The Story of My Assassins Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  THE STORY OF MY ASSASSINS

  “Deeply humane, raucously funny, dizzy with social and psychological insight! A masterful account of 21st-century ambition, inequality, and power from one of India’s most fearless writers.”

  —KATHERINE BOO, AUTHOR OF BEHIND THE BEAUTIFUL FOREVERS: LIFE, DEATH AND HOPE IN A MUMBAI UNDERCITY

  “Tarun Tejpal is clever and inventive. In the profoundest way he writes for India”

  —V.S. NAIPAUL, WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE IN LITERATURE

  “Overlooked in the general rush to adore The White Tiger and Slumdog Millionaire … with a much richer understanding of the politics of poverty, [The Story of My Assassins] deserves wider attention.”

  —HARI KUNZRU, AUTHOR OF GODS WITHOUT MEN, IN THE GUARDIAN’S “BOOKS OF THE YEAR”

  “One of the most attractive Indian writers in English of his generation, he writes with a great deal of raw energy, inventively employing images which are at once sad, haunting, horrendously comic and beautiful.”

  —THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

  “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, AUTHOR OF AN END TO SUFFERING: THE BUDDHA IN THE WORLD

  “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, AUTHOR OF RICH LIKE US

  “An instant classic … far, far better than anything I’ve ever read by an Indian author.”

  —ALTAF TYREWALA, AUTHOR OF NO GOD IN SIGHT

  “Few English novels from India are as finely textured and true-to-life as Assassins … The reader is seduced by the novel’s narrative voice, a smart, acerbic voice for a tough, edgy story … Tejpal is a marvellously observant writer … The novel is full of laugh-out-loud lines … The truth, revealed at the end, makes for a thoroughly satisfying read … Assassins does not just entertain. It also enlightens.”

  —MANJUSHREE THAPA, AUTHOR OF SEASONS OF FLIGHT

  “Without doubt the best Indian book written in English. Driven in turn by stunning prose and a deep empathy with struggling India, this novel makes Aravinda Adiga’s Booker winning novel look dipped in treacle. This magnificent tome will be the India testament for many many years.”

  —BINOO JOHN, AUTHOR OF THE LAST SONG OF SAVIO DE SOUZA

  “Tarun Tejpal knows a lot about the dirty underbelly of the Indian state, elite and society. Combine that knowledge with a wonderful ability to spin a yarn in lyrical prose and you get an excellent novel.”

  —INDIAN EXPRESS

  “A story masterly told … The Story of My Assassins is an argument with power … Tejpal is not picnicking in the proverbial Other India … He rewrites the idea of victimhood in an India where the subterranean deceptions of power know no bounds.”

  —INDIA TODAY

  “Superb … Interspersed with dark humour, Assassins is an unnervingly gripping tale on the use and abuse of power in modern-day India.”

  —HIMAL

  “A complex page-turning plot … a commentary on power, sex, corruption and poverty.”

  —VERVE

  “This book is a must-read … extraordinary for its portrayal of modern society … shatters any illusions we may harbour of being tolerant and just … weaves an extremely powerful plot and tells it skillfully.”

  —BUSINESSWORLD

  PRAISE FOR

  THE ALCHEMY OF DESIRE

  “A fascinating analysis of 20th century India, a painfully accurate study of a writer in the writerly anguish of trying to write, and an endless Scheherazadian weave of stories-within-stories-within-stories—all in engaging and colourful prose, a literary crazy quilt of love, family, culture, politics and history.”

  —LOS ANGELES TIMES

  “A bold, sensual novel about art, inspiration and the disintegration of a relationship … Tejpal’s writing is unpredictable yet strikingly disciplined, and his explorations of matters physical and spiritual point out often painful truths.”

  —WASHINGTON POST

  “Amid the endless cascade of semi-genuine Indian novels by Indian Americans comes the real thing, The Alchemy of Desire, a kaleidoscopic first novel by a top Indian journalist, erotically rooted in the country.”

  —PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

  “He has a compassionate eye and an instinctive understanding of the underprivileged, the simple and the dispossessed. The wretchedness of ordinary people’s is well caught, the tragedies, the telling detail and the convulsive changes the subcontinent has suffered over the past 60 years.”

  —THE SPECTATOR

  “This Indian masterpiece is like a voyage down the Ganges, long and infinitely pleasurable; the only thing that worries you is getting to the end too soon.”

  —LE FIGARO

  “The Alchemy of Desire is anything but safe. One of its most soaring notes is its exploration of passion … As an attempt to compel readers to look at desire without the crippling impulse of shame and hypocrisy, it works beautifully. In many ways, the novel is like the man himself: gritty, unrestrained yet bound by a personal code of honour.”

  —THE INDEPENDENT

  “Throughout, it reveals Tejpal’s eye for characterisation and description.”

  —THE GUARDIAN

  “Sizzling, sultry … all right, sexy: Tarun J. Tejpal’s The Alchemy of Desire has knocked ’em dead in the rest of the English-speaking world and is now singeing eyebrows in the USA.”

  —SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE

  “Tejpal ties the reader into a sordid tale of murderous intrigue … thrillerlike in its breathless pace … the reader will connect at a deeply personal level.”

  —THE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL-SENTINEL

  “In The Alchemy of Desire, New Delhi-based journalist Tarun J. Tejpal has written a stunningly original novel.”

  —THE NASHVILLE TENNESSEAN

  “Engaging and astute: he turns a clear eye on the social and political quirks, inequalities and contradictions of modern India … a lively and persistently entertaining novel.”

  —LITERARY REVIEW

  “One can’t help but admire Tejpal’s novel … It is a shout of joy.”

  —THE BOSTON GLOBE

  THE STORY OF MY ASSASSINS

  First published in India by HarperCollins Publishers, India

  Copyright © 2009, 2010 Tarun J. Tejpal

  All rights reserved

  First Melville House printing: September 2012

  Melville House Publishing

  145 Plymouth Street

  Brooklyn, New York 11201

  and

  Unit 3 Olympia Trading Estate

  Coburg Road

  London, N22 6TZ

  mhpbooks.com

  eISBN: 978-1-61219-163-8

  A catalog record is available for this book from the Library of Congress.

  v3.1

  For

  NEENA,

  artist of generosity, my oldest friend

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1: News of a Killing

  Chapter 2: Reign of the Shadows

  Chapter 3: Mr Lincoln Meets Frock Raja

  Chapter 4: Penguins and Killers

  Chapter 5: The Art of Balance

  Chapter 6: Chaaku

  Chapter 7: The Emperors of Air

  Chapte
r 8: Kabir M

  Chapter 9: Moneyworms and Menofwater

  Chapter 10: Kaaliya and Chini

  Chapter 11: The Rodent in the Castle

  Chapter 12: Hathoda Tyagi

  Chapter 13: The Scales of Eternity

  Acknowledgements

  1

  NEWS OF A KILLING

  The 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 mid-May, 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, 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 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 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 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 Mo
ther. 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. 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.