The Story of My Assassins

by Tarun J. Tejpal

  iii

  Swordarm of the Guru

  With his days so barren, Vishal Tyagi’s dreaming had acquired a kaleidoscopic fecundity. Every morning he woke with the residue of busy images floating in his head. Most days he liked the dreams. They were full of action—double-barrelled guns, flying hammers, galloping horses, baying dogs, running policemen, a moving shadow. Having woken, he would scrunch his eyes shut again, in a futile attempt at recapturing the storyline. Then he would pull out his slim-stemmed hammer from under the pillow, caress it, and know that his life fell in that unknown space between dreams and reality, and he did not have the tools to make any sense of it.

  One night, as he lay buried in the depths of his quilt, amid the slumbering dogs, the dream became unusually vivid and menacing. He found himself suddenly surrounded in the dark by numberless shadows. The shadows had no faces but had lines of guns sticking out of them. There were two by the door, barring escape. And there were two flanking the window, which was now open with the moon shining through. In the middle of the room was a huge shadow whose head seemed to go through the ceiling, and who had shoulders that could have hurled the shot into the next country and beyond. Next to its thick legs was a lumpy one—as if it were sitting on a chair.

  Soon the boy realized there were more shadows than he’d first thought—they were clinging to the walls and filling the corners. This was a dream unlike any he had ever had. More vivid, more sinister. Suddenly he began to hear mewling sounds. The dogs were burrowing into him, pushing themselves under the bedding, into his feet and thighs. This too was odd. He didn’t think his dreams had ever had a soundtrack.

  Okay, he thought to himself, if this was going to be about battle, he’d better get on with it. He pulled his hand out of the warm quilt and reached under his pillow, and in that very instant he found both his wrists grabbed and held tight. In the last couple of years Vishal had not met anyone who could physically match him or contain him, but now no matter how much he flexed his arms, they were trapped in a stronger grip. It had something to do with the position. Someone very heavy was leaning his whole weight down onto his wrists, pinning them to the bed. It was a dream, after all—unlikely things were allowed.

  The boy relaxed, letting the struggle drain out of him, and in the next moment his dream exploded in a flash of blinding light. Someone was shining a powerful torch into his eyes, and he suddenly knew he was not in a dream but awake, and he was in deep trouble because the police had found him, and all the shadows looming around the room had come to pick him up. With a loud roar he snapped his wrists free and banged the torch away from his face and jumped up from the bed, scattering the quilt and dogs, but before he had found his feet something slammed him hard on his chest and he was flung back onto the bed, the breath knocked clean out of him, the mad baying and whining of the dogs ringing all around.

  When his head cleared the light was still on his face, and the whimpering of the dogs had gone into diminuendo. A low gravelly voice said, ‘So, boy, you are very strong, are you? And did you really hammer in the skulls of three men all by yourself?’ Vishal knew that his uncle Joginder was most probably in the room too, and the police were going to bump him off once they had his confession. When he said nothing, the low voice asked, ‘Did Gwala say he had no tongue?’ The shadow in the middle of the room, with his head going through the roof, said with a chuckle, ‘Most tongues quickly slip down into the stomach in your presence, don’t they!’

  Vishal exclaimed, ‘Guruji!’

  The voice from the roof said, ‘He has a tongue, and it says the right things.’

  The torchlight had dipped from his eyes a little and Vishal could once again see the shadow lines. Yes, there was someone sitting on a chair in the middle of the room, next to the huge silhouette. In a low gruff voice it said, ‘You want to work for the people? You want to fight for justice? You want to swing your hammer to help the poor?’

  Vishal said, ‘Yes. Yes. Whatever you tell me to do.’ He was straining to make out the face and features of the man, but all he could see was a dark lump, swathed perhaps in a blanket, with a kind of beret on its head.

  The low voice said, ‘What I tell you to do, boy, will come later. First, what is that you’d like to do? Hulla, do you want to ask him if he’s made of sand or steel?’

  The man with his head in the roof and shoulders like a cupboard said, ‘Tell us, boy, did you kill them to gain money or respect?’

  Vishal said, ‘Respect.’

  The man said, ‘There were three of them. Did that scare you?’

  The boy said, ‘I had the hammer.’

