The Story of My Assassins Read Online Free PDF Page B

own, but did you want to take a chance? Never!
    They would then have been handed down a chain—in which each man laughed and said, ‘Hapur! Hapur ke papud!’—till they were finally facing the man who would spell out the deal.
    This man would be an artist, well aware of his place in the universe, the keeper of the doorways. He would have styled himself—gestures, tone, the movement of his head—on a film star—Dev Anand, Dilip Kumar, Raj Kapoor—of his youth. By turns he would be voluble, phlegmatic, withdrawn, haranguing, dismissive, comforting, and philosophical. Always philosophical. Jugglers of morality, dribblers of ethics, need philosophy more than priests and professors. He would leave no doubt that he was the enabler, the altruist; the corruption and greed all belonged to the men who had come to his door.
    Many bargains, pleadings, assurances, counter-assurances later, the father would have returned to Hapur to rustle up the pay-off.
    Because the boy was a simpleton, likely to raise an innocent question, he would be kept out of the process, told to just prepare for the physical examination. Push-ups; sit-ups; litres of bubbling milk.
    Because his father did everything right, because the artist of the doorways exercised his munificence, Vijyant would be embraced by maibaap, given the rank of a constable, his lifelong cares taken over by the sarkar, fully secure to scuttle in maibaap’s mansion for the rest of his days.
    Now all he had to do was guard me. Against I did not know what.
    Nor was he the only one. He was the first to show up on that Sunday morning with SI Hathi Ram, but then over the next few days twomore were assigned to look after me. Both of them were much older than Vijyant—crusty veteran thullas, with bellies and phlegm—but for some reason I always assumed that the young boy was in charge. The three of them were supposed to rotate work in eight-hour shifts, but had hammered out some complicated timetable among themselves that would see them on duty for anything between twelve and twenty-four hours. I never knew when they would change shifts and who would be coming on next. Nor did I care.
    In the beginning there was the novelty and the unease, like suddenly having a beautiful woman on your arm. Everywhere you went you were aware of this presence by your side, and every moment you felt all eyes were on you. Then swiftly, as with beauty, the novelty and the unease faded, and I soon ceased to be aware of them. In a few weeks they had become nothing but shadows—they went where I went, moved when I moved, vanished once I went indoors; dying in the dark, materializing in the light.
    Because they were never in uniform, a loosely hanging shirt being the only constant, it was even easier to forget their presence. In any case, I ensured they remained true shadows, never speaking unless spoken to, managing their meals and ablutions in the inadvertent gaps my life afforded them, actively discouraged from asking questions about my schedules and plans.
    After the initial curiosity about Vijyant, I decided I didn’t want any intimacies with any of them. It was best if they remained faceless, nameless, storyless. I didn’t want to know about the villages they came from, the schools they went to, their family problems, their struggling parents, their working woes, their caste, their religion, their dialect, their opinions on politics, nationhood, the economy, Gandhi, Nehru, corruption, crime, cricket, Hindu, Muslim. Nothing.
    There was just too much opinion in this country, too many sob stories. Nobody wanted to put a lid on anything; everyone wanted to say it all, about everything. If you as much as said hello to someone on a train or a plane, you were in for the unexpurgated memoirs.Nehru in 1947 had declared us a nation finding utterance—but in fifty years the utterance had become a mad clamour, a crazed babble, an unending howl. We were a nation of Scheherzades, afraid we’d die if, for a moment,