The Story of My Assassins (53 page)

Donullia’s brother, Gwala Gujjar, became a civil-works contractor. He was so good at his work that he began to get a slice of every new and old project in the district. Repairing torn roads, laying new ones, building rural schools and primary health centres, culverts and bridges, bus stops and night shelters, clearing drains and gutters, planting power poles and stringing telephone lines. The shrewdest men in India have always known that money lurks not in the dazzle of the markets but in the dour corridors of government. Laying macadam is paved with greater—and quieter—riches than all the hustle of the high marketplace.

The benign politician blessed the contracts and Donullia’s severe shadow ensured competitors sewed their lips and stilled their fingers.

But Donullia and Bajpaisahib’s relationship went deeper than macadam. It was also tied to the high rituals of democracy. The brigand was a persuasive canvasser for the public man, and at every election his word would scorch through the district, urging the peasants to vote wisely and in their best interests. On voting days his men would trawl through the booths—armed and alert—ensuring fair electoral processes were not derailed by money or muscle. Bajpaisahib never lost an election, and Gwala Gujjar’s businesses diversified
to include shops, petrol pumps, gas agencies, cinema halls, a small vegetarian hotel, and an English-medium school.

It was only proper that Gwala Gujjar, who was older than Donullia, was a small, mild man. He beamed the terror of his two shadows, but he spoke softly and without aggression. Too few people understand the potency of the big fist that presents a soft face. Gwala Gujjar then was the man to whom Rajbir reported. Mining the minister’s bungalow continually, he took to him news of Bajpaisahib’s movements, the men he had met, and the way the political winds were blowing. He provided details of the comfort women who brought solace to the public man’s stressed life, and of the traders and businessmen who were opening up new and novel mines of moneymaking.

The brigand’s brother always met him with humility and grace, bending and smiling. He met him at the door of his house, sat him next to himself in his bed-cum-sitting-room, fed him well with snacks and tea, and walked him out to the gate. Sometimes he gave him an envelope thick with gratitude, and sometimes a warm hug. Often he would say, ‘You are my Gujjar brother. Donullia always says, in the gang there is no caste and never can be, but in life caste is family. He has ordered me never to turn away a Gujjar from my door.’

There were always supplicants crowding the front of the house, seeking jobs, referrals, financial aid, justice, and sometimes the road to the famous brother. Gwala Gujjar performed every good and generous deed with utter humility in Donullia’s name, and always he told the grateful, ‘Seek blessings for him. He lives in the jungle and sleeps on the hard ground, often eating uncooked food, with the open sky for a roof, and wild animals for company—and he does all this for you, for the cause of justice, for the salvation of the poor. So pray for him every day, and on Tuesdays offer prasad to Hanuman so he may protect him and, by extension, us.’

In the four years that he lived in Chitrakoot, Rajbir saw Donullia’s
empire expand and his wealth multiply. New jeeps and big cars, new properties, a movie hall, and a motorcycle agency. More of his men could be seen overground, transiting through the town, creating a stir. Often there were rumours that the man himself was visiting, but for some reason Rajbir had never met anyone who said he had actually seen him. It was always a second-hand story, and it was always couched in vagueness. Few even knew any more what he looked like. Though he had been a legend for fifteen years, the police did not possess a single image of the man. He had turned an outlaw much before the government had started snaring all criminals in passport-sized photographs, and in all the years since, he had never once been captured. Nor had anyone betrayed him and lived to tell the tale. There were stories of defecting gang members whose body parts—eyes, tongue, ears, heart, testicles—had been systematically removed and set in a line, like a modular toy. Donullia gave his life for his men; the least he expected was some gratitude.

He was a master of disguise who practised his craft at all times; growing moustaches and beards, changing hairstyles, tying turbans, affecting lisps and limps. The great bahurupiya—man of a thousand faces—had a vast collection of false whiskers, wigs, robes, glasses, caps, and moles. Once, he had terrified and excited his men by appearing in their forest clearing, suddenly in the dead of night, dressed in an electric-blue saree with red lipstick full on his mouth. Even when he came to meet Bajpaisahib, his political partner, he never came as himself. In the end the world is a shifting place, and political partners can be trusted with cracking deals, not with one’s life.

