The Story of My Assassins

by Tarun J. Tejpal

  It became known that Donullia was not only fearless, and not only liquid as a shadow, but also a bahurupiya, a man of a thousand faces. The featureless peasant sitting next to you at the tea shop could well be the two-barrelled one.

  Around this time a young man from Habusa who had been brutally interrogated by the special group suddenly vanished. His name was Kana Commando. He had been sent back from the army after he lost his left eye in an insurgency operation in Nagaland. Soon news came that the one-eyed infantryman had joined up with Donullia Gujjar, and was adding his vast knowledge of arms, terrain and tactics to the outlaw’s cunning and courage. Then on, every few months, there would be reports of another young man gone missing. Between the police, the upper castes and the landlords, there was enough oppression going around to fuel endless platoons of angry revenge-seekers.

  Donullia offered dignity, vendetta and the matchless pleasure of a metal-spitting gun. For men who had spent a lifetime cowering under a lathi, this was an offer made by the gods.

  Donullia, it seemed, was also a secular modernist. He ran a caste-less and religion-free gang. Anyone could join up, everyone was free to worship their own gods and follow their own rituals, and everyone ate and drank from the same pot. Another of his key deputies was Hulla Mallah, a low-caste boatman who in a moment of rage had drowned two high-caste Pandeys whose feet his ancestors would have kissed. Hulla Mallah was reputed to be so big and strong that he could jog through the ravines with an injured comrade on his shoulders without breaking for breath or falling behind. On the other side of the caste spectrum there was Kana Commando, a high-caste Tyagi, who was treated by the gang as a mentor, providing instruction in marksmanship, the maintenance of weapons, and shoot-and-scoot tactics.

  The job also had the perks of a modern corporation. Not only did the organization take care of you in injury and in ill-health, it also ensured that your family and clan were protected and provided for. Ruthless retribution was visited on anyone—official, policeman, or moneylender—who dared to pose a threat. The recruits poured in, and at its apogee the Donullia Gujjar gang numbered more than a hundred. When they moved into an area they were like a locust swarm, feasting on whatever they chose.

  For many years there was not only a big price on the head of the chieftain but also, individually, on nearly a dozen of his gang members. Hulla Mallah’s life alone was worth a lakh of rupees, and Kana Commando’s one-and-a-half.

  Local lore was that the leader wielded the same donulli gun that he had started his career with, and that he carried scores of red cartridges in a waterproof canvas pouch inside the haversack strapped to his back at all times. All alone, it was said, he could hold off a posse of ten armed policemen for a few hours.

  Sitting under the banyan tree, Rajbir now looked for the telltale double-barrel. He spotted a couple, jutting out from around the wrapped blankets, but the men carrying them did not seem possessed of any centrality. It was quite likely that the double-barrel rumour was false; just another smokescreen used by the bahurupiya, the man of a thousand faces.

  It had grown dark now, the street lamps were dimly yellow, and clouds of mosquitoes were building spirals in the air. An occasional vehicle rumbled past on the wide road as temple bells loudly tolled the evening prayers. None of the men had moved to enter the house; no one else had come out to talk to them. Bread pakoras had arrived in a large paper packet and were being circulated.

  Bajpaisahib, of course, was inside the house. Visitors and petitioners swung steadily in and out of the mesh door by the side of the driveway. Occasionally some important town official, or local businessman, or religious leader, arrived encased in a crowd of hangers-on, and was ushered in through the main porch into the room at the front. A narrow connecting door allowed the politician to switch from the hard-nosed business of his office to the expansive deal-making of the living-room.

  Rajbir picked a man with a gentle face—no handlebar moustache, no obvious scorn in his eyes, just a deep scar that ran from the edge of his left eye to his mouth—and sidled up to him. The man squatted on the edge of the driveway, chin resting on his knees, a rifle between his thighs and stomach, both ends sticking out like sharp elbows. Rajbir dropped on his haunches next to him and told him he was a policeman attached to the leader. It was the surest way of gaining some purchase with the brigand. Policemen did not scare these men; they knew how to use them.

  The man said, from the corner of his mouth, ‘You want to quit?’ The scar was deep, even in the dark. Someone had tried to carve his face as an example.

