Between the Assassinations

  ‘I think someone’s breathing on the line,’ the man said – or so Shankar imagined.

  ‘Yes, you’re right. Some pervert is listening to us,’ the woman replied – or so Shankara imagined.

  Then the man hung up.

  I have the worst of both castes in my blood, Shankara thought, lying in bed, the receiver of the phone still at his ear. I have the anxiety and fear of the Brahmin, and I have the tendency to act without thinking of the Hoyka. In me the worst of both has fused and produced this monstrosity which is my personality.

  He was going mad. Yes, he was convinced of that. He wanted to get out of the house again. He worried that the chauffeur was noticing his restlessness.

  He went out of the back door and slipped away from the house without the driver observing him.

  But he probably doesn’t suspect me, he thought. He probably thinks I’m a useless rich brat, like Shabbir Ali.

  All these rich fellows like Shabbir Ali, he told himself bitterly, lived out a kind of code. They talked things, but did not do them. They had condoms at home, but did not use them; they kept detonators but did not explode him. Talk, and talk, and talk. That was their life. It was like the salt on the ice cream. The salt was smeared on the slab of vanilla and left there in the open; but no one was meant to lick it! That was only a joke! It was meant to be talk only, all this bomb-exploding stuff. If you knew the code, you understood it was just talk. Only he had taken them seriously; he had thought that they fucked women and blew up bombs. He did not know about the code, because he did not really belong – either to the Brahmins, or to the Hoykas, or even to the gang of spoiled brats.

  He was in a secret caste – a caste of Brahmo-Hoykas, of which he had found only one representative so far, himself, and which put him apart from all the other castes of human kind.

  He took another autorickshaw to the Junior School, and from there, making sure no one was watching him, walked up Old Court Road with his head to the ground and his hands in his pockets.

  He parted the trees, came up to the statue of Jesus, and sat down. The smell of fertilizer was still strong in the air. Closing his eyes, he tried to calm himself. Instead, he began to think about the suicide that had taken place on this road many years ago. He had heard about it from Shabbir Ali. A man had been found hanging from a tree by this road – perhaps even in this spot. A suitcase lay at his feet, broken open. Inside, the police found three gold coins and a note. ‘In a world without love, suicide is the only transformation possible.’ Then there was a letter, addressed to a woman in Bombay.

  Shankara opened his eyes. It was as if he could see the man from Bombay, hanging in front of him, his feet dangling in front of the dark Jesus.

  He wondered: was that going to be his fate? Would he end up condemned and hanged?

  He remembered again the fateful events. After the conversation at Shabbir Ali’s house, he had gone down to the Bunder. He had asked for Mustafa, describing him as a man who sold fertilizers; he had been directed to a market. He found a row of vegetable sellers, asked for Mustafa, and was told: ‘Go upstairs.’ He climbed stairs. He found himself in a pitch-black space where a thousand men seemed to be coughing at once. He too began to cough. As his eyes got used to the dark he realized he was in a pepper market. Giant gunnybags were stacked up against the grimy walls, and coolies, coughing incessantly, were hauling them around. Then the darkness ended and he arrived in an open courtyard. Once again he asked: ‘Where is Mustafa?’

  He was directed by a man lying on a cart of old vegetables towards an open door.

  He went in and found three men at a round table playing cards.

  ‘Mustafa’s not in,’ said a man with narrow eyes. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘A bag of fertilizer.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I am growing lentils,’ Shankara said. The man laughed.

  ‘What kind?’

  ‘Beans. Green gram. Horse gram.’

  The man laughed again. He put his cards down, went into a room and hauled out an enormous gunnybag, and put it down by Shankara’s feet.

  ‘What else do you need to grow your beans?’

  ‘A detonator,’ Shankara said.

  The men at the table all put down their cards together.

  In the inner room of the house, he was sold a detonator; he was told how to turn the dial and set the timer. It would cost more than Shankara had on him at that moment, so he came back the next week with the money, and took the bag and the detonator back with him by autorickshaw, and got off at the bottom of Old Court Road. He had hidden it all near the statue of Jesus.