The few times Rajbir asked the brother for an audience, Gwala said, ‘Of course, of course. He would love to meet you. He always speaks so affectionately about you.’

But that was never to be. On a couple of occasions, he reached Gwala’s house only to be told that he had just missed him; he was in the jeep that drove past him as he entered the driveway. When his tenure ended and he was transferred back to Lucknow to work in
the records department, Gwala assured him that Donullia was sad to see him go. ‘He told me to tell you that he is there if you ever need him. In the world of the gods he can do nothing for anyone, but in the world of men he will do his best.’

As it turned out, Vishal Tyagi did not get rid of the long-stemmed hammer. It was still in his bag when they arrived at Gwala Gujjar’s house and the armed men outside insisted on frisking them. Too many years had passed and there was no one on that outer periphery who readily remembered the former policeman. The house was the same, but Rajbir could see it had grown, adding on several floors. The boundary walls were also much higher, with blue-flowered creepers running over them, and there were now shisham trees encasing the walls. Rajbir recalled a much gentler cordon. Now the men were rude and aggressive, flaunting their double-barrel guns and their privilege.

Inside, however, the man was the same. Gwala Gujjar recognized Rajbir immediately and met him with the same bending humility and grace. But this time they did not go into the inner quarters; they sat in the living-room, which had become a fine place, with upholstered chairs and sofas and shining wood tables with brass and glass artifacts set on them. While Gwala’s hair had turned silver and his face was softer than before, the long red tilak on his forehead was fresh and thick as ever. Rajbir noticed that now there was also a holstered gun under his white kurta, the concealed brown belt running diagonally across his chest. The stakes had obviously risen over time.

Rajbir said, ‘How is Guruji?’

That’s how Donullia was now known. The years had taken him beyond the categories of outlaw and terror. His name still froze the blood—and his men slaughtered a few times a year to keep the fear coursing—but his deeds of generosity and kindness, of giving and
facilitating, had altered the account books. In the current audit he was more patron than predator.

Gwala said, ‘If you had come yesterday, you could have met him …’

‘Is he keeping well?’

‘Well, he is no younger, as you know. But he still runs through the jungles and ravines with the youngest of them, and still sleeps on the ground with the stars above, and often with uncooked food in his stomach. Meanwhile, we who do nothing and exist by his grace live in these pretty cake-like houses, eating motichur laddus and oiling our bodies.’

Rajbir said, ‘It is the way of great men. To suffer for the good of others.’

Gwala said, ‘He is opening a hospital and an orphanage. He said to me, “Gwalabhai, the government can say the worst about us and they need to do so all the time because they need to look good in comparison. But we know what our duty is. It is to always serve the people, the poor and the needy and the suffering. Do I live the life of a fakir in a jungle because I enjoy it? I do it because it is my karma. It is the will of Shiv-Shambhu—the lord of all creation and destruction, the richest ascetic in the world, the keeper of insects and animals, of djinns and men. If he wanted me to be you, Gwalabhai, he would have made me you. He made me Donullia so I could fight against injustice and protect the weak. He made me Donullia so I could do his work in this transitory world. When I run in the forest with the rifle in my hand I feel him running by my side.” ’

Rajbir said, ‘He is a great man. And it is the way of great men: to suffer for the good of others.’

Gwala said, ‘And what can I do for you, our old friend?’

Rajbir grasped Vishal’s wrists and said, ‘I have an offering for Guruji.’

Gwala said, ‘Is his heart as big as his body?’

Rajbir pulled out the thin-stemmed hammer from the boy’s bag,
and said, ‘He just made kachumar of three heads. Even their mother couldn’t recognize them. They had raped his sisters.’

‘And he will strike in the service of others as he has done for himself?’

‘Gwalabhai, he is a boy unlike any other. I would not bring you a mule dressed up like a horse. You know I have seen the world, of men and of boys. Guruji will find in him all the virtues of the Alsatian dog—strength and courage, love and loyalty.’

Gwala looked at the boy sitting upright on the edge of the sofa, the fair broad face expressionless, the eyes steady, the muscles bulging. His great brother could tell the truth of a man in a single look. But he himself had no such gift. He had to feel his way around, make risky guesses, hope for the best.

