Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
But no matter how fit I became, I knew that my mind wouldn’t heal, couldn’t heal, until I found out who’d arranged with the police to have me picked up and sent to Arthur Road Prison. I needed to know who did it. I needed to know the reason. Ulla was gone from the city—in hiding, some said, but no-one could guess from whom, or why. Karla was gone, and no-one could tell me where she was. Didier and several other friends were digging around for me, trying to find the truth, but they hadn’t found anything that might tell me who’d set me up.
Someone had arranged with senior cops to have me arrested, without charge, and imprisoned at Arthur Road. The same person had arranged to have me beaten—severely and often—while I was in the prison. It was a punishment or an act of revenge. Khaderbhai had confirmed that much, but he couldn’t or wouldn’t say more, except to tell me that whoever it was who’d set me up hadn’t known that I was on the run. That information, about the escape from Australia, had emerged from the routine fingerprint check. The cops concerned had realised, at once, that there might be profit in keeping quiet about it, and they’d shelved my file until Vikram approached them on Khader’s behalf.
‘Those fuckin’ cops liked you, man,’ Vikram told me as we sat together in Leopold’s one afternoon, a few months after I’d started work with Khaled as a currency collector.
‘U-huh.’
‘No, really, they did. That’s why they let you go.’
‘I never saw that cop before in my life, Vikram. He didn’t know me at all.’
‘You don’t get it,’ he replied patiently. He poured another glass of cold Kingfisher beer, and sipped it appreciatively. ‘I talked to that guy, the cop, when I got you out of there. He told me the whole story. See, when the first guy in the fingerprint section found out who the fuck you really were—when your fingerprint check came back with the news that you were this wanted guy, from Australia—he freaked out on it. He freaked out on how much money he might get, you know, to keep the shit quiet. A chance like that doesn’t come along every day, na? So, without saying anything to anyone else, he goes to a senior cop he knows, and shows him the file report on your prints. That cop freaks out, too. He goes to another cop—the one we saw at the jail—and shows him the file. That cop tells the others to keep quiet about it, and leave it to him to find out how much money there is in it.’
A waiter brought my cup of coffee, and chatted with me for a while in Marathi. Vikram waited until we were alone again before he spoke.
‘They love it, you know, all these waiters and cab drivers and post office guys—and the cops, too—they love it, all these guys, that you speak Marathi to them. Fuck, man, I’m born here, and you speak Marathi better than I do. I never learned to speak it properly. I never had to. That’s why so many Marathis are so pissed off, man. Most of us don’t give a shit about the Marathi language, or who all comes to live in Bombay, or wherever the fuck they come from, yaar. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, so the cop has this file on you, and he’s keeping it quiet. But he wants to know more about this Australian fucker, who escaped from jail, before he does anything, yaar.’
Vikram stopped, and grinned at me until the grin became a playful laugh. He wore a black leather vest over his white silk shirt, despite the thirty-five-degree heat. In his heavy, black jeans and ornate black cowboy boots, he must’ve been very hot, but he seemed cool; almost as cool as he looked.
‘It’s fuckin’ great, man!’ he laughed. ‘You busted out of a maximum-security jail! Fuckin’ deadly! It’s the greatest thing I ever heard, Lin. It’s tearing my heart out that I can’t tell anyone about it.’
‘Do you remember what Karla said about secrets, when we were sitting here one night?’
‘No, man. What was it?’
‘It isn’t a secret, unless keeping it hurts.’
‘That’s pretty fuckin’ good,’ Vikram mused, grinning ‘So where was I? I’m losing it today, man. It’s this Lettie thing. It’s driving me insane, Lin. Oh yeah, the cop in charge, the cop with your file, he wants to do some checking on you. So, he sends two of his guys around, asking questions about you. All the street guys you used to work with, they gave you solid support, man. They said you never cheated anyone, never fucked anybody over, and you put a lot of money around with the poor street guys when you had it.’
‘But the cops didn’t tell anyone I was in Arthur Road?’
