The Thing about Thugs Read online

  ‘Sothaees, Amir Ali?’ I enquired, pausing from jotting down his words.

  ‘O sahib, excuse my oversight, for benighted that I am, I lack the forethought to avoid getting carried away by my own disturbing tale, every bit of which stands in front of me as vivid as a person in broad daylight. Perhaps sahib, you do not recall this strange word, sothaee, from when I explained to you the functions of the members of the gang: sothaees are inveiglers, they are members sent out in advance to scout around, identify victims, if possible smell out their weaknesses and plans, befriend them, lead them to us or us to them. So, Kaptaan Sahib, one of our sothaees returned, bearing news of a merchant and his son who were travelling with two menservants; the party appeared to be rich and vulnerable. By the time we caught up with them, we were in Patna, near the shops about the jama masjid, most of them closing, now that night had fallen. But this night was not cool and clear as nights usually are at that time of year. It was oppressive and humid.

  ‘Perhaps this was the reason why, when we reached the merchant and his party, who were travelling in a smart horse-driven buggy, with another horse, saddled for riding, tied to it, we found him engrossed in an argument with a driver who was obstructing the road with his bullock cart. There was a group of young men sitting on the cart, probably returning from or going to some marriage party, and in high if not slightly inebriated spirits. Perhaps, had the night been milder, the two groups would not have got into an argument.

  ‘When we reached the merchant, he was being intimidated by the greater number of his opponents who, being locals, though of a lower class, were pressing their advantage more than perhaps good breeding allowed.

  ‘Into that fray, my father rode his horse. We had decided that the best horse in our group would be used by my father, who assumed the role of a nobleman from Oudh on his way to Benaras on business, while the others, mostly on foot, would pretend to be his companions and servants. We already knew that the merchant was from Calcutta and on his way to Benaras: such information is what the sothaees are sent to inveigle.

  ‘The appearance of our larger party cowed down the men in the bullock cart, and soon they unblocked the road and let us and the merchant’s party proceed to the mughal sarai further ahead from the mosque. The merchant was already taken with the cultured language and bearing of my father, and appreciative of his support during the fracas with the bullock-cart lot. After spending the night in the same sarai and after revealing, by accident, that we were also headed for Benaras, it was not difficult to get the merchant and his party to join us on the journey.

  ‘And thus we proceeded for two more nights, sahib, heading for Allahabad, on our way to Benaras. My father, Allah pardon him his crimes, was always a careful man. Some members of the gang used to complain about it. But the graver minds knew that his care and planning saved them much trouble — for, unlike many other gangs, we never ended up running a risk by killing someone who turned out to have only a donkey and two rupees in a bundle.

  ‘Perhaps, on the second night, my father would have given the signal for the merchant and his party to be disposed of. By then, the merchant had come to trust us. He and his son would come into our camp for the evening meal, leaving his servant with the horses in their camp, and he would let his sword lie at a distance from him. But that night, after we had set up camp, one of the sothaees came with information that a contingent of the Company Bahadur’s sepoys was camping just a few yards further down the road. My father judged this to be a risk, though there were those who said that any real Thug could take care of a man without a single sound escaping his lips. Still, we waited for the third night.

  ‘It was a cold night. We lit a bonfire, not far from a grove of palm trees in a desolate, barren field, just off the road. The merchant and his son came to join us as usual. I thank you, Ali Sahib, he told my father, for accompanying me all this way from that unsainted town of Patna. Truly there is enjoyment in the society of gentlemen who have seen the world, and more so when one is in such desolate parts.

  ‘And thus the conversation continued, the merchant and his son being so used to our company by now that they did not grow suspicious of, or even notice, that three or four of my father’s companions were sitting closer to them than usual.

  ‘And the hospitality you have meted out to me and my son, Ali Sahib, the merchant continued. That, if I may say so, is the mark of a true gentleman. Never have I travelled with a greater feeling of safety, with less need to be watchful. With you, O gracious host, I know I will be taken care of.

