Chapter 7: The Mafia

“Did you watch the match yesterday?” he asked me.
I couldn’t believe this guy. Several different layers of my brain were racing at several different gears into several different directions, but here was Arora, as calm and aplomb as ever.
“What match?” I asked.
“The India match!” he exclaimed and got off his chair, “Oh, what a game – Nehra made the English batsmen go crazy,” Arora did an animated bowling run-up, “He will definitely be one of our best ever bowlers ever.”
Arora stayed up, pacing around the room impatiently. The gleam in his eyes showed no hitch caused by our recent abduction.
There was only one door in the small room, and for the first time in the last hour, it opened again. Out stepped an incredibly short, scruffily bearded man, with a gleam in his eye of definite disdain for the non-vertically-challenged. His arms bulged from his sleeveless red vest, which couldn’t mask the tropical abundance of his hairy chest. The dwarf’s scoff made me wish, for the first time in my life, that I wasn’t blessed with my otherwise enviable six-foot-frame. Arora quickly sat back down.
“Shanker,” he said in a voice that was too big for him, “Rajju Bhai is here now. Wait for ten more minutes and then come out. Bring your accountant with you,” he pointed at Arora.
I nodded as he left the room, leaving the two of us alone again. It suddenly became hotter and stuffier inside. And somehow, smaller.
“Arrey, you should have seen it Azad sir,” Arora said, almost to himself, “Nehra was just embarrassing them.”
“What the hell are you talking about Arora?”
“Cricket, sir! Cricket!” He sprang up again, “The World Cup!”
I looked away. “I don’t follow cricket anymore.”
Arora’s voice reached a new level of bewilderment. “You do not follow cricket?” he quivered, “What kind of an Indian are you?”
I shook my head. Here we were, minutes away from meeting the biggest criminal mastermind of the city, and the only thing that this shithead could worry about was cricket. “I stopped watching cricket after Kapil Dev retired,” I said, before quickly concluding the topic, “And Arora, we have much more important things to worry about.”
His words were about to arrive at the tip of his tongue before my dismissal made them fade away.
In this city, you know that you’re made if Rajju Bhai wishes to see you. All my hard work and the continuous drive to get wealthier had finally caught his attention. Rajju Bhai wished to see me. I had heard rumours about these meetings before – they never ended well. Rajju Bhai wishing to see you is never a pleasant little milestone in one’s life. It is like the school bully wishing to see you in the bathroom after you bring the nicest lunch to school, except that this bully had guns and wasn’t scared of any headmasters, or for that matter, anyone else is organized society.
And it was only a matter of my cruel misfortune that the shithead accountant Arora was around when Rajju Bhai’s goons paid their visit today. For a garrulous fool, Arora was actually semi-decent at his job. Then they decided to bring him along, too.
“It is starting to get hotter now: do you not think so, sir?” Arora said, “Why is there is no fan in this room? It is getting seriously hot. Really, sir, I spent all of last Sunday in my half-pants.”
I nodded and looked away again.
“Really,” he continued, “Have you heard of global warming, sir? I think it is happening. I have never worn half-pants or started sweating in February before.”
I began to sweat just thinking about it. “Yes, yes, maybe that’s what it is.”
“Do you think it will get worse?” he asked, “I think in a few years, we will have to start wearing half-pants from January.”
“No, no, I don’t think it will be that bad anytime soon,” I said, before realizing that I had again unwittingly fallen into his small-talk trap.
Arora opened the top button of his white shirt to loosen his neck. “Do you think they will have a fan in the other room, sir? I really wish they do.”
“Arora, shut the hell up,” I muttered from between my grinding teeth, “We’re here to see the mafia, not the fucking weatherman.”
The room fell silent again, but now, I could think of nothing else but the heat. Arora had a point, because it was way to hot for February.
I checked my watch – it was time to go.
I led us out into the large bright, gleaming, and overbearing lobby of Rajju Bhai’s mansion. For however much of a rogue he may well be, the man did have an incredible taste for architecture and home decoration. The massive room we entered was bedizened in yellow, blue, white, red, and green, and there was confident amounts of each colour to make this amazing mash-up look tasteful.
A spiral staircase led up to the second floor of the building, half of which was stylishly cut off in the form of a missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle.