  One Sunday, he went around the school. It was like the movie Papillon, one of his favourites, the scene where the hero plans how to escape from jail – it was as exciting as that. He was seeing his school as if for the first time, with all the keenness of a fugitive’s eye. After that, on that fateful Monday, he took the bag of fertilizer with him to school, and attached the detonator to it, turned the timer to one hour, left it under the back row, where he knew no one would sit.

  Then he waited, counting off the hour minute by minute, like the hero in Papillon.

  At midnight, the phone began ringing.

  It was Shabbir Ali.

  ‘Lasrado wants to see us all in his office, man! Tomorrow, first thing!’

  All five of them had to be there in his office. The police would be present.

  ‘He’s going to have a lie-detector.’ Shabbir paused. Then he shouted: ‘I know you did it! Why don’t you confess? Why don’t you confess at once!’

  Shankara’s blood went chill. ‘Fuck you!’ he yelled back and slammed down the phone. But then he thought: my god, so Shabbir knew all along. Of course! Everyone knew all along. Everyone in the bad boys’ gang must have known; and by now they must have told the whole town. He thought: let me confess right now. It would be best. Perhaps the police would give him some credit for having turned himself in. He dialled ‘100’, which he thought was the police number.

  ‘I want to speak to the Deputy Inspector General, please.’

  ‘Ha?’

  The voice was followed by a shriek of incomprehension.

  Thinking he’d get better results, he spoke in English: ‘I want to confess. I planted the bomb.’

  ‘Ha?’

  ‘The bomb. It was me.’

  ‘Ha?’

  Another pause. The phone was transferred.

  He repeated his message to another person on the other line.

  Another pause.

  ‘Sorrysorrysorry?’

  He put the phone down in exasperation. Damn Indian police – can’t even answer a phone call properly; how the hell were they going to catch him?

  Then the phone rang again; Irfan, calling on behalf of the twins.

  ‘Shabbir just called us; he says we did it, man. I didn’t do it! Rizwan didn’t do it, either! Shabbir is lying!’

  Then he understood: Shabbir had called everyone and accused them all – hoping to extract a confession! Relief mingled with anger. He had almost been trapped! Now he felt anxious that the police might trace his ‘100’ call back to his phone. He needed a plan, he thought, a plan. Yes, he’d got it; he would say, if they asked, that he was calling to report Shabbir Ali for the crime. ‘Shabbir is a Muslim,’ he would say. ‘He wanted to do this to punish India for Kashmir.’

  The following morning, Lasrado was in the principal’s office, sitting next to Father Almeida, who was at his desk. The two men stared at the five suspects.

  ‘I have scientipic evidence,’ Lasrado said. ‘Pinger-prints survive on the black stub of the bomb.’ He sensed incredulity among the accused, so he added: ‘Pingerprints have survived even on the loaves of bread lept behind in the Paraoh’s tomb. They are indestructible. We will pind the pucker who has done this, rest assured.’

  He pointed a finger.

  ‘And you, Pinto, a Christian boy – shame on you!’

  ‘I didn’t do it, sir,’ Pinto said.

&n
bsp; Shankara wondered: should he also throw in an interjection of his innocence, just to be safe?

  Lasrado looked at them piercingly, waiting for the guilty part to turn himself in. Minutes passed. Shankara understood: he has no fingerprints. He has no lie-detector. He is desperate. He has been humiliated, mocked, and rendered a joke in college, and he wants revenge.

  ‘You puckers!’ Lasrado shouted. And then, again, in a trembling voice: ‘Are you lapping at me? Are you lapping because I cannot say the letter “epp”?’

  Now the boys could barely control themselves. Shankara saw that even the principal, having turned his face to the ground, was trying to suppress his laughter. Lasrado knew this; you could see it on his face. Shankara thought: this man has been mocked his whole life because of his speech impediment. That’s why he has been such a jerk in class. And now his entire life’s work has been destroyed by this bomb; he will never be able to look back on his life with the pride, however false, that other professors do; never be able to say, at his farewell party, ‘My students, although I was strict, loved me.’ Always there would be someone whispering at the back – yes, they loved you so much they exploded a bomb in your class!