  Rajbir said, ‘Not yet.’

  The man said, ‘Then come back when you do.’

  Rajbir said, ‘This is not a bad life.’

  The man said, ‘Nor is a eunuch’s or a gravedigger’s. One is cock-less while servicing others cocks, while the other is alive while serving the dead.’

  Rajbir said, ‘But being hunted day and night can hardly be the recommended life?’

  The man replied, still as a tree, ‘Donullia Gujjar’s men hunt, they are not hunted. We are from the country of free men. We do not follow laws made by rich men for rich men, and we do not follow men who say one thing and do another.’

  Rajbir said, ‘But your captain comes here. Why?’

  Turning his head to look into the policeman’s eye, the man said, ‘He comes as a king. To talk things; to extract his tithe. Not as a supplicant. Ask the man whom you guard—if you ever have the courage to—ask him if he could survive without Donullia Gujjar.’

  Rajbir thought of Bajpaisahib. Alliances with untouchables, alliances with bandits—how many gallons of Ganga water would he need to cleanse himself?

  Rajbir said, ‘I too am a Gujjar.’

  The man said, nodding at the house, ‘Then when the high-caste fails you, you can come to Donullia. Even a dog never forgets the gutter that spawned him. The kaptaan is committed to helping any Gujjar who seeks his help.’

  Rajbir said, ‘But where is he? Can I meet him when he comes?’

  The man suddenly grinned, the ravine on his face making him look diabolic. ‘He is inside the house you are guarding, shaking down your rich seth for the money he makes off the poor.’

  Rajbir said, ‘When did he get in?’

  The man said, ‘He moves like a snake through water, like a shadow through the dark. If there were a hundred of you with four eyes each, you would still not know when he went past you and into that house. In fact I could be him and you would not know.’

  In panic Rajbir peered at the squatting man. Fuck, was he in the midst of the crowning foolishness of his stupid career?

  The man laughed aloud. ‘He can be a snake through water, a shadow among shadows, but never a fool talking to a fool! I couldn’t be Donullia if I lived seven lifetimes. You didn’t see him go in and you won’t see him going out.’

  Rajbir said, ‘But will you get me to meet him?’

  The man said, ‘Well, if we all stay alive, and you be a true Gujjar, and you come to him not as a policeman but a true kinsman: a dog from his own gutter, blood of his blood.’

  Rajbir said, ‘I am a policeman for the salary, merely one more whore in the whorehouse of the state. No matter how much you pay the whore, she never belongs to you. She is always only the child of the mother she was born to.’

  ‘Well spoken,’ said the man. ‘The kaptaan should meet you. First let us see, stellar policeman, if you can recognize him at all.’

  Rajbir said, ‘Are you a Gujjar too?’

  The man laughed, the tin-shade light on the bungalow wall making his scar dance. ‘If the captain is do nullia, double-barrelled, then I am ek nullia, single-barrelled. If you ever go to village Bhasodi, ask about Katua Kasai and see them scurry like rats. On the peepul tree in the square I strung up four of them naked and alive, after putting a cross on their chests with my knife, and dared the milling bastards to cut them down and take them away.’ The squatting man broke his narration and spat to the side in disgust. ‘It took them fifteen hours to
bleed to death but not one villager had the guts to even fetch help. That’s why we are a country of serfs, we are scared of everything! If we see the shadow of a cock, we think it’s going to bugger us!’

  Rajbir said, ‘So you are a …’

  The man said, ‘Yes, I am cut not only on my face, but also down there. My forefather was Akbar the great, emperor of all of Hindustan, but I am only Katua Kasai, king of whichever tree I sleep under every night.’

  At some point, around nine o’clock, when the crowds under the banyan had thinned and most of the petitioners had received their moment inside the bungalow, the gang of men spread out over the driveway and the gate, jumped into their trekker and jeep and drove off. Rajbir was not quite sure what had happened. He reconnoitred the front porch. He could hear low voices in the living-room, including that of the leader. He walked to the other side, looking for a staffer who could give him some information. There were only two peasants there: unshaven, dirty turbans wound loosely around their heads, coarse black blankets wrapped about their shoulders and chin. One of them had rheumy eyes and was coughing like a tuberculosis patient, bringing up phlegm, spitting all around. They clambered awkwardly onto an old Atlas cycle leaning against the wall—the smaller, thinner man on the carrier at the back—and with a weaving start, slowly cranked their way off.

