I said, ‘That’s good.’
He said, ‘It’s only good if it is good.’
Suddenly from the dark depths of the house came the sound of Dolly/folly singing a crap number from a recent Hindi film. She was desperately trying to pull registers out of her atonal voice. It was awful. Why wasn’t she on the phone to her mad mother? Was she stupid enough to think no one could hear her because it was dark?
Hathi Ram said, ‘The good wife? Good singer.’
I screamed, ‘Felicia!’
Almost instantly, she emerged from the dark, spooking us again. Hathi Ram said, ‘Big headlights, boss.’ I looked at her and opened and shut the fingers of my right hand, and pointed a thumb in the direction of the bedroom. She disappeared in a blink. Hathi Ram said, ‘Also tail lights.’ An irate door slammed shut. The song died.
I said, ‘If the risk is down, why should I be more careful?’
He said, ‘I didn’t say the risk is down. I said they’ve ordered a scale-down of your security. This is the time to be more careful.’
I said, ‘What is it about the men that you are not telling me?’
He said, ‘I don’t even know if the men are who they are. Maybe your friend knows. The one who’s always meeting the lawyers and going to the jail. Nice girl. Smart girl. Very smart girl. You must ask her to be careful too. This is a third-rate city. I would never live here if I had an option. Its surface is gold, its heart is grime. Every lamb in this city is a wolf; every flower is a bomb. And I would never take that forest road to Vasant Kunj at night. It turns and twists too much, and never ever can you tell what is coming from the other side.’
My mouth was tight and there was ice in my heart.
Banging the biscuit, he said, ‘One of them it seems is a kung fu master and he can also sing a snake out of the deepest hole.’
The next evening when I went to the Saket sports club for my jog I found myself taking the long route across the IIT flyover. At the traffic light I stopped at some distance from the next car, and looked carefully at the cars parked around me. There was a fat woman and a child at the back of a Honda City and I glared at them so hard that the woman pulled her boy’s eyes away from mine. The shadow in the back seat was dozing, and the one next to me was trying to make sense of the new mobile phone he had just bought. It was fluorescent blue with a glitzy keypad. If someone shot me now he would be able to quickly dial the mortuary. And then wake up the guy at the back.
Dusk was falling as I began to run. The cricketers at the nets in the club were packing away their equipment into their heavy kit-bags. Only a handful of very young boys slogged on. One smooth-faced Sikh boy, dancing forward on quick feet, was determined to put away two spinners in the failing light. He found the ball with the muscle of his bat each time—the voluptuous thwack cutting through the cawing and screeching of birds settling down for the night in the trees lining the jogging track. In another country the boy would have been earmarked for fame. But India was overflowing with such cricketing passion and talent. To go beyond the college and club stage, he would need luck, money, godfathers, and very cunning footwork that had nothing to do with cricket. As Huthyam would say, nothing in India is what it seems. As I jogged, and the light died, and the young boys too began to put away their gear, I felt a sudden inexplicable fear.
In the equestrian enclosure the last horses were being taken in by the syce, amid jangling harnesses and relieved snorting. The yelps of the rich kids, brought there by their fair, painted-up mothers or by dark, tired domestics to play out their horse-horse fantasies, had finally faded. By the time I was on my fourth round, only the tart smell of the animals remained, and the field held nothing but the surreal open embrace of the cricket net. The moon was fat enough to put a silvery light on the trees, making the trunks and leaves move. I looked around me as I ran, twisting my head to see if anyone was behind me. The wall along the big gutter was easy to scale. Swing off a branch, squeeze the trigger once, twice, twenty times, then grab the branch, clear the wall again, run stealthily along the gutter, in the undergrowth and rushes, out onto the road, walk briskly to the buzzing multiplex, catch a nice new film, with popcorn and Pepsi—in a jumbo combo—and perhaps a long hot dog with a pale pink sausage at its soft heart.