And from the mysterious puzzle that was the second floor slowly descended a regiment of domineering men in white kurta-pajamas and red headbands. Leading them was another blinding flash of colour, in the form of none other than the numinous Rajju Bhai. I recognized him with an extraordinary sense of familiarity, especially considering that this was the first time I was meeting the man.
“Shanker!” he called out to me in greater amity than I’d experienced in years of semi-close relationships. My toes jittered inside my tight leather shoes. The white background of his dozen bodyguards made his own contrasting colourful attire stand out and blend perfectly with the chaos of colour in the rest of the house.
“Shanker!” he said again and came closer. He opened his mouth to smile and display a red, yellow, and white set of teeth, which were busy mingling themselves into paan masala. The colours matched his red kurta, his yellow pajamas, and the white patch of hair on his head. He also wore a majestic green stroll over his kurta, which he flipped back behind his shoulder and brought it in front again multiple times a minute.
Rajju Bhai grabbed and shook my hand hard and I noticed a gleaming gold watch on his wrist. He delayed leaving the handshake for just the perfect amount of seconds before moving on to greeting Arora. I marvelled at how pleased I felt at his gracefully offensive assurance.
“Shanker!” he said again, before pointing at his sofa and commanding me to sit down.
I obliged obediently. Arora followed suit.
“Aye, rrin larraer,” Rajju Bhai commanded to nobody. Everybody in the room responded into action.
He sat down on a sofa opposite us. “Hroo al you mooeg, Shanker?” he asked.
“Huh?”
One of Rajju Bhai’s helpers quickly grabbed a small bucket and brought it to him. Rajju Bhai sucked in and then spat out a splash of blood-coloured paan.
“How are you doing, Shanker?” he asked again, his words now comprehensible.
“Oh, oh, fine, fine,” I meekly replied, “Just fine, fine.”
Rajju Bhai smiled and looked around. “You like my house? It’s new, you know? Just moved in last month.”
“Uhm…” I started.
“Beautiful sir, it is absolutely beautiful,” Arora interrupted, “The furniture and layout are awe-inspiring. And the colour schemes – just wow sir, wow.”
Rajju Bhai smiled and then looked back at me. “Is this your accountant, Shanker?”
“Yes sir, I am,” Arora stood up to introduce himself again. Rajju Bhai motioned him to sit.
I stared to and fro between my feet and Rajju Bhai in silence, quickly glancing away each time he caught my stare. Arora continued marvelling at the room, exchanging smiles with the otherwise impassive faces of Rajju Bhai’s bodyguards.
“Did you watch the match yesterday?” Arora asked the surrounding public.
“Oh, yes, yes,” Rajju Bhai answered, “Nehra made the English batsmen go crazy.”
Although it was cooler in this room, I began to itch uncontrollably. I bravely shoved away my diffidence and turned to my polite kidnapper. “Rajju Bhai,” I said as he glanced at me, “Why have you brought us here?”
He smiled and looked around at his staff. “Oh, Shanker Shanker,” he shook his head comically, “Shanker, Shanker, Shanker...”
“Yes?”
“I know where you live Shanker,” his smile grew wider, “I know where you live and I know where your office is. I know where your parents live and I have the address of your wife’s parents. I also know where her sister lives and I am well acquainted with your close friends Vinod and Chhayya...”
My head bowed lower and lower. A young girl placed a glass of water in front of me, which I didn’t dare touch.
“… I know what car you drive and when you go to office and when you come back home,” he continued, “I know about your friend Rakesh and his little flat where you sometimes go to get drunk without telling your wife. I also know about that young pretty receptionist of yours and the scooter she goes around in, and I recognize your eyes when you can’t take them off her…”
I sat dumbfounded. “No, no…” I stumbled, “Atty’s just… Rakesh is a nice guy… I like my wife a lot…”
“Yes, yes, we all do,” he said before looking around at his people, who returned his look with an on-queue burst of laughter.
“So, what do you want?” I spat out to silence them.
Rajju Bhai answered to Arora instead. “How much does Shanker make, Accountant?”
Arora smiled and looked at me for permission. I didn’t give it.
“Not as much as you sir,” he answered to Rajju Bhai, “His house isn’t as grand as yours. Neither is mine. And our colour schemes – sir, they are no match for your creative mind.”
Rajju Bhai began to laugh again. Then the dwarf who we had encountered earlier walked in the room, chewing a toothpick in his mouth. He whispered in Rajju Bhai’s ears and then trotted away.
