The Story of My Assassins (49 page)

The shastri rustled his parchment. Every damn parent hoped a new child would bring a change in fortune. In his experience all they did was add one more mouth to be fed. He had seen birthcharts like this before. They presaged a stormy life.

He said, ‘Yes, he will be a warrior who strikes fear into his enemies. He will bring you material well-being, and he will bring you protection. But it will take a heavy toll of him.’

In alarm the mother cried, ‘Shastriji, you are hiding something from us! What is wrong with my son? Is he ill-fated?’

The astrologer, his grey hair thick over his ears but gone from the top of his head, said, ‘Oh, don’t start getting worked up. It’s just that, because of his work and his strength, he will have powerful foes. You do know, mataji, that only powerful men have powerful enemies! But it will not be easy to harm him. His stars are like Hrinyakashyap’s. He can only be harmed in a place that has both sunlight and shade; he can only be harmed when he is moving and not still; he can only be harmed when his belly is full; he can only be harmed when he is hidden from view; he can only be harmed by a slain enemy; and he can only be harmed when he is trapped between friends. For all these things to come together is a near impossibility. So you must not worry. Remember, to kill the evil Hrinyakashyap, Lord Vishnu had to appear himself and bend the elements. And as you know, the gods don’t descend into this country any more.’

Despite the shastri’s reassuring odds, the mother could not stay her anxiety. And, sure enough, the signs of trouble surfaced early as the boy grew strong and tempestuous with every passing year. He talked little and never argued, but he was prone to sudden explosions of temper. It was impossible to tell what triggered the outbursts, but it was mostly something said, not something done or denied. It could be a casual remark by one of his sisters, his mother’s nagging, the sour undertone in his father’s voice, a farmhand’s jibe. When he was small it would result in him flinging things around—pots, pans, slippers, clothes, food, anything that his hands found. If an attempt was made to restrain him he would become a ball of fury, lashing out with his fists and feet and teeth.

In a big city, in a rich house, he would have been taken to a counsellor. He would have been offered sweet words and coloured pills. In the village, in the one-room house amid the fields, the problem was first redressed with systematic thrashings. But soon it became clear that this was a medicine designed to aggravate the disease. The beating would scarcely be over than the ball of fury would erupt in a fresh round of destruction.

One time, when the father had been particularly excessive, laying into him with the short bamboo stick they used to goad the cattle and then tying his hands together, the enraged boy—who never cried or begged for mercy—banged his head against the wall till his skin split and the blood ran into his mouth.

The terrified family was forced to change tack. The best way to keep water still is to not stir it. In a declared—and oft-repeated—consensus, it was agreed, ‘Don’t say anything to him. Just let him be.’

Very early then, he fell out of all conversation and emotional commerce with his sisters, and with his parents there arose a distance that would never be bridged. The boy did not seem to mind. He never sought anyone out—for company or assistance—and was quite happy to escape the family by plunging into the sugarcane forests that began, literally, from the edge of their yard, and lay all around them. It was not unusual for him to spend hours exploring and roaming them. He would peel and chew and peel and chew stalk after stalk of cane, as he picked his way through the crowded razor-leaves.

Sometimes he would walk for so long that he would enter other men’s fields and lose his bearings. Then he would need to make an exit from the forest, locate his position—by a homestead, a tree, a tube well—and slowly saunter back over the bunds.

Sometimes he would imagine that he was surrounded by armed dacoits, and he had to evade and slay them. He would then wreak havoc with the juicy weapon in his hand, thrusting it like a dagger and brandishing it like a sword.

The sugarcane forests were alive with surprises other than the rustling dacoits. Snakes were not uncommon, nor were hares. Occasionally you could see a jackal slinking away, head low to the ground, and rarely, very rarely, a wild pig or a hulking nilgai. Once he found the neighbouring thakur’s son wrestling with a woman who worked in the fields. He had managed to get on top of her and was thrusting her hard into the ground. The boy watched—unseen—for some
time, but when he thought the man was about to kill her he scuttled away. Somehow the woman survived. A few days later, he saw her squatting between the cabbage rows, diligently turning the soil.

