by Bajaj, Karan
‘Delhi has changed,’ I said.
He didn’t reply. Small talk wasn’t a part of his job description.
‘Two million rupees,’ he said after a while.
‘What?’
‘The stakes,’ he said. ‘You take half a million, those who bet on you double their money; we take the remaining.’
‘If I win, that is. If I lose, I get nothing except a bullet through my head.’
He shrugged. Life is tough, get over it.
They would pick up the money either way, I thought, though I suspected that the game was organized less for money and more for the entertainment of important clients - a morbid modern-day joust.
‘The Donos says you are the first man he has met who is genuinely unafraid to die,’ said the handler. ‘Two million rupees isn’t a joke in India. Do you know why the stakes are so high?’
I didn’t know, nor did I care.
‘Indians seem almost as afraid to die as Americans and Europeans. Elsewhere in south-east Asia - Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, even Hong Kong - it’s easy to organize. Here, we can’t find two people we can trust to play the game till the end. Every time, one or both of them chickens out after the first shot, or they shiver so much that they can’t even hold the revolver straight, or else they cry like babies. It’s embarrassing. Why are Indians so afraid to die?’ he asked rhetorically.
‘Family ties, perhaps,’ I said disinterestedly.
I didn’t know. I didn’t care. I had no ties in India or, for that matter, anywhere else. I was better dead than alive, and would have done the honour myself except for my irrational belief that suicide was morally wrong, a direct violation of the laws that the Buddha had taught me. Or maybe I was just a yellow hypocrite. I neither knew nor trusted myself any more.
‘This time is going to be different, I know,’ he said, studying me closely. ‘Your eyes are steady.’
I didn’t say anything. Blowing your brains out for money was cowardice, not courage.
‘The other man is also a great find. He is dying of cancer but looks as healthy as an ox. It wouldn’t work if he looked as if he were about to die.’
I didn’t want to think about my opponent. It was best that he remained nameless and faceless.
‘How’s business?’ I asked instead.
The thick muscles in his neck tightened. ‘There are a lot of gang wars, especially with the big cartels from Colombia and Russia stepping in to get a piece of the action. I lost two men this month. You ran Marco’s operations in India?’
I shook my head. ‘I was with him in Brazil.’
‘How did you get there? I heard you went to MIT or Harvard or somewhere. You don’t meet too many of them in our line of work,’ he said, his blank eyes showing a slight flicker of interest.
‘Long story,’ I said dismissively.
He shrugged. Whatever, your hell.
The car stopped in front of a furniture showroom on a busy street.
‘Here?’ I asked. It seemed an unlikely location for this diabolical duel. But where was I expecting him to take me anyway? India Gate or the Rashtrapati Bhavan, perhaps?
I followed him quietly as he scanned the road with a practised eye and made his way through the smoked glass doors to enter the main floor, which was filled with sparkling new cane furniture. The merchants in the showroom stood to attention. He ignored them and walked to the back of the shop. We went down a flight of stairs into a dark, stale basement where a small door opened into a surprisingly large, bare room with a wooden table in the centre and a chair on either side.
A man sat on one of the chairs, staring blankly at the light bulb above him, one of the two bulbs that lit the room.
‘This is Dayaram, your opponent,’ said the handler.
He looked about sixty, six foot plus, solidly built, with just a touch of grey in his thick black hair. The handler was right. God knows I had seen more dying men than anyone should see in a lifetime, and he didn’t look like one. A little pale perhaps, but he might soon be blowing a hole through his temple, something that could make even the best of men lose colour. Dayaram got up from his chair and greeted me warmly.
‘Nikhil,’ I said, shaking his hand.
Or Jet. Or Monk Namche. Or Coke Buddha. Or Nick. Different aliases for each phase of my life. Take your pick, none had worked.
‘I was worried they wouldn’t be able to find an opponent,’ Daya said in chaste Hindi. ‘Thank you for doing this, sahib.’