  ‘Ay, growled an old Thug who was sitting next to me, behind my father. You will be taken care of. We will see to that.

  ‘How, I almost asked him, for, sahib, I was still only vaguely aware of the details of my new profession. It was then that I noticed that both the men sitting behind the merchant and his son were holding gamchas in their hands, the scarves with which bhutottoes throttle their victims.

  ‘My father and a couple of his older companions occupied the merchant and his son in gracious conversation all through the meal. Then, having washed our hands with a little water from the surahi, we settled back in our places, and my father raised his voice and ordered for the hookah and tobacco to be brought: tambaku lao, he shouted loudly. This was the signal.

  ‘Quicker than thought, the thugs with the gamchas who sat behind the merchant and his son, the bhutottoes who specialized in this business, threw their scarves around their victims’ necks. In an instant, the merchant and his son were on their backs, struggling in the agonies of death. Taajoob, sahib, not a sound escaped them, nothing but an indistinct gurgling. I knew that their servants had met a similar, silent fate a few metres away in the darkness. How easy it is, sahib, to snuff out a life; how easy it is to kill a human being!

  ‘Under those palm trees, in that barren piece of land, we buried the four bodies, after having slit their bellies open so that the gases of decay building up in them would not explode and disturb the loose earth of their shallow grave. As we walked away the next morning, I looked back, sahib, and already, from a little distance, there was nothing extraordinary to distinguish that piece of brown land from the barrenness all around it, those nameless stretches of straggly weeds and no irrigation, the lands where the writ of Allah and Bhowanee runs, the lands denuded of the grace of your God of Reason, sahib.’

  15

  Jaanam,

  Yes, a blessing and a curse, that’s what our ancestral lands were to us. A blessing, for there were not many who had land of their own, and once we had vast stretches, given to one of our ancestors as a jagir by Emperor Akbar. The jagir lands have since been divided and subdivided with each contending generation, despite Chacha’s claim that in the past, only the eldest son inherited the land — a claim that was true, I suppose, only for the last two or three generations, when siblings got along better than was the custom. For, surely the original jagir must have been bigger: what we possessed was not substantial enough to be a gift from an emperor, but of course no one had a copy of the original jagirnama, though we had other records of ownership.

  And yet, by local standards, what my father and Mustapha Chacha inherited was substantial. It would have enabled us to live a life of fullness, if not abundance and ease. But, alas, my love, we could cultivate only a quarter of the land we had inherited. Oh, we had the papers to those plots all right, for all they were worth, but Mirza Habibullah, a much richer man who was related to us, or whose forefathers had been to ours so far back in time that I for one never understood the connection, this rich and powerful relation had laid claim to all our lands. Most of it he had occupied by force, and even the quarter that we cultivated was repeatedly claimed by him. Every planting season, his men would divert our water channels or block them; every harvest season his cattle would be accidentally herded into our fields.

  Mustapha Chacha had the respect of many in the village and I think that was the only thing that protected us from the wrath of Mirza Habibullah and his henchmen. For Mirz
a Habibullah was a powerful man, one of the richest farmers in the village, a person who aspired to set himself up as more than a landlord, which probably explained his appropriation of the title, Mirza.

  What angered him the most was that Mustapha Chacha defied him instead of coming to a compromise, perhaps conceding him ownership rights in return for the right to continue farming the land. I think that would have been acceptable to Mirza Habibullah: he already owned most of the land, and the bit that we cultivated would not have added much to his wealth in any case. But Mustapha Chacha was a man of principles, and he would never agree to being browbeaten; he would never resort to subterfuge, or cower in front of superior might. This was what he taught his sons and me too, but his life taught me another lesson — would that my youngest cousin, Shahid, had learnt the lesson too. For jaanam, the bending doob-grass survives the storm; the upright palm breaks like a twig in this world of ours.

