The following is an excerpt from the start of chapter 4 of the 2010 novel
Story of My Assassins by Tarun Tejpal. Close read the selection. Annotate
intensively. You will be permitted to use this text and any notes you make on it
in the quiz. In the box at left are some terms and words that may inform your
annotation.
4
Penguins and Killers
There was a moment—when I first saw them—that I experienced a fleeting
rush of curiosity and distaste, but it was quickly gone, submerged in a profound
indifference. All I wanted to do was to get out of that place as quickly as possible. (1)
The huge high-ceilinged room was packed. There was a continuous eddy of
movement as bodies pushed in and out, talking to one another in whispers. The
emotional registers all around were high: every face appeared marked by anxiety,
fear, aggression, resentment, despondency. The only calm ones seemed to be the
black coats dotting the landscape, penguins in their element, skating smoothly
through the heartless glacier of organized justice.
Within five minutes of entering the stately iron gates of the Patiala House
courts I’d become aware that I was entering a zone of experience that would
forever change the way I looked at the wonder that was India. Before the day was
out I would know that no middle-class Indian, from any old st mary-john-mark
school with trilling nuns and caning fathers, who twittered in the queen’s English
and held forth on freedom and democracy, had any real ideas of this country if he
had not wandered through the frozen glaciers of its legal system. If he had not
befriended a frisky penguin and been shown some chilling X-rays of the grand body
of Indian law and order and justice.
Outside the gates of the courts ran the wide stately roads of Lutyens’ Delhi,
curving with an imperial assurance around the imposing edifices of the National
Stadium, the National Gallery of Modern Art and the India Gate, then taking the
high road to Raisina Hill where the monoliths of North and South Block continued to
be metaphors for the imperiousness and inscrutability of the state, before finishing
up inside the excessive sprawl of the presidential palace, and appropriate metaphor
of shallow decorativeness. Patrolled by police jeeps, these were ceremonial roads,
cocooning a space where the state could continually convince itself of its power and
purpose. Any dwarf wearing the ensemble of the state could bring the tallest citizen
of the country to his knees.
But inside the high gates of the courts, the splendor of the state was in
disarray. From the moment you entered the grounds you battled your way through
parked scooters and bikes and cars, weaving through thick clusters of petitioners,
penguins, policemen—weirdly, holding hands with their criminal wards as lovers
would, since the Supreme Court had banned the handcuffing of small-time
offenders. Everywhere was dirt and offal and loud voices, and random chain-link
fences you had to hop over. The hum all around was of transactions. A brisk bazaar,
where you could strike any deal you wanted as long as your attitude was
unburdened and your wallet thick. Going around to the back of the building to meet
my lawyer, I saw advocates’ kiosks that looked more like they dealt in minor
merchandise—cigarettes, paan, biscuits, candy—than in the somber questions of
the law. (5)
Inside the once opulent building built during the Raj to serve as the Delhi
outpost of the royal house of Patiala, the state’s glory was equally in tatters. The
sweeping staircases, the marble floors, the teak balustrades, the carved windows,
the fluted ceilings, all were in distress. Everything was soiled, dirty, peeling. Every
corner had a chiaroscuro of blood-red paan stains. Despite their grand scale, the
corridors were dark and musty and poorly lit, with the illumination from the
windows and ventilators truncated by dirt and furniture. The windows were further
obscured by human bodies—sitting, standing, trying to wedge their way through.
Many of these were clearly peasants, their faces unshaven and gaunt, their thick
blankets and bodies giving off the rank odour of animals and sweat. I had to put out
my hands and literally push people aside to make way for us. My shadows* did the
same, their elbows jutting out. At one point, just when I was beginning to enjoy
shoving the idiots around, Sara poked me in my ass, warning me angrily to take it
easy. When I went to take a leak in the makeshift urinal under the staircase, I had to
pay a rupee for the privilege and survive such a stench of fresh piss as could have
deterred the stoutest litigant.
In this hellhole, were were led by my penguin into a high-ceilinged room
that was no less nondescript and soiled. It was bursting with a silent clamour, as
routine mayhem tried to rein itself in, in deference to the setting. The milling bodies
moved around the ugly wooden cupboards littered all over, in random array, filled
to oozing with dusty files. These were all tied in strings of different colours, and had
dirty ears of paper peeping out. Each time and attendant opened a cupboard the
files began to topple out, and had to be desperately held in check with one hand
even as the right one was located and extracted. As at the dera on the night of the
metamorphosis*, there was only one point of calm in this melee: the elevated
platform at the end of the room where, behind a wide wooden desk, sat a clerkylooking man in black-rimmed spectacles.
The guruji of this equally surreal realm.
Unlike my guruji, this one needed help with his appearance. He was young,
with a weak pasty face and a collapsed jaw. He didn’t look like he could adjudicate a
spat between his own children. Someone should have given him a curly white wig
and fastened a false beard to his chin. A couple of real clerks sat around him taking
notes, one punching away into a grimy cream-colored computer, and a wastrel at
his side rudely shouted out case numbers and names as another, even lower down
the food chain, near the door, immediately took up the call. On the three rows of
ramshackle wooden chairs in front of the pasty boy sat an assortment of penguins
and litigants.
Arguments were being made and heard in conspiratorial consultations. Not
orated, not declaimed, not stated. A number and name would be barked out and
one clutch of penguins—trailed by their glassy-eyed clients—would wriggle through
the throng and present themselves right under the high chair. Some sort of urgent
whispering would ensue to and fro, left and right, strung out on a chorus of milords
and yoronours. Then, absurdly quickly, a consensus would be arrived at—simply, the
next date of hearing—and yoronour, guruji of the high chair, would say something
to the computer man on his right, close the file, pick it and fling it at the other clerk.
