Sacred Games

by Vikram Chandra

  ‘These Bombay girls are too fast. So then?’

  ‘We used to meet after her tuitions in the afternoon.’

  ‘And then you kissed her?’

  ‘She kissed me.’

  ‘Yes, yes. Where?’

  ‘Why, here, of course,’ Sartaj said, pointing to his lips.

  ‘Not that, you silly man.’ Mary made a mock-angry face, but kissed him anyway, a quick peck where he had pointed. ‘I meant, where? In her father’s bedroom?’

  ‘The first time, in the family room of a restaurant in Colaba. She had two girls with her, but they left us alone. Then, after that, you know, on the rocks in Bandra.’

  ‘On the seafront? Really, she was shameless.’

  ‘Sudha? No. She was just Sudha.’

  His smile must have been a little too fond, because Mary pinched him again. ‘So what happened? Did you marry her?’

  ‘I was too young. She married someone a couple of years later. All arranged by her parents. I went to the wedding.’

  ‘Oh. Poor boy.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t like that. We never thought we would get married. I was too young. And not from her caste either.’

  ‘And still she seduced you. My God.’ But Mary was teasing now, and stroking at his chest. ‘But I suppose she just couldn’t resist Sartaj Singh.’

  ‘Yes. I was already almost my full height, you know.’

  ‘And almost as handsome as you are now. A full hero, almost.’

  She was mocking him now, gently, and he scooped her up and over himself. ‘Are you making fun of me? Are you?’ He had discovered already that she was very ticklish, and now she shrieked and twisted under the tips of his fingers.

  ‘Only a little fun,’ she finally got out.

  Her breasts flattened against him, hiding and then revealing the dark rounds of her nipples. She saw him looking and reached for the sheet. She was strangely shy for a woman her age, one who had been married and divorced. Maybe that is what village girls were like. Sartaj had never been with one before. This particular one was now lying on her side, the sheet pulled up to her chin, gazing intently at him. ‘What?’ Sartaj said.

  ‘What what? Don’t think you’re going to distract me just like that. Okay, so this fast girl got married to some unfortunate man. Then what happened? Who did you marry?’

  So he pulled her close and told her about Megha, about the thrill of their impossible college romance, which went across class and the impenetrable boundaries of accent and clothing and music. He told her about how Megha had found his affection for old Shammi Kapoor numbers quite incomprehensible, and how she had trained him not to wear flared pants. And how, finally, they had married and failed. Or maybe they had succeeded in some small way, in not hurting each other too much.

  Mary murmured sympathetically as he told the story, and then she sighed and her breathing evened out. Her body made small twitches, extensions and contractions of her arms and legs, and Sartaj smiled. Her hair brushed across his nostrils, and he remembered those long-ago days of walking with Sudha on Marine Drive, of being maniacally excited and terrified as he pressed his thigh against hers in the back booth of an Irani restaurant. He had thought a lot about sex and love in those days, sometimes it seemed that not a minute passed without some overwrought image of sex skittering through his brain. And there had been that anguished longing for an imagined someone, a hazy and yet incandescent woman who was beautiful, and good, and understanding, and sexy, and supportive, and everything else. He had once thought that Megha was all these things, and Vaheguru only knew what Megha had imagined him to be. They had disappointed each other. He had thought he might never recover from the disillusionment, and for a while he had fancied himself a cynic. Then he had discovered that he was still very much a sentimentalist, that he wept late at night over Dilip Kumar in Dil Diya Dard Liya, that he felt a huge lump in his throat when he read newspaper stories about poor boys who had studied by the light of streetlamps and made it through the IAS exams. Now there was this woman, this Mary resting against him. This was not illusion, or heated filmi romance, or cynicism, or sentiment, this was something else. Love had turned out to be something altogether other than what he had imagined it would be, at fifteen.

