The 3 Mistakes of My Life

by Chetan Bhagat

  Ish put Ali in the safe. He gave him a few pillows. Ali switched on the phone light. Ish shut the door and locked it. He kept the keys inside his sock.

  ‘You ok?’ Ish screamed.

  ‘It’s dark,’ Ali said.

  ‘Hold on ok?’ Ish said.

  ‘Ok, we have to cook one more dish in the kitchen. Come fast,’ Ish said.

  We left Ali in the vault and ran to the kitchen. The jabs at the main door continued. I estimated we had five more minutes before the door gave away.

  Ish unplugged the LPG cylinder. ‘Carry this to the main door,’ Ish said.

  Omi and I carried the LPG cylinder. We kept it under the sofa blocking the main door.

  ‘Omi where do we keep the fireworks?’ Ish said.

  ‘Top shelf,’ Omi said.

  Ish came back with boxes of leftover Diwali crackers. We usually burst them when India won a match. Ish emptied a box of bombs on the cylinder.

  He took two bombs and opened the fuse to make it last longer. The crowd banged at the door. One main door bolt became loose.

  ‘I open, you light and all run up. Clear?’ Ish said to Omi.

  Omi nodded. Ish climbed on the sofa and tried to get hold of the bolt. It vibrated under the impact of the mob’s jabs.

  Omi lit a matchstick and took it to the fuse. As the fuse tip turned orange, Ish opened the bolt. The sofa would keep the door in place for a few more seconds, the time we had to save our lives.

  ‘Run,’ Ish said as he jumped off the sofa.

  We ran up the stairs. I was four steps away from the top when the door came loose.

  ‘Mother fuckers we won’t leave you. Killing your own people,’ the mini-leader I had tried to bribe opened the door. Him and three more men entered the room.

  ‘Hey stop,’ they shouted at me as I continued to climb. I looked behind, eight men had entered the bank.

  I was one step from the top when my ears hurt. The explosion rocked the cupboards on the ground floor as the main door blew away. I think the mini-leader took the worst hit from the cylinder. The other eight men couldn’t have been much better off.

  I didn’t know what we were doing. Preventing someone from taking revenge by attacking them ourselves. I had never seen body parts fly in the air. I didn’t know if any of the rioters remained. I used the two way switch at the top to switch on the ground floor tubelight. Smoke and bits of paper from the old files filled the room. Ish and Omi came behind me.

  ‘All gone?’ Ish said.

  The smoke cleared in thirty seconds. A few men lay around the room. I could not tell if they were injured or dead. The erstwhile main door was now an empty gap. Mama entered the room with five other people. Maybe he was lucky, or maybe he had the foresight to send others to open the door first. The five people ran to the injured in the room. Mama looked up. His eyes met us.

  Twenty one

  ‘Traitors, you bastards,’ Mama screamed. I noticed his left hand. It bled and the kerosene had burnt part of his kurta’s left sleeve.

  ‘Catch them,’ Mama shouted. He and five other men ran up the stairs. Ish, Omi and I ran into the branch manager’s office and shut the door.

  ‘Hold these,’ Ish said. His hands trembled as he shuffled through the cricket equipment we kept in the manager’s office. Ish picked up a bat. Mama and his group had reached the branch manager’s office door.

  ‘Open or we will break it,’ Mama said, even though they didn’t bang the door. They continued to threaten us but didn’t act. Perhaps they were afraid of what we would blow up this time.

  My heartbeat sounded almost as loud as their screams.

  ‘I don’t have my phone. Give me yours, I’ll call the police,’ Ish said to me.

  ‘We will not leave,’ Mama’s voice reverberated through the door.

  I passed my phone to Ish. He dialled the police number.

  ‘Fuck, no one is picking up,’ Ish said and tried again. Nobody answered.

  Ish hung up the phone and shook it in frustration.

  Beep Beep, my phone said as a message arrived.

  ‘It’s an SMS,’ Ish said as he opened it.

  Hey, stay safe tonight.

  By the way, just got my period!! Yippee!!

  Relieved no? C U soon my hot teacher. Love – me.

  The message came from supplier Vidyanath. Ish gave me a puzzled look. I shrugged my shoulders and reached to take my phone. Ish moved the phone away from me. He looked at me in shock. He turned to the message and went into details. He saw the number. He dialled it.

  I came close to a cardiac arrest.