The shadows were sitting by the floodlit basketball court, where I always insisted they wait, watching the hectic half-court games that mostly ended in arguments and disputes. The young boys watched NBA games on cable television and were shod in Nike shoes and baggy shorts and bright piped vests. They were full of quick feints, loud abuse, and aggressive elbows. Some were accompanied by ripening girls who sat on the sides, taunting them for their fumbles. Later, they all huddled in a corner and shared cigarettes. Some knew of me and called me uncle. I wanted to slap their smug, confident faces. These were kids for whom India was just a vast amusement park, set up by some earnest geezers after kicking out some white men. They all needed a fucking crash course in the Vedanta and a stint in the army. Three months in Siachen, and six months in Imphal. Then they would gain perspective on the fadeaway jumper.
But right now I was wishing I had asked the shadows to accompany me to the centre of the field today, where standing back to back, cradling their cold hardware, they could have followed the entire track with their eyes.
I found myself running faster and faster, and soon galloping in a kind of panic.
Hanumanji had told Huthyam something.
And there was a kung fu master who sang snakes out of deep holes.
It was time to give Guruji a call. It was time to get a discourse from Sara.
10
KAALIYA AND CHINI
i
The Glue of Happiness
When the beautiful vapours filled their beings, they all heard different things.
Kaaliya heard the mesmeric whine of the pungi beckoning every serpent in existence to appear, dancing to its tune.
Chhotu heard his mother’s voice singing a lullaby as she gently applied turmeric paste on the welts his father had just given him with his police belt.
Makhi Khan heard the reassuring sound of the mullah’s call from the mosque near his childhood home before the riots began.
Tarjan heard the haunting Bhojpuri songs his skeletal father used to sing as he beat out a slow rhythm on an empty ghee tin outside their hut.
Gudiya heard the tinkling sound of the bells that hung around their sad-eyed cow’s loose neck.
Chini heard the sweet music of rain on a thatch roof amid wet green trees at the end of a world he could never again find.
And Dhaka, macho Dhaka, with a grip of steel and hard-tipped army boots, heard the mocking words of Gabbar Singh. ‘Jo darr gaya so marr gaya.’ To be afraid is to be dead.
It was the divine gift of the solution. To give to you whatever you most craved. The boys knew that in the teeming world outside—the world of clean pants and shirts, and cars and houses, and gleaming shops filled with sweet-smelling women, and air-conditioned cinema halls with screens bigger than walls, and eating places where men wore uniforms to bring you hot intoxicating food, where policemen were smaller than politicians, where children spoke in singsong voices all day in school and were forced to drink tall glasses of spotless white milk—the boys knew that in that teeming world outside, the true virtues of the solution had not yet been discovered.
Out there, the boys had been told, it was used for other things. For prosaic stuff like erasure and correction, wiping out what had been written on a paper, blanking out one’s mistakes, killing the error. These boys had no paper, and nothing to write, and nothing to write with, and even if they had all three, they did not have fingers that knew how to curl around the profound certitude of the written word.
But they knew the secret, the truth of the solution. It was meant for blanking out and erasure. It was meant to clean the dark blemishes in the mind. To blanket the ache of memory, correct the wring of emotion. It was meant to wipe out not just a sheet of paper, but the entire w
orld. Everything. All the noise, all the stink, all the iron, all the piss, all the shit, all the policemen, all the rancid food, all the rags, all the scabs, all the offal, the offal, the offal. Everything. Everything, except the sound of rain singing on a thatch roof. Except the juicy green mountain slopes that came from the films but belonged to Chini’s mind. Except the heroines whose eyes were full of kindness and whose mouths full of promise and whose skins glowed like the radiance of god.
Salushan Baba, the old man who came to the no man’s land beyond platform six every evening, bringing them the magic potion, never said a word. No sales pitch, no hustling, no small talk. Selling water in the desert doesn’t call for promotions. The thin hair on his head, with strips of scalp showing through, was pulled back and tied in a tight knot, but his beard flowed like water down to his chest in three shades of grey, dark like the rail tracks, lighter like gravel, and then dirty white like the newspapers. The beard was his obvious vanity, and he kept it oiled and washed, each strand gleaming, the breeze picking and running through it. Sitting on his haunches, the baba stroked it slowly with his left hand, smoking a beedi with his right, while his young clientele milled around, handing over soiled coins and notes and picking up a pair of bottles each.
