Sacred Games

  ‘I think it’s spreading from back to front,’ Jaggu said. ‘But listen, it’s nothing to worry about.’ And he proceeded to list hair dyes, and pronounce on the virtues of different brands, and instruct Aadil in their usage. He was outraged when Aadil shook his head, and refused to colour.

  ‘Why, bhai, why? I ask you, why?’ Jaggu said. ‘Nothing could be easier. It’s not like you have to do it every day. You need to take care of yourself, and you refuse to do even this little thing.’

  Aadil held Jaggu’s wrist, and smiled, and shook his head, and led him down, back to the gate and the others. It was impossible to explain to Jaggu that hair dye even once a month could be an unbearable expenditure, a luxury reserved for people not like Aadil. Jaggu, who threw away his toothbrush every second week because he thought it looked worn and tired, couldn’t know what it really meant to live without a thick fold of rupees available at all times. He didn’t lack intelligence, or sympathy, or insight. He was just different, he couldn’t understand. Aadil couldn’t blame him personally. Aadil couldn’t tell him, either, that there were many days now when he felt like an old man. Maybe Aadil had aged prematurely, which was why there was this debilitating weariness seeping through his veins. He fought to rouse himself from bed every morning, struggled through fatigue to get through lectures, studying, exams. The exhaustion was not just in his muscles or cells, this he could have perhaps isolated and controlled and defeated. He had somehow been eroded, ground down until only a thin sliver of will was left, steely and brittle. He was on the verge of breaking, and yet he had to go on. He survived. He kept at it, and by the end of the year, by the time that exams were done and plans were being made for the future, Aadil had had enough. He wanted to go home.

  ‘Why?’ Jaggu said. ‘Go back to what? You have to get a PhD, that’s the only thing you can do.’

  Getting a doctorate was the only possible choice if you wanted to teach, which Aadil did want to do. But paying for another degree, for three or maybe four years, was something he was not capable of, not any more. Maybe a human being could only expend so much effort, he thought, and he had been trying so very hard from class one onwards, he had no strength left to exert. He knew that he couldn’t drive trucks any more, or miss another meal, or borrow books and make fervent promises that he would return them before dawn. He tried to explain to Jaggu. ‘I am just very tired,’ he said.

  Jaggu grew angry. ‘What is this, this laziness? I thought you had more guts than that. You are just throwing away years of education. At least try.’

  For the first time, Aadil felt a sullen rage towards Jaggu, his friend who had so easily finished one degree and was going on to another one, who would no doubt complete this one with a song on his lips, who would have a PhD and a teaching job dropped into his lap. He would think he had really tried so hard to earn these prizes, he would believe that he had sacrificed and sweated. No doubt, one day, seated with his fellow professors in some cosy common room, he would tell the story of his friend Aadil, a poor rural boy who hadn’t had the fortitude to finish his education. Those people, he would say, and sigh and take a sip of his chai. And here he was, generous Jaggu, righteous and indignant. Aadil wanted to slap him.

  Instead, Aadil turned away. He withstood Jaggu’s impassioned entreaties and gibes for the next three weeks, and then he went home to Rajpur. Here, in the bazaar, there were debates and arguments about what had happened to Dibba in Patna. Some thought he had failed, others believed that he had not even gone to Patna. Otherwise why would he come back, with all his supposed education, and work on the land? This was the puzzle that Rajpur tried to solve, and some even went out to Ansari Tola, to see Aadil in the fields, wearing a lungi and sweating next to his father. Aadil shrugged off all questions and taunts, and kept to himself. He came into town rarely, to get seed and fertilizer, and went straight back out. The months passed, and the bazaar wits grew tired of Dibba, and moved on to other topics. Interest was suddenly revived when it became clear that Dibba was going to produce a spectacular crop from that little patch of patli earth near Ansari Tola. After the spring harvest, there was much sage nodding of heads in Rajpur. ‘That Dibba boy is earning all that Patna money back for his father. From his ekfasli land, Dibba’s going to produce two harvests. Old Noora must be happy.’

