning to switch on one by one and then in chandelier-like clusters, the clean lines of a richly milky moon, the soothing music of cicadas and tube wells and sweetly questioning lapwings, while he thought of his childhood and a life spent amid such beauty, while his brother held the shoulder of the old woman, and the old man sat drooling on his sagging charpoy with a hole shot through its heart, his men picked up the other two parts of the three-in-one goddess, and gagging their protesting mouths with their own dupattas, dragged them into the sanctity of the mud rooms.