The Story of My Assassins Read Online Free PDF

with the hairless face and the telltale loop of the lanyard became a daily fixture in my life. His name was Vijyant, and he was shy, wide-eyed and young enough to take his job seriously. He sat outside each door I was inside—office, home, restaurant—and leapt to action the moment I appeared, looking right, left, all around, and beating down with his eyes anyone who glanced our way. In the car he rode in the back while I drove and was always out of his door and covering me before I had killed the engine. He kept his big, black, slightly worn-looking, 9mm pistol tucked into the front waistband of his pants, the business end of it presumably nestling cold and deep in his crotch. Sometimes when I pulled aside the bamboo chik to look out of my study window I would see him sitting in the tiny porch, the 9mm in his lap, caressing it gently with his fingertips and humming the Mukesh number, Chal akela chal akela chal akela, tera mela peechhe chhuta rahi, chal akela.
    Hathi Ram alias Dost Ram had said, ‘Golden boy! He’s my golden boy! He’s a jaanbaaz—would punt his life in a moment. When we got him I told the inspector, Where is the kiln this one was baked in? I need some more like him. The inspector said, Give him a year, then we’ll talk! But the inspector was wrong—even we have failed to corrupt the boy. He could be with ministers, MPs, VVIPs, but no, I want him to be with you, because for me your life is more important than theirs.’
    All this had been said within earshot of the boy. When he’d finished he’d looked at him, standing slim and coiled in his safari suit, and said, ‘Why? Have I said anything wrong?’
    Vijyant had smiled shyly and patted his iron crotch. ‘It is my duty.’The boy was as educated as I was—a BA, a Bachelor of Arts—and had graduated in the same subjects, political science and history. It was quite possible he had scored better in his college exams than I had. The difference was that he’d have studied in Hindi, in Hapur, and when he finished his father would have urged him to try for a government job. After all, the government, the sarkar, was maibaap—father, protector, keeper.
    Once you became part of maibaap, you were invincible. Cyclical storms of joblessness could not touch you; germ and disease would find their match in government hospitals; soaring real estate prices would tiptoe past maibaap’s houses; sarkari schools would ring with the happy cries of your children; and when your hair fell out and your limbs grew infirm, maibaap would let you go home but keep sending you a cheque every month for your old age. Once you entered the embrace of maibaap you were taken care of till your very last day, till it was time to be thrown onto bamboo sticks and be carted off to the cremation ground. And by then, if you were truly blessed, your children would already be in the secure lap of maibaap, steeled against the depredations that blighted other ordinary lives.
    From the tiny eyehole of Hapur—with its forsaken streets, sludge gutters, dimly lit shops, coagulated traffic, and the thick rough blanket of dust on everything—from remote Hapur the world would have looked dangerously non-negotiable: much too large, much too complex, much too malevolent, and much too full of very smart, very rich, very powerful people. Hapur was too small for a smart boy; the world too big for a small boy.
    His father would have been terrified of sending him out of Hapur with scarcely a weapon for survival; most likely Vijyant himself would have been terrified of venturing out too. Government, sarkar, maibaap: father, protector, keeper: that was their only hope. In the grand monument of maibaap you did not need to command a bedroom or an office—even scuttling rats had a space and were secure.
    A search would have commenced; a journey. First, for someone—arelative, a friend—who knew someone in Delhi. Ideally in government, a broker or a fixer. Yes, the boy was good and might make it on his