I smiled slightly. He was thanking a man he was about to kill, or would be killed by in a few minutes. I liked him at once.
‘You have your choice of revolvers, but you both have to use the same one of course,’ said the handler, impatient to begin. ‘Should I toss a coin to choose who picks? We need to hurry before the audience starts coming in.’
An array of revolvers lay on the table - .17 Remington, .416 Barrett, .25 WSSM, .35 Remington, .357 Magnum, .30 Carbine. It had been a while but I recognized all of them, I realized with some measure of pride.
‘No need,’ I said. ‘He can pick.’
Dayaram looked bewildered at the range of options, just as I had been the first time Marco asked me to pick.
‘Just pick the one that feels most comfortable in your hand. All of them are equally effective,’ I said gently. ‘Aiming right is more important.’
The handler seemed to like the advice. He picked up the Smith.
‘You need to point here,’ he said, placing the gun against his temple. ‘Just move the barrel around a bit, like this, until you feel the slight bump, then press the trigger. Don’t point anywhere else on the head. It will be slow and painful for you - and for us. Too much blood, too messy, and you know of course that going to a hospital isn’t an option.’
To his credit, Dayaram seemed unfazed at the prospect of ending up in bits of bone and blood in a few minutes. He picked up the revolvers one by one, fingering each one gingerly, and finally chose the .35 Remington.
‘Good choice,’ I said approvingly. ‘Let me unload the cartridges so you can practise.’
I took the pistol, unfastened the lock, removed the cartridges, and gave it back to him.
The handler looked at me appreciatively. I was quick despite my arm. We had obviously been trained in the same school.
‘Can you help him out a bit?’ the handler said. ‘I need to check on a few other things. People should be arriving any moment now.’
He walked towards the door.
By the time Daya found the bump on the temple, he was sweating profusely, his hands clammy and unable to get a firm grip on the barrel. He looked down at himself in disgust.
‘Don’t worry,’ I told him. ‘You aren’t scared. It’s the heat in the room.’
He looked at me gratefully.
‘They said you are from a big college like IIT, sahib,’ Daya said, once he had practised a few times with a firmer grip. ‘Is that true?’
I winced. My absent arm began to hurt again, the same throbbing, phantom pain that had plagued me for years now.
‘MIT,’ I replied shortly. ‘It’s outside India. I was there a long time ago, but it doesn’t matter now.’
‘I am honoured to do this with you, sahib.’
‘Likewise,’ I said.
‘But I am no IIT graduate. I’m just a naukar in a big man’s house. Now that I am dying, who is going to take care of my family? This money will be like a lottery for us if I win. If I lose, nothing lost, I’m dying anyway.’ His face darkened. ‘They assured me that they will give the money immediately if I win - can I trust them?’
I thought of Marco in the Jocinha favela of Rio de Janeiro, who had almost given up his life for me; good money thrown after bad.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You can trust them with your life.’
The audience, all of them men, began to stream in and the small, airless room turned stuffier and sweatier. They eyed Daya and me curiously as they gathered around the table, sweat glistening on their temples, starched s
hirts darkened from being in an unsavoury part of town, their faces flushed, either from the stifling Delhi summer or with barely contained excitement.
That could have been me, I thought suddenly as I looked at the smartly-dressed, wealthy looking men. A few different turns and I could have been strolling in here on my way to a Bernard Shaw adaptation or a Beethoven rendition. But the old, naive me probably wouldn’t have believed that such a game could take place in Delhi - or anywhere outside Hollywood. Now, nothing surprised me. I had seen the best of human nature and the worst of it. I believed in the evil of man as much as I trusted in the good.
A dark, well-dressed young man bumped against my chair. I looked up at him. Reflexively, he raised his right foot and rubbed it against his left pant sleeve. Polishing his shoes, I thought. What would he tell his young wife when he got back home? Honey, I forgot the onions because I bet fifty thousand rupees on someone blowing his brains out. What kind of emptiness made these men come here? How could you be so insulated from death that you had to seek it out? Our eyes met. I saw the gleam in his eyes and averted mine so he wouldn’t see the pity in them.
