‘For the awesome story it tells and the stunning impact of its prose this is, quite simply, the best Indian novel in English I have ever read’ — NAYANTARA SAHGAL

TARUN J TEJPAL

Tarun J Tejpal has been a journalist for close to thirty years. He is the editor of Tehelka, a news organization famed for its public interest journalism. His first novel, The Alchemy of Desire, received worldwide recognition. He lives in New Delhi.

The Story of My Assassins

tarun j tejpal

HarperCollins Publishers India

First published in hardback in India in 2009 by HarperCollins Publishers India First published in paperback in 2010 A-75, Sector 57, Noida, Uttar Pradesh 201301, India www.harpercollins.co.in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Copyright © Tarun J Tejpal 2009, 2010 P-ISBN: 978-93-5029-017-0 E-ISBN: 978-93-5029-507-6

book are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Tarun Tejpal asserts the moral right

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers. Typeset in 11/14 Bembo Jojy Philip New Delhi 110 015

For Neena, artist of generosity, my oldest friend

1 News Of A Killing

T

he morning I heard I’d been shot I was sitting in my office on the second floor looking out the big glass window at the yellow ringlets of a laburnum tree that had gone in a few days from blindingly golden to faded cream, as if washed in rough detergent. Beyond the balding tree, losing its ringlets prematurely in midMay, the sky was blamelessly blue. In minutes it would begin to bleach and the sun would paint such a glare on it, it would be impossible to look up, even briefly, to catch the full bellies of groaning aircraft swooping down to land. It was not yet seven in the morning. I had slipped away early from my darkened bedroom with barely a glance at the sleeping splash of my wife, lying spreadeagled on her stomach, arms and legs akimbo, as if quashed by a giant foot. Brushing my teeth in the dining-room sink I had glanced at the weekend newspapers, full of the excitements of food and cinema, and eschewing the tea Felicia had set to brew, quietly let myself out. The lane lay in Sunday morning stupor, not a leaf stirring in the row of gulmohurs or the lone peepul. Rambir, our night watchman, had abandoned his post and was probably sleeping in his bed-sized room or doing the stuff one has to in the morning. The only thing moving was the mongrel of the lane, foraging for discarded food in the heaped refuse in the corner. Cast in many shades of brown with a rodent’s long face, one bad eye and one bad leg, he had been christened Jeevan after the nasal, sneering Hindi film villain of the 1960s, by the cloying old uncle of C-1.The old man, Sharmaji, who cracked silly jokes with the colony children and stroked their arms slowly, would stand outside his gate and call out to the children,

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and if the dog was around, he’d adopt a nasal sneer. The children, eyes averted, mostly sprinted past his house. Before Jeevan could limp up to me, tail wagging, I rushed to the car and slammed the door shut. For four years I had successfully managed to keep from opening up a relationship with him. That was one thing I could do without. More relationships.

At the office, the parking lot was pleasingly empty but for a plump green Bajaj scooter, battered and old – head cocked, eyes cracked – resting on its stand. Its owner was sprawled just inside the front door, on the armless sofa in the reception. When I walked in he scrambled to his feet, swaying, making a grab for his unbuttoned trousers. I said, ‘Motherfucker Sippy, you’ve again been hitting the bottle all night!’ He said, ‘No sir yes sir no sir.’ Sippy looked like he had been masturbating himself to death for the last fifty years. He had the wasted air of stereotype – hollowed eyes and cheeks, thin strands of hair on a pigmented scalp, arms and legs of stick and the wheedling manner of someone looking for just one more rush. He was struggling to align the buttons on his trousers and find the keys to my room at the same time. I slapped his fumbling hand away from the open drawer, and reaching into the jumble of brass and steel inside, picked up my set of four long slim keys anchored to a miniature high-heeled, knee-length brown leather boot. Someone’s mad European fantasy from a foreign catalogue or film? Who, in all of India, thought up such key chains? When I bounded up the stairs, Sippy was still rummaging purposefully in the drawer. It would be a few minutes before he realized this sequence was over. He was like that, with some kind of delayed-response metabolism. Changing a light bulb, he’d

