Sacred Games

by Vikram Chandra

  This Man unreels the thread and sets it on the loom,

  he notches it on the bar of heaven.

  And the pegs are fastened to this altar.

  On this sky-spanning loom,

  the Sama hymns are the shuttles,

  blazing back and forth.

  ‘Each god covered himself with a poetic metre,’ Guru-ji said, ‘and this metre became the source of their power as sacrificers. Agni was suffused by the Gayatri metre, and Savitar by the Usnih metre. Indra’s energy came from the Trishtubh. The Jagati metre moved through all the gods. So from metre, through sacrifice, from this warp and weft, this weaving, this geometry, this form, this poetry, the universe was born.’ Sitting cross-legged on the ground, anonymous and alone, I could see – in my mind’s cinema screen – that moment of creation, the hymns sliding across each other like ghee and sandalwood, the heated sparks of the metres, the flames of the universe being born. ‘When we sacrifice,’ Guru-ji said, ‘when we chant, when we allow the metres to move through us, we weave the world. We are creators. We sustain all that is, we hold it up, we make it. We are the universe.’

  Back at our room, Bunty had a good dinner waiting for me, brought from his wife’s kitchen. While I ate we talked business, and I gave instructions and answered queries. By now the boys on the yacht had probably figured out that I wasn’t in Jakarta, that I wasn’t available on the phone there, but nobody would imagine that I was here, sitting at a yagna in Andheri or eating parathas in Santa Cruz. They sent me reports, and Bunty took my orders to be passed back. With reference to our job for Mr Kumar, our boys were already in London, in safe houses, waiting for the mullah. I told Bunty to secure our communications with them, to see to weapons and logistics. Me, I slept a deep, outstretched sleep, a sleep as confident and happy as a well-loved and well-fed child’s who knows that he will wake to care and love and laughter. I was smiling even as I woke.

  Back I went, back to Guru-ji. On this second day I was early, one of the very first few people on the maidan, apart from the policemen and the volunteers. I made my way to the very first shamiana, and found myself a seat right behind the VIP section, very close to the altar. The sadhus were seated about the fire, which had not gone out, which would not go out for twelve days. The yagna had continued through the night, staffed by teams of priests. But now, in the morning, they were only beginning to switch on the loudspeakers. At eleven, on the dot and dash of eleven, Guru-ji arrived. Now I was able to see him up close. Sometimes, when he appeared on television broadcasts, he wore Nehru suits, exquisitely tailored but simple jackets in linen and silk. I myself had had some made, similar in line and cut. But today he was wearing a white dhoti, and a sheer white cloth thrown over one strong shoulder, leaving the other one bare. His hair swept up and back. He was handsome. He was sixty-four years old, but his skin was taut and clear, his eyes were alert and alive.

  ‘This is a sacrifice that includes each type of person,’ he told us that day. ‘This is not a sacrifice for rishis or munis or emperors only. Whether you are from the highest sections of society, or from the lowest, you can participate in our Sarvamedha sacrifice. We invite you all. You are the yajman. But you must give. That is the meaning of the Sarvamedha sacrifice. You must give everything. Sarvamedha is the universal sacrifice, it is the all-sacrifice. In the old days, every type of animal was sacrificed to the gods during this sacrifice, and humans from every walk of life, from every profession, gave themselves to the sacred fire, they died during the Sarvamedha and were blessed. In the old days, brahmins and tailors, dhobis and warriors, all were immolated in the fire of the Sarvamedha. In the old days, the yajman of the Sarvamedha sacrifice gave all his possessions as the fee, everything he owned. When the father of Nachiketas hesitated at everything, Nachiketas himself reminded the father that his son was his last possession. Nachiketas gave himself to death, and so achieved heaven for his father, and through his confrontation with death revealed to us the secrets of death, and life. Wisdom belongs to those who can burn themselves, and so discover the true self.’ There was an absolute silence in the shamianas, a breath-stilled pause as we listened. And Guru-ji laughed. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I won’t ask you to give up your sons, and I won’t ask you to jump into this fire.’ The fire was leaping above the heads of the priests. ‘The times have changed. We will complete the Sarvamedha, and we will sacrifice animals and humans, all that lives. But we will do it symbolically. We will substitute. You will burn, but only in effigy, only through a model of you. Like this one.’