‘No, man, they were checking up on you to find out if they wanted to fuck you over, and send you back to the Australian cops, or not—depending on how you checked out. And there’s more to it. One of the moneychangers tells the cops, Hey, if you wanna know about Lin, go ask in the zhopadpatti, because he lives there. Well, the cops are now real intrigued, like—a gora, living in the slum. So they go there, and they take a look. They don’t tell anybody in the slum what happened to you, but they start asking about you, and the people say stuff like, You see that clinic? Lin built it, and he’s been working therefor a long time, helping the people… And they say stuff like, Everybody here has been treated at Lin’s clinic, free of charge, at one time or another, and he did a great job when the cholera came… And they told the cops about that little school you started, You see that little school for English? Lin started it… And the cops get an earful of this Lin, this Linbaba, this foreign guy who does all this good shit, and they go back to their boss, telling him what they heard.’
‘Oh, come on, Vikram! You really think that made a difference? It was about money, that’s all, and I’m just glad you were there to pay it.’
Vikram’s eyes widened in surprise, and then narrowed into a disapproving frown. He lifted the hat from his back and examined it, turning it in his hands and flicking specks of dust from the rim.
‘You know, Lin, you’ve been here for a while now, and you’ve learned some language, and been to the village, and lived in the slum, and even been the fuck to jail and all, but you still don’t get it, do you?’
‘Maybe not,’ I conceded. ‘Probably not.’
‘Damn right you don’t, man. This is not England, or New Zealand, or Australia, or wherever the fuck else. This is India, man. This is India. This is the land of the heart. This is where the heart is king, man. The fuckin’ heart. That’s why you’re free. That’s why that cop gave you back your phoney passport. That’s why you can walk around, and not get picked up, even though they know who you are. They could’ve fucked you, Lin. They could’ve taken your money, Khader’s money, and let you go, and then get some other cops to bust you, and send you the fuck home. But they didn’t do it, and they won’t do it, because you got them in their heart, man, in their Indian fuckin’ heart. They looked at all what you did here, and how the people in that slum love you, and they thought, Well, he fucked up in Australia, but he’s done some good shit here. If he pays up, we’ll let the fucker go. Because they’re Indians, man. That’s how we keep this crazy place together—with the heart. Two hundred fuckin’ languages, and a billion people. India is the heart. It’s the heart that keeps us together. There’s no place with people like my people, Lin. There’s no heart like the Indian heart.’
He was crying. Stunned, I watched him wipe the tears from his eyes, and I reached out to put a hand on his shoulder. He was right, of course. Even though I’d been tortured in an Indian prison, and almost killed there, I had been set free, and they had given me my old passport when I left the prison. Is there any other country in the world, I asked myself, that would’ve let me go, as India did? And even in India, if the cops had checked on me and discovered a different story—that I cheated Indians, say, or ran Indian prostitutes, or beat up defenceless people—they would’ve taken the money, and then sent me back to Australia anyway. It was the land where the heart is king. I knew that from Prabaker, from his mother, from Qasim Ali, from Joseph’s redemption. I’d known it even in the prison, where men like Mahesh Malhotra had taken a beating in order to smuggle food to me when I was starving.
‘What’s this? A lover’s quarrel, perhaps?’ Didier asked,
‘Oh, fuck you, Didier!’ Vikram laughed, pulling himself together.
‘Ah, well, it’s a touching thought, Vikram. But, perhaps when you are feeling a little better. And how are you today, Lin?’
‘I’m fine,’ I smiled. Didier was one of three people who’d burst into tears when they saw me, flesh-withered and still ripped with cuts and wounds, soon after my release from Arthur Road Prison. The second was Prabaker, whose weeping was so violent that it took me a full hour to console him. The third person, unexpectedly, was lord Abdel Khader, whose eyes filled with tears when I thanked him: tears that flowed on my neck and shoulder when he hugged me.
‘What’ll you have?’ I asked him.
‘Oh, very kind,’ he murmured, purring with pleasure. ‘I believe that I will begin with a flask of whisky, and a fresh lime, and a cold soda. Yes. That will be a good commençement, no? It is very strange, and a very unhappy business, don’t you think, this news about Indira Gandhi?’