  Noor Mohammed wasn’t happy. He was very afraid. During the cutting of the crop, Aadil had noticed that their land had shrunk. The farm next to theirs belonged to Nandan Prasad Yadav, and during the harvesting, it expanded six inches all down the length that abutted Noor Mohammed’s land. Nandan Prasad Yadav’s men cut their crop, and when they were done, the addah that separated the two properties had somehow shifted six inches to the west. One farm grew, the other lessened. When Aadil pointed this out, at first Noor Mohammed denied it. Then Aadil grew angry, and walked him down the boundary, and pointed out where it was closer to the babul tree on their side, and further from the pump on Nandan Prasad Yadav’s land. Noor Mohammed could deny it no longer. He admitted that their land had been taken, but begged Aadil to do nothing, say absolutely nothing. ‘We are very small people,’ he said. ‘They are elephants.’

  Aadil was quiet. The yellow flowers of the babul blazed against the distant haze over the river. ‘How much have they taken?’ he said.

  ‘You said this much, kya?’ Noor Mohammed said, holding up a callused hand, fingers stretched out.

  ‘No,’ Aadil said. He took his father’s hand. ‘I mean in all, everything, in all the years.’

  Noor Mohammed looked over at Nandan Prasad Yadav’s holding, which went all the way into the high land and to the road. He wasn’t measuring, he knew already. ‘We used to own almost one and a half bighas. One bigha they took when I was a boy. My Abba, he borrowed some money and signed a paper.’

  ‘What paper?’

  ‘Who knows? He couldn’t pay, so they took the land.’

  Noor Mohammed didn’t know who had the paper now, either, or where it could be found. ‘Beta,’ he said, ‘the land belongs to them now. It’s theirs.’

  Aadil pointed down at the new addah. ‘And this?’

  Noor Mohammed had no sorrow, no anger. His brow and cheeks were as hard as carved black stone. ‘This also,’ he said, ‘is theirs.’ He turned and walked back to the Tola at his usual even pace, not slow and not fast.

  Noor Mohammed grew afraid the next day, when it became clear that Aadil was not willing or able to stay quiet. Aadil went that morning to Kurkoo Kothi and demanded to see Nandan Prasad Yadav. After being kept waiting for four hours, he went to the Rajpur police thana and tried to file an FIR, and when the constable on duty laughed at him, he came back to Ansari Tola, took a spade and tramped out to his fields. An hour later a labourer on Nandan Prasad Yadav’s land saw him, digging furiously. He had moved fifteen feet of the addah back over. Another hour later, two men with lathis and two with shotguns came out to Ansari Tola, and spoke to Noor Mohammed. He and two of his cousins ran out to the field, and talked and then struggled with Aadil. They had to wrestle the spade away from him. He cursed them all, and Nandan Prasad Yadav’s men laughed. Aadil walked away. Noor Mohammed and his cousins moved the addah back to where it had been that morning.

  Aadil went to the land records karamchari the next day, and from there to the circle inspector. Both seemed impressed by his sophisticated manner of speech, and advised him to file a land suit, and they would take it up with the circle officer, who was actually a deputy collector, who would take it up with the collector. Neither the karamchari or the circle inspector knew anything about a promissory note signed by Aadil’s grandfather, but the karamchari promised to look up the number for the plot of land in the registry, and see if there was anything to be found there.

  Aadil understood that nothing would be found, and nothing would be done. He had no money to bribe the karamchari, and no influence to bring to bear on the circle inspector. The Ansari Tola didn’t have the numbers or the will to beat back Nandan Prasad Yadav. The land that had been
lost would never be regained. He knew this as surely as he knew that the Milani flowed from west to east, and yet he was unable to reconcile himself to it. He knew that in Rajpur the rule of law was an illusion that not even children believed in, but he could not find the fortitude that his parents practised. He was no longer silent. When he went into the bazaar, he spoke angrily against Nandan Prasad Yadav. He called him a thief and a bastard. He had not drunk beer in Patna, but now he began to drink tadi. His relatives now often found him staggering down the road to the Ansari Tola. He sat on the culvert, talking to himself and darting red-eyed glares at all who walked by. His mother and father pleaded, threatened, got the maulvi to speak to him, but nothing could assuage Aadil’s despair. His mother insisted that he be married now, that a wife and responsibility would calm him down, but no parents were willing to give their girl to such a known madman, all his education notwithstanding.

  Aadil still worked assiduously in the fields, every day. Every day, he walked the length of the addah, making sure it had not moved again. One evening, that August, he found two men waiting for him at the end of the field. One was tall, with enormous muscled forearms and a belligerent air. But it was the other one, short and dark and round-faced, who was clearly the leader. ‘Are you Aadil Ansari?’ he said, holding on to the ends of his gamcha and bouncing on his heels.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Lal Salaam. I am Kishore Paswan.’