  Sartaj moved his shoulder from under Mary’s head, and settled her on a pillow. He turned towards her, rested his fingers on her thigh and tried to sleep. But now he couldn’t help thinking of the bomb. He was feeling safe now, so he tried again to imagine what it must look like, this device, and could only come up with some silly image of a tangle of wires against steel, inset panels that displayed racing neon numbers. Maybe this device would take Mary away from him, just as he had finally found her. He knew this to be true, and yet he didn’t feel the strong emotion that he expected, some rage, or black melancholy, or despair. He touched Mary’s cheek. We are all already lost to each other, he thought. In the moment of our possession we lose those we love, to mortality, to time, to history, to themselves. What we have are these fragments of generosity, these gifts of faith and friendship and desire that we can give to each other. Whatever comes later, nothing can betray this lying in the dark, this breathing together. This is enough. We are here, and we will stay here. Perhaps Kulkarni was wrong about the people of Bombay, perhaps they would stay in their city even if they knew that a great fire was coming. Perhaps they would wait for the bomb in these tangled lanes, grown out of the earth without forethought or plan. People came here from gaon and vilayat, and they found a place to sit, they lay down on a dirty patch of land, which shifted and settled to take them in, and then they lived. And so they would stay.

  Still, of course, the search for the guru and his men continued. Sartaj followed leads, went to apartment buildings in Kailashpada and Narain Nagar, where people had reported their suspicions about their neighbours. And also bastis in faraway Virar. On the Friday afternoon, Sartaj stopped in at the Delite Dance Bar. Shambhu Shetty gave him a Pepsi and asked, ‘Boss, what’s going on? I’m getting two visits from the constables per day, at least. They come thumping in, and ask my staff about some wheelchair man and some foreigner. And why would sadhus come into a bar anyway? But your people barge in every day. It’s not good for business, you know.’

  ‘It’s just one of those alerts from Delhi, Shambhu,’ Sartaj said. ‘There is some information, so we have been told to follow up on it. That is all. It is very urgent, so we have to look everywhere. You never know where you can hear something. The constables have their orders.’

  Shambhu was still irritated. ‘Why do they disrupt work like that? They come in during busy times also, it really affects our collections. As it is, our whole business is in danger. There are rumours that if the government changes in the next elections, those Congress bastards may ban dance bars altogether. If it’s not one gaandu trying to protect Indian culture, it’s another one. Bastard politicians. You know how many times I get MLAs and ministers asking me to send girls for private parties?’ Shambhu was complaining, but he looked prosperous and well-fed. Marriage seemed to agree with him.

  ‘Yes, Shambhu, I know. But right now, let the constables do their job. This is an emergency. Could be serious. Really, if you know anything you should let me know. Okay?’

  Shambhu stretched and scratched his belly. ‘What, is it those bastard Muslims again?’

  ‘No,’ Sartaj said. ‘It’s not Muslims. Not at all. Just look out for a wheelchair and a foreigner, Shambhu. It’s very important.’

  But Shambhu wasn’t convinced. He slouched off, muttering. He had recently made a contact at MTNL who arranged free long-distance calls on the red phone in his office. So he had invited Sartaj in to share the bounty, and had taken the opportunity to make his complaints about the constables. Sartaj picked up the phone and dialled. If Shambhu was getting irritated by the questioning, and his customers were noticing it, it was likely that the apradhis also knew that they were being pursued. A big investigation left a big footprint, and subtlety wasn’t something that came eas
ily to tired constables at the end of their shifts.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Peri pauna, Ma.’

  ‘Jite raho. Where have you been, Sartaj?’

  ‘Work, Ma. There is a big case going. The biggest.’

  She chuckled. ‘That is exactly what your Papa-ji used to say. Every case was the biggest case in the history of the Bombay police.’

  Sartaj could hear the pleasure in her voice, the affection for old spousal dodges. ‘Yes, Ma. He used to tell me that also. But this case, it really is an important case. Really really important.’

  But Ma wanted to talk about Papa-ji. ‘He once investigated the theft of a dog, an Alsatian puppy. He told me that was also a really really important case. He stayed out whole nights, investigating leads. And it wasn’t for the owners, even. I mean, they were rich, they would have got another dog after a week or two. But your Papa-ji kept on telling me, “Imagine how that poor little thing feels, taken away from home like that.” He found it, a week later.’

