12.
I began to roam now. South, into Bundelkhand, then east, toward Bihar, wandering from town to town, stealing when I had to, committing small and petty crimes. I ended up in Ballia, on the Bihar border, a perfect place for a man like me. I started working for one of the local MLAs. His name was Ajit Singh. Nothing moved in the town without his say-so, this was what I heard, so I turned up at his party office one morning and said I was a man who liked hard work. A senior worker there directed me to speak to a man in another office a few streets away. He asked me what I wanted, and I said I’d do anything for a little money and some liquor, though I wasn’t a drunk. He quizzed me a little, asked what my experience was. I told him I’d worked for my local party back west. Teaching our enemies a lesson. It was all he needed to hear. “What’s your name?” Chotu Raj, I said and that was it, I was in. I learned a great deal about politics then. See, Ajit Singh was the biggest goon in town. He had many interests. Dredging the riverbeds for construction sand, cutting down trees for timber on Forestry Department land, mining quarries for stones, stealing medicines from the government hospitals. So long as we did his work, whatever else we did, short of killing cops, we had protection. I had a great education there, I understood the turning of the wheel, how the cops and the politicians and the bureaucrats were all working together to keep this wheel in motion, how every spoke of the wheel was important, how the wheel was the system itself. How men like you are the shit that sticks to the wheel. How a wheel crushes everything in its path. And oh, what crushing it was. We indulged in extortion, collecting protection money from businesses or else burning them down, we’d commit many kidnappings for ransom. We’d kill our opponents, stage riots, manage protests. If the minority community became upstarts, we’d burn their neighborhoods down. If some misguided citizen tried to complain about us, go to the media, or the new district magistrate, we’d break their legs, or else we’d kill the journalists themselves. We had to make sure the message was clear: so long as you know your place and don’t interfere, the wheel turns very well, but if you wish to be a hero, good-bye! And yet for all that, I was dissatisfied. It was monotonous work, lacking any creative spark. I had no real chance to distinguish myself. That changed when one of Ajit’s upstart rivals, a man by the name of Govind Chaudhary, a gangster who’d started in scrap metal, began to step up, planning to contest the next election and win. Any man who stands for election in our part of town is a threat. He has his own money and muscle behind him. So Ajit Singh wanted to send a message his way. There was a meeting, it was debated: what kind of message would be sent? Now, Govind Chaudhary had a right-hand man, Shiv Kumar. Shiv Kumar was an old associate of Ajit’s, who had gone to the other side. It was understood that without him, Chaudhary would be lost. So it was decided that Shiv Kumar would be killed, in front of the courthouse, no less, in three days’ time, the day an extortion case was to be settled in his favor. It would be a powerful message indeed. The only thing to decide now was who would do the killing and how. Oh, my God, Sunny Wadia, in Ajit’s headquarters the debate was going back and forth, back and forth, everyone talking for the sake of it, loving the sound of their own voice. I’m not much of a talker, so I was listening silent in the back. When I grew bored of the false bravado, I stood and called that I would do it. Then I walked out. But I would not wait three days, nor would I restrict myself to Shiv Kumar.
13.
I went back to my room and spent the rest of the day with several bottles of daru and some charas, preparing myself. Some of Ajit’s men came to find me to tell me they had their own men, that I was not part of the plan; I laughed and waved them away. Please yourself, I said. I finished the last bottle and waited for night to fall, and when my blood was in nasha, went out into town, giddy into the dark, avoiding the police posts, avoiding everyone, and when I was close to Shiv Kumar’s house in one of the fancy colonies, I went into one of the dark alleys and hid among some trees until late in the night. Then I stripped down to my chaddi and baniyan, stashed my clothes away, rubbed grease that I’d carried with me over my limbs, wiped my hands clean and wrapped them in clean rags so I could climb. The street around his house was guarded by cops and his house itself had two armed guards. So I climbed onto the roof of a house some distance away, stalked over the tops of others until I reached his place. I leaped across to their balcony and landed without sound. It was a fine house, the kind all big men keep these days. But it made no difference to me. I unseated the balcony door from its slider and went inside, across the cool marble floors of the hall until I found the bedroom, and inside the bedroom I looked down on the bodies of Shiv and his wife. It was so easy, Sunny Wadia. Shiv Kumar was just a man. Just a man. I wasted no time. I slit the man’s throat in his sleep. The blood drained out everywhere as he gurgled his last. Then his wife awoke with a start and I pressed my hand across her mouth. Her eyes widened in terror and she bit my hand like a rabid dog. I was so incensed, I had to fight my urge to carve her up, but it was necessary to my plan that she stay alive. I fought her. She was stronger than most men in her desperation to survive. She bit my hand so hard it drew blood, but as soon as she pulled away I was able to twist myself and beat her with my fists. I beat her until she was unconscious, then tied her up and searched the rest of the house. The sound of the ceiling fans had muffled the noise of our scuffle, so the others inside hadn’t heard a peep. There were two servants sleeping downstairs, two guards posted out in front, and two children. Shiv Kumar had been blessed with two boys. I slit the throats of the servants first. Then I crept into the kids’ room and looked down. Should I kill them or let them sleep? I had too much time to think and this was my mistake. See, Shiv Kumar’s wife had woken, and as I stood in front of the children, she began to cry. The boys woke and looked up at me standing over them in chaddi and baniyan, covered in grease and blood. Their screaming was immense. By now the guards outside were forcing their way in, so I took flight. I sailed out the window, scrambled over the roofs and into the nearby trees just in time to avoid the rifle shots. I grabbed my clothes from the bushes and managed to escape through the town, hiding in the forest all night.