  Aadil didn’t quite know how to react to Kishore Paswan’s upraised fist. He had never been the recipient of a red salute before, and he fumbled and put his hand on his chest. Kishore Paswan didn’t seem to mind. He was grinning up at Aadil.

  ‘I heard you are having lots of trouble.’

  ‘Who are you?’ The Naxals had never been very active around Rajpur, and Aadil had never heard of Kishore Paswan.

  ‘I told you who I am. I am Kishore Paswan Jansevak. Come. Tell me what’s been happening.’

  Kishore Paswan took Aadil by the elbow and led him to the side of the field, where they all squatted in the shade of a tree. Paswan had a very soft voice, and a soothing manner. Aadil found himself telling his whole story, not just about the stolen land, but about his struggles in primary school, and his times in Patna. Paswan listened, and then told Aadil about himself. He was from near Gaya, the son of daily-wage labourers. His family had been active in the anti-feudal movement, and his Naxalite father had worked with the great revolutionary Chunder Ghosh. When Kishore Paswan was three, both his father and Chunder Ghosh had been shot and killed by a police agent disguised as a businessman. So Kishore Paswan had been politically active since youth, working against the oppressions of the upper castes and the state. History had remade him into Kishore Paswan Jansevak. He was now a functionary in the People’s Revolutionary Council, which was an above-ground, legitimate organization dedicated to the betterment of the poor. ‘We are dedicated to justice, my friend,’ Kishore Paswan said. ‘If you are politically aware, you are with us. If you are intelligent, you have no choice but to be with us. We want to unite the proletariat. We have in our membership every caste, every religion. Some of our leadership are even Brahmins. It does not matter. If you understand the structure of oppression, then you cannot help being with us.’

  As Kishore Paswan went on to describe this structure, Aadil saw that his logic was impeccable. That feudalism still existed in Rajpur was obvious, that the reactionary classes oppressed the proletariat went without saying. But now, as Paswan instructed Aadil in the subtleties of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Aadil saw how precisely the theory fitted the facts. Of course Aadil had heard of Marx before, he had discussed Lenin with his hostel-mates, but he had been too preoccupied with zoology to delve into the works of Mao, to read or investigate, to understand the Great Helmsman’s long march and the spring thunder his party had once proclaimed over India. Now it seemed to Aadil that what Paswan was telling him had a scientific elegance about it. Of course, of course. The institutions of the state were reactionary by nature, defined by the class positions of those who controlled them. The police and other executive arms of the state were used to destroy, to exterminate the developing class struggle of the landless peasants. What was always referred to as a ‘law and order problem’ in the reactionary newspapers was actually the natural outcome of a socio-political system which generated poverty, unemployment, illiteracy and all-round underdevelopment for more than ninety per cent of the toiling population in mostly rural areas, while producing immense wealth and extravagance for a handful of parasitic classes in the villages and the cities. The aim of the class struggle was to eliminate feudalism and bureaucratic capitalism. The contradictions of the present class-divided society would result in its destruction, leading to a truly classless society on earth. The dialectic itself would produce the necessary next stage, the workers’ paradise. This could not be denied. It was inevitable.

  Paswan spoke rapidly, without pause. His words fell like scouring medicine on Aadil and burned away the last vestiges of bourgeois illusion from his mind and his heart. He knew then how ridiculous it had been of him to invest hope in a rotten system. To trust the reactionary classes in any way was a sign of weakness and ignorance. Aadil wanted to participate, to somehow take part in the revolution.

  ‘That’s easy to say,’ Paswan said, ‘hard to do.’

  ‘I will do anything.’

  ‘Good. Mind you,’ Paswan said sternly, ‘the first battle that a revolutionary must win is against his own ignorance and bad habits. We expect nothing less than ideal social behaviour, worthy of a revolutionary. You must take control of yourself. You must examine yourself and your actions ceaselessly, and dedicate yourself completely to the struggle. No less is acceptable.’

  So Aadil immediately, from that day on, gave up tadi. He never drank again. He applied himself to the struggle. Comrade Jansevak instructed him to educate the poor in and around Rajpur, to raise revolutionary consciousness, and to keep farming, to not lose heart. Fortified, Aadil continued. With the backing of the PRC, accompanied by Comrade Jansevak, Aadil revisited the karamchari, who was now exceedingly co-operative and productive. A land suit was promptly filed against Nandan Prasad Yadav.