  ‘And suppose there had been six of them?’

  The boy said, ‘I would have swung the hammer faster.’

  ‘And suppose you had a gun?’

  ‘Then I would have taken down twelve of them.’

  ‘Do you even know how to use a gun?’

  ‘I know how to point it and how to squeeze a trigger.’

  The man in his practised baritone said, ‘Do you know what happens when you come under the grace of Guruji?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then on, you belong to him alone. No family, no friends, no other allegiances, no other loyalties. Like a true bhakt, you give yourself up to him, doing only the good that he commands. He works for the weak and the wronged, and you work for him. Your days are his, and your nights are his. Your life is his, and your death is his.’

  The boy’s skin prickled with excitement. He said, ‘I understand.’

  The man with his head in the roof said, ‘But first, how do we know that you are not a police informer? Some of us here think you’re not to be trusted. The old man says you say nothing but observe everything, and you are always asking questions about us.’

  The boy looked around to locate the old man, but none of the shadows seemed to be him.

  He said, ‘The old man is a chutiya. Far stupider than the dogs.’

  A few of the shadows tittered.

  The man said, ‘So give your guru dakshina and prove yourself.’

  The boy said, ‘Whatever you want.’

  The man said, ‘What did Eklavya give?’

  ‘His thumb.’

  ‘Well, you can give your little finger.’

  The boy held out his left hand, all the fingers curled in but the smallest.

  The man said, ‘Katua, you don’t need to take it—just brand it as Guruji’s. Use his hammer. Let’s see how good it is.’

  At the edge of the torchlight, the boy saw a face appear with a big scar running down its side. He knew it instantly from the stories of his sports mentor. Katua Kasai. So it was all true. All of it! The one with the head in the roof had to be Hulla Mallah, who had drowned a boatful of upper-caste landlords; who could run through the forest with a man on his shoulders. And somewhere amid the shadows must be the one-eyed armyman, Kana Commando—a Tyagi like him. And, yes, that dark shapeless silhouette in the middle with the beret …

  The man with the scar had pulled out the hammer from under the pillow. He caught the tiny extended finger and put it on the wooden bar of the charpoy’s frame. The man from the roof said, ‘Are you sure, boy? Guruji does not want any reluctant warriors. In Guruji’s army there are only true karmayogis—who fulfil their duty without any regard for recognition or reward. If there is any fear or avarice in your heart just pull back your hand, get back into your quilt, close your eyes, and it’ll all be over and you can go back to your life.’

  The man with the scar waited, poised with hammer and finger.

  The boy thought of his mentor and the story of Chuchunder. An iron asshole. Men who stood apart had an iron asshole. He said, ‘I am sure. I have nine more. And you don’t need this one for hammer or gun.’

  The silhouette said in a low voice, ‘Do you know what the great lord Krishna said to Arjuna as he stood there, head sunk low, bow flung to the ground, unwilling to fight? The lord said, “I envy no one, nor am I partial to anyone. I am equal to all. But whoever rende
rs service unto me in devotion is a friend. He is in me, and I am also a friend to him. Even if one commits the most abominable action, if he is engaged in devotional service he is to be considered saintly because he is properly situated in his determination. He quickly becomes righteous and attains lasting peace. O son of Kunti, know it verily that my devotee never perishes. O son of Partha, those who take shelter in me, though they be of lower birth, of any birth, can attain the supreme destination.” It is what I say to you, son.’

  Overcome, the boy merely said, ‘Guruji.’

  The voice from above said, ‘Accept his gift then, Katua. Brand it with Guruji’s love.’

  The last thing the boy remembered was the light sparking off the kneeling man’s rich scar and the whirl of a forearm, and then the world blew up in an explosion of pain that wrenched a scream from deep inside him and hurled him into a blackness darker than the silhouette with the slanted beret.