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continue to stroke it long after it had come alive. Often, while making repairs in the jungle of wires and fuses in the main junction box under the stairs he would touch a naked wire and get a jolt; we’d all see the wires spark angrily, then, several seconds later Sippy would leap up, clutch his hand and scream, ‘Oh, my mother’s dead! My mother’s dead!’ The office boys called him Uncle Tooblite and everyone shouted their instructions at him twice, thrice, four times. If he was ever offended, he didn’t show it. He always met you with a serious expression and a willingness to do whatever he was told. When I pushed open the door of my office on the second floor, the phone was already trilling. It was Sippy asking if I’d like some tea. I had barely turned on the lights and pulled open the plastic blinds when the phone trilled again. Sippy. Wanting to know if he should get me a bun-omelette too. The computer had just finished booting when Sippy was back on the line. One omelette or two? I said, ‘Motherfucker, one hundred! And they should all be round like testicles and pulled out of a hen’s ass!’ After the customary delay, he said, ‘Okay sir.’ I waited as the icons lined themselves up at the top and bottom of the screen, like two teams of football players before the start of a match. After the great era of literacy the world was going back to the pre-literate age. For centuries there had been the hunt to find a word for every image, every sensation, every feeling; now we were working at finding an image for every word, every sensation, every feeling. Advertising, television, cinema, photography, computers, mobiles, graphics, animatronics – everything was geared to turn the squiggle of the word into the splendour of image. Across the globe, Photoshop Picassos crouched at their machines marrying unlike images to produce such unlikely images as no word could hope to withstand. The imagination no longer needed the word to negotiate its darkest recesses. The imagination was having its most fantastical meanderings served up in prefabricated images, for all to share. Our Mordor was the same. Our Frankenstein was the same. Our Tinker Bell was the same. We didn’t have to

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imagine Davy Jones – a graphics company in Silicon Valley was manufacturing him for us. We all picked our visuals from the universal pool. The individual monster was dead. Private passion was dead. Personal grief was dead. Anger was an icon. Love an image. Sex an organ. The future a matrix. If you could imagine it or feel it, it would be shown to you – in any colour, from every angle – without the exertions of the word. Even god would, finally, be shrunk to size. No larger than the screen. No denser than a pixel. I had not yet put an icon into play when the phone rang again. An unknown voice, in Hindi, asked to speak to me. Sippy must have put the switchboard line on direct before he went out. I said today was Sunday and I would not be in office. The voice said could it speak to anyone else, or could it be given my home number. I said there was no one here on Sunday morning except me, the cleaner, and I was not authorized to give out phone numbers. The voice said it was critically important, critically. I said so is sahib’s Sunday. The voice said, ‘You are a chutiya and you deserve to be a sweeper all your life!’ The players were ready and the screen was still, but there was nothing to do, really. I was just escaping the house. Even surfing the Net was not an option; the server downstairs was shut on Sundays. I looked out the big window in front of me at the laburnum flowers, bleached and dying young, that littered the balcony floor – like a low-wit parable on transient beauty. Laburnum. How melodious the name sounded. How sweetly the Malayali girl had said it before she wet my palm. I had barely noticed the tree until then, but she said its name with more ardour than she did mine, and I was forced to pay attention, feigning curiosity so she wouldn’t stop to move. A botany lesson punctuated with slow deep gasps. A few weeks later, when it was over between us, the only memories that remained with me were the names of some trees and how she’d insist I rub my cheek against hers. I didn’t mind that. I like dark skin, even though my mother had launched a hunt for the

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fairest girl in north India when she’d wanted me married off. The Punjabi girl she had finally picked hurt the eyes with her whiteness and had tiny bumps on her skin when naked. My mobile phone began to buzz on the table’s glass top like a trapped insect. Mother calling; probably to ask if we were going to visit her today. I put a folded hanky under the phone to dull the noise. Some seconds after the vibrations had ceased, they started up again. Still Mother. I leaned back in my chair and looked at the mobile’s small screen pulsing light. It died; and came alive once more. Not Mother this time but a number I didn’t recognize. The number vanished and was replaced by another one I didn’t recognize. Now Mother was on the line again; now another number I didn’t recognize; now Pramod, the office accountant; now a number that looked like one of the earlier unknown ones; now the home number; now Mother again; now my wife. The jittering mobile moved the hanky slowly across the table. Mother, I knew. What was wrong with the rest of this demented city? On a Sunday morning? Then the land line trilled. I picked it up to deal with Sippy. A vaguely familiar voice in Hindi said,‘Give me sahib’s mobile number, it’s urgent.’ I said I was not authorized to do so. The voice said, ‘Chutiya, you don’t even deserve to be a sweeper!’ My silver and black Nokia had juddered itself and the hanky to the edge of the table. I waited and, as they plunged, caught both deftly in my left hand like a sharp slip fielder and replaced them on the glass top. The small screen was pulsing light without pause. My sister from Bombay; my wife; Mother; an unknown number; another unknown number; the circulation manager; the space-selling boy who had joined two months ago; Mother. Probably some new bullshit in the papers. The switchboard line rang again. I picked it up. ‘Sippy?’ Sippy said, ‘Sirji, they are saying you are dead.’ I said, ‘Motherfucker, you are if I don’t get my tea now!’ The sun had now climbed past the tree and hit the window.

