Sartaj took her back through the people she had met through Gaitonde, and she was sure – there was Jojo, Arvind, Suhasini. She had never even seen the driver of the limousine. Gaitonde had seen to it that the logistics ran efficiently, smoothly, exactly the same every time. ‘We had to keep it private,’ Zoya said. ‘And he was very good at security.’
‘Who did he talk about? He must have mentioned some names, some people.’
‘He didn’t talk to me.’
‘How can that be? You spent all this time together. You were his secret girlfriend. He liked you. What did he say to you?’
‘I told you, not much. I didn’t talk, mostly. At first I didn’t say much because I was afraid of him. Then I realized that he liked me silent, that was what he preferred. So I kept quiet.’
‘So you must have listened a lot. What did he talk about?’
‘To me? Not much. Make-up, my career. Films and the film business. What I should do next.’ She was looking down at her hands now, and under the overhead light her face was a mask of gold. ‘He thought he knew everything. I said yes a lot and nodded my head.’
‘What was he like, this Gaitonde?’
‘What do you expect? He was Ganesh Gaitonde. He was just like himself.’
‘Madam, but you knew him. Really. You must know things about him that the rest of us don’t. Some details.’
‘He played the part of Ganesh Gaitonde even when he was alone with himself. I think he was the same when he was alone with me as he was when he was in his durbar with his boys. That voice, and sitting like this.’ She slouched back in the chair, her shoulders came up, an aggressively cupped hand gestured towards Sartaj, as if wanting to squeeze his testicles. ‘Ay, Sardar-ji. What, you think you can come on to my ship and push me around, shanne? Do you know who I am? I am Ganesh Gaitonde.’
At the orotund rolling of the name Sartaj and Kamble both burst out into laughter. She had that voice exactly right, the one that Sartaj had heard that long-ago afternoon, full of booming self-importance, even over a clangy speaker. ‘Madam,’ Sartaj said, ‘you are too good.’
Zoya accepted the tribute as her proper due, with a slight inclination of the head. She was still Gaitonde, though. She picked up an imaginary phone, dialled with her little finger. ‘Arre, Bunty! Maderchod! You sit in Bombay eating all the malai and getting fat, and take months to do work that should be done in one week. What happened with that khoka we were expecting from Kilachand this week?’
Sartaj gave her another appreciative laugh. ‘Madam,’ he said, ‘so he talked to one Bunty in Bombay?’
‘Frequently.’
‘Do you remember any details?’
‘Details of?’
‘What they talked about.’
‘No, I tried not to listen. It was all about khokas and petis and meet that one there and call that one. Mostly they did their business in Arvind’s flat, downstairs. But at night, when I was supposed to be sleeping, sometimes Gaitonde would sit in the balcony and talk on the phone. I heard bits and pieces, but mostly it was boring. I can’t remember details. I used to pretend I was sleeping a lot, just lie there and close my eyes and think about my career. He used to talk on his phone then.’
Gaitonde must have been planning murder, mayhem and extortion, but to a beautiful young woman dreaming of stardom, perhaps that was boring. Sartaj smiled encouragingly. ‘So there was Bunty he talked to. Who else? Please think, anything can help us. Even any names.’
Zoya sat up, out of her Gaitonde sprawl. She put a hand on her chin and projected concentration. ‘I can’t really remember. There were always three or four phones. There was one phone for Bunty. Yes, yes, I remember. There was a Kumar on another separate one, a Kumar Saab or Mr Kumar.’
‘Very good, madam,’ Sartaj said. Kamble was writing on a small pad. ‘That is very good. Mr Kumar.’
‘I think there were other people in Bombay, in Nashik. Of course he talked to Jojo often. Sometimes he had me say hello to her. Then there was somebody in London, some Trivedi-ji or something like that. There were a few others. I can’t remember. Then there was one phone only for his guru.’
‘Gaitonde had a guru?’
‘Yes, he talked to him almost as much as Jojo, I thought.’
‘Who was this guru?’
‘I don’t know. He called him “Guru-ji”.’
‘Where was the guru calling from?’
‘I don’t know. All over, I think. I remember Gaitonde telling him once to go to Disneyland.’
