Free Between the Assassinations by Aravind Adiga Page B

this bomb-exploding stuff. If you knew the code, you understood it was just talk. Only he had taken them seriously; he had thought that they fucked women and blew up bombs. He did not know about the code, because he did not really belong—either to the Brahmins, or to the Hoykas, or even to the gang of spoiled brats.
    He was in a secret caste—a caste of Brahmo-Hoykas, of which he had found only one representative so far, himself, and which put him apart from all the other castes of humankind.
     
     
    He took another autorickshaw to the junior college, and from there, making sure no one was watching him, walked up Old Court Road with his head to the ground and his hands in his pockets.
    He parted the trees, came up to the statue of Jesus, and sat down. The smell of fertilizer was still strong in the air. Closing his eyes, he tried to calm himself. Instead, he began to think about the suicide that had taken place on this road many years ago. He had heard about it from Shabbir Ali. A man had been found hanging from a tree by this road—perhaps even in this spot. A suitcase lay at his feet, broken open. Inside, the police found three gold coins and a note: “In a world without love, suicide is the only transformation possible.” Then there was a letter, addressed to a woman in Bombay.
    Shankara opened his eyes. It was as if he could see the man from Bombay, hanging in front of him, his feet dangling in front of the dark Jesus.
    He wondered, was that going to be his fate? Would he end up condemned and hanged?
    He remembered again the fateful events. After the conversation at Shabbir Ali’s house, he had gone down to the Bunder. He had asked for Mustafa, describing him as a man who sold fertilizers; he had been directed to a market. He found a row of vegetable sellers, he asked for Mustafa, and was told, “Go upstairs.” He climbed the stairs. He found himself in a pitch-black space where a thousand men seemed to be coughing at once. He too began to cough. As his eyes got used to the dark, he realized he was in a pepper market. Giant gunnysacks were stacked up against the grimy walls, and coolies, coughing incessantly, were hauling them around. Then the darkness ended, and he arrived in an open courtyard. Once again he asked:
    “Where is Mustafa?”
    He was directed by a man lying on a cart of old vegetables toward an open door.
    He went in and found three men at a round table playing cards.
    “Mustafa’s not in,” said a man with narrow eyes. “What do you want?”
    “A bag of fertilizer.”
    “Why?”
    “I am growing lentils,” Shankara said.
    The man laughed. “What kind?”
    “Beans. Green gram. Horse gram.”
    The man laughed again. He put his cards down, went into a room, and hauled out an enormous gunnysack, putting it down by Shankara’s feet.
    “What else do you need to grow your beans?”
    “A detonator,” Shankara said.
    The men at the table all put down their cards together.
    In the inner room of the house, he was sold a detonator; he was told how to turn the dial and set the timer. It would cost more than Shankara had on him at that moment, so he came back the next week with the money, and took the bag and the detonator back with him by autorickshaw, and got off at the bottom of Old Court Road. He had hidden it all near the statue of Jesus.
    One Sunday, he went around the school. It was like the movie Papillon, one of his favorites, the scene where the hero plans on how to escape from jail—it was as exciting as that. He was seeing his school as if for the first time, with all the keenness of a fugitive’s eye. After that, on that fateful Monday, he took the bag of fertilizer with him to school and attached the detonator to it, turned the timer to one hour, and left it under the back row, where he knew no one would sit.
    Then he waited, counting off the hour minute by minute, like the hero in Papillon.
     
     
    At midnight, the phone began ringing.
    It was Shabbir Ali.
    “Lasrado wants to see