Confessions of an Epic Indian

(This one was written about ten years ago, possibly before that.

In any case, it features the same series character from a previous story I posted earlier on this same blog, Flesh Songs. And she even featured in her own novel, The Iron Bra, published in 1993.

Today, with Ram Gopal Varma’s realistic Mumbai underworld films topping box office charts in the country (and elsewhere, with Sarkar), it makes me smile to know that I attempted to do the same thing, in printed fiction at least.

Needless to say, this story (like the others featuring Sheila Ray) was written long before I’d seen a single RGV film.

But it shares the same spirit.)

The Population Problem
by Ashok Banker

1

They sounded like cheap firecrackers going off, but Diwali was months away, and then, after a moment’s pause, there was the sound of glass shattering which had nothing to do with a religous celebration.

The fat man walking beside Sheila stopped and looked around. “What was that?”

Sheila broke into a run as she heard more gunshots. Some sort of automatic weapon. Definitely in Pimenta’s office, because his was the last one at the far end of the corridor, and that was where the shots were coming from. As she ran, doors opened all along the way, people looking out cautiously, some jerking back as she went by. “Call the police,” she called out.

She reached the end of the corridor as the door to Pimenta’s office opened. A man with a very short haircut came out, grinning. He had a revolver held loosely in his left hand. Another man came out after him, calling out to someone else inside the office.

Sheila stopped running.

The third man emerged from Pimenta’s office. He was carrying a khukhri. There was blood on the khukhri. He was holding the khukhri up like a sword, brandishing it. He saw Sheila, saw the heads looking out of the doors all along the corridor, and waved the bloody khukhri as he shouted in pidgin Bombay English: “LONG LIVE BHAI THAKUR! DEATH TO BHAI THAKUR ENEMIES!”

Doors slammed shut all down the corridor.

Sheila waited as the man, followed by the two gunmen, strode down the corridor toward her. The first man looked at her breasts and muttered something in Hindi to his companions. They laughed harshly. The khukhri man met her eyes as he approached: his eyes were blank, black, fish cold. Sheila met his eyes with a rage of her own, but he didn’t notice. To him, she was just a pair of tits.

She recognized the second man. And the third.

She expected to be recognized too. But as they swept past her, she realized that she had been a child when she had last seen them. They would hardly connect her with that girl in the blood-spattered nightgown 13 years ago.

She ran to the door of the office. Held onto the doorjambs and stared.

Pimenta was on the desk. And on the walls. And on the floor. And on the bookshelf. And on the PC. The deskjet printer.

They had cut off his head and placed it on the desk. On a copy of the newspaper he edited. His eyes stared wildly at Sheila from across the room.

She heard a man scream and turned back.

It was the fat man. The one who had been in the elevator with her, waddling beside her as she came into Editorial.

He had frozen out of fear. Blocking their way.

Khukri Man was yelling at him in Marathi to get out of the way, idiot, but he was locked solid.

As Sheila saw what was about to happen, she began to run again. But Khukhri Man had raised his hand even before she took her first step.

The fat man was planted bang in the middle of the corridor. Flat-footed sandals planted apart as in the broad stance of a woman during late pregnancy. Mouth open, shoulders heaving, breath pumping in and out in a rapid, panicked rhythm. He looked like he was ready to deliver right there and then, with or without a midwife.

The khukhri swung down, striking him in the lower abdomen. Blood flew. God, so much blood. Great thick gouts like vomit from a drunk’s mouth. Splattering onto the shiny tiled floor.

The fat man emitted a groan. Grabbing hold of his belly with both hands. As Sheila began to sprint towards them, she saw him fall to his knees, moan once and then fall face forward onto the floor.

The men were at the end of the corridor now, disappearing through the doorway.

Sheila reached the fat man and leaped over him and the pool of blood in which he lay. He was past helping.

2

She reached the hallway just in time to see the elevator door shutting on their grinning faces. Ignoring the shocked suits standing around, she slammed through the door marked Stairs.

She took them two and three at a time, shoulder hitting the wall on the landings, shoving her way past astonished journalists and workers stained with printer’s ink.

On the ground floor, she leaped over the last banister. The sound of gunshots led her directly to the foyer. Two security guards were down, their outdated carbines unfired. A third was cowering in a corner, trying to punch in a phone number and fucking it up. There were people everywhere, crouching, kneeling, prostrate. Screaming, calling out, crying.

