Book review: The story of my assasins by Tarun Tejpal

When a journalist of the order of Tarun Tejpal takes to penning a book, his antagonists can not refrain from feeling a pang of threat, a threat of misdeeds being unveiled, dark secrets being divulged and so
on. The reader waits with bated breath to come home to potshots, scandals, tantalizing criticisms of policies or individuals, backlashes from ‘victims’ etc.

‘The story of my assassins’, on a similar note, promises a lot. However, Tejpal ducks every opportunity to turn heads with revelations. He resorts to taking mild potshots at the decadent journalists, who form the backbone of modern day journalism, activists going gung ho for defending those they believe to be wronged, driven by an urge to satiate their moral responsibilities than backing their beliefs with coherent arguments. Last but not the least, the queer Indian police, which has gracefully learned to function ineffectively in spite of the plethora of ire and mockery they have been subjected to from all quarters, remaining nonchalant to criticism all the way.

Tejpal narrates the story through a journalist, who finds himself at the centre of media attention and round the clock police protection, inadvertently, for being the prime target of a foiled assassination attempt (for the exposes he has conducted on various honchos in politics and business), claimed to be a brainchild of Pakistan backed terrorists, by the Indian government.

The reader will unfailingly empathize with the protagonist, who is seemingly trapped between foul bureaucracies in the work place, a dumb and beautiful wife ‘Dolly/Folly’ (as addressed by the protagonist)
back home, an intellectual lover Sara fond of obscenities who needs ‘….a dose of Vedanta to cleanse her head. Hindi abuse for the body; Hindu philosophy for the soul’: a gold digging, parasitic, self proclaimed best friend Jai, who can be as diverse as to quote Pablo Neruda to charm women and hurl abuses after downing few pegs of country liquor and a police inspector Hathi Ram, who is fascinated by ‘The Naked Lunch’ succumbing to the provocative title and not the content. So disdained is the protagonist with the hullabaloo around, that he seeks repose in ‘Guruji’, a religious preacher, a symbol of loosing confidence in self.

The book succeeds in captivating the audience right from the beginning. Narratives with a hint of ambiguity are hilarious, so are the conversations between characters with undertones of confrontations. Too many characters pop in between, new dimensions to the lead characters are unfurled, all to the comfort of the readers. The sub plots, revolving around Jai’s opportunistic endeavors in selling off a dying publication house at the expense of the protagonist’s newly earned fame, the monotony in domestication with ‘Dolly/ Folly’, violation of privacy by a bunch of bodyguards seemingly disinterested in their job and a beaming discord over their way of functioning with the protagonist, are fitted aptly in the story. Another aspect where Tejpal scores over his Indian contemporaries is the lucidity of language, making his second novel a pleasant read.

The success, as well as shortcoming of the book are the four chapters attributed to providing a background of the accused assassins, entwined with confrontations between the protagonist and Sara, the activist who believes in the innocence of the accused and takes up the onus of exonerating them before law with panache, as if she is on course to fulfilling a moral obligation.

With his infallible narrative, Tejpal creates a vivid image of the assassins, replete with their childhood, introduction and ascent in the profession of vandalism, even adding a spiritual dimension to the
characters as he deduces Chaku’s (one of the assassins) inference of the Gita: ‘of fearlessness and action and the legitimacy of violence’. Even from their monikers (Chaku, Chini, Kaliya, only exception being Kabir.M) the readers get a feel of them being hoodlums with all social ties renounced. All one can conceive are personifications of brutality.

Just as the reader climbs the crest of anticipation, making wild guesses at who might be the master mind of the plot which has thrown the protagonist’s life into disarray, or whether Sara was right in smelling foul in the set up or even a violent altercation between Sara and the protagonist over conflicting interests (in a patriarchal Indian society, a man inevitably finds it difficult to digest his woman supporting the cause of his opponents), a series of events are insinuated that unravels the mystery to the reader. An ending, which
can be safely presumed, will not cross one’s mind throughout the entire read, but sadly devoid of the impact it had promised to impart.

Overall, the book almost serves its purpose. It is humorous, it is a racy read and it takes potshots, successfully. Most importantly, it unveils a virtual nexus between the government and law enforcing
agencies which is capable enough to make a mountain of a mole or disrupt the normalcy in one’s life, for the vested interests of the powerful. It gives a reader a sense that policemen we accuse of being incompetent are mere pawns directed by bureaucrats, as Hathi Ram sighs, “….in our line of work, nine right and one wrong is wrong, but all ten wrong is right.” It is a compelling read if read, if not, not a loss.