Another thing to watch out for in the cane forests were the defecating bottoms. The trick was to walk close to the heart of the thicket—the crappers seldom went in farther than three rows from the edge. Deep in there he discovered two things: the profound peace that lies at the heart of rustling nothingness, and a matchless hiding place. Both were to provide him solace in the years to come.

He had another source of comfort. The cattle tethered in the yard. He liked stroking their heaving flanks—the buffalo’s fleshy but rough; the oxen’s spare but silky. It calmed him to rub down their bony heads, to grip their hard horns. Their startled stomping when he pulled and played with their ears and tails was the only thing that made him gurgle with amusement. And sometimes, when no one was watching, he slowly caressed his face with the hairy end of their frayed tails, making his nose tickle, giving himself shivery giggles and bouts of sneezing.

Since everyone said his head was too hot, he also discovered an unusual way of cooling it. When the buffalo—called Shanti, peace—had settled on her side to ruminate, he would lie in front of her, head propped on his elbows, and offer her his severely cropped head (his father’s strategy for keeping it cool). Shanti would then proceed to systematically lick it with her thick wet tongue. He would move his head slowly under the lapping tongue and in no time his scalp would be drenched. The boy loved this massage and anytime he was sure no one was watching he would seek it out. Sometimes he would actually nod off to sleep as Shanti lapped his head.

At his naming ceremony the shastri had pulled out the letter ‘V’. To begin with the family named him Vinod, after a couple of film
actors of that name, one of them a macho Punjabi hero with a cleft chin. The boy’s pet name was, of course, Guddu; the formal Vinod was never used. Then, when he was six, and was taken to the local government school, the headmaster ran his hands down the boy’s shoulders and arms and said, ‘He looks too big to be six. Are you telling the truth about his age?’ Soon after, his father changed the boy’s name to Vishal—huge. And though he did not grow up to be unnaturally tall, he did develop the torso of a lifter of weights and the rolling gait of a professional boxer.

In school they began to tease him early. He was big of size but not quick of wit. He spoke little and haltingly and had slow eyes, which in later years would turn into an unflinching gaze. The boys called him chacha, daddu, oonth, bhainsa, khachchar, mule. In every school skit he was given the role of the demon. Thick black moustaches were painted under his nose and rolled over his cheeks, and he was he made to strut the makeshift stage with a wooden club, before being slain by Rama or Bhima or Shiva. His maths teacher called him Bakasura.

When he was nine, and strong enough to be fourteen, he began to bang the heads of the teasing boys together. His behaviour was no different from what it had been when he was younger. He’d let the jibes slide for a long time, paying no heed, not responding, looking the other way, carrying on in his slow fashion, and then suddenly something would snap and he would grab whoever he could lay his hands on and hammer them till their wails for mercy filled the school.

The headmaster took it up with his father more than once. Gyanendra Tyagi, exhausted by a lifetime’s legal and physical war with his cousins, sick of his son’s intransigence, simply said, ‘Why do you think we’ve sent him to you, masterji? What is the meaning of this big school in this small village if finally I am left to kick him into shape? You come and run my house and fields and I’ll run this fancy school of yours, if that’s what you want!’

The school was certainly extravagant. Sixteen concrete rooms, in an L-shaped block, ten and six, all the rooms twelve by twelve feet, with two windows and two doors each. Twelve years ago a local village man had become the MLA of the area and had then become a minister in the state government. The school was his gift to his kinsmen, though the village was too small to fulfil the criterion for a high school. Once the minister lost power, the school grew derelict. Maintenance funds were scarce and most villagers didn’t have the patience to walk their children down the long tortuous education road that would most likely end in a blind alley. Now the bricks of the boundary wall were being continually purloined, several rooms had become living quarters for the teachers, and the playing field behind the building was grazing ground for cattle.

The headmaster, who ran a small cement sale agency alongside, actually didn’t give a damn about the school. His only concern was avoiding a scandal. He didn’t want a death on his hands. Times had changed. There were small and big newspapers everywhere, some like
Sanjhi Khabar
, Twilight News, no more than four smudged sheets, always on the lookout for a juicy story that they could drum up and parley into a deal. This was a comfortable posting. His village was just fifteen kilometres away, and the cement agency was doing brisk business. Any controversy, and he could well be on his way to eastern UP, or worse still, to some godforsaken hamlet at 8000 feet in the Kumaon—an hour’s walk from the road and so cold in December that it froze your piss.