  He held up his hand, palm up, revealing a small model of a man. With the motion of his hand I noticed, across the flames and across the way, a policeman. I must have seen him before, in the bandobast outside and under the tents, but he caught my eye now. He was a sardar, wearing a tall khaki turban with a green patka underneath. He had just escorted someone to the VIP enclosure, and was backing away, but he turned back now to listen to Guru-ji. For a quick moment, the length of a snapping flame, the policeman and I held each other’s gaze. And then we shifted back to Guru-ji.

  As the priests chanted, Guru-ji gave the little figure to the fire. So, just like that, all afternoon and through the day, little casts of cows and bulls and men and women – made out of crystallized sugar or lime – were thrown into the sacred fire. The conflagration was fragrant and enormous. I was close enough to hear it. It had a steady rhythm, this music.

  That evening, I waited late in a long queue for a meeting with Guru-ji. At eleven, he left the altar and retired to the film producer’s house for the night. From eleven till midnight, he met members of the public in private audience. There was a queue that stretched from the gate of the house and wound around the maidan twice. I was somewhere in the middle. At midnight the policemen came through the maidan telling us that Guru-ji had to sleep, telling us to go home. There was a great groan, but people dispersed easily, without protest. We could imagine how tired Guru-ji was, how even his massive strength must be taxed by a full day of talking to us, of taking us along on his journey. The policemen looked relieved. They were tired themselves, and they were used to the jostling, tumbling energy of the Ganapati processions, where thousands of young men in shorts and banians danced for Ganesha, drunk on sweat and brotherhood and surreptitious swigs of beer and bhang. But we went home in good order, all of us, Guru-ji’s followers.

  Bunty was waiting at our room, with food and his mobile phones. We took care of business. ‘Bhai, my wife thinks I have a woman,’ Bunty said when we had finished with the calls. ‘I keep telling her it’s just a busy time right now, special night-time jobs to do, but she saw me taking some of her adrak pickle for you, and now she’s convinced that I feed my woman food from her kitchen.’

  He was grinning, but I had met his Priya, who was a plump Punjabi with a convent-school education and the look of a Patton tank about her. Bunty had had his women on the side, of course, but in a very discreet way. Dealing with a raging Priya because he had to take care of me was evidence of his total dedication. ‘I’ll have to give you a double bonus on Diwali, beta,’ I said. ‘Buy her bangles.’

  ‘Triple bonus,’ he said. ‘She was spectacular this evening. In the middle of the Red Fort, bhai. And she didn’t hold back. I had to give her one on her ear, to shut her up.’

  This year, for the festival, we had spent a crore and a half to build a replica of the Red Fort, complete with a glittering Peacock Throne, on which Ganesha sat. We had used real marble for the floors, and even the carving was exact, taken from photographs. People came from all over Bombay to Gopalmath, to see our Red Fort, it was a huge hit, bigger and better than any other pandal in the city. To imagine Bunty and Priya at it in the middle of the darbar hall was hilarious. ‘Your Priya must have the Mughals rolling in their graves. We should send her to Pakistan, she’ll finish off all those S-Company bastards.’

  Bunty had to clutch at his stomach at the thought of Priya rolling over the border. When he could speak, he said, ‘Everyone in Gopalmath reme
mbers you, bhai. The boys think you are somewhere in Europe, but they all want to thank you, at least on the phone.’

  I shook my head. ‘Tell them I’m thinking of them. But no outside contacts, Bunty. This is my time with Guru-ji.’

  It was true: I hadn’t called Jojo even once, and I knew she must’ve been worried. She knew that I had gone on a trip, but from all my trips, I had called her. This time I hadn’t called. It couldn’t be helped. I needed to concentrate, to purify myself. And so the days passed in prayer and contemplation. Every day I went early to the maidan, to get a good seat. Every night I stayed late, lining up in the queue to get a personal darshan of Guru-ji, just like any other follower. But there were too many of us, just too many, and there was never enough time before midnight to let us all in. But I was patient, and came back the next day. Guru-ji took us through the sacrifice, and my days passed listening to him, to his explications of the Vedas and the Brahmanas. I knew I was learning new things every day, and each day I felt lighter inside my body, as if some thick sediment was being washed away. Or, as Guru-ji put it in his discourses, some part of my karma was being burnt in the heat of the sacrifice.