Sunlight struck her face with the impact of a body blow. Knives of light and heat pierced her sleep-deprived eyes. She shielded her face with her palm and scanned the street. D.N. Road on a Monday morning. Packed with suits and officegoers walking from Shivaji Terminus to work. After her sojourn in New York last month, Sheila couldn’t get used to the crowds here. 18 million people packed into a city the size of Long Island, and it always seemed as if they all took to the streets at once.

She barreled through a knot of goggle-eyed commuters all staring in the same direction. Slammed into a chinese food stall, knocking down a suit’s breakfast of greasy noodles. Through a group of people milling around a bus stop, she saw them.

Opening the door to a Maruti Van. White, with dark tinted windows. They didn’t seem to be in any hurry. Khukhri Man was at the door, unlocking the van. The other two still had their guns. Nobody around them seemed to be very upset. Traffic flowed past as usual.

Then she remembered. She didn’t have a gun.

She ran back to the lobby of the Times building. One of the shot security guards lay sprawled across the steps, blood dripping from step to step to the street. A small bunch of interested onlookers surrounded him, watching him bleed to death.

Sheila pushed her way through them, leaned down, snapped open his holster, and yanked out his revolver. She checked it: Loaded. Glancing around at the curious street people, she figured it would have been lifted in another minute anyway.

She ran back to the street, holding the revolver above her head. Nobody noticed or moved to let her pass. She shoved her way through the crowds with brute force.

They were in the van, the engine running. She saw Khukhri Man in the driver’s seat, talking into a cellphone.

She stopped on the pavement in front of the van, and took the classic firing crouch: Both hands gripping the revolver, legs spread, knees bent.

The gunman in the passenger seat saw her and spoke sharply to Khukhri Man. The gunman in the back seat leaned forward to get a better look at her. He was leering.

Khukhri Man said something to the other two. Then finished his cellphone call and snapped the flap shut. The khukhri was on the dashboard, she saw.

One of the gunmen raised his gun. A Chinese Type 56, what the press mistakenly called an AK-56. He gripped the tip of the barrel with one fist and made a masturbatory gesture, grinning at her.

“Aaja jaaneman, aaja,” she heard him call out above the sounds of traffic.

Khukhri Man put the van into gear. He was parked between an Enfield Bullet and a Willys Jeep and had to maneuver a little to get out onto the street.

Sheila didn’t want to fire at them on the open street. There were too many people around. Fucking population of this country.

She saw where Khukhri Man had to go once he reversed his way out of the parking space. And ran to intercept him.

The one-way street led off the main D.N. Road toward Metro, past the Metropolitan Magistrate’s Court. She stepped out into the middle of the two-lane street, aiming the revolver again.

The gunman in the front seat stuck the Type 56 out of the passenger side window as the van came around. But he was on the far side and moving slowly. Khukhri Man swung the van around fast, and hit the pedal, heading straight at her.

She fired once and saw a hole punch through the windshield, spider-cracks shooting out.

Type 56 jerked back, hit in the face, blood gouting out of the wound in his cheek. The gun fell out onto the street and the rear wheel went over it, twisting the barrel.

But the second shot had missed: Khukhri Man ducked his head at just the right instant and the shot went through the back of his bucket seat and on through the rear windshield. She hoped it didn’t hit anyone on D.N. Road. So many people.

The van roared at her like a mad white bull, blinded and in pain. Like a torero, she stepped aside and the vehicle growled past, the left door-handle tapping her hip sharply as it went past. She fired at it, shooting one-handed, and didn’t see where it went.

The van shot down the street and for a moment she thought that was it, they were gone. But instead of taking the turn down the curving lane, it went on straight, and crashed into the silvery pole of a streetlight with a biscuit-crunching sound. Smoke puffed from the exhaust pipe and the engine turned over, accelerating furiously, then roaring impotently.

She kept low as she approached the rear. The van’s low axle had gone up on the pavement. Stuck on a pile of iron girders left over from some recent roadwork. The wheels ground a mound of gravel, showers of pebbles and dust flying behind. The beast pawing the ground angrily.

The engine turned over one last time and stalled.