‘What news?’ Vikram asked.
‘They are saying on the news, just now, that Indira Gandhi is dead.’
‘Is it true?’ I asked.
‘I fear that it is,’ he sighed, suddenly and uncharacteristically solemn. ‘The reports are not confirmed, but I think there is no doubt.’
‘Was it the Sikhs? Was it because of Bluestar?’
‘Yes, Lin. How did you know?’
‘When she stormed the Golden Temple, to get Bhindranwale, I had a feeling it was going to catch up with her.’
‘What happened? Did the KLF do it?’ Vikram asked. ‘Was it a bomb?’
‘No,’ Didier answered, gravely. ‘They say it was her bodyguards—her Sikh bodyguards.’
‘Her own bodyguard, for fuck’s sake!’ Vikram gasped. His mouth gaped open, and his gaze drifted on the tide of his thoughts. ‘Guys—I’ll be back in a minute. Do you hear that? They’re talking about the story, right now, on the radio, at the counter. I’ll go and listen, and come back.’
He jogged to the crowded counter where fifteen or twenty men pressed together, arms around shoulders to listen, while an almost hysterical announcer gave details of the murder in Hindi. Vikram could’ve listened to the broadcast from his seat at our table—the volume was switched up to the maximum, and we heard every word. It was something else that drew him to that crowded counter: a sense of solidarity and kinship; a huddled need to feel the astounding news, through contact with his countrymen, even as he listened to it.
‘Let’s have that drink,’ I suggested.
‘Yes, Lin,’ Didier answered, pouting with his lower lip, and offering a flourish of his hand to dismiss the distressing subject. The gesture failed. His head lolled forward, and he stared vacantly at the table in front of him. ‘I can’t believe it. It is simply not believable. Indira Gandhi, dead … It is almost unthinkable. It is almost impossible to force myself to think of it, Lin. It is … you know … impossible.’
I ordered for Didier, and let my thoughts wander while we listened to the plaintive screech of the radio announcer. Selfishly, I wondered first what the assassination might mean for my security, and then what it might do to the exchange rates on the black money market. Some months before, Indira Gandhi had authorised an assault on the Sikh holy-of-holies, the Golden Temple, in Amritsar. Her goal was to drive out a large, well-armed company of Sikh militants who’d entered the temple and fortified themselves there under the leadership of a handsome, charismatic separatist named Bhindranwale. Using the temple complex as a base, the militants had launched punitive attacks against Hindus, and those they described as recalcitrant Sikhs, for many weeks. Indira Gandhi, on the eve of a fiercely contested general election, had been deeply concerned that she would appear weak and indecisive if she failed to act. In what many judged to be the worst of her admittedly limited options, Indira had sent the army into battle with the Sikh rebels.
The army operation to dislodge the militants from the Golden Temple was known as Operation Bluestar. Bhindranwale’s militants, believing themselves to be freedom fighters and martyrs for the Sikh cause, met the army force with reckless and desperate resistance. More than six hundred lives were lost, and many hundreds of people were injured. In the end, the Golden Temple complex was cleared, and Indira emerged as anything but indecisive or weak. Her goal of reassuring the Hindu heartland of voters had been achieved, but the Sikh struggle for a separate homeland, called Khalistan, was rich in new martyrs. And across the world, Sikh hearts clenched around their determination to avenge the profane and bloody invasion of their holiest shrine.
The radio at the counter gave us no other details, but the message wailed from the speaker that she’d been murdered. Only a few months after Bluestar, Indira’s own Sikh bodyguards had killed her. The woman who’d been reviled as a despot by some, adored as the mother of the country by many others, and so closely identified with the nation as to be indistinguishable from its past, and from its destiny, was gone. She was dead.