  At that moment, Shankara thought, I wish I had just left this man alone. I wish I had not humiliated him, as so many have humiliated me and my mother.

  ‘I did it, sir.’

  Everyone in the room turned to Shankara.

  ‘I did it,’ he said. ‘Now stop bothering these other boys and punish me.’

  Lasrado banged his hand on the desk. ‘Mother-pucker, is this a joke?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Op course it is a joke!’ Lasrado shouted. ‘You are mocking me! You are mocking me in public!’

  ‘No, sir—’

  ‘Shut up!’ Lasrado said. ‘Shut up!’ He flexed a finger and pointed it wildly around the room.

  ‘Puckers! Puckers! Get out!’

  Shankara walked out with the four innocent ones. He could see that they did not believe his confession: they too thought he had been mocking the teacher to his face.

  ‘You went too far there,’ Shabbir Ali said. ‘You really have no respect for anything in this world, man.’

  Shankara waited outside the college, smoking. He was waiting for Lasrado. When the door to the staff room opened, and the chemistry professor walked out, Shankara threw the cigarette to the ground and stubbed it out with a scrape of his shoe. He watched his teacher for a while. He wished there were some way he could go up to him and say he was sorry.

  Day Two (Evening): LIGHTHOUSE HILL (THE FOOT OF THE HILL)

  You are on a road surrounded by ancient banyan trees; the smell of neem is in the air, an eagle glides overhead. Old Court Road – a long, desolate road with a reputation as a hang-out for prostitutes and pimps – leads down from the top of the hill to St Alfonso’s Boys’ High School and Junior College.

  Next to the school you will find a whitewashed mosque dating back to the time of Tippu Sultan; according to local legend, Christians from Valencia suspected of being British sympathizers were tortured here. The mosque is the focus of a legal tussle between the school authorities and a local Islamic organization, both of which claim possession of the land on which it stands. Muslim students from the school are allowed, every Friday, to leave classes for an hour to offer namaaz at this mosque, provided they bring a signed note from their fathers, or in case of boys whose fathers are working in the Gulf, from a male guardian. From a bus stop in front of the mosque, express buses go to Salt Market Village.

  At least four stalls stand outside the mosque, selling sugarcane juice and Bombay-style bhelpuri and charmuri to passengers at the bus stop.

  A flurry of alarm bells rang at ten to nine, warning that this was no ordinary morning. It was a Morning of Martyrs, the thirty-seventh anniversary of the day Mahatma Gandhi had sacrificed his life so that India might live.

  Thousands of miles away, in the heart of the nation, in chilly New Delhi, the President was about to bow his head before a sacred torch. Echoing through the massive Gothic edifice of St Alfonso’s Boys’ High School and Junior College – through thirty-six classrooms with vaulted ceilings, two outdoor lavatories, a chemistry-cum-biology laboratory, and a refectory where some of the priests were still finishing breakfast – the alarm bells announced that it was time for the school to do the same.

  In the staff room, Mr D’Mello, assistant headmaster, folded his copy of the newspaper, noisily, like a pelican folding its wings. Tossing the paper on a sandalwood table, Mr D’Mello struggled against his paunch to get to his feet. He was the last to leave the staff room.

  Six hundred and twenty-three boys, pouring out of class -rooms and eventually merging into one long line, proceeded into the Assembly Square. In ten minutes they had formed a geometrical pattern, a tight grid around the flagpole at the centre of the square.

  By the flagpole stood an old wooden platform. And next to the platform stood Mr D’Mello, drawing the morning air into his lungs and shouting: ‘A-ten-shannn!’

  The students shuffled in concert. Thump! Their feet knocked the chatter out of the square. Now the morning was ready for the sombre ceremony.

  The guest of honour had fallen asleep. From the top of the flagpole, the national tricolour hung, limp and crumpled, entirely uninterested in the events organized for its benefit. Alvarez, the old school peon, tugged on a blue cord to goad the recalcitrant piece of cloth into a respectable tautness.

  Mr D’Mello sighed and gave up on the flag. His lungs swelled again: ‘Sa-loot!’