The handler walked up to the table once the fifty-odd men in the audience had huddled around us.
‘Thank you for being here,’ he mumbled, looking uncomfortable at having to speak.
The room fell silent as the suits moved closer, breathing down hard on our necks, a few spare drops of sweat splashing onto the table.
‘Move back, please,’ said the handler authoritatively.
This was the kind of direction he was used to giving. The men complied immediately and shuffled back a few steps.
‘As you know, we have been trying to arrange this for a while,’ the handler continued. ‘Finally, I present before you two fearless men.’
A smattering of applause broke out and seemed to unnerve the handler. The rest of his words came out in a jumbled heap. ‘The rules are simple. The revolver has six rounds, but only one bullet. The other five are blanks. One shoots at himself, passes the gun to the other who shoots at himself, and so on, until one of them falls. Someone could die on the first shot or on the last shot. But one of them will die tonight. Those who bet on the winner will have their money doubled. I will rotate the barrel after every turn. Any questions?’
There seemed to be none.
‘Let’s begin the game. I will rotate the revolver to choose who goes first,’ he said, obviously relieved at being done with the talking. He placed the revolver on the table.
‘Do you want to call or spin?’ he asked Dayaram.
Dayaram’s hands began to tremble as he mumbled something. The reality had finally sunk in, I thought, he was probably thinking of the family he would never see again.
The handler looked disgusted. ‘Are you going to call or spin?’ he repeated impatiently.
‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘We don’t need the toss. I’ll go first.’
A hush fell upon the room.
‘Are you okay with that?’ the handler asked Dayaram.
He nodded and looked at me gratefully. ‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered.
I shook my head dismissively. ‘It doesn’t matter. You will be fine.’
Every eye followed me hungrily as I picked up the revolver. I positioned the gun against my temple. They say your entire life flashes before your eyes when you are about to die. But no such thing happened to me, perhaps because I was no stranger to death, perhaps because my entire life had been a series of mistakes that I didn’t care to recall in my last moments alive. As I placed the pistol to my temple and cocked the barrel, all I thought of was that beautiful garden where I had sat twenty-five years ago. When I placed my finger on the trigger, I swear I heard Sam laughing. And what was that sudden sweet fragrance? April cherry blossoms in Boston. The dark, cheerless room suddenly seemed to fill with sunlight and hope.
Karma Yogi
Therefore, o Arjuna, without being attached to the fruits of activities, one should act as a matter of duty, for by working without attachment the Karma Yogi attains the Supreme.
Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita
15 April 1975, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, USA
‘What about Cambodia?’ Sameer asked.
‘What about it?’ I said.
‘We go there tonight. What else?’
‘Do I have to remind you that you’re from Bhatinda, not Boston?’
He threw the fat Lonely Planet in my lap. ‘Read this, you dumb fuck. Cambodia and Bhutan are the only two countries in the world where Indian citizens don’t require a visa - apart from Nepal, of course. Let’s choose one and go there.’
A Chinese woman turned around and glared at us.
‘Sorry,’ I said immediately.
‘About the tickets…’ whispered Sam.
‘Can’t we talk about this later?’ I whispered back.
We were sitting in the last row of the massive student congregation that was MIT’s graduating class of 1975, straining to listen to the keynote speaker. Or at least I was.
‘I don’t want to listen to this fat fucker,’ said Sam after a few minutes of silence. ‘He has nothing new to say. Work hard, take risks, learn from mistakes, be a people person, blah, blah, blah.’
I sighed and moved our chairs further back so we wouldn’t disturb the others, most of whom were listening in rapt attention as the head of America’s biggest financial services firm dispensed advice on how to be successful in corporate America after graduating from MIT. The soft, pleasant Boston spring contributed to the upbeat mood. We are now MIT graduates, everyone’s expression seemed to say, watch out, will ya?