  There were other reasons for Habibullah’s enmity. We knew his father and uncles had feuded with our grandfather. We also knew that on at least two or three occasions, Mustapha Chacha had worsted Mirza Habibullah in the eyes of the village — once at the village panchayat.

  I remember the occasion of the panchayat. A servant in the house of Habibullah’s brother, who was a rich farmer, just like Habibullah, and like him, a fat man with a sparse hennaed beard and no moustache, had been accused of stealing an expensive necklace. The servant, Haldi Ram, and his family were reputed to be honest people, and despite threats and beatings, Haldi Ram continued to proclaim his innocence. The matter was brought before the village panchayat, which had assembled, as was the custom, under the peepal tree in the village square. Most of the village had turned up too, quite a few siding with Haldi Ram and his family despite their Cow-caste status. However, Habibullah, who had recently had himself chosen sarpanch, was convinced that Haldi Ram, a villainous-looking, pockmarked man — faces can deceive as much as words — was the guilty party. The interrogation that followed was so one-sided as to get members of Habibullah’s party twirling their whiskers in satisfaction. But then Mustapha Chacha interfered.

  Do not misunderstand me, jaanam; Mustapha Chacha was not a man who opposed people out of dislike or a desire for prestige. He was a studious, religious man, regular in his prayers, and he was a member of the panchayat only because every villager, except Habibullah and his henchmen, wanted him there. If you had met him, I am sure you too would have seen him as the villagers saw him: a man hardened and leathery with work, with deep lines etched on his face, but seldom without a smile on his lips or a twinkle in his dark eyes. What he exuded was both a love for knowledge and a tolerance for the weaknesses of others — the two characteristics that he believed were enjoined upon all Muslims. He would not interfere in other people’s affairs unless he was driven by a higher purpose. I think he was moved to interfere in this case because he genuinely believed in the innocence of Haldi Ram, having known his family for years. But perhaps there was also the desire — what Kaptaan Meadows might call ‘scientific curiosity’ — to apply his learning to a concrete situation.

  This then, jaanam, is what he suggested, and his suggestion was accepted after a vigorous debate in which Habibullah’s objections were discarded by the other members of the panchayat. It was an old and time-tested method to ascertain the truth of a statement in such situations, a method that was used, Mustapha Chacha said, in the Mughal courts of the past. This is how it went, my love:

  First, Mustapha Chacha had the servants from the house brought to the panchayat square. There were five in all, and it was clear that one of them, though not necessarily Haldi Ram, had stolen the necklace. After soaking a quantity of rice in cold water and drying it in the sun, which does not take long in the glorious sunlight of my land, jaanam, he weighed rice equal to the weight of a rupee on a pair of scales. He arranged five such weights of rice. Then calling the five servants, including Haldi Ram, to him, he told them to swear by their gods and on the heads of their near and dear ones that they had not stolen the necklace, and that they did not know who had done so. When the oath had been taken, and Mustapha Chacha had impressed its solemnity on the gathering once again, he asked each of the five servants to extend their right hand, palm upward. On each man’s palm, he placed a weight of the soaked and dried rice. Each man was told to hold the rice in his palm, not allowing any grain to drop, until all five had been served in a similar manner. Then, after repeating their oath again, they were made to sit down with a plantain leaf in front of them. Mustapha Chacha then said in a solemn voice: Some person among you has taken a false oath. But God, who is everywhere, is among us too. Let every man put his portion of rice into his mouth, and having chewed it, let him, when instructed, spit it out upon the plantain leaf before him. When this consecrated rice comes out from the mouth of the false, it will be different from the rice from the mouth of the honest and true.

  And so it was done, jaanam: from four of the mouths, including that of Haldi Ram, the chewed rice came out much like milk and water, and from the fifth it came out almost like dry sand, fine as powder. Then Mustapha Chacha said: He who is the thief, or knows of the identity of the thief, from his false mouth the rice has come out dry and stricken; from the mouths of those who are innocent, it has come forth wet and well chewed.