The boys picked their wares from the baba’s open-mouthed cloth bag and put the money down at his feet. He glanced down to check what each was putting, and when it was not enough he caught the boy’s eye and logged in the debt. Nobody cheated the baba. This was a life transaction. You did not haggle at the door of the intensive care unit. And if you intended to come back to the life-giving threshold every day, then you played level and kept your accounts squared.
The first time a bewildered and fearful Chini had been taken to the end of platform six and beyond, the old man squatting on his haunches, stroking that hoary beard, had looked at him and then looked at Dhaka. The coal-dark, wiry boy with hard round biceps like cricket balls, had placed his index fingers at the ends of both his eyes and pulled them back into slits. ‘Chini.’ From China. ‘Came off the Guwahati Express a few days ago.’
The baba put his rough hand on Chini’s smooth cheek and gently patted it. Then he softly traced the little narrow eyes, the snub nose and the thin mouth with his fingertips. His gaze was steady but kind. Little Chini’s panic ebbed. In a low hoarse voice the baba said, ‘Cheen. Very very far away. It rains there all the time?’ The boy nodded. The baba said, ‘The king cobra there is longer than a train?’ Dhaka, standing with his hands on his waist, said, ‘Yes, and it can kill a man in ten minutes.’ The baba said, ‘There is a big animal there called the rhino and it can stop a speeding train?’ Dhaka said, ‘And if you fire bullets at it, they bounce back and kill you.’ The baba said, ‘The men there eat men?’ Dhaka said, ‘And collect their heads like toys.’
The baba reached into his open-mouthed bag and taking out a pair of small bottles put them in the little boy’s hands. ‘When you miss home too acutely, smell this, it will take you home. Ask Dhaka. Tell us, Dhaka, how often do you go to your Bangla home?’ Dhaka, still standing, legs akimbo, his tight blue jeans streaked with many shades of grime, said, ‘Every single day. Sometimes more than once in a day.’
The baba took Chini’s little right hand and put it on his flowing beard. ‘Go on, stroke it. Feels good, doesn’t it?’ It did. Long and silken. As the boy swam his fingers in the reassuring hair, the baba said, ‘And when you don’t want to go home, you can visit the gods. Go to Lord Shiva on Mount Kailasa and ask him for whatever you wish. But don’t forget to tell him that the baba is his greatest devotee!’
That day, along with the magic potion, the baba also gave him a neatly folded ten-rupee note. ‘On this first visit all of baba’s prasad is free. But after this, when you come for baba’s blessings, you will have to bring him your offerings. After all, the baba is old, and you are all young.’
The meeting with baba was one of the clearest memories Chini retained of his first few weeks in Delhi. The rest was a fog of tears and anxiety. He remembered he had not wept on the train, but when all the friendly men and women whose children he had played with, who had fed him their puris and bought him tea, suddenly picked up their trunks and holdalls and disembarked, and in one shrill spasm the big carriage that had been a warm chattering home for three days was completely emptied, he had begun to sob. All around him lay the silent debris of cracked tea kullads, stitched-leaf plates and rough napkins, biscuit and namkeen wrappers, newspaper scraps in different languages, plastic water bottles, and endless bits of discarded food—chapattis, bread, rice, subzi, banana peels, apple cores, flecks of chewed sugarcane. In contrast, outside the iron-barred window was pure swirling chaos. People without number were rushing around calling, asking, demanding. More people than the little boy had seen in all his life, more people than he could have imagined existed in the world.
At one point he spied the army man who had first taken him under his wing, given him a corner of his berth, a small yellow banana and the spread of his black blanket, thereby encouraging the kindness of others. The tightly shaven man with a pencil moustache had his green holdall on his right shoulder and a black iron trunk in his right hand. The boy called out, Uncle! Uncle! But his voice was weak, the noise was great, and the man was moving away, drowning in the vast crowd in a matter of seconds. He looked around desperately for any other familiar faces from the journey. The fat woman in a saree who had given him so many puris; the old man who had asked him about his parents; the young girl who had kept pinching his cheeks. But in that heaving mob he could spot no one.
