‘Thugs are the only ones who have preserved crime in its purity, cleansing it of the impurities of emotions and enmity. Killing for us is an act of sadhana, to be carried out with a completely detached and clean mind. Our victims are usually not known to us. If they are innocent of any act that might call for retribution, so much the better. In fact, the ideal victims are those who are innocent and unknown. Goddess Bhavani demands purity — purity of the killed as well as of the killer.
‘You might have heard that our method is to strangle with a roomal. After the execution, we accept with grace and respect whatever the victim had in his or her possession, even if it is a single paisa. If there is no money in their possession, we take their clothes with humility. It is also our offering to Devi Bhavani and Allah the Great. We are bound by our faith to, at least once a year, present our offerings obtained from the killings and robberies to them. Our teachings dictate that robbery is to be preceded by the killing, and the killing must be by strangling. After the killing it is essential that we dispose of the body of the victim by burying it in the ground.’
Gruesome though it was, I was unable to put the pages aside. Seshadri continued his march of horror, as if he hadn’t said enough already:
‘Now I am going to tell you something which may horrify you. In Mehta Company you were my marked victim for the year. I had decided it the day you started showing interest in my gardening work. The omens were perfect and I knew you were the one Devi Bhavani had thrown in my way. Her commands became more evident when I was able to win your friendship and confidence in a few easy steps. To let off a bunij — that is what we call a victim — thrown in our way by the Devi, or to fail to recognize the omens she sends us is a sin in our philosophy.
‘There are different ways to win over a victim. In your case I understood that the role of an intellectual was the best. I was able to get very close to you through our discussions on literature. We used to, if you remember, go deep into the forest on our “walks”. The pit for burial too was ready. But the omens that came at the last minute were not favourable. I had to release you.
‘It was then that Kulkarni, the accounts clerk, so conveniently fell into my hands. Omens and signs progressed favourably and the presence of the Devi became more and more apparent to me. The accounts clerk in place of the engineer. What is written cannot be erased.
‘Why am I telling you all this, you wonder. You are not a member of our brotherhood. I have also no thoughts of converting you into a thug. Your picture in my mind has always been that of a bunij. One cannot elude what is ordained and what is ordained cannot be avoided. Why did you manifest before me out of nowhere this morning as I was being taken to the clinic on a stretcher? Why did the surgeon schedule my emergency operation for tomorrow? Why was I fated to die in the course of the surgery? Why did you fail to turn up till eleven o’clock at night? Why did every scheme turn upside down at the stroke of eleven and why was I compelled to write this letter to you? The role granted to you has to be played out fully. And the role assigned to me, that of imparting to you what is normally not imparted, also has to be played out.
‘You are now a living victim. And I, a dead hunter. If you are reading these two sentences it is because this letter has reached you. If this letter has reached you, it is because I am dead. Therefore, understand that this dialogue is taking place (because of the fact that it is taking place) between a dead thug and his living bunij. That makes it very special and important.
‘The answer to the question “Why this dialogue?” is also that it is fated. Since a context like this has not arisen before, I would say that it carries a special mission, a mission assigned by time and circumstances. The history of crime is now passing through an unusual and critical period. It has become necessary to subject its theory and practice to an intelligent discussion and analysis. It is but appropriate that the discussion be initiated by a hunter with his prey. It further becomes ideal when the hunter is dead and the bunij is alive. Death stands between us to prevent the dialogue from getting polluted by emotions or feelings.
‘This dialogue is, however, not going to remain restricted between a hunter and his victim. If you look at it from a different angle, it is also between two hunters. A nurse here who recognized you told me that you, who used to be just an engineer, have, in these past forty-five years, while I had been relentlessly hunting for you, turned into a novelist. Congratulations! This has given me a bigger reason for starting this dialogue with you. For, as a fiction writer, you too are familiar with the art of deluding and fooling your victims, the readers. If we use the roomal, you use the web of words, granted to you by your Devi, Saraswati. This dialogue thus transforms into one between a dead hunter and a living hunter. To be more precise, between a thug-hunter, who never contaminates his hunt with emotions, and a writer-hunter who invariably does. There is one more difference between us. You lie proclaiming that they are lies. You trap your victims with traps advertised as traps. They submit to you knowing that they are being seduced. They experience ecstasy and rapture when you force yourself upon them. The whole experience is turned into an emotional feast. On your own side, you go a step further, making it an act of self-gratification, by mixing lying with lies and deceiving with deception. This is corruption of the highest order and for us thugs, a sin.
‘Our lies are straight lies. Our deceptions are plain deceptions. Neither we who destroy nor the victims who are destroyed feel any kind of exhilaration through the act. We would not board the vehicle of emotions even by mistake. It is not the excitement of the act nor the material gain to be had from it that motivates us, but the philosophy. Our acts are not decided by us. The ideology and the methodology do that.
‘I don’t want you to repeat the mistakes your predecessors have made in understanding us or, rather, not understanding us. Remove the tinted glasses of prejudice you wear before you look at us. While you and your victims fall into a bliss of mutual deception, the torments of our victims lead to their actual liberation. They might not be conscious of it in those final moments of pain. But when the time comes, the liberated souls of our victims will definitely thank us. It will be revealed to them that we were just instruments in the larger scheme of things and that their own sufferings were the unavoidable pangs to be endured during the execution of an ideology and methodology, no doubt bearing the stamp of Nature. It is the grand design of Mother Nature, and hence, doubtlessly, the violence that connects us with our victims is not base but noble. When the victim realizes the underlying nobility of the act, the pain will cease. Deception will cease to be deception, and the lie will cease to be the lie. The agony of the present will enhance the beauty of the future; and so, one day, the present too will become beautiful, in retrospect. You and your victims are sadly denied these beautiful moments. For your aesthetics are different. But now, as a living victim, you are privileged to experience that ecstasy without having to pass through the pain your fellow victims suffered. You will appreciate: we do not allow a victim to learn that he is a victim until the moment the roomal falls around his neck. It is unfortunate that in those critical moments his pain drowns everything. But then, as I said, the pleasure is only delayed, reserved for future realization.
‘In one sense our philosophy is futuristic. We do not dwell on that which has happened because whatever has already happened has begun to rot and what is rotten is impure. Moreover, we always have our eyes set on that ultimate state of destruction of the world when all that has been created will be returned to the elements. Books of literature ceaselessly dig through the past only to bring forth newer and newer versions of it. Revolutionaries seek to rewrite the past even before the blood of revolution has dried on the ground. Thugs hurry to bury the body of their bunij the moment he stops moving. In fact, they do not even lay their hands on a bunij before his pit is ready.