‘Disneyland?’
‘Disneyland, Disneyworld. One of those. And another time this Guru-ji was in Germany.’
‘What did they talk about?’
‘Spiritual things. About the past and the future. God, I think. Gaitonde consulted the guru on shaguns and mahurats and when to start projects and everything like that.’
So Gaitonde had a guru. He had been famous for his piety, his four-hour pujas, his donations to religious festivals and pilgrimage centres, so it made sense that he had a guru. Of course he had a guru.
Sartaj took Zoya to the beginning, to her first meeting with Jojo, and then through Gaitonde and then again the days with him, and the nights when she pretended sleep and he phoned. The details were consistent, and the same names emerged: Arvind, Suhasini, Bunty. It really did seem that Zoya Mirza had built a connection to Ganesh Gaitonde solely through these meetings in an apartment in Singapore, and through phone calls. He had financed her rise as a model, and then her first film. How exactly Zoya had profited from her trips abroad emerged only very slowly, as Sartaj probed past her reluctance. She was reticent about her colleagues in the movie industry, but Sartaj could be relentless even as he was being polite. She was a worthy opponent, and he had a weak hand, and it was her house, so they went back and forth. But he finally had what he thought might be some approximation of the whole story. They looked at each other, Zoya and he, quite exhausted.
‘Nothing more, madam?’ he said. ‘Anything at all about Gaitonde?’
‘What else is there to say?’
‘Nothing else about the great Ganesh Gaitonde? What he was like?’
‘Great?’ She shrugged. ‘He was a short man trying to act like some big hero,’ she said.
So are we all, Sartaj thought, and may Vaheguru deliver us from the judgements of our girlfriends. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Thank you, madam.’
‘You have the papers?’
Kamble stood up and held out an envelope, and then watched Zoya admiringly as she flipped through the sheets and the photographs. ‘You are really very tall,’ he said.
‘Are these the originals?’ she said, to Sartaj.
‘They are what we found in Jojo’s apartment, everything.’
It was a lie, and she knew it. But Sartaj was now standing up, not easy and pliable any more, and there was nothing to be gained from tussling with him right now. Zoya put the envelope down on a small glass table, and put her arms behind her back, and became suddenly tired and somehow girlish. ‘I’ll tell you something,’ she said. ‘I’m actually not six feet tall.’
‘Arre, really?’ Kamble said. ‘You are, I’m sure.’
‘No.’ She walked behind them to the door, and into the hall. ‘I’m really only five ten and a half. But Jojo told everyone that I was six feet, and everyone believed it. All the media made such a fuss about that. Now I can’t get rid of it, this six-feet thing.’
Sartaj could see that Kamble was measuring himself against her shoulder. Kamble said, ‘Why would you want to?’
‘Some of the heroes, you know, they don’t want to star with a tall girl. It makes them look small.’
‘No,’ Kamble said indignantly.
Sartaj could see down the hall, next to the kitchen door, the old man who had opened the door for them. He was polishing a silver dish and watching them.
‘It’s true,’ Zoya insisted. ‘I know I have lost very good roles just because of this. These men are just afraid, and they still dominate the industr
y.’ She raised her shoulders and let them drop.
‘We live in sad times,’ Sartaj said.
‘A real Kaliyug,’ Kamble said, with a certain morose inwardness.
Zoya was amused. ‘He used to say that all the time.’
‘Who, Gaitonde?’ Kamble said.
‘Yes. He and his Guru-ji used to talk about Kaliyug all the time. About that and the end of the world.’
Sartaj was careful to let the moment pass, so as not to seem anxious. ‘What else did they say about this?’ he said, very gently.
‘I don’t know. He used that Hindi word for it, what is it? For qayamat?’
‘Pralay?’ Kamble said.
‘Yes. Pralay. They talked about that.’
‘Saying what?’ Kamble was also very casual, but Zoya was now quite aware of the attention focused on her.
‘Why? What is it?’
‘Please, madam,’ Sartaj said, ‘we are just interested in everything Gaitonde said or did. Tell us.’
‘I can’t remember, exactly. I was supposed to be asleep. And it was all so boring. I didn’t listen very much.’