Then terror filled his being when he saw, for the second time in fifteen minutes, a great multitude of people simply vanish as if suctioned out by a giant pipe. As he peered through the iron bars, the shouting screaming mob with all their luggage and children was suddenly gone. In the vast cemented patch from end to end that his eye could see, all that remained were a few static people, frozen behind food carts or vending kiosks. But then he focused a little farther away and he could see a line of tracks and another platform—which was run over by people—and beyond that another train, and when that suddenly moved, he saw another line of tracks and another platform, again run over by people. The place seemed to be packed with platform after platform, train upon train, a countless people in constant motion.
Hugging his knees, he closed his eyes and began to cry. Through his sobs he called out to his uncle who, three days ago, had sat him down in this very train before stepping off to get them something to eat. He was sure if he cried long enough his uncle would stop playing this game and come back and be sorry for having caused his nephew so much torment. Sure enough, soon there was the sound of footfalls, he heard his uncle coming closer and closer. He kept his eyes shut till the very last moment, wanting his uncle to suffer, to see the grief he had wrought. But when he opened his tear-washed eyes and looked up, he saw a face so black and scary and so close to his that he screamed aloud and flung himself back.
Kaaliya and his friends were used to such reactions. One of their favourite pastimes was terrifying the rich fair kids in the first-class compartments and watching them shout and shriek. The boys had a way of baring their teeth and popping their eyes that made them seem even more horrifying than they already were. At one time, for a few weeks, Kaaliya had got hold of a Domukhi snake, the harmless two-headed kind—ostensibly with a head at each end—and carried it inside his torn shirt, triggering panic and pandemonium inside the carriages and on the platform. Sometimes the passengers fled in terror, leaving behind whatever they were eating or drinking, which the boys then swiftly purloined. The lot of them had never laughed so hard, and often they were on the floor with a stitch in their sides and tears running down their cheeks. One time Kaaliya let the plump sleepy reptile slither out of his short pants as he squatted begging for a few rupees. The auntyji, clad in a tight salwar-kameez with dangling gold earrings, dismissive till that moment, screamed in such fury that a crowd began to gather and the boys had to make
a run for it. In the night, Makhi Khan—so fair, so pretty, with not even a trace of down on his upper lip at eleven years—did an impersonation of the woman with pelvic thrusts that had the boys screeching in amusement.
It was Kaaliya—dark as night, skin shining like glass, a stud glinting in his left ear—who took the weeping boy home that evening, to be assessed by their chieftain. Kaaliya, Chhotu, Makhi Khan, Gudiya, Tarjan, all stood around while Dhaka, squatting at the entrance of their house, pulling on an unfiltered cigarette, took stock with slow scanning eyes.
Around Dhaka’s stringy neck hung an assortment of beads and pendants—an ivory piece shaped like a claw, a rudraksha mala, a silver chain, a couple of necklaces of coloured seeds. They were all of varying lengths and filled the wide open vee of his big-collared shirt. On his wrists he wore red-and-blue wrist bands of the kind used by racquet players and basketballers. Whenever his cigarette was in his mouth, his hands repeatedly ripped and stuck the Velcro of the bands with a satisfying chirring sound. On his left upper arm, under his short-sleeved shirt, could be glimpsed an aluminium tabeez, tightly worn on a black string. There was faint stubble on the boy’s darker-than-Kaaliya skin and it was tough to tell his age—anything between sixteen and twenty-six. The body was thin but muscled; the eyes full of experience and pose. His jeans were tight on his matchstick legs, and as he squatted they rode up over his ankles to reveal black leather boots with a glint of iron at the toes. The blue jeans were grimy like the shirt but the army boots had the gleam of a fresh rub. Washing clothes was an undertaking; getting the shoe-shine boys to spruce up his leather every day was easy.
The weeping boy from the train had run dry of tears by now, but the fear inside him intensified as he looked at the squatting man-boy assessing him with menacing eyes. He noticed that none of the others who had accompanied him here was saying a word. Where in heavens had his uncle gone? His uncle whom he loved so much? His uncle who had come one night and taken him away when his mother did not return at the end of the day. His uncle who had said he would take care of him always. Maybe this squatting man knew about these things. Maybe he would know where his uncle was.
The Story of My Assassins Page 29