  A minute later, he knew. Beneath the dirty white pajama the tuberculosis patient had been wearing sports keds with thick rubber soles. The kind you got in swank shoe shops; the kind that absorbed thorn and stone; the kind that gripped in mud and slope. By the time he rushed to the gate the street was empty. Around the big yellow lights were a million night insects committing hara-kiri.

  A snake through water; a shadow in the dark.

  He was still standing there, reflecting on his slow-witted life, when the Willys jeep came and parked across the street. The scarred man leaned out from the co-driver’s seat and said, ‘Oh policya, I have something to show you.’ When Rajbir walked up to him, the Muslim bandit put his hand behind Rajbir’s head and shoved it into the jeep. Inside, in the dark, he could dimly register the shapes of several men, and the light through the canvas sparked on the barrels of guns.

  A quiet voice said, ‘Gujjar?’

  ‘Yes.’ The grip on the back of the policeman’s neck was firm.

  ‘You want to be a friend?’

  It was too dark inside. ‘Yes,’ said Rajbir, ‘it would be an honour if I could ever do anything for you.’

  The voice said, ‘Do your given job well. Keep a good eye on the brahmin. You may be a whore of the state, but it is only men like us who truly appreciate you.’

  Rajbir could now make out that there were three men in there, on the back seat, but he couldn’t even tell which of them was speaking to him. He said, ‘I am there for you.’

  The voice said, ‘For the people, for the people. Always for the people. Not for me. Your service rules say you have to serve the people. My service rules say the same. Serve the people.’

  ii

  An Asshole of Iron

  When he was seventeen and in class ten, two of Vishal Tyagi’s sisters were savagely raped. They were not killed. The aim was not pleasure, but leverage. A hundred bighas of land hung in the balance. Joginder was not so stupid—or so crude—as to have his sons rape their cousins. The men entrusted for the task were from Meerut. Karimbhai, the small-time don and truck transporter who sent them, said they were the best in the business. They did precisely as instructed: chhota kaam, small job; bada kaam, big job; poora kaam, full job. The small commission was a strongly intimidatory molestation—the tearing of clothes, the squeezing of breasts, the insertion of fingers. It was a warning, a call to action to some errant party. The big brief was full intercourse, to its conclusion, with the violate seed firmly implanted. It was a warning and a punishment to someone who had earned it. The full job was rape followed by murder, with established degrees of brutality. This was warning, punishment, and the closing of old accounts.

  Joginder had contracted for the second degree.

  Early one morning, with the mist rising off the fields like vapour off boiling milk, the two girls, out for their morning ablutions, were dragged deep into the sugarcane fields and professionally raped. At seventeen and nineteen respectively both were betrothed; the older was set to be wed in three months.

  When they returned their mother held her head and howled like a jackal, but refused to allow Gyanendra to go to the police or to visit his cousin. The police, she knew, would fill up some papers and do nothing, except confirm to the entire world that her girls were irretrievably damaged. If they played it astutely, the information might be contained till the marriage was over. The most difficult part was stopping her husband from heading out to confront his cousin. He had a single-barrel gun and a few old red cartridges in the tin trunk, but she knew Joginder and his sons would bring him to ruin before he brought off a shot. The mother and raped daughters clung to his legs, pleading with him for his life, imploring him to not widow and orphan them. Gyanendra—aware he would be walking out to his death—finally relented, shrinking, with this decision, to a husk of himself.

  Driven mad by the screaming and crying, Vishal Tyagi went into the yard, lay down in front of his buffalo, Shanti, and had his cropped head licked again and again. He said nothing to his sisters, nor a thing to his parents. He had nothing to say. A week later, walking to school in the evening for his body-building exercises—iron dumbbells, push-ups, sit-ups, rope-climbing, sprints—under the tutelage of Rajbir Gujjar, he crossed Joginder’s three sons by the stone shrine under the peepul tree. One of them said, ‘How lovely his sisters are and how ugly he is! Think how much more it would have cost to get him fucked!’