  The wooden platform began to creak noisily: Father Mendonza, junior school headmaster, was ascending the steps. At a sign from Mr D’Mello, he cleared his throat into the booming mike and launched into a speech on the glories of dying young for your country.

  A series of black boxes amplified his nervous voice across the square. The boys listened to their headmaster spellbound. The Jesuit told them the blood of Bhagat Singh and Indira Gandhi fertilized the earth on which they stood, and they brimmed with pride.

  Mr D’Mello, squinting fiercely, kept an eye on the little patriots. He knew that the whole humbug would end any moment. After thirty-three years in an all-boys’ school, no secret of human nature was hidden from him.

  The headmaster lumbered towards the crucial part of the morning’s speech.

  ‘It is of course customary on Martyrs’ Day for the government to issue every school in the state with Free Film Day tickets for that following Sunday,’ he said. It was as if electric current had jolted the square. The boys became breathless with anticipation.

  ‘But this year’ – the headmaster’s voice quivered – ‘I regret to announce that there will be no Free Film Day.’

  For a moment, not a sound. Then, the entire square let out one big, aching, disbelieving groan.

  ‘The government has made a terrible mistake,’ the head -master said, trying to explain. ‘A terrible, terrible mistake… They have asked you to go to a House of Sin…’

  Mr D’Mello wondered what the headmaster was prattling on about. It was time to bring the speech to an end and send the brats back to class.

  ‘I cannot even find the words to tell you…it has been a terrible mix-up. I am sorry. I…am…’

  Mr D’Mello was looking around for Girish, when a movement at the back of the square caught his eye. Trouble had begun. The assistant headmaster, hindered by his massive paunch, struggled to descend from the podium, but then, with a surprising litheness, he slipped through the rows of boys and homed in on the danger zone. Students turned on their toes to watch him as he made his way to the back. His right hand trembled.

  A brown dog had climbed up from the playground below the Assembly Square and was loping about behind the boys. Some trouble-makers were trying to persuade it to draw nearer with soft whistles and clicks of their tongue.

  ‘Stop that at once!’ D’Mello – he was gasping for breath already – stamped his foot towards the dog. The indulged animal mistook
the fat man’s advance for another blandishment. The teacher lunged at the dog and it pulled back, but as he stopped to breathe, it raced back towards him.

  The boys were laughing openly now. Waves of confusion spread throughout the square. Over the speaker system the headmaster’s voice wobbled, with a hint of desperation.

  ‘… you boys have no right to misbehave…the Free Film Day is a privilege, not a right…’

  ‘Stone it! Stone it! ’ someone shouted at D’Mello.

  In a moment of panic, the teacher obeyed. Whack! The stone caught the dog on the belly. The animal yelped in pain – he saw a gleam of betrayal in its eyes – before it bounded out of the square and ran down the steps of the playground.

  A sensation of sickness tightened in Mr D’Mello’s gut. The poor animal had been hurt. Turning around, he saw a sea of grinning boys. One of them had goaded him to stone the animal; he swung around, picked a boy at random – only hesitating for a split second to make sure that it wasn’t Girish – and slapped him hard, twice.

  When Mr D’Mello walked into the staff room, he found all the other teachers gathered around the sandalwood table. The men were dressed alike, in light-coloured half-sleeve shirts, closely checked, with brown or blue trousers that widened into bell-bottoms, while the few women wore peach or yellow polyester-and-cotton-blended saris.

  Mr Rogers, the biology-cum-geology teacher, was reading aloud a schedule of the Free Film Day from the Kannada-language newspaper:

  ‘Film One: Save the Tiger

  Film Two: The Importance of Physical Exercise

  Bonus Reel: The Advantages of Native Sports (with special attention to Kabbadi and Kho-Kho).’

  After that harmless listing, came the bombshell:

  ‘Where to send your son or daughter on Free Film Day (1985):

  St Milagres Boys’ High School; Surnames A to N, White Stallion Theatre, O to Z Belmore Theatre.

  St Alfonso’s Boys’ High School; Surnames A to N, Belmore Theatre, O to Z Angel Talkies.’

  ‘Half our school!’ Mr Rogers’ voice whistled in excitement. ‘Half our school to Angel Talkies!’