  ‘Hey, cool no? I never thought I’d be celebrating a period,’ Vidya rattled off on the other side as she saw my number. I could hear her cheerful voice even though Ish held the phone.

  ‘Vidya?’ Ish said as his brows became tense.

  ‘Ish bhaiya?’ she said.

  Ish looked at me. He cut the line and kept the phone in his pocket.

  For a moment we forgot that we had murderers at our door. Ish stepped forward towards me as I backtracked until I reached the wall.

  ‘Ish I can explain…,’ I said even though I couldn’t.

  Ish dropped the bat on the ground. He lifted his hand and then – slap! slap! He deposited two of them on my face. Then he made his hand into a fist and punched me hard in the stomach.

  I fell on the ground. I felt intense pain, but I felt I had lost the right to say anything, including screaming in agony. I clenched my teeth and closed my eyes. I deserved this. I had to pay for the second mistake of my life.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Omi said even though he understood the situation well.

  ‘Nothing, selfish bastard. He is a snake. He’ll sell us if he could. Fucking businessman,’ Ish said and kicked me in the shins.

  ‘Hey Ish, you want to get killed?’ Omi said.

  ‘Fuck you Mama, come in if you have the guts,’ Ish shouted and walked up to the door.

  Omi lent me a hand. I stood up and leaned on him. I wondered if my intestines had burst.

  ‘I told you. Protocol,’ Omi said.

  ‘I didn’t do anything wrong,’ I said. I don’t know why I said that. I had unprotected sex with a barely legal student and my best friend’s sister. It must be up there in the top ten morally wrong things one could possibly do.

  Mama’s patience ran out after five minutes. He ordered his minions to break the door. They pressed their trishuls against the door, but kept their distance.

  ‘Right now, aim is to survive, not to settle scores,’ Omi said.

  Omi handed Ish the bat again. I held my wicket tight. We monitored the door. A few more jabs and it would open.

  ‘I’ll let them in anyway,’ Omi said and released the bolt.

  ‘You want to kill me? Mama, go on, kill me. Why wait,’ Omi said and opened the door.

  ‘Move aside Omi. Just tell me, where is the boy,’ Mama said.

  ‘You won’t get any boy here,’ Ish growled.

  Mama’s five men held up their trishuls. We lifted our cricket weapons. One man attacked Ish. Ish blocked him with his bat. Ish struck the bat on the man’s arm, leg, thigh and groin. The man fell on the floor.

  My hands shivered as I tackled another fat man. My wicket got stuck in his trishul’s blades. Our conjoined weapons hurled in the air as we tried to extract them apart. He kicked me in my right knee and I lost my balance. He came forward and pinned me to the wall.

  The third man hit Ish on the neck with the blunt end of the trishul. Ish fell forward. The man took Ish captive and pushed him against the wall.

  Omi had crushed the toes of the fourth man with the bat. The man winced as he fell on the floor. Omi kicked his stomach but the fifth man punched hard on Omi’s back. The man grabbed Omi from behind.

  ‘Buffalo, you can’t get free now,’ the man said.

  ‘Tch, tch. Stupid bastards. Like playing with fire eh?’ Mama said as he sat on the branch manager’s table. The three of us were pinned to the wall
. The three remaining able men had blocked our bodies with their trishuls.

  Mama sat on the branch manager’s table and looked at us.

  ‘I want blood. Give me the boy, or it will be yours,’ Mama said. He took out his hip flask and had a big sip of whisky.

  ‘There is no boy here,’ Ish said, ‘as you can see.’

  ‘You are not to be trusted, as I have seen,’ Mama said. He threw the empty flask at Ish. It hit him in the chest.

  Two injured men lay on the floor. Mama kicked them.

  ‘Go search,’ Mama said.

  The men hobbled and left the room.

  ‘Nobody here,’ they screamed as they traversed the various rooms of the bank. Their voice had pain. Something told me they’d had enough.

  Mama went close to Ish. He pulled Ish’s hair hard.

  ‘Tell me you bastard,’ Mama said.

  ‘He is not here,’ Ish said.

  ‘I will…,’ Mama said as a phone ring interrupted him.

  The phone didn’t belong to me or Omi. The ring didn’t come from Mama and his men either.

  Mama followed the sound. The sound came from the manager’s table. Mama went to the wall behind the manager’s table. It had the vault. The sound came from within the vault.

  ‘Open this,’ Mama said as he pointed to the wheel shaped lock of the vault.