  ‘I know, Ma.’ Sartaj had heard the story many times before, from both Ma and Papa-ji. When Papa-ji told it, the case became an object lesson in careful investigation and the cultivation of informers. He had never mentioned the puppy’s feelings. But Ma, as she was doing now, always had Papa-ji stalking the streets, worried about the dog, and the puppy whining incessantly at her kidnapper’s home. Papa-ji had found the dog in four days, through a widening series of neighbourhood interviews and some careful pressure on the shopkeepers at the corner of the street. The apradhi, when he was discovered, turned out to be the nephew of the owner of the general store one lane away. This nephew was addicted to the new craze for video games, and he had sold the dog to his neighbours on Nepean Sea Road, so that he could play Missile Command endlessly at a brand-new parlour down the street, the first in that part of the city. So the dog was duly brought back, and the nephew jailed and disciplined.

  ‘And, you know, Pinky was so glad to be back at her real home,’ Ma said, as she reached the end of this well-rehearsed family tale.

  ‘Who is Pinky?’

  ‘Sartaj, really, sometimes you don’t listen at all. Pinky was her, the puppy.’

  ‘Pinky was the puppy?’

  ‘Yes, yes. What’s so difficult about that?’

  ‘No, no, Ma. I remember now.’

  After Sartaj said his goodbyes and hung up, and thanked Shambhu, he stood outside the door of the Delite Dance Bar and thought about Pinky. In all his recountings of the case, Papa-ji had never mentioned that the animal in question was called Pinky. He’d probably thought it didn’t matter, one way or the other. But somehow it did. Knowing that she was Pinky made the whole matter of the missing dog more poignant. It was impossible that Pinky was still alive, but maybe her children and grandchildren were thriving somewhere in the city. Maybe Sartaj had himself petted some of them. He could think of at least three, no, four quite handsome Alsatians with whom he had an acquaintance. Two of them were nervous neurotics, but Sartaj put that down to them having to live in small flats all their lives. It was enough to drive anyone a little crazy.

  He slung a leg over the bike, and then sat still for a moment. The evening sun blazed off the office windows across the road and threw a haze over the traffic below. The roadside hawkers were doing good business, selling clothes and cards and footwear to passing pedestrians. To the left, three buildings away, there was a cluster of chaat-wallahs, on the crowded landing of the Eros Shopping Centre. Sartaj could smell the heated pao-bhaji, and suddenly he was hungry for papri chaat. He had been addicted to it as a kid, and finally Papa-ji had rationed him to one plate a week, on Fridays. Today was a Friday, he thought, and he got off the bike and walked down.

  Amidst the sizzle of the concoctions on the tavas, Sartaj queued up behind a giggly group of collegians. The girls were sleekly dressed in short tops and tight jeans, and they all wore bright red and blue bracelets around their wrists, some version of bangles made out of rubber. One of them saw him looking at her friend’s arm and turned away haughtily. They whispered together. Sartaj turned away to hide his smile. No doubt they were complaining to each other over this lecherous uncle, this cheap roadside Romeo. But he just felt kindly towards them, and was amazed that it had been so long since his college days that flared pants had made a comeback.

  He got his papri chaat and walked around the ring of white plastic chairs that edged the patio until he found an empty one. Then he gave himself to the pleasure of the papri chaat, to its crunch and the lovely sourness of the tamarind. He must have made a low sound of satisfaction because the three-year-old boy peeking at him from behind his mother’s knee laughed and pointed. Sartaj wrinkled his nose at the boy and took another bite. ‘Mmmm,’ he said.

  His mobile rang. Sartaj fumbled with the paper plate, wiped his hand on a napkin and finally got to the phone. It was Iffat-bibi.

  ‘What, have you forgotten your old friends?’ she said. She was as coarse-voiced as ever.

  ‘Arre, no, Bibi,’ Sartaj said.

  ‘Then you must still be angry with me.’

  ‘Why do you say so?’

  ‘Because if you need something, and you don’t ask those close to you, then you must be angry.’

  ‘Do I need something?’

  ‘Maybe you don’t, but your department has been flailing its arms all over Mumbai.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Maybe you don’t want those men, if you want to play all these childish games.’

  ‘Which men?’

  ‘The man in the wheelchair. The foreigner. And the others.’

  ‘You know where they are?’

  ‘I may know.’