  The first job he was given was to eliminate a contractor in Jhansi. The man was young but had amassed a large fortune by annexing government contracts. In city circles he was known as an unstoppable trident. One tine of his power was his father’s youngest brother, a senior official in Lucknow, who had six times been voted among the most corrupt bureaucrats in the state. The second tine was his mother’s maternal uncle, who was a legislator and minister from western Uttar Pradesh, a chargesheeter, who had been named in several cases of abduction and murder. The third tine was the man himself—ruthless, crisp, wielding money, men, gun and influence to sweep all before him. His fate was further sealed by the fact of his good looks. It completed the cocktail of arrogance, encouraging him to the kind of excess a more plain-faced man would have balked at. Before he was thirty he had been named in half a dozen FIRs for the abduction of girls. In time, all of them had withdrawn their complaints.

  Vishal Tyagi was sure Guruji had nothing personal against the contractor. The man who came to brief him at the farm wore a white kurta-pajama and spoke with a lisp. He said the contractor was an oppressor. Complaints about him had heaped up at Guruji’s feet and it was time to bring his terror to an end. Then he proceeded to show him pictures of the man, and explain his location and habits. He made the boy take down directions, names, addresses, and the modus operandi. Vishal was distracted by the man’s childish voice and had to struggle to concentrate.

  Later, when he had left on his Bajaj scooter, trailing a line of dust, the old man, squatting by the cow and pulling at its teats, asked, ‘What did you get—a tamancha or a pistol?’

  Vishal replied, ‘Neither.’

  Stilling his bony hand mid-spurt, the old man said, ‘Ah, test run! The last one who was sent out without either never came back. But enough money was sent to his home.’

  Rolling the flesh of his boneless little finger like putty, Vishal said, ‘Old man, you like money, do you?’

  ‘Not more than my life.’

  ‘Have you ever killed anyone, old man?’

  Resuming a slow massage of the udders, the small brass bucket held in place by his feet, the old man said, ‘I do something even more important. I collect the bones and flow them down the Ganga. None of you would get moksha without my hard work. I am the brahmin Guruji keeps to send you all safely on your way.’

  ‘So now you are going to wait to collect my bones, old man?’

  Hopping on his haunches along with the shuffling cow, the milk frothing warmly in the bucket, the old man said, ‘Don’t say such a thing. There is no pleasure ever in collecting the bones of the young. And I have done enough of that in my life.’

  He met with his accomplice in the tea shop at the bus stand. The accomplice called himself Ali and was clean-shaven with a bright red mouth wet with paan. Ali took him to a hotel in the crowded bazaar, called New Delite. The entrance was through a narrow staircase between a saree shop and a kirana store, and upstairs there were many dimly lit corridors and a small windowless room. Ali barely spoke. The only thing he muttered when he learnt it was Vishal’s first job was, ‘What will they send me next—a schoolboy in half-pants? The only one they are going to get killed soon is me!’ Vishal, anyway, was not inclined to speak. The two of them ate dinner in silence at a small dhaba in an adjoining lane, and then Ali left, saying he’d be back early the next morning.

  Ten minutes later, Vishal went down to the pale, thin, swollen-eyed man sitting on the first-floor landing behind a stained plywood desk with a cellophane-bulb lit picture of Goddess Lakshmi behind him, and asked for another room. The man who’d probably not been out in the sun for the last ten years had some peanuts spread out on the counter and was fastidiously picking them up one by one and popping them into his mouth. ‘Why, the palace is not good enough for his lordship, the Nawab of Siraj-ud-Daulah?’ he asked, not bothering to look up. When Vishal leaned into him, blocking the light of the bulb overhead, he quickly said, ‘Well, let me offer his royalty the Hawa Mahal then.’ Prostitution, drugs, guns, it all happened here, and it made sense to not provoke trouble. You never knew which crazy was transiting through. Few wore the name of their gangs or their homicidal records on their foreheads.

  The Hawa Mahal turned out to be a room with a small window at the back of the second floor. The window had no bars. Halfway down was the discoloured hulk of a desert cooler. By its side grew an electricity pole that rose from a narrow back lane filled with refuse, dank water, and the steady hum of mosquitoes. The boy latched the window, then latched the door and pushed a small table against it. Then he lay down fully dressed on the bed, and pulling out his thin-stemmed hammer from his small blue shoulder bag, placed it next to his pillow.

  He slept badly. All night the corridors were alive with hushed voices and shuffling feet. The sad world was trying to fuck itself out of unhappiness. He waited for the one footfall that would stop outside his door. The sky was beginning to lighten outside his window before he finally fell asleep, and was immediately woken by an infernal banging on his door. In an instant he had the hammer in his hand.