I had to think. I had to calculate the danger. Security forces across the country would be on special alert. There would be ramifications—riots, killings, looting, and burning, as revenge exacted on the Sikh communities for her murder. I knew it. Everyone in India knew it. On the radio, the announcer was talking about troop deployments in Delhi and in Punjab aimed at quelling anticipated disturbances. The tension would bring new dangers for me, a wanted man, working for the mafia, and living in the country with an expired visa. For a few moments, sitting there as Didier sipped his drink, as the men in the restaurant strained in silence to listen, and the early evening blushed our skin with rose-gold, my heart thumped with fear. Run, my thoughts whispered. Run now, while you can. This is your last chance…
But even then, as I formed the clear thought to flee the city, I felt myself relaxing into a dense, fatalistic calm. I wouldn’t leave Bombay. I couldn’t leave Bombay. I knew that, as surely as I’d ever known anything in my life. There was the issue of Khaderbhai: my financial debt to him had been repaid from the wages I’d made in his service with Khaled, but there was a moral debt that was harder to repay. I owed him my life, and we both knew it. He’d hugged me when I came out of the prison and, crying at my pitiful state, he’d promised me that for so long as I remained in Bombay, I would be under his personal protection. Nothing like Arthur Road would ever happen to me again. He’d given me a gold medal featuring the Hindu aum symbol joined to a Muslim crescent and star, which I wore on a silver chain around my neck. Khaderbhai’s name was inscribed on the back, in Urdu, Hindi, and English. In the event of trouble I was to show the medal, and ask that he be contacted at once. That security was imperfect, but it was better than anything I’d known since my exile had begun. His request for me to stay in his service, the unspoken debt that I owed him, and the safety that being Khader’s man offered—all of those elements held me in the city.
And there was Karla. She’d disappeared from the city while I was in prison, and no-one knew where she’d gone. I had no idea where in all the wide world I might begin to look for her. But she loved Bombay. I knew that. It seemed reasonable to hope she might return. And I loved her. It grieved me—an emotion that was, in those months, even stronger than my love for her—that she must be thinking I’d abandoned her: that I got what I wanted, when we made love, and then dumped her. I couldn’t move on without seeing her again, and explaining what had happened that night. So I stayed there, in the city, a minute’s walk from the corner where we’d met, and I waited for her to return.
I glanced around the subdued, listening restaurant, and caught Vikram’s eye. He smiled at me, and wagged his head. It was a heart-broken smile, and his eyes were inflamed with unshed tears. Still, he smiled to comfort me, to reassure me, to include me in his bewildered grieving. And with that smile I suddenly knew that there was something else holding me there. In the end I realised that it was the heart, the Indian heart that Vikram had talked about—the land where heart is king—that held me when so
‘It’s a fuckin’ bad business, yaar,’ Vikram muttered as he rejoined us. ‘There’s going to be a lot of blood spilled over this, yaar. On the radio, they’re saying that Congress Party gangs are roaming in Delhi, going from house to house, and spoiling for a fight with the Sikhs.’
We were silent, all three of us, lost in our own speculations and worry. Then Didier spoke.
‘I think I have a lead for you,’ he said softly, wrenching us into the moment once more.
‘About the jail?’
‘Oui.’
‘Go on.’
‘It is not much. It does not add much to what you already know—that it was a person of some power, as your patron, Abdel Khader, has told you.’
‘Whatever it is, Didier, it’s more than I’ve got now.’
‘As you wish. There is a … man of my acquaintance … who must visit the Colaba police station on a daily basis. We were talking, earlier today, and he mentioned the foreigner who was in the lock-up there some months ago. The name he used was the Bite of the Tiger. I cannot imagine how you came to win such a name for yourself, Lin, but I make a wild guess that it is not entirely flattering, the story, non? Alors, he told me that the Bite of the Tiger—you—was betrayed by a woman.’
‘Did he give you a name?’
‘No. I asked him, and he said that he did not know who she is. He did say that she is young, and very beautiful, but he may have invented those last details.’
‘How reliable is this man of your acquaintance?’
Didier pursed his lips, and let out a puff of air.
‘He can be relied upon to lie, and cheat, and steal. That is the extent of his reliability, I am afraid, but in these things he does show a marvellous predictability. However, in this case I think he has no reason to lie. I think you were the victim of a woman, Lin.’