Rajju Bhai made another motion and one of his bodyguards quickly handed him a pen and a small sheet of paper. He scribbled something on it. “Shanker, Shanker, Shanker,” he stood up and unsuccessfully tried to tuck in his massive belly.
I stood up too. He approached me, folded the paper, and placed in my front pocket.
“12 percent of everything you make, every month” he said and patted my shoulders like a proud father, “Tax,” he smiled and looked at Arora too. “You are big-time man now, Shanker. You need my protection.”
There are certain experiences in life that are so unexpected that it is impossible for us to think of a response. We haven’t planned a response before, because we simply never considered encountering that particular experience or emotion. These experiences include officially realizing that you hate your parents, falling in love (allegedly), and being forced to pay the most dangerous man in the city for his supposed help. So I stood silently in an attempt to come to grips with the unexpected present.
“Oh Shanker,” Rajju Bhai added, almost as an afterthought, “I hope I won’t have to waste time threatening you with guns and bullets. But if you don’t pay me, I will shoot your wife…”
Keep talking asshole; I’m not afraid of you.
“… And then I will shoot you, too,” he added.
Fucking shit.
He turned around to consult one of his more intellectually dressed associates. I saw from my peripherals that all the colours in the room had begun to turn grey.
“Please, please, no tension, sir,” said Arora, “Azad sir is a good man, sir, he really is.”
“Shut the fuck up, Arora,” I told him.
“Hey!” For the first time, I heard the venom in Rajju Bhai’s voice as he turned his attention back to me, “Don’t you use that language under my roof Shanker. I bring you as a guest into my house and this is how you behave? You better watch yourself or I will have you raped.”
I agreed that it was probably better for me to watch myself.
And soon, Rajju Bhai drifted away and his associates dispersed from view. Arora sat down and shifted away, and then disappeared. The mansion became smaller and greyer. And greyer and greyer. I sat down and my vision became blurry, till the expensive furniture in front of me coasted away to the white horizon and I was left with nothing but black and white bubbles floating about aimlessly.
The next thing I knew, I was still seated, but was all alone in my car; driving aimlessly but heading home.
Fuck.

Rajju Bhai wasn’t my only problem of those times. Anita had started to feel that three years into a marriage was much longer than the ideal time to produce an offspring. But I had too many other complexities in my life to fulfil her wishes.
“But I want to be a mother, Azad,” she protested, “It is every woman’s dream. I want to be pregnant and I want us to have our own baby.”
“And I want to live, Anita,” I said, “I have much more important things to worry about than your motherly dreams. Please – don’t bring this up again.”
And for some time, she didn’t. Instead, I began to notice how every other molehill in our daily lives was becoming a mountain. If I didn’t wear a shirt of her choice one evening, then I didn’t respect her opinion enough. If I didn’t care about her dresses, then I was an inconsiderate husband. And if I worried more about balancing work, Sahni, and the mafia’s rapist nostrils breathing down my neck, I was labelled a home-wrecking workaholic.
Rajju Bhai got his 12 percent the first month, so he sent me a box of laddus as a thank you and also a note asking for 13 percent from the next month onwards. I crumpled the note, ate a laddu, and privately broke down crying.
I couldn’t turn to Anita for the obvious reasons. I didn’t have much of a family and wasn’t a big fan of hers. And I couldn’t turn to Vinod, Sandip, or any other friends I had made in our couples social circuit because I hated all of them. Plus I had long alienated all of my other friends, including Rakesh and Shubham. There was only one person I could think of.
“Hey!” Deepu Chachu’s opened the front door to reveal a voice that was still as refreshingly soothing as it had been in my childhood, “You finally remembered your uncle, eh? What, is it your birthday?”
“No, no,” I flashed an embarrassed smile as he let me in. I had finally begun to accept the inconvenient truth that I wasn’t comfortable in my uncle’s presence any more. It was just age – and this truth which would’ve shocked me into disbelief and blasphemy as an adolescent had indolently grown into another not-so-important realization.
The house that I partly grew up in was the same as ever before. The bookshelves still had the same collection of untouched old English classics which Deepu Chachu still hadn’t dusted off. His small television still had a VCR player and the old kung-fu videotapes lay around which I’d bought to watch here in my younger years. Large empty cardboard boxes crowded the corners with tons of bubble wrap and ropes stuffed in them. Deepu Chachu was never interested in change, and without Chachi around to beautify and renew things, his lifestyle stood paused in the otherwise rushing sands of time.