This boy bothered him. Either he was going to be dead before he was eighteen, or he was going to be a legend. The headmaster had spent a lifetime thrashing bullies and brats, and he had learnt to identify their varying thresholds. The most common ones gave you lip and played to the gallery: they could be easily silenced with some precise insults about their caste, or their physical features, or the sheer meanness of their family conditions. There were others, more thick-skinned, inured to insult, who needed to be caned to
within an inch of their lives before they understood the obedience–unishment equation. There were still others, physically strong, more resistant to authority, carrying the threat of counter-violence in their bodies. For these you called in their fathers: between master and patriarch they could be taught the meaning of piety.

This boy was different. He didn’t give lip, and he didn’t play to any gallery. Most times, he just exploded disproportionately to someone’s provocation. Then there was no restraining him till his fury was spent. And physically he was an ox. On a few occasions he had mercilessly beaten up as many as six-seven boys, while scaring off another half a dozen from interfering. Since class seven, the headmaster had not risked assaulting him. Matters were compounded by not knowing what would trigger his violence. His Hindi teacher, a thoughtful man who chewed on his sacred thread, always said, ‘Inside his head is a jwalamukhi. A simmering volcano. Does anyone ever know why and when a volcano will erupt? Even a geologist? Even the volcano itself? It’s the same with him.’ And when he was asked what should be done, the teacher would say, thread between his teeth, ‘What do men do with a live volcano? Keep a watchful eye on it, and maintain a safe distance.’

Everyone took that advice as an injunction—at home, in the school, in the village. Except one man—the one man who was to shape and define his life.

Rajbir Gujjar had done twenty-four years in the state constabulary and was now employed in the school as sports-master. In his youth he had been a sprinter, but not good enough to go under eleven seconds, and then in police camp he had graduated to becoming a lightning-quick right-out in hockey. He had made it to the state police team and had played the national police games and endless other regional tournaments for five years. Rajbir’s role on
the field was simple: run down the long pass on the right flank, trap the ball, and centre it swiftly for the forwards. He had to do this endlessly: explode from the half line, heart and muscles pumping, stick in his right hand, and somehow intercept the speeding ball and swat it to the top of the D. His mates called him Bhagbir Gujjar. For doing this well, he had been excused from all policing duties for seven years. He lived in a separate, special barracks with the team, close to the playing field. They had to be on the ground before the grey of morning broke; during the day they rested and oiled their bodies; and at four in the afternoon—rain, sun, or storm—they had to be back on the field till night fell and they were guessing at the ball by its running sound. Their extra diet included a litre of milk, three eggs, and a dozen bananas each day, and chicken three times a week.

These long years of no policing and pampered, sportsmanlike conduct ensured he was a bit of a deviant by the time he was trucked into the job. In no time his colleagues discovered he was a liability. On the beat he was sincere, full of the self-importance of his uniform, and inside the station he was fastidious, with an eye for rules and procedures. But leaving him alone was dangerous. It took months to just get him to understand that you did not file a First Information Report each time someone walked in with a complaint. The FIR, the case diary, all these were lethal legal documents, and it was critical to manage them right. The repercussions of one unmeditated entry could play out over years and ruin entire lives and careers. There was also the business of balancing the statistics. Rape, theft, murder, riot: there was a historical legacy to them all, and you worked to keep the numbers along the running line—not too over, not too under, nothing that could attract praise or damnation, nothing that got you on the radar.

In his first year in Allahabad, three police stations parcelled him on. As a former star player he had access to senior police officers. He sought and obtained a transfer to Lucknow, imagining in the state capital it would be easier to work as the rules stated. It is the
universal affliction of all athletes: struggling to level with the infinitely more complex rules of life outside the playing arena. Of course Lucknow was worse, a rabidly political city, with no scope for errors. In less than a year, the speedy right-out was in Meerut, then Gorakhpur, then Shahjahanpur, then Faizabad. Everywhere he discovered he was sprinting one way with the rules, while all the other players ran the other way. The rules, he realized, were not what were written in the book, but what everyone had agreed to follow.