Gwala said, ‘This is a life of no pleasures and no rewards. It is a life of daily danger and hardship and selfless service. It is Shiv-Shambhu’s work. Can you do it?’

Vishal Tyagi nodded.

‘Can you kill, not out of anger and enmity and greed, but for the greater good?’

Vishal Tyagi nodded.

‘You do know that once you become a soldier of Guruji, a devotee of Shiv-Shambhu, you cease to be detained by other ties of family and friends.’

Vishal Tyagi thought, this is such music to my ears.

For the first several weeks, his allotted space was a charpoy in the garage that lay at the end of the short tight driveway. At the back was a bathroom, and a small windowless store stuffed with weaponry. Swords, spears, axes, several substandard rifles from Indian ordnance factories, nearly a dozen tamanchas, unreliable local pistols, the barrels made of sawn-off water pipes. There were also a few .303
Enfields, taken off the police, heavy and destructive; one black carbine, hung on the wall, its holes sinister, its magazine clamped into place; one Webley & Scott revolver and two 9mm pistols; and in a small wooden box kept on a high ledge, half a dozen plump grenades.

The store was kept locked, the key under the soap dish in the bathroom. It was only after two weeks that one of the men, Gainda—rhino—opened the door and showed Vishal the tools of the trade. The three men did not know how to work the entire armoury, and were under orders to not stupidly fiddle. Their comfort zone spanned the non-firearms and the local rifles and tamanchas. Each of them carried one of each. Not a single piece was made available to the boy.

Rajbir had left two days ago, but the boy was calm. He was happy to sit at the gate and watch the street flow by, to observe the line of visitors who streamed in and out of Gwalabhai’s house. Many were questioned, most frisked, but a few strode in as if they owned the place. Beefy Gainda, his neck thick as a thigh, would often try and impress him with the significance of some of them. Director of public works, chief engineer, subdivisional magistrate, deputy superintendent of police, the local president of the low-caste party, the local president of the high-caste party, the local president of the national party, the chairman of the temples committee, the imam from the local masjid, the seth who presided over the grain mandi, the principal of the local inter college, the businessman from Lucknow who was whispered to be worth five hundred crores.

The boy was not impressed by any of them. He only stayed alert for that one man who might suddenly show up—fully aware that he might come in any manner of guise. Each time a visitor arrived, he scanned him carefully—looking for other signs, of weapons, accomplices, anything that might give a clue to his true identity. In the beginning, Gainda and his two buddies pretended they had seen him and met him, but soon it became clear to the boy that they too were still awaiting their first sighting. And they had been there for years.

Gainda told him hilarious stories of the false sightings at the gate. Once, he said, the three of them had fallen at the feet of an ochre-robed mendicant convinced that it was Guruji. They had been told the telltale sign was that he always wore keds, and since the mendicant was also carrying an iron trident—Shiv-Shambhu’s weapon—they were carried past all doubt. Only when Gwalabhai dismissed him with some alms did the three of them stop grovelling at his feet.

Gainda said, nodding at the house, ‘I don’t think even he has seen him for years. Some say there is no Donullia Gujjar any more. That he was injured in a police encounter five years ago and died in the ravines. His name is kept alive so that the fools of this area keep their pricks inside their trousers and don’t start getting grand ideas about themselves. Didn’t Gwalabhai tell you he was here just the day before? He says that to everyone who comes and makes an inquiry. It shrivels up your testicles some more. The thought that he was just here, that he can so effortlessly pass through the lives of men, like a shadow in the night, like a wispy djinn from a magician’s lamp. If anyone asks us, we too say that he was here just the other day. The truth is we have seen him as often as we have seen Alexander the Great! Listen, there is no Donullia any more. Gwalabhai and Bajpaisahib keep him alive, and it is our job to do the same. You may have made brain curry out of three men’s heads—and you look like someone who could—but just remember that, like us, you will stand at this gate for years, and you will be looked after well, and whenever anyone asks you will say, he was here just yesterday, but you will never see him because he has already gone where we are all headed soon.’ And he looked up at the sky and waved his right hand cheerily.