She had seen six cartridges in the revolver when she had checked it. So far she had fired three shots.

The rear door slid open and the second gunman fell out, vomitting as he emerged. He had cut open his forehead when the van crashed, and blood streamed down his face and neck.

Sheila shot him once in the chest as he released two rounds of his Uzi. They went wide and slammed into the side of a brownstone, gouging out chunks.

He spun around, like a jazz ballet dancer pirouetting in a desi version of a Broadway musical. Banged into the side of the van, bounced off, and fell onto the girders, striking his head hard as he fell. He didn’t move.

Four shots.

She crouched low as she went around the van, on the passenger side. She could see the first gunman slumped in his seat. He was screaming, clutching at the gaping hole in his face.

She took careful aim and squeezed off a shot. His head jerked forward, hitting the cracked windshield. The screaming stopped.

One shot to go.

Sheila heard an explosion and felt a blast of searing heat slap the left side of her body. She fell to the ground, her elbows crunching into gravel. A volley of Type 56 fire followed. Khukhri Man had graduated to semi-automatic fire.

She felt her ribs. The shot had just grazed her chest, but the scratch burned like a hot poker pressed against her side.

There was a gap in the girders, just enough for a person to squeeze through. She crawled under the van, forcing herself into the gap. Oil dripped on her head. She heard gutteral Marathi abuses from somewhere above her. When she was directly below the driver’s seat, she raised the revolver and fired one shot, careful not to hit the fuel pipe.

She waited. Nothing happened. The cursing had stopped.

She crawled out on the driver’s side, experiencing one very bad moment when she was prone and visible. Then she was on her feet, springing around to face the driver’s side window.

He was inside, struggling to get a grip on his khukhri. The Type 56 was beside him, so she assumed the magazine was depleted. Then she saw his other hand. There was too much blood to be sure, but it looked like his thumb and two fingers had been shot off. That was why he had abandoned the gun: it took two hands to hold a Type 56 steady. He was lucky. There was a hole the size of a rupee coin in the middle of his seat, between his thighs.

He grimaced as she raised the gun to his head. He brought up the khukhri very fast, hacking at her neck. She dodged it and chopped his wrist, feeling it snap. The khukhri thunked into the gravel and lay imbedded.

He swore at her, holding his other, blood-smeared hand to his chest. Teeth bared as he bit back the pain.

“Who are you, bitch?” he asked in Marathi.

“Sheila,” she replied. “Sheila Ray.”

He frowned. Then his eyes widened in recognition. He looked closer and she knew he was examining her features to compare them to his memory of her father. Everybody compared her to her father. She was used to it.

“Yes,” she said. “Ashok Ray’s daughter.”

He nodded, acknowledging her, impressed. He had heard the stories, she could see. Then his face wrinkled in a scowl of confusion.

“Why?” he asked in Marathi. She knew what he meant. Why would you, a contract killer like me, attack us?

“Well,” she said, crouching briefly to retrieve the khukhri. “Actually, the fat man was a good enough reason. You didn’t have to do him, you know. He was just an innocent bystander. So this is for him.”

She shot him in the groin. That made six.

She threw the revolver aside and watched him thrash in agony.

“And then there’s the fact that I was hired to do the same job. Hit Pimenta. Of course, I would have done it much more gracefully, using these blades.”

She lifted her shirt, showing him a glimpse of the blades in their pouches in her specially made belt. “But obviously, Bhai Thakur thought that the more goons he hired, the better his chances of getting the job done. Or maybe it’s just this fucking country. Too many fucking people, too few jobs. Even in this fucking field, can you believe this shit?! In India, even the underworld has a population problem!”

She shook her head, disgusted. “But the thing is, brother, when I’m hired to do a hit, I do a hit. So you did Pimenta. And I have to do you.”

And then she used the khukhri on him. Cutting off his screams. It was important to send a message back to Bhai Thakur.

When you hired Sheila Ray, you didn’t hire anyone else. Even if there was an unemployment problem in this over-populated city.

3

As she walked away from the van, the whinging sirens of police vehicles drew closer. She didn’t bother to run or hide. She simply crossed the street, crossed D.N.Road, and went up the side entrance into C.S. Terminus.

In seconds, she was lost in the mass of people going in and coming out of the station.