Sacred Games

  Katekar leaned down to the window. ‘I don’t know, sir. On television they have long black hair, horns. And pointy teeth sometimes.’

  ‘And they go around eating people?’

  ‘I think that’s their main job, sir.’

  They both laughed. They had spent the day working, and they had made small progress in their investigations, and so they were happy. ‘That would be nice to have during some interrogations,’ Sartaj said. ‘Horns, and teeth like wolves.’

  But on the way home it occurred to Sartaj that most people he interrogated were so frightened that he might already have oversized canines. It was the uniform that terrified them, that brought back all those tales of police brutality collected over many generations. Even the ones who wanted help spoke warily around policemen, and the ones who didn’t need help tried to be overly friendly in case they ever did. Policemen were monsters, set aside from everyone else. But Parulkar had once told Sartaj, ‘We are good men who must be bad to keep the worst men in control. Without us, there would be nothing left, there would only be a jungle.’

  A low, yellow haze flitted behind the buildings as Sartaj drove. The streets were quiet. Sartaj imagined the citizens sleeping in their millions, safe for one more night. The image gave him some satisfaction, but not nearly as much as it used to. He couldn’t tell if this was because he had become more of a rakshasa, or less so. Still, he had a job to do, and he did it. Now he needed to sleep. He went home.

  Ganesh Gaitonde Acquires Land

  I took the land between N.C. Road and the hill which overlooks it. You know Gopalmath basti, from N.C. Road all the way up the hill and four miles wide, from Sindh Chowk to G.T. Junction? All that was empty land then, nothing but a wasteland of weeds and bushes – it was municipal land. The government owned it, and so nobody owned it. I took it.

  You know how it’s done, Sartaj. It’s easy. You pay off three chutiyas in the municipality, oil them up properly and then you kill the local dada who thinks he deserves a percentage on your action, like it’s his bhenchod birthright. That’s it. Then the land is yours. I took it, and it was mine.

  I had sold my gold, and I had money. Paritosh Shah, fat Gujarati that he was, told me I should put all my cash into business: buy this, sell that. ‘I can double it for you within a year,’ he said. ‘Triple it.’ He knew exactly how much I had, since he had bought all my gold from me.

  I listened to him, as he sprawled elegantly on his gadda, one cushion under his shoulder and another under his knees. I thought about it, but I knew it in my bones, if you don’t own land you are nothing. You can die for love, you can die for friendship, you can die for money, but finally the only real thing in the world is land. You can depend on land. I said, ‘Paritosh Bhai, I trust you, but let me follow my own road.’ He thought I was a fool, but I had already seen the land, and had walked up and down it, and knew it was the right place, near the road and not so far from the railway station. So we gave money to the municipality, to one clerk and to two officers, and the land was mine to build on.

  But then there was the problem of Anil Kurup. We had the scrub cleared, and my contractor had his men digging out the foundations for the kholis, and we were expecting a truckload of cement, and Anil Kurup’s boys stopped the truck on the way down from the main road, and took it to Gopalmath village, which was about a mile up the road. We never saw any cement, and instead they sent a piece of paper with a phone number on it. ‘You’re a bachcha from nowhere,’ Anil Kurup shouted at me when I called. ‘And you think you’re going to come into my village and spit into my face. Maderchod, one hen doesn’t get sold here without me knowing about it. I’ll put a truckload of cement up your gaand and send you back to whatever gutter you came out of.’ I kept calm and quietly asked for a day to think about it. He cursed me some more and finally told me to call him the next day. He was right, of course. He had grown up in Gopalmath, and this area was his, no question about it, he ruled it like a king. There wasn’t much in his raj, just some small shops, a garage or two, but it was all his.

  Four days later I went to see him in Gopalmath. I went with Chotta Badriya. You remember that big muscleman Badriya who was Paritosh Shah’s bodyguard? This Chotta Badriya was his little brother. He was actually Badrul-Ahmed, and his elder brother’s name was Badruddin, their father had been told by some Sufi pir that he should give all his sons names beginning with ‘Ba –’ for their success and well-being. So they had their fancy long names, but to us they were just Badriya and Chotta Badriya. Badriya and I saw each other every time I went to see Paritosh Shah, and we liked each other, and when I started my project he asked me to take his younger brother with me, to make his life. This Chotta was bigger actually, bigger than his big brother, as big as a mountain. He was a good boy, well-mannered and obedient, so I was glad to have him along with me. I said to his brother, ‘If you ask, I give.’

  That afternoon, though, with Anil Kurup, I was trying to keep what was mine. Chotta Badriya and I went walking into Gopalmath, and a sad little rubbish dump it was then, one kuchcha road and clustering hovels surrounded by palm trees and fields, and a few shops on the main road. Anil Kurup was waiting for us in the back of a dhaba just off the main road, which in those days was the only place in Gopalmath which had a phone.

  His boys searched us, took our ghodas from us, and they were very impressed, I don’t think they’d expected us to be carrying pistols. There were five of them. They led us through a door into the back room, past the huge karhais filled with frying puris and bhajiyas. Anil Kurup was sitting at a table, drinking beer. At two in the afternoon, the ugly bastard was red-eyed and burping. He had thick lips, hair falling over his forehead, white chappals. I put on the table in front of him a newspaper wrapped around twenty thousand in cash.