  We kept quiet. Ish’s phone rang again. I guessed Vidya had called to explain things to her brother.

  ‘I said open this,’ Mama said.

  ‘This is the bank’s vault. We don’t have the keys,’ I said. I wanted to do my part to help Ish. I wanted to do anything to make me less of a creep.

  ‘Oh yes. The smart boy has spoken. No keys,’ Mama said.

  My head turned to Ish. Ish looked away from me.

  Mama grabbed my chin and turned my face to him.

  ‘So we are idiots isn’t it? You don’t have the keys, but how did the fucking phone end up inside? Search them.’

  Mama’s minions began the most violent search possible. The man searching me ripped open my shirt pocket. He slapped me once and asked me to turn around. His nails poked me as he frisked me from top to bottom. I told him I didn’t have the keys more than ten times, but he wouldn’t listen. He searched my pant pockets and grabbed my groin twice to check. Whenever I tried to squirm, he jabbed me with his fist.

  The other men did the same to Omi and Ish. The man searching him ripped off Ish’s shirt. He took a trishul and poked him in his rib cage.

  ‘This bastard doesn’t have it,’ my man said and gave up his grip. He pinned me to the wall again.

  ‘This one neither,’ the man with Omi said.

  ‘This one needs to be tamed,’ the man with Ish said as he tried to take off Ish’s pants. Ish kicked hard in the man’s shins. I noticed the blood on Ish’s chest.

  ‘Should I help,’ Mama said from the branch manager’s desk.

  ‘Don’t worry I’ll tackle him,’ the man said even as Ish bit his arm.

  Mama came to Ish. He jabbed the blunt end of the trishul again at his chest wound.

  Ish screamed in pain and fell. The man searching Ish slapped him a few times. Ish clenched his teeth and continued to kick. Mama reached into Ish’s pockets. He felt something. Ish had worn practice shorts underneath his pants. Mama took his hands out of the pants and slid it again into Ish’s shorts. He pulled out a bangle sized keyring. It had two six inch long keys.

  Ish lay on the floor taking heavy breaths from his mouth. His eyes looked defiant even as his body refused to cooperate.

  Mama twirled the key ring in his hand.

  ‘Never looted a bank before,’ Mama said, ‘and what a prize today. Father and son, I’ll root out the clan.’

  Mama took a minute to figure out the vault keys.

  ‘Don’t Mama, he is a child. For my sake,’ Omi said.

  Mama paused and turned to look at us.

  ‘My Dhiraj was also a child,’ Mama said and went to the vault.

  Ish sat on the floor. The man guarding him suffocated Ish with the trishul rod around his neck.

  ‘Don’t touch him. He is national treasure,’ Ish growled. The man suffocated him further.

  ‘I’ll pay you, whatever you want,’ I said.

  ‘Businessman, go sell your mother,’ Mama said to me as he turned the wheel of the vault.

  ‘There is the bastard,’ Mama said.

  Mama yanked out Ali from the vault. His thin body in the white kurta pajama shivered intensely. His smudged face told me he had been crying inside. Mama grabbed Ali by the neck and raised him high in the air.

  ‘Ish bhaiya,’ Ali said as his legs dangled.

  ‘The more innocent you look now, the bigger devil you will be in ten years,’ Mama said and brought Ali down. He released his grip on Ali’s neck.

  ‘Stop it Mama,’ Omi said as Mama lifted his trishul.

  ‘You won’t understand,’ Mama said and folded his hands to pray.

  ‘Run Ali, run,’ Ish screamed.

  Ali tried to run out of the room. Mama opened his eyes. He ran after Ali and jabbed the trishul into Ali’s ankle.

  Ali screamed in pain and fell down.

  Mama kneeled down on the floor next to Ali.

  ‘Don’t you try and escape son of a bitch. I can kill you in one clean shot. If you try to be clever I will cut each finger of yours one at a time. Understand?’ Mama roared. His eyes were red, the white barely visible.

  Mama closed his eyes again and mumbled silent chants. He took his folded hands to his forehead and heart and tapped it thrice. He opened his eyes and lifted the trishul. Ali stood up and tried to limp away.

  Mama lifted the trishul high to strike.

  ‘Mama no,’ Omi screamed in his loudest voice. Omi pushed the man blocking him. He ran between Mama and Ali. Mama screamed a chant and struck.