  ‘Iffat-bibi, you have to tell me. It’s very important.’

  ‘We know it’s important.’

  ‘You don’t understand. Do you know their location? It’s very urgent.’

  ‘Has this guru escaped with a lot of money? That’s very bad of him.’

  ‘All right. What do you want?’

  Iffat-bibi sighed. ‘Now you’re speaking like a sensible man. But not like this, not over the phone.’

  ‘Where are you right now?’

  ‘In the Fort area.’

  ‘It’ll take a long time for me to get to Fort. And here every minute matters. You don’t know what might happen, Iffat-bibi.’

  ‘Then you had better catch the train, no?’

  ‘Just tell me what you want. I promise I’ll do it.’

  ‘What I want, I can’t ask for like this. Come. My boys will meet you at the station.’

  So Sartaj went. He caught the fast train to VT, where two young men were waiting for him outside the terminal. They came up to him out of the crowd, and one of them said, ‘Sartaj Saab. Bibi has sent us.’ Sartaj followed them to the gate, and then up towards the Times of India building, where a nondescript black Fiat was waiting. Everyone got in, Sartaj at the rear left, and they drove on. Nobody spoke. The driver circled around, past Metro, and back towards D.N. Road. Sartaj watched the familiar streets slide by. Papa-ji had spent considerable chunks of his career down here. He had taken the young Sartaj for walks down his beats, pointing out places where crimes had been perpetrated and apradhis apprehended. The car now turned left into a U-turn, and then right, and Sartaj saw the small Technicolor temple he had loved as a child, its walls covered with brightly painted sculptures of gods and goddesses. Papa-ji and he used to meet there, ‘next to the temple,’ no need to say which one.

  But the old shops were gone. Sartaj didn’t recognize any on the lane they turned into, although the haphazard clusters of scooters and cycles were the same. And the crowds were thicker, even at six o’clock in the evening. The driver said, ‘Here,’ and they stopped.

  Bibi’s boys led Sartaj around a seafood restaurant, through a narrow alley, to the back of the building. They went up a staircase smelling of rotting fish, and then a door opened. They were inside a very small office, some sort of accountants, it looked like. There were ledgers on t
he shelves, which went all the way up to the ceiling. The desks were crammed in tight next to each other, and there still half a dozen employees bent over the computer screens. To the right, the space had been doubled by putting in a mezzanine, which contained three whole workstations thus suspended in mid-air. One of the men pointed Sartaj to the end of the office, where a cabin had been wedged into the triangular end of the room. Sartaj opened the door, and bent to get through.

  Iffat-bibi was seated cross-legged on a red executive chair at the point of the triangle. She had her burqa thrown off her head, revealing a youthful thickness of hennaed hair. ‘Come, come,’ she said. ‘Arre, Munna, get some chai for Saab.’ She waved Sartaj into a chair almost as magnificent as the one she was sitting on, and closed the ledger that she had been perusing. ‘Do you want the air-conditioner higher, saab? They keep it so cold in here that it freezes my bones. But you are a young fellow, you people like it like that.’

  ‘No, no need. It’s cold enough.’

  The room pushed them close together, and Sartaj thought that Iffat-bibi looked exactly as he had expected. She was large and craggy, with a square-cut jaw and youthful skin. The toothless mouth was startling, under the alert eyes and sharp nose. He couldn’t imagine her as a young woman. Maybe she had been the same age for the last hundred years. She certainly looked as if she could go on for at least another hundred.

  ‘Saab, what will you eat?’

  ‘Nothing, Bibi. Please, we need to discuss your information. There is great danger, and those are very dangerous men.’

  ‘Danger is always there, saab. If you miss the chance to eat, danger will still come.’ There was a knock at the frosted glass door, and then a boy put a steaming cup of chai in front of Sartaj. ‘Get some tandoori machchi for Saab. And that special jhinga.’

  Sartaj sat back in his chair and gave himself up to the rituals of hospitality. The end of the world would wait, it had been coming for months and for forever. Iffat-bibi was implacable in her courtesies. Arguing would get you nowhere, better to co-operate and enjoy. ‘So, Bibi,’ he said, ‘what is the news?’