  ‘You even smell better,’ Bunty told me on the eleventh morning.

  ‘You mean I smelt badly before, bastard?’ But I was smiling. I could whiff the improvement myself. Maybe it was just the smoke of the burning samagri from the sacrifice that had settled into my pores, or maybe this was how an unburdened soul was supposed to smell. I hugged him, and scootered off. I hummed a movie song, a Koli song: ‘Vallavh re nakhva ho, vallavh re Rama.’ At the grounds, I settled myself into what had become my accustomed seat. At this time in the mornings, when the tents were empty, with the loudspeakers and the televisions turned off, I really did feel like the yajman, as if it were all for me.

  ‘You’re even earlier today.’

  It was the sardar inspector. He was standing right behind me, his thumbs inside his belt, making his shirt neat. And yes, of course it was you, Sartaj. It was you in a crisp khaki uniform and a tall pagdi, and you were smiling. But then I only knew the sardar inspector. He was amused, friendly, this inspector.

  ‘I have to come early,’ I said. ‘Otherwise I have to sit all the way back.’ I kept my voice very mild.

  ‘You can watch on these televisions even if you’re far away,’ he said. ‘In the close-ups you can see each hair in their nostrils.’ He tilted his chin towards the priests. He was a good-looking sardar, this one, and very stylish with his blue patka and matching socks.

  ‘It’s not the same thing at all,’ I said, and even as I said it I realized I was being too sharp, too snappy. I had to be deferential, like a normal member of the public when faced by a policeman. It had been a very long time since I had been afraid of an inspector, but I had to act it now. ‘What I mean, Sardar Saab, is that nowadays people think they can have darshan over television or phone. But you only get the full benefits of darshan if you come face to face, eye to eye. Guru-ji’s glance has to enter you, his voice has to come into you. I’ve not seen him before, and I can tell you I have been changed over the last few days. All my television-watching from far away didn’t add up to one moment of real darshan. Seeing the Golden Temple in a photograph is one thing. Going to Amritsar is another blessed thing altogether.’

  ‘You’re not from Bombay?’ He had the policeman’s trick of sudden questions, and that calculating glance. And under all that chikna film-star prettiness, the relentless brutality born of a thousand interrogations. I knew his type.

  ‘Not originally. But I moved here some years ago.’

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘I work in an import-export company.’ He had turned it into a question-answer session after all, the suspicious bastard. Typical, typical. I very slightly turned back towards the yagna. But he wasn’t going to let it go yet.

  ‘I’ve seen you somewhere before,’ he said. ‘You look familiar.’

  I stayed very still, didn’t even let myself tense up. I looked at him over my shoulder and smiled. ‘I have a very familiar face, saab,’ I said. I had kept up with the shaving of my head, and let my beard grow in. I looked something like one of those Afghan mullahs myself. In my mirror I was most unfamiliar to myself. But this maderchod had a good eye. ‘People always tell me I look like someone they know. My wife used to laugh about it.’

  ‘She used to? Not any more?’

  He was very attentive, this chikna inspector, and he was not at all the thick-brained sardar of all the jokes. You had to be on full alert with him. ‘She’s dead,’ I said, very quietly. ‘She was killed in an accident.’ He nodded, looked away. When he came back to me he was the maderchod inspector again, but I had marked that small blink of sympathy. I could be sharp too. In my life I had learnt to read men also. ‘You also lost someone,’ I said. ‘Who, your wife?’

  He gave me back a hard glower. He was a proud man, of course, and in uniform. He wasn’t going to tell me anything. ‘Everyone loses somebody,’ he said. ‘That’s what happens in life.’

  ‘If you come into Guru-ji’s protection, all this pain passes.’

  ‘You keep your Guru-ji,’ he said, but he was friendly again, with a very small grin. He raised his hand, and marched off to the back of the tents, to his duties. Guru-ji arrived at his usual punctual hour, and today he led us towards the end of the sacrifice, its fulfilment.