  ‘Stop Mama,’ Omi said.

  Even if Mama wanted to stop, he couldn’t. The strike already had momentum. The trishul entered Omi’s stomach with a dull thud.

  ‘Oh … oh,’ Omi said as he absorbed what happened first and felt the pain later. Within seconds, a pool of blood covered the floor. Mama and his men looked at each other, trying to make sense of what had occurred.

  ‘Mama, don’t do it,’ Omi said, still unaware that the trishul blades had penetrated five inches inside him.

  ‘Omi, my son,’ Mama said.

  Omi writhed in pain as Mama yanked the trishul out.

  I had never seen so much blood. I wanted to puke. My mind went numb. The man who pinned Omi earlier now held Ali tight and came close to Mama. Mama had Omi in his lap.

  ‘Look you animal, what did you do,’ Ish screamed. Ish had seen the scene from behind. He never saw the trishul inside him. Only I had seen, and for years later that image would continue to haunt me.

  ‘Call an ambulance you dogs,’ Ish screamed. Ish’s captor held him super-tight.

  Ali put his free hand on Omi’s chest. It moved up and down in an asymmetrical manner.

  Omi held Ali’s hand and looked at me. His eyes looked weak. Tears ran across my cheeks. I had no energy to fight the man holding me. I had no energy left to do anything.

  ‘Leave us you bastards,’ I cried like a baby.

  ‘You’ll be fine my son, I didn’t mean to,’ Mama said as he brushed Omi’s hair.

  ‘He is a good boy Mama, he didn’t kill your son. All Muslims are not bad,’ Omi said, his voice breaking as he gulped for breath.

  ‘Love you friend,’ Omi said as he looked at me, a line that could be termed cheesy if it wasn’t his last. His eyes closed.

  ‘Omi, my son, my son,’ Mama tried to shake him back to life.

  ‘What? What happened?’ Ish said. He had only witnessed the drama from behind.

  Mama put his head on Omi’s chest. Ish started kicking and shoving the man holding him. The man jabbed Ish with his elbow. Ish gripped his trishul rod and pushed back hard until he could slip out. He gave the man a kick in his groin. The ma
n fell down as Ish kicked him again thrice in the same place. Ish pounded his head with his foot until the man became unconscious. Ish ran to Omi.

  Mama left Omi’s body on the ground and stood up. Ish went over and touched Omi’s face. He had never touched a dead body before, let alone his friend’s. I saw Ish cry for the first time. He sniffed back hard but the tears wouldn’t stop.

  ‘See what you made me do you bastard,’ Mama said, ‘made me kill another son. But I am not weak. I haven’t cried yet, look.’

  Ish ignored Mama. He went through the same numbness I did a few moments ago. He touched Omi’s body again and again.

  ‘Hindus are not weak, am I weak?’ Mama said as he turned to his men. The men looked nervous, as things had not gone as planned. The man who held Ali’s arm looked at Mama, looking for guidance for the next step.

  ‘Hold him back, next to this mother pimping businessman,’ Mama said.

  The man brought Ali next to me and held him back with a trishul.

  Ish’s captor had recovered from the groin attack. He woke up and ran to Ish from behind. He struck the blunt end of the trishul on Ish’s head.

  ‘Ah!’ Ish said in pain as he fell down, semi-conscious. The man dragged Ish back to the wall.

  Ish faced Ali and me.

  ‘No more chances,’ Mama said as he came in front of Ali. Mama asked Ali’s captor to release him. I looked at Ish, around fifteen feet away. His captor looked extra-alert. Ish looked at me. His eyes tried to tell me something.

  What? I asked myself, What is he trying to say?

  I squinted my eyes to look at Ish. He moved his eyeballs from centre to left in quick succession. He wanted me to run out and block Mama. Just the way Omi had, unsuccessfully.

  I examined my captor. He blocked me but his eyes watched Mama and Ali. It is hard to take your eyes of a live murder. I could slip out. However, what was the point of getting killed?

  ‘Get ready you pig,’ Mama said as he lifted his trishul and took five steps back.

  Maybe I could extract myself and try to pull Ali towards me. That way Mama’s strike could hit the wall. Ish could push his captor away, come from behind and protect us all. Is that what Ish had tried to say? I had limited data beyond the eye movement. I had limited time. I couldn’t analyse, I had to do first and think later. The exact opposite of when I slept with Vidya. There, I should have thought first and done later.