  A week later, Aadil had no water. The irrigating water that fed his fields came from the river, to the east, and through Prem Shanker Jha’s land. This had been the arrangement for decades, for generations. Now Prem Shanker Jha closed the narrow channel and declared that he needed the land for cultivation, that the movement of water across his fields was a burden that he was unwilling to carry any more. He refused to listen to any arguments. Aadil was no longer willing to plead. Prem Shanker Jha and Nandan Prasad Yadav were not on the best of terms. They were rivals for influence and money and land, the political candidates they backed sometimes clashed with each other. And yet, they were now colluding. As Comrade Jansevak observed, this is the way of the capitalist world, bitter enemies will become brothers to protect class interests. Don’t worry, Comrade Jansevak told Aadil, we will struggle.

  But that Monday, Aadil was arrested. At five in the morning, he was pulled out of a bitter, thrashing sleep, and taken to the thana. The FIR had already been prepared: one Aadil Ansari, acting in collusion with a group of eleven unknown men, had surrounded two constables at the Garhi chowki and overpowered them. The intruders had then broken into the armoury in the chowki, and decamped with nine .303 Lee-Enfield rifles and four hundred and sixty rounds of ammunition. The two constables had been tied up and blindfolded, but they had clearly seen the ringleader, whom they recognized as the notorious Naxal leader, Aadil Ansari.

  On the basis of this lie, Aadil was remanded to custody for ten days. The policemen beat him every day, with straps, and with lathis on the soles of his feet. Noor Mohammed made frantic outcries at Nandan Prasad Yadav’s gate, and sat whole days outside the thana and wept. After ten days, Aadil’s bail request was refused, on the grounds that he presented the risk of violence to society at large, and to the two witnesses of his crime in particular.
He was sent a hundred kilometres south to the Hasla Aadarsh Kara to await trial. Aadil spent the next two years and three months in this jail, through a series of trial dates and postponements, all because the two constables were unable to come to court and testify. First both were ill, then they were posted along the Nepal border, then they were ill again. They were simply unavailable. The trial, of course, had to happen, and so Aadil was kept in jail. He surprised himself with his patience, his good spirits, in this fetid, crumbling edifice that crushed so many men. It had been built fifty years before, to house six hundred prisoners, and it now held two thousand. The food smelt of rot, and fevers and dysenteries took a steady toll. But Aadil was never depressed or afraid. He did not pray any more, not even once a day. He dedicated himself to the study of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and the campaigns mounted by peasants and workers in every part of the world. Aadil read the pamphlets and books sent to him by Comrade Jansevak, and educated every man he came into contact with. In Hasla jail, Aadil was soon known as the Professor, and this was the sobriquet that he took with him to the outside.

  Aadil and four others escaped one bright December morning when the chief minister was visiting the district. Many from the jail staff had been assigned to duty on the roads and for the minister’s bandobast, leaving only a skeleton force in the prison. Aadil and his fellow prisoners overpowered two guards behind the jail laundry, and then climbed a wall, using wooden racks and cords from the laundry to construct makeshift ladders. Two days later, Aadil was in Rajpur, in conference with Comrade Jansevak. ‘I want those bastards,’ he said.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Comrade Jansevak said. ‘If you kill two policemen, you will run for ever.’

  ‘I am already running. Don’t worry. I’ve decided. I have left everything behind.’

  Aadil killed the two constables named in the FIR four days later. Five policemen were actually killed in the blast, but Aadil was concerned about his two accusers. The others were just accidental profit. Comrade Jansevak had put Aadil in touch with the People’s Action Committee, which was the military arm of the PRC. The PAC had the necessary intelligence and the matériel for the job. They knew that an inspector and four constables would be travelling in a jeep to the village of Ganti, to investigate a clash between rival groups in a land dispute. For three days the PAC had hidden scouts watching the dirt road that the police would have to drive down to Ganti. On the fourth day, the police jeep was seen approaching at eleven in the morning. It was confirmed that Aadil’s two constables were in the back of the jeep. The jeep passed, and as soon as it was out of sight, the PAC platoon and Aadil went to work. Aadil watched the PAC men lay the landmine in the road. They were using sticks of RDX, which they called gelatin. The platoon leader grinned as he lowered the Dalda tin containing the explosive into the hole they had dug. Aadil had not been told any of their names, for reasons of operational security.