Instantly the wastrel—busy all the while cutting side deals with penguins who sidled
up to him; speaking to them through the corner of his mouth with his eyes on the
high chair—instantly the wastrel would bark a name and a number, junior wastrel
would echo it, and the throng would begin to undulate, pushing forward the next
clutch of players. It was barely noon, but going by the shouted number, yoronour
was cleaning up society lickety-split and had already delivered justice in twentyeight cases.(10)
Curiously, all the penguins seemed to be friends, even if their clients were
trying to kill each other. Before they showed up under the chair of yoronour, they
appeared to be jointly working out their opposing strategies. My penguin, Sethiji,
was fat and middle-aged, with the jocular, can-do manner of a middleman. He was
some distant relative of Jai’s, and in his smooth ability to work people, a sort of
cruder, more down-market version of him. In our passage through the sweeping
staircases and jammed corridors everyone seemed to know him. When I had
emerged from the pissoir, barely breathing, he was upset that I had paid, asserting
that the attendant should have known who I was with. He wanted to go right back
in to retrieve the rupee.
In the high-ceilinged room, the clerks half raised their hands to salaam him,
while the wastrel gave a full salute. He said, with a happy smile, ‘I pay them to do
this each time there’s a new client. It boosts the confidence of the client. I am telling
you this because you are family.’
The happy smile never left Sethiji’s face, and he shook a hand after every
sentence. Hustling, everywhere in Delhi, is a desperately tactile affair: slapping flesh,
pressing flesh, rubbing flesh. In disgust I put my hands in my pockets, and so he
began to grab one of the shadows. He called Sarah ‘bhabhiji,’ assuming she was my
wife, and bowed to her courteously every few minutes, making her glower. In the
room he had a chair cleared for her but she declined to sit.
Sethiji’s belly was so spectacular he needed suspenders to keep his pants
up. The black coat and trousers were worn to a shine, but the white shirt’s collar
was frayed, the leather shoes battered. He said, ‘Lady Justice, you know, is blindfold.
Only weight on her balance matters. More weight better chances.’ His thumbs were
hooked into his suspenders; they came out fleetingly after every sentence to reach
for someone.
He had three very young penguins with him, a son and two nephews, who
circled him watchfully, awaiting orders. Sethiji was a true king penguin, a master of
his game. He never spoke loudly or rudely, just whispered his instructions with that
bemused smile; a look of comic wonderment. The boys—in sharp black attire, with
gym muscles, shining skin, and gelled hair—darted off to comply. At one point he
shepherded us out to a cordoned-off corner of the corridor and his boys served up
hot tea, cold lassi, and crisp samosas. The shadows attacked everything; I downed
the lassi; Sara said, ‘What a bloody racketeer!’; Sethiji said, with his smile, ‘You can
survive the law, but you cannot survive hunger,’ and reached for the hand of a
shadow. (15)
The corner had a huge window—built for princely eyes—but it was grimy
and closed. It looked out over lush green trees, and Sara stood there gazing out, an
arty charcoal sketch, her unequal body a sudden invitation. I knew she was
simmering, raging at all the kind of stuff she liked to rage at. This place was a rager’s
paradise. By bringing her here I had already given her fuel for weeks of ranting. And
we were not done yet. Poverty, justice, class, democracy. Some spectacular nailing
on the wall was in the offing.
Sethiji was, of course, stoking the embers continually. At one point his
mobile rang. Leaving his left thumb in the striped elastic, he pulled out his clunky
phone with his right hand and placed it two inches from his ear. ‘Hello, my dear,’ he
said, slowly with his wide bemused smile. ‘No madam, I need no loan. Not for home,
or marriage, or car, or carriage. I would marry again, but my wife eats two spoons of
Chyawanprash every day and does not look like she’ll die for another hundred years.
Education? Madam, it is better to burn the money than spend it on my sons’
studies. Their principal says, Sethiji take them home and you will better serve the
cause of education. Madam, that’s why I am thinking I will make them both lawyers.
Only the rejected can understand the pain of the dejected! My car, madam, is a
Maruti, a red one. Do you really think I should buy another? And just stop the
medical treatment of my father? He’s dying of cancer you know. Of the bowels. You
know, the bowels? Of course you do, everyone knows the bowels! But he’s old, no
problem if he dies now. Maybe I can take him to the cremation ground in the new
new big car. That would please him! No, no madam, don’t go yet! Wait I have
something to tell you too! Is there anyone in your family who has been raped or
murdered or has committed suicide? Madam, my law firm specializes in handling
cases of rape and murder. No, no madam, you cannot just go now—you called me,
you must listen to me now. Okay, okay, not your family, any of your friends who
have been raped or murdered? No? No. Very lucky you are, madam! But in future if
anyone you know is raped or murdered you know whom to call! You have the
number—you just called it! Advocate Sethi and Sons—one son actually and two
nephews—specialists in rape and murder. Hello? Hello! Madam! Madam? You
called me, madam, you must listen to me!’
With the phone still inches away from his ear, he swiveled around slowly
and gave us all his smile of bemused wonderment. Son and nephews were grinning,
and so were the shadows. I was too, but I had turned away from Sara. She was
thunderous. I could sense the fury radiating from her clenched body. For a moment
I was anxious she’d say something needlessly unpleasant to the fat lawyer and I’d be
forced to step in; and it would lead to weeks of simmering rancor between us. He
was just a fat man making light of his sad life. There was no need to throw The
Female Eunuch and the Constitution at him.
She peeled away from the window and stalked off, back into the highceilinged room. (19)