  ‘We have come together on a great journey,’ he said. ‘For these many days you have walked with me. By participating in this great yagna, you have burnt away the inertia of hundreds of past lives. As the yajmans of this sacrifice, you will accrue its benefits, its powers. But remember what I told you about the Sarvamedha: the yajman gives away everything. To sacrifice yourself, you must sacrifice your attachments. So, today of all days, give. Give of yourself.’

  It was a hot day, the last day of the Sarvamedha. After many muzzy days, the sun now burnt off the haze and slid across the tents, and moved bright strips of flame across our legs, our heads. The fragrant smoke gathered and thickened, and the slokas swept through us, and Guru-ji’s voice gathered in my chest, and the crowd was packed in today, and the sweat dripped off my shoulders, and there were many who were weeping. Yes, I was crying too. I was not sad, I was not grieving. I was happy, and I was sobbing. I gave, whatever was in my wallet, and my watch. Throughout the days of the sacrifice, the devotees had given donations, had left money and valuables with the booths scattered among the tents. But today we gave everything. I saw women giving their jewellery, their mangalsutras, and men struggle with gold and diamond rings on swollen fingers. That afternoon, we truly became yajmans, and felt the power of the Sarvamedha.

  Then it was over. At ten o’clock, Guru-ji put his hands together in a pranaam to all of us, and bowed his head. And then he went back to the house. This night, I was up close to the front of the queue for darshan. I had planned and made sure, and yet after an hour of waiting it became clear that I might not make it. Today all the VIPs came, there was a home minister and two actors and three actresses, and business tycoons and television news announcers and film producers and one general. Their cars came one after another and made a shiny cluster in front of the house, and our queue hardly moved at all. For the ordinary people darshan came very slowly, and tonight I stood among the ordinary. I waited. It was very close to midnight.

  ‘Have you seen your Guru-ji yet?’ It was the sardar inspector. He was tall, taller than me by a head. The black plate on his chest told me his name in white letters: ‘Sartaj Singh.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Today, too many big people up there.’

  I shrugged. I was calm, but quite drained, my legs felt like falooda, and I was a little dizzy. This inspector looked exhausted himself. There were dark stains on his shirt from all the sweat of the day, and under the white tube-lights he wasn’t that chikna, just gaunt and long and tired. He was examining me with a policiya’s impersonal suspicion. Then he said, ‘Come on.’

  He led me past the front of
the line, through the parked Toyotas and BMWs and ranks of policemen and private security. He nodded at an inspector standing by the tall double doors of the producer’s house, and then we walked through the crowded drawing room, and up a marbled corridor. Sartaj Singh talked to a constable, and then we angled down another corridor crowded with sadhus and devotees, out into a garden. We went to the front of the line. There were three sadhus ranged near the entrance, letting in devotees one by one. And beyond them, in the centre of the garden, the unmistakable profile of Guru-ji, seated in his wheelchair, talking to some woman.

  ‘Okay,’ Sartaj Singh said into my ear, ‘I’ve brought you so far. Now you take care of yourself.’ He barked at the sadhus: ‘He’s next.’

  I felt his thump on my back, but before I could even turn to thank him, he was off. I would take care of myself, yes. I gazed calmly at Guru-ji’s attendants, and took a step to the right and put myself squarely before them. I was going to be next. There was one tall, yellow-haired firangi sadhu who seemed to be the boss, and I smiled pleasantly at him and stared him down until he gave me back a dubious grin. I might stand in queues for Guru-ji, but I knew how to let little flunkies know I meant business.

  After all the days of waiting, there was now a pause of only two minutes. The woman with Guru-ji stood up, turned away, and I slipped by the firangi sadhu. I was with Guru-ji in a moment, finally alone with him. I knelt in front of him, touched his feet, touched my head to his feet.

  ‘Jite raho, beta,’ he said, and laid a hand on my head. ‘Come, come.’

  He raised me up, motioned to the chair. I sat. I knew I was smiling like a happy infant, like a cheery, light-hearted madman. I sat, hands clasped in my lap, beaming at him.

  ‘Tell me what you want,’ he said, ‘what you need.’

  I burst out laughing. ‘I need nothing now, Guru-ji. I wanted only to be with you.’