He sits stunned in the dark.
When dawn finally comes a figure sits before him on a stool, swigging from a plastic bottle of country liquor.
“Manoj?” Sunny groans, through the pain and the sorrow.
“Oh no,” comes the reply. “Manoj is gone.”
It’s the Incubus. His rasping voice unmistakable.
“Gone?”
Sunny feels the floodwaters of panic rise in his chest.
“Gone where?”
“To get the first payment, of course.” The Incubus laughs. “Your people have come through for you.”
Sunny squeezes his eyelids shut. “They’re going to kill him,” he says.
“No, no, no,” the Incubus replies. “You’re the heir to the kingdom. You’re much too precious for them to risk that.” He gets off the stool, tosses the liquor bottle to the floor, slowly circles around behind Sunny. “Besides,” he goes on, “you’re the one who’s going to kill him.”
“I don’t understand.”
The Incubus pulls a long, greasy rag from his pocket as he edges out of Sunny’s vision, like a bad magician performing a bad trick.
“Just not yet.”
“What are you doing?”
Unable to see.
Unable to turn or break free.
Writhing in his ropes.
Until the Incubus looms above him, a nightmare in flesh.
“What are you doing?!”
Brings the rag down over Sunny’s gaping mouth.
Ties it tight.
“Telling you my story.”
ALL GLORY MUST GO TO GODS
1.
It’s the story of my life, Sunny Wadia. Here I am, Sunil Rastogi, crippled and scarred. But not so long ago I was a young man of nineteen on the back of my brother’s brand-new Pulsar, and my brother, twenty-five years on earth, riding up front. On that day it was just before dark, when the birds are loudest above the fields and the sun is a ball of fire in the sky. We were riding slow. The road had been paved only three months before, but it was crumbling already. Such is life. Sunny Wadia, listen. A man flagged us down at the Bulandshahr junction, stepped out and waved us down in a panic, and we saw another man lying motionless in the road beside him. “Don’t stop,” I said, “it’s a trick,” but before my brother could react the first man pulled a gun and the second leaped to his feet. My brother stopped the bike in a calm manner, and as we climbed off, he said, “Do what they say,” then he whispered to me, “We can always kill them later.” Some gust of wind must have carried his voice to them like a stray spark igniting my life, for the one with the gun laughed a moment later and said, “Oh really?” then he shot my brother in the chest. “Behenchod!” I cried as they jumped on our bike and escaped toward the sunset, while my brother collapsed into the dirt.
Some other men on bikes passed by as I held my hand to the wound, tried to stop the blood that was pumping out of him. One of these men turned and hurried off to fetch a police Gypsy they’d seen parked just down the road. As we waited, my brother slipped out of consciousness. “Why did you do that?” he said. “Do what?!” I replied, but I would never find out, for those were his last words.
The cops in their jeep arrived soon enough. They looked down on us as if we were dogs. I shouted at them to take us to hospital. “Take him yourself,” one of them said. The other said, “Do you think we’re charity?” “But, sirs,” I cried, “you have your Gypsy right here. He’s dying.” They looked on. “Please, sirs,” I cried, “it’s nothing to you, but it’s my brother’s life.” “Oh, it’s nothing?” the first cop sneered. And with that he turned and the other followed. I ran after them, Sunny Wadia. I fell on my knees. “Please, sirs, just take him, please, why won’t you take him?” The first one looked at me and said, “We don’t want his blood on our seats.” I said, “Sir, if that’s the case, I’ll clean the blood. I’ll scrub it off with my own hands, you won’t see a single stain when I’m done.” Do you know what he said to that? “But where do you expect us to sit while we wait?”
2.
Such is life, Sunny Wadia. My brother died there in the road. My mother blamed me for his death, then collapsed and died herself from shock during his cremation. My father had already died from alcohol poisoning when I was small, so now I was left alone with my brother’s widow and their little son. My uncle lived in the next house with his fat wife and their own stupid sons, and on the pretext of helping they came and took hold of our animals and land and my brother’s widow as well. She wailed and wailed in my uncle’s house, and I lay listening to her in the night. I knew soon enough one of my uncle’s sons would take her as his own.
Oh, Sunny Wadia, I was full of rage, staring at the ceiling. Do you know how much it burned? I wanted to kill them all, smash their heads with rocks, slit all their throats, kill all the cops in the world. But who was I in this world? Without money, without power, without even a bike or a gun or an iron rod to my name. I said to myself, You must find a way out of this place or you’ll be ruined. So do you know what I did? I applied to join the police force.
You look surprised, Sunny Wadia, but understand, I knew what it was like out there. I didn’t want to be next in line. I wanted to be sitting in a Gypsy instead, handing out tickets for life and death. But in the meantime, I started roaming the area, snatching gold chains. It was so easy! The cops didn’t care about this kind of thing, they were too busy protecting men like you, making money for themselves. I loitered in the markets, and one day a man left his scooter running while he went to buy medicine. I stole that and rode off and sold it, then I used the money to buy an old Pulsar like my brother’s. Then with the money from the chains, I bought a country pistol of my own. Now I was riding along on my bike with a gun stuffed down my pants. It was so easy. Yes, I thought, this is the life! Only at home, I was still under a cloud and in such a rage, watching those fellows looking down at me. So I went out and stayed out. I was free when I was on my bike, robbing chains.