‘Still,’ Sartaj said, ‘you must have heard something. About pralay.’
‘I don’t know. I think they used to talk about how it was coming. Gaitonde used to ask if it was, and I think Guru-ji said it was. Something about the signs being all around.’
‘They talked about how pralay was coming…What were these signs?’
Sartaj waited. Zoya shook her head.
‘All right, madam. Thank you for your time,’ Sartaj said. ‘And if you remember anything else at all about this, or any other thing concerning Gaitonde, please call me. It’s very important. And if we can be of any service, please call also. Any problems, anything, please call us.’
Zoya took his card, but she was troubled. ‘Why, what are you worried about in all this? Why do you want to know about Gaitonde? He’s dead.’
‘We are just conducting an investigation into gang activities, madam,’ Sartaj said. ‘There is nothing to worry about. He is dead, yes.’
They left her worrying about her dead Gaitonde. In the lift they were both quiet, sweating suddenly after the uniform coolness of Zoya Mirza’s white apartment. Her media image really was impeccable: there were no affairs and no scandals, and when other heroines said bitchy things about her in magazines she never ever replied. And all this she had built on a foundation provided by Ganesh Gaitonde. She’s quite brilliant, Sartaj thought. The guards were dozing at the gate, and the moon had vanished, leaving behind only the orange circles from the streetlights. Near the motorcycles, Kamble finally spoke: ‘We don’t have any facts, really.’
‘Just that Gaitonde had a guru, that’s the only new thing. Nothing to bother Delhi with, really. I’ll call in the morning.’
‘Nothing to worry about.’
‘I didn’t know you were a religious man, Kamble.’
‘What?’
‘All that talk of Kaliyug.’
‘You think this world we live in is anything but Kaliyug? Everything is upside-down, boss. That woman upstairs, living in that huge apartment, all alone. She has two policemen coming to her house, and she meets us alone in the middle of the night. She doesn’t have a father or brother there, nobody.’
‘I think she can look after herself.’
‘That is my point, bhai. And yes, I am.’
‘What?’
‘Religious.’
‘Buddhist?’
‘Why do you assume that? No, I’m stubborn. I’m not going to give up anything, I’m going to take respect and whatever else I want from those Manuvadi bastards. Who are they to say what a man is, what level Hindu he is? Bhenchods. My father was like that also. For that, some people in our community fought with him.’
They left each other with a raising of the hand. Racing down an empty road in Goregaon, Sartaj tried to imagine pralay. He tried to see a storm of fire take up the bodies sleeping on the steps and the pavements, a terrible wind crushing the buildings, crumbling them. The images wouldn’t stay, the fear flickered out. Life was all around, too much of it. And yet, Sartaj couldn’t fall asleep for a good hour and a half. He lay twisted in bed, uneasy. Gaitonde had a guru. There was something teasing at Sartaj’s mind, something hiding just beyond his reach but touching him all the same. He drank some water and stretched and turned on his left side, away from the window. Pralay receded altogether, but left behind a void in which random fragments of Sartaj’s past chased each other about, an emptiness in which his mind raced. Out of this twilight flurry came a face that stayed with him, and Sartaj held on easily to Mary Mascarenas and floated into sleep.
The next morning, Sartaj made two very early phone calls, the first to Anjali Mathur in Delhi. Anjali Mathur listened to his report about Zoya and Gaitonde’s guru and pralay, and said a few encouraging words and a quiet thank you. She told him to continue investigating, and hung up. In the sparkling sunlight of early morning, pralay seemed quite absurd, and Sartaj felt contempt for the deluded Gaitonde and his deluded guru.
Sartaj sat back in his chair, cracked his knuckles and prepared himself for the next call. He wasn’t nervous exactly, no. He wanted to call Mary, and he felt like a bear emerging from an over-extended hibernation into blazing, disorientating sunlight. Once he had been quite suave, capable of flirting with women at a moment’s notice, and asking them out on a whim. Now he was sitting at his coffee table, trying to work out a script. He resisted the urge to write down some lines and thought, Sartaj, what a lallu you’ve become. Just pick up the phone and do it. But he didn’t. He got up, drank a glass of water and sat himself down again. Now he had to admit that although he was not nervous, not in that way he used to be when he was thirteen, he was afraid. What was he afraid of? Not just of the possible disasters, of rejection or unpleasantness or betrayal, but also of good things. He was afraid of Mary’s sudden smile, of the touch of her hand. It was better to live inside a cave, walled in and comfortable.