  Even though Habibullah grumbled, the panchayat sent, as agreed upon earlier, men to ransack the quarters of the servant who was now considered guilty, having been indicted by the consecrated rice. Even before the men returned with the recovered necklace, the servant had broken down and confessed.

  Great was the rejoicing in the village, jaanam, not least in Haldi Ram’s family and community, and the reputation of my uncle as a learned and devout man was further enhanced, though it was not a reputation Mustapha Chacha ever courted. That evening, when he joined us at the dastakhan for dinner, we asked him about the significance of the event, the means by which he had charmed the rice. He smiled and replied: The greatest charms reside in the human mind, my children. A guilty man will always find it impossible to chew — his gullet will be dry, his saliva meagre. God is not our servant: he does not run about and do our errands, but he gives us arms, and minds, with which to do them.

  Yes, jaanam, now you know why I revere this man, this man of truth and vision who, finally, could not save himself or his family from destruction. For, my love, it is not only the greatest charms that reside in the human heart. So does the foulest evil. And when that heart belongs to the rich and powerful, like Mirza Habibullah, well then, jaanam, you should never cease to look over your shoulder. Never.

  16

  [WILLIAM T. MEADOWS, NOTES ON A THUG: CHARACTER AND CIRCUMSTANCES, 1840]

  ‘And thus, sahib, did my first year as a thug come to an end. How many did we kill that year? Close to seventy! And yet, I had no blood on my hands. Was it my reluctance or the vestiges of good sense in my father? Whatever the reason, for those five months, I was only trained to be a scout and camp follower. Even though some gang members criticized my father for it, and particularly so, the man who was next in command, Mirza Habibullah, my father never made me commit a murder. I returned to our village with my hands untainted by blood. But the second year, I knew, would be different. Alas, sahib, I had no idea just how different.

  ‘Strangely, I do not recall how the lota ceremony went that year: did my father spill a few drops, which went unnoticed? Or did the partridge, for us Thugs a bird of omen, call from the wrong side of the fields? Or was the sacred kudalee not properly consecrated? Something must have happened, sahib, for we all, not least my gentle if misguided father, paid for the oversight. Strange are the ways of providence!’

  ‘Surely, Amir Ali, said I, ‘surely providence cannot be blamed for meting out just deserts to such a horrible set of miscreants as you. What is the Thug’s life but a preying upon those weaker than him? Crueller than the tiger, craftier than the fox, with less scruples than a hyena is a Thug. It is a wonder that providence has allowed your anc
ient vocation to flourish for so long!’

  ‘I acknowledge, O Kaptaan Sahib, the justice of your criticism, for I have been exposed, however fleetingly, to the wondrous rays of your God of Reason, and I stand reformed of the evil ways of my ancestral order. But had you made this criticism to my father or his companions, they would have answered you thus: Are you English not passionately fond of sporting? A lion, a wolf, an elephant rouses your passion for destruction — in its pursuit you risk body and limb. How much higher game is a Thug’s, and how much more fair, for man is pitted against man, not against a dumb, bewildered beast. And are you not fond of the battles and wars by which you win a town here and a market there? How much less bloody is the occupation of a Thug!’

  ‘Enough, Amir Ali, evil thoughts are not meant to be repeated. Enough.’

  ‘Forgive me, sahib. You are right, as always. I was carried away by my recollection of what befell my father in my second year out with him. It happened not far from Patna, for that year too we took the same route as in the previous year. This time, we started our bloody business early into the trip. On the very night that we embarked, we fell in with a family — an elderly man, his wife and their ten-year-old son (you will recall the bodies, sahib) — who were also headed for Patna. Though my father was against it — for the man was obviously a mullah, bearded and holy in his demeanour and voice, the dark mark of regular prayer creased into the middle of his forehead, and we had not even left the region around our village — my father’s companions were impatient to begin and they garrotted all three and buried them in that place next to the neem tree from which your men later recovered the bodies. Then we set off, though not without an argument.