  It was Ali, and he came in ranting, flecks of paan flying out of his mouth. Who the fuck did the boy think he was! Changing the room he’d been put in! He’d just had a row with the man downstairs about it! Was it Ali’s fate to spend his life chaperoning adolescents and chutiyas! Allah gave men wife, children, and livestock. Unto him had been given only chutiyas, chutiyas, and more chutiyas! Some with small useless brains and some with small useless fingers, and some with both! And what was that damn hammer in his hand? Was he here on a killing contract or to make a sofa set!

  That old red light exploded inside the boy’s head, and in one quick move he caught Ali by his shirt collar, lifted him with one hand till only the points of his sandalled feet were on the floor, and banged him against the wall. Then he swung his hammer hard and smashed it against the wall next to Ali’s left ear. Shrapnels of white plaster flew. Through his choked windpipe Ali screamed inarticulately for mercy. The boy held him there for long minutes, with Ali clawing at his arms and kicking his legs, till the red light in his head dimmed. When he let go of him, Ali slumped to the ground, holding his head, gasping to fill his lungs. Then he croaked, ‘Maaderchod, have they sent you to kill me?’

  Vishal Tyagi said nothing; the boundaries stood redrawn. Ali had come on a yellow Chetak scooter with a Donald Duck sticker on it. He took his partner on it to check out the house near Civil Lines where their quarry lived, with new care.

  The front wall of the house was about seven feet high, topped with iron rods and coils of barbed wire. The iron gates had a beware-of-dogs sign, big light globes on the pillars, and an assortment of men in white uniform. In the driveway, through the bars of the gate, he could see several cars and at least two jeeps. Ali said that in the small guard hut next to the gate, the men had a couple of local weapons, including a rifle.

  At night, after dinner, Ali rode Vishal through the road once more. Now the gate was ablaze under the fire of floodlights and one of the guards had a rifle slung on his shoulder. Ali said, in
his high-pitched nasal twang, ‘When we fire the first shot, this one will shit a trail from here till Lucknow!’

  Later, at Hawa Mahal, Ali said, ‘My dear King Kong, now please stay where I am leaving you, so that I can find you in the morning without calling in Inspector Eagle!’ The plan was to be out before five in the morning to scope out the contractor’s morning walk and badminton routine. They had three strike options. The morning walk; in his very lair, in the house, where he had an office to meet visitors; or at his hotel construction site near Orchha, at the point where the tarred road turned off onto a narrow dust track that could be accidentally blocked. They had been given ten days to decide, plan and execute.

  That night too Vishal slept with his shoes on, and was waiting, all ablutions over, sitting on the lone wooden chair, when the knock came. Ali wore a green monkey cap pulled down low over his face. ‘Hah!’ he whined. ‘Didn’t recognize me? Not even my wife would! Might even open her legs because of that!’ He rolled up his cap till it was a thick cream band on his forehead. Even at this first hour before light, his mouth was full of paan.

  The halwai shops were the only ones stirring in the bazaar, when Ali kick-started the scooter. Just out of the bazaar a tea-stall owner and his underage assistant, a boy in loose torn shorts and close-cropped hair, were putting out their biscuit jars and setting a pan to boil. Ali tried to slow down, hoping to grab a hot glass, but Vishal knocked him on his skull with his knuckles and hissed, ‘Go!’

  The shotput champion with the long-fuse and big detonation never learnt to speak much, but he always had an instinct. It would see him survive many a perilous situation. Ali would be dead before long, and so would most of the hitmen he worked with over the coming years. As a rule, triggermen were picked for their dispensability. Conscripted raw, with no police records, no faces, they were expected to run a job or two before they were eliminated by the police or the commissioning gang, or by an understanding between the two. For sheer evanescence there wasn’t a career to compare. A rare few rose to be leaders, escaping the hitman’s fate. Fewer still were those who refused to become leaders—managing gangs and managing money—and refused to die. These were the true artists of the business, the legends, in sweet harmony with what they practised, warriors from the Gita, concerned little with reward and recognition, capable of audacious strikes and survival, again and again.