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You could see the drip stains on the glass. Fifteen minutes more and the vertical blinds would have to be half closed. The room would then become striped in sunlit lines. It was the backdrop photographers who came to take my picture favoured. Yes please, move back please, just a little, good, very good, eyes in dark, mouth in light, chest in dark, belly in light, groin in dark, thighs in light. Smile please. Sippy came in, weaving slowly, a plastic tray in hand. He wore tattered leather shoes with ragged laces. His leathery skin was grey with unshaven bristles, his eyes swimming in a soup of yellow and red. The first thing he said was, ‘Sorry sir.’ I said, ‘Who called, motherfucker?’ Sippy said, ‘I picked up the phone and the man said, Bloody chutiya! So I said to him, You are a chutiya, your father’s a chutiya, and your son’s a chutiya! He said, Your sahib’s dead, and so should you be! Now give me his mobile number! I said, Why? You want to phone him in heaven?’ The tea already had a skin on it. I peeled it off with the tip of my forefinger and stuck it to the side of the tray. Sippy said, ‘Sirji, should I get you another one?’ I looked at him. He said, ‘Sorry sirji.’ The mobile had been trembling all the while, making its way across the table. Sippy looked at it intently for some time, then said, ‘Sirji, phone.’ I looked at him, stopping mid-bite into my bun-omelette. He said, ‘Sorry sirji.’ The land line trilled. Kept trilling. When I finally picked it up, Sippy asked, ‘Do you want me to pick it up?’ I said, in Hindi, ‘Hello, Sub-inspector Shinde speaking from Kiskiskilee police station.’ Mother screeched into the phone, ‘How bad is it? How bad is it? Why is no one picking your mobile phone? Why must you talk such nonsense even at this time?’

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I said, ‘Madam, it is a criminal offence to speak to the Indian police like this.’ Mother screamed, ‘You fool, turn on the TV! Turn on the TV immediately!’ I picked up the remote, swivelled in my chair and detonated the TV. With a soft pop a chorus line of singers exploded into the room, throwing their legs and breasts about. I said, ‘Mother, it’s from Kismet – the hero is about to enter the don’s den.’ Sippy giggled. ‘Kiskiskilee police station. Kis kis ki lee!’ I looked at him. He said, ‘Sorry sirji.’ I flipped channels. An amazing smorgasbord of mythological costumes, American cafes, ornate quiz shows, thrashing crocodiles, goggled cricketers, striding golfers, bare-chested godmen, film stars talking, film stars dancing, film stars acting, all kinds of old and new films flitted past in several languages before I hit a news channel. There was a still of me, with my mouth open. Perhaps from some press conference, caught mid-sentence.The words ‘Breaking News!’ emblazoned in red ran across my chest. I read the ticker below: Attempt on journalist foiled. Five hitmen arrested. I flipped some more. Another news channel. A different picture – from before I had shaved off my moustache. Again, Breaking News! The ticker said: Scribe survives murder attempt. Delhi police foils bid. I turned up the volume. In a grave voice the pretty girl said that I had been saved in the nick of time. The police had been acting on intelligence tip-offs. Sophisticated weapons such as AK47s and automatic pistols had been recovered. No information had been released yet on the motives, but inside sources hinted these were contract killers. Now Sippy said, ‘Sirji, that is you?’ I put the receiver to my ear. ‘Mother, they are saying I survived.’ Mother screeched, ‘It is the glory of Shiva! It is the mercy of god! It is the power of my prayers!’ I said, ‘Mother, they are saying it is the power of Delhi police.’

‘An instant classic – far, far better than anything I’ve ever read by an Indian author’ — ALTAF TYREWALA ‘Intrepidly conceived and ingeniously executed, The Story of My Assassins casts an intimate, often humorous, but always unflinching, eye at the squalor of modernizing India. Combining a fierce political imagination with a tender solicitude for the losers of history, it sets a new and formidably high standard in Indian writing in English’ — PANKAJ MISHRA ‘Few English novels from India are as finely textured and true-to-life as The Story of My Assassins. A marvellously observant writer, Tejpal knows India’s elite and underclass alike, and he weaves their stories together seamlessly. The narrative voice seduces and the novel is full of laugh-out-loud lines. But The Story of My Assassins does not just entertain. It enlightens’ — MANJUSHREE THAPA ‘A devastating tale about political power and its malignity. With his ferocious new book, with his compelling writing, Tejpal ensures, hopefully, that Indian exotica will never sell’ — Financial Express ‘This book is a must-read. Extraordinary for its portrayal of modern Indian society’ — Businessworld

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