‘The thing is, I don’t even want to end up like him,’ Sam continued. ‘Who wants to be a fat old turd peddling penny stocks and junk bonds and talking about how the best days of his life were spent at MIT?’
‘I would, for one,’ I said. ‘Unlike you, I don’t have any grandiose visions of happiness. I just want a simple life.’
‘A simple life! See, that’s what I’m talking about. That’s what we are going to get in Cambodia,’ he said, back on the subject of our yet unplanned vacation after graduation.
I wanted to do a road trip through the US. He, on the other hand, wanted ‘something big’, as usual.
Reluctantly, I stopped listening to the speaker and turned to Sameer (call me ‘Sam’). The stocky, clumsy son of a poultry farmer from Bhatinda, pencil-thin moustache forming over red, cubby cheeks, now an MIT engineer with outsized ambitions to take over the world.
‘Isn’t there a civil war going on in Cambodia?’ I asked him.
‘There was a war going on in India as well, when we came here four years ago - the ‘71 Indo-Pak War,’ he said. ‘And I had barely heard about it in Bhatinda. Cambodia is as big as a whore’s cunt; we can easily find some place where there is no fighting. Besides, who’s going to harm two Indians? We are non-aligned like Chacha Nehru.’
His face was flush with enthusiasm and I suddenly realized that he was serious about this. We could actually end up on a flight to Cambodia tonight, as we had on a flight to Mexico after our sophomore year. Time to get practical, boy, I thought, else we might end up sleeping in a bus stand for a week like we did in Cancun.
‘Do I have to remind you that we have no money?’ I said. ‘Zilch. Nada. I don’t want this to be another Mexico.’
‘This time it’s taken care of,’ he said triumphantly. He took out a cheque from his pocket with a flourish and waved it at me. ‘Dad’s graduation gift. No one in Bhatinda has ever graduated from an MIT before, not even from the Muzaffarpur Institute of Technology.’ He stared into the distance dreamily, and for a second I thought he was listening to the speaker who was explaining the lessons he had learnt from a recent acquisition.
‘The Angkor Vat is in Cambodia,’ said Sam unexpectedly. ‘The seventh wonder of the world.’
‘Since when have you been interested in historical monuments? You haven’t even seen the Taj Mahal, have you?’
He looked at me contemptuously. ‘There it’s all the same,’ he said. ‘The paagal-khaana is on the same road as the Taj Mahal.’
‘And how does that make the Taj Mahal any less magnificent, fatso?’ I said as we were rewarded with another look of disgust from the Chinese student sitting in front of us.
‘So, are we on?’ Sam asked.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Somehow, I don’t have a good feeling about this. Why can’t we just do a road trip like everyone else?’
He groaned and began to rock his chair. ‘You realize this is our last chance, don’t you? Three weeks from now, you will start pushing paper at NASA, and I will be sweeping factory floors at GE. It all goes downhill after that. Adulthood and responsibility; marriage, family, kids, finances, the works.’
‘You’ve been saying that for a long time,’ I said. ‘And I haven’t seen your downward journey begin yet.’
As if on cue, he tilted his chair back a little further than he probably intended, and landed on his back. A thunderous applause seemed to greet his fall. The speaker had just completed his speech. A few folks in the last row tittered as Sam picked himself up.
‘Bastard,’ he muttered sheepishly like he always did when he stumbled, slipped, fell, or broke things - all of which happened with alarming frequency.
‘Are you okay?’ I asked him.
He nodded. ‘Just got distracted thinking about the great time we’re gonna have.’
‘It’s prophetic,’ I said. ‘A divine sign that we should stay put.’
‘If I started seeing divinity every time I fell, I’d be Moses,’ he said.
I couldn’t contest that. His clumsiness was legendary at MIT.
‘At least we should stop by the international affairs department to check on the political situation in Cambodia,’ I said.
Sam waved his hand dismissively. ‘Are you out of your mind? Final exams just ended, and you want to study political history in a crummy room to prepare for a vacation? America has turned you into a pussy.’