  The inside of his head exploded like a bomb. He tried to leap on them, but armed with iron-tipped lathis they menaced him back. Vishal Tyagi then ran, head on fire, straight to the room of his mentor, and the first thing he saw there was a long-limbed hammer. It was a nice hammer, with a smooth handle and a small hard head. One side drove in the nails; the other was hooked and split to wrench them out. Before Rajbir could mouth a word, the boy had snatched it up and was out the door.

  The boy caught up with them just as they had entered their own fields and were walking on the bund, sweet fresh water from the throbbing tube wells running in the channel on one side, the cane fields dense and rustling on the other. The eldest, bringing up the rear, went down without a word as the hammer pistoned through his skull, fusing his circuitry before it could form a word. He fell with a splash into the channel, the water gurgling into his open mouth. As the other two turned, Vishal Tyagi’s weapon was already swinging. It went through the centre of the second brother’s forehead and nose like a spoon through an eggshell, collapsing his eyes into each other and taking down his upper jaw. They would have to cremate him with his face swathed in bandages. The third brother began to babble incoherently from behind his extended lathi, by turns begging abjectly for mercy and threatening him with great punishment. In an act of creativity, the rampaging boy swung his right hand in a smooth round-arm while blocking the counter-attack with his left and exploded the iron head through his cousin’s left ear. A second, redundant, blow caved in his temple. Like his brothers he too slopped into the channel, damming the flow of the water, making it spill out onto the bund.

  The boy washed the blood and brains off his hammer and hands and returned to his homestead where he lay in front of Shanti and submitted his scalp to her loving licks. The only witnesses to the carnage were Joginder’s three curs who snarled and barked and circled the scene, but had the good instinct not to take on the foe.

  It was not late but everyone had eaten dinner. They were working the handpump for the last cleanings when Gyanendra’s dogs began to bark. It was Rajbir Gujjar and he was alone. In his right hand was his single-barrel, the canvas strap looping low, like a garland. His face was set. He sat down on the edge of Gyanendra’s charpoy and accepted the glass of boiling milk handed
to him. The moon was thin, and it was a night of a billion stars.

  The former cop said, ‘Joginder’s sons are dead.’

  Gyanendra, pulling on his last hookah for the day, said, ‘Why, what have they done now?’

  ‘They are dead, tau. Dead. All three of them. Too dead to be even taken to a hospital. Somebody pulped their heads, as if they were animals.’

  Gyanendra pulled the bubbling pipe out of his mouth, and said, ‘It cannot be. I saw them this morning in the village, their chests puffed out like a cockerel’s. The bastards said to me, “Hope you are well, tau, and your children. We haven’t seen your daughters around for some time now.” ’

  The cop said, sipping carefully from the burning steel glass, ‘Tau, no one in these parts has seen a killing like this in years. Even their mother couldn’t recognize one of them.’

  In the dark, Vishal Tyagi sat by his buffalo on the ground, slowly stroking her sandpaper flanks. He felt calm. His father now gripped his tutor’s shoulder and said, ‘Have you seen it for yourself? I don’t trust that low-caste and his satanic sons!’

  Sipping loudly, the cop put two fingers on his eyes.

  ‘God be praised! But who?’

  ‘Nothing is known yet. The police say it looks like the work of a gang, five-six people. But nobody seems to have seen anything. The farmhands went to investigate when the dogs wouldn’t stop barking.’

  Gyanendra said, ‘Finally we can be sure there is a god! There is justice!’

  But his wife, squatting on the ground near the handpump, shook her head slowly. ‘This is not good. No one deserves such an end. Now there will be a new cycle of bloodshed. Joginder will not keep still.’

  The cop had seen the boy’s bulk beside the buffalo, sunk into the shadows. He called out, ‘And what do you plan to do now?’

  The boy did not reply. His raped sisters sat in the open doorway of the house, squatting on the threshold. They picked at their hair in silence. The death of the cousins meant nothing to them. They were inside their own cocoon of taint and unhappiness. All their lives they would have to live in dread of their husbands discovering they were used goods. That’s if their marriages went through at all. The killing of the cousins could start a police investigation that would lead to the disclosure of their torn flesh.