Gaandu coward, you should be ashamed of yourself. He shook his arms from shoulder to wrist, picked up the phone and dialled. Mary picked up, and he told her in a rush that tomorrow, the next day, he was going to drive up to Khandala for an investigation, and he wanted to tell her about his meeting with Zoya Mirza, and he thought that perhaps she might want to come up to Khandala, since tomorrow was a Monday and he knew that was her day off, and they could get out of the city, for a sort of picnic with Zoya Mirza spice. Even as he was saying it, he realized that it was all too elaborate, that what he had to tell her about Zoya Mirza didn’t need a long drive and a meal in some mountain café. He stopped himself. He was expecting her to refuse, or want to be persuaded further, but she quite straightforwardly agreed and asked what time he would pick her up.
Sartaj hadn’t driven the car for a couple of months, so that afternoon he gave it a quick going-over, and encouraged it with praise, and it rumbled into motion. He drove around the locality for half an hour, until he was satisfied that the old khatara was still able to rattle on. He cleaned the car out, had the oil and battery checked and by next morning felt quite prepared. They set off at seven-thirty. Mary wore black jeans and a white shirt. Sartaj was very aware of her hand on the seat beside him, not so far away, and the waft of her shampoo. They drove through Sion, relatively uncrowded that early. At Deonar, the dense press of buildings finally parted, and the sky suddenly appeared, vast and grey, and across the spreading panorama ahead Sartaj could see the mountains. He felt that childhood tingle in his stomach, and wanted to chant, we’re going on a holiday, we’re going on a holiday. But no, Mary would think he was crazy. He was smiling anyway, and Mary saw him and smiled too. They sped across the muddy water of the sea, arcing high above on the bridge, and then through clusters of apartment buildings, and then Sartaj saw the bright pastel buildings ahead, tall and very new, and knew they were almost at the expressway.
‘They look like cakes,’ Mary said. ‘A building should look like someone lives i
n it, not like a cake.’
‘It is the modern style,’ Sartaj said. ‘Are you hungry? Do you want to get something at the McDonald’s?’
‘No, no. I’m fine. Let’s go.’
She made a soaring gesture, up and away into the Ghats, and Sartaj knew that she wanted to be on the hills as much as he. ‘All right.’ He paid the toll, and then they were away.
Traffic on the expressway was light, and it was good to be on the wide road, skimming against the wind. The khatara seemed to like it too, this unexpected, foreign-seeming sweep of smooth, wide road dropped on to the rough Ghati landscape. The car surged ahead, vibrating violently as Sartaj let it have its head.
‘How old is this thing?’ Mary said.
‘Years and years. But she keeps on going.’ He slowed, and changed a lane. Even changing lanes here was a pleasure, the drivers seemed to get a bit more civilized when they came on to the expressway. And there were so many lanes, all comfortably wide and perfectly arranged.
But further on, when they had reached the lower slopes, cars backed up behind a behemoth of a truck sprawled on its side, across the lanes. Traffic was still moving, and as they came past the blockage they saw that the rear end of the truck was buckled and ripped, and a sea of oranges had spilled out on to the tar. The car’s wheels squished for a moment, and then they were past.
‘Last time I came on the expressway,’ Mary said, ‘I saw five accidents.’
‘These idiots have never seen an expressway in their lives, they’ve driven only in Indian conditions. So they see a big perfect road, they get excited, go too fast, don’t know how to handle their vehicles. Bas, finish.’
‘At least this one didn’t close the entire road.’
There was that. Mary Mascarenas was an optimist, or at least she wasn’t a pessimist. Sartaj felt a flush of well-being himself, sitting next to her. Yes, the road was still open. Now they didn’t speak much, he was content to point out to her an inexplicable string of camels plodding down a side road, a fat girl walking on a bund between fields. They went through the tunnels and out into the sun, and there was the smooth drumming of the engine, the hiss of passing cars.
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