“Will you have some cold coffee, Azad?” he asked.
I smiled; he never made it as well as Chachi used to. “No, no, Chachu, don’t worry about it.”
He didn’t need to be told twice. Chachu offered me my favourite seat, right in front of the television, and sat down beside me.
“So, what brings you back son?” he asked with a friendly nudge, “Is the wife giving you problems again? Or do you finally have the good news?”
‘Good news’ in this context meant ‘baby’. It always meant ‘baby’. Everywhere I went – When are you having your baby? What are you waiting for? Don’t wait too long. Baby, baby, baby. It was like the only way one could contribute decently to the progress of society was if they presented society with another mouth to feed.
“No, no,” I kept my thoughts to myself, “No such good news yet, Chachu. I have another problem.”
Deepu Chachu’s fat spectacles were twice the size of his eyes. He took them off to rub his eyes, which squinted meekly and became half as small. “Tell me, son. What’s wrong?”
“Okay,” I clenched my hand into a tight fist, “Rajju Bhai,” I mumbled his name in reverence, only to watch my uncle’s expression fall thunderously, “He has been forcing me to pay. He’s calling it my protection fund. I don’t know what to do.”
“Okay, okay…” Deepu Chachu leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, “Okay, okay…
“The man is above the law. I really don’t know what to do.”
This is a problem Azad…”
“Yes it is.”
“… No one I know has ever been rich or important enough to be bothered by the mafia before. You have scaled new heights in our family.”
I was unsure on whether or not that was a good thing. “So, what do I do?”
Deepu Chachu kept his eyes closed. I wondered why I even turn to him anymore. He’s not the wisest, richest, powerful or most respected of the people I knew. Perhaps it was because he was just the only one alive to whom I could expose my own frailties and not worry about it. His ear was more important than his advice.
“What does your heart tell you son?” he finally said.
I was going to listen to my heart anyways. “I don’t know, Chachu,” I told him, “I just don’t know.”

By the third month, I stopped driving the Maruti to save petrol money, and instead, had to count on Arora to drive me to work on his motorbike every day. The food at home became blander – the vegetables had less salt and the tea had less sugar. I sent Ramu away on an unpaid leave as Anita toiled harder by herself in the kitchen.
I tried to diversify my accounts in the third month, but Rajju Bhai was experienced in the forced-money-extraction business.
“Rolt teet me, Shanker,” he said during one of his surprise raids to my house, “I lro tat you’re upto.”
“What?”
“Ront cheet me, Shanker,” he repeated, “I krow wat you’re upto.”
I flushed. “No, no, Rajju Bhai, I wasn’t cheating. You will get the 13 percent.”
“Phiphteen perchenlt,” he spat outside my door, “I know everything, Shanker.”
As he was escorted back to his jeep, the only sound I could hear was Anita’s muffled sobs from the kitchen.

By the fourth month, I had begun to completely comprehend Rajju Bhai’s paan-mouthed words, so I didn’t need him to repeat it when he asked for 18 percent.
Rajju Bhai didn’t get any money from me that month. He didn’t get any the next month either. When his people began to show up at the work to threaten Atty, I held a panic-button meeting with my wife and staff.
“Does anyone have any advice,” I asked, this time genuinely ready to listen.
Of course they didn’t. Rajju Bhai was untouchable. He could ask the mayor for 18 percent today and the mayor would oblige him by giving 22.
“You will have to keep paying him sir,” sniffed Atty, “There’s nothing we can do. We can’t have those goons coming to the office every day.”
Anita stared at her in disgust. “We should have a child, Azad,” she gave her predictable advice, “It will soften him, I tell you.”
“Do what your heart tell you, son,” opined Deepu Chachu.
“Sir, that new Shah Rukh movie is rocking, isn’t it?” Arora asked, “Definitely one of the best, sir.”
I stepped back, further and further, till I found myself alone in a cubicle. Their nonsensical noises went into one ear, fucked with my brain, and then went out the other. I clenched my hair and attempted to pull it out. Unfortunately, I succeeded.
So, I was losing hair as well? What else could go wrong?
That night, I had a dream about Papa. The following night, I was too afraid to go to sleep.