  ‘Not enough,’ he said.

  ‘Bhai,’ I said, ‘I’ll have the rest soon, next week, I promise. And I would have brought this earlier, only I didn’t know.’

  ‘What kind of brainless bhenchod are you?’ he said. ‘You don’t find out about an area before you go into it and start digging it up?’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. And I shrugged, small and helpless.

  He laughed then, spitting beer on to the table. ‘Sit,’ he said. ‘Both of you. Have some beer.’

  I said, ‘Just some chai, Anil Bhai.’

  ‘If I offer, you have beer.’

  ‘Yes, Anil Bhai.’ And he laughed again, and his three boys who were in the room laughed. They got us beer, a bottle each and glasses, and we drank.

  ‘Where are you from, bachcha?’ he said.

  ‘Nashik.’

  ‘You have to grow up in this Mumbai to know how it works,’ he said. ‘You can’t just come in and act like a chutiya, you’ll end up with your brains out on the road.’

  ‘Yes, Anil Bhai,’ I said. ‘He’s absolutely right, Badriya,’ I said. ‘We have to listen to Anil Bhai.’

  Anil Kurup was puffed up like an avuncular toad now. ‘Arre, go and get us some bhajiyas to eat,’ he said. ‘And bring some eggs also.’

  Two of the boys jumped to attention and hurried out. That left one leaning against the wall to my right.

  ‘Bhai, I have to ask some advice from you,’ I said.

  ‘Ask, ask.’

  ‘It’s about the municipality and water,’ I said. And I scratched my nose.

  And right then Chotta Badriya nudged his beer bottle off the table. ‘Maderchod,’ he said, and bent down to the floor. He came up quick, stood up and leaned forward in one flash, and his arm went suddenly across the table too fast to see, and then Anil Kurup was rocking back in his chair with a wooden handle growing from his right eye.

  I had a bottle in my hand, and I smashed it across the face of the boy on my right. He squealed and clutched at himself, and I went past him and slammed the door shut, I threw the bolt and put my shoulder against the wood. I knew none of Anil Kurup’s boys had guns, and our own ghodas were unloaded, so there was no danger of a bullet coming through the do
or, just Anil Kurup’s fools shouting and slamming against it.

  ‘Stop,’ I shouted. ‘Stop! Prashant. Vinod. Amar. He’s dead. Anil Kurup is dead. And my boys are outside, and you may kill us, but they’ll kill every one of you. I know your names. I know all your names and my boys know who you are. You can get us, but they’ll kill every one of you. Amar, just take a step back and think about it. He’s dead.’

  Anil Kurup was dead, with blood seeping over his cheek. When they found our pistols, they hadn’t searched further, and what Chotta Badriya had under his trouser leg was one of those straight picks that you use to break ice, with the handle set crosswise, he had it on the inside of his left leg, held there with three pieces of white medical tape. He was too strong, that Chotta Badriya, and he had put it right into Anil Kurup’s eyeball, smashed it in with all his weight and muscle behind it. Very fast he was, and there was nothing they could have done about it. Only afterwards, when he was dead, they could have tried to kill us. But I talked them down. I told them I’d make them rich, that Anil Kurup was a stupid bastard, that he had robbed them for years, and cheated them, and now that he was dead it was mad of them to die for him. Because if they tried to do anything to us, they would die for sure, my boys were sworn to avenge me. I told them to look outside, and sure enough, there were six of my boys, standing in a line across the road.

  We walked out of there alive, Chotta Badriya and me, and with our pistols back under our shirts. ‘What a speech you gave, Ganesh Bhai,’ Chotta Badriya said when we were out and had left Gopalmath behind us. And then he laughed, and he had to stop in the middle of the path and lower his head and put his hands on his knees and laugh. I thumped him on the back, and smiled. We had done it. And we really did it, Sardar-ji. Ask anyone the story of Ganesh Gaitonde and they will begin it there, in that dhaba in Gopalmath. I know that how I killed Anil Kurup has been told so many times that it doesn’t seem true any more. In five different movies they put it, and in the last one they had me doing it – the character based on me, that is – with a small pistol that he had strapped to his ankle. But this is really how it happened. And it happened, actually and truly like this, in spite of how untrue all the telling and retelling of it has made it.

  News of my victory against Anil Kurup spread through the neighbouring localities, and people started to come to me to settle matters, to give them jobs and protection, to help them deal with the police and the local government. My war with him had been short and decisive, and I realized only after it was over that I had needed to fight it not only for territory, but for legitimacy. I was now recognized as Ganesh Gaitonde of Gopalmath, and nobody could dispute my right to stay in the city. I had succeeded in more ways than one.

  But why had I succeeded? I had won because before I went walking into Anil Kurup’s home, I knew everything about him. I knew his history, I knew his strength, I knew his weapons, I knew the names of his followers and how long they had been with him. I took the time to investigate him, to learn him, and he – the arrogant gaandu – knew nothing about me. So I had won. But why had Chotta Badriya followed me into the mouth of death itself? He hardly knew me, and he knew the insane risk of my plan, and yet he came with me. I tell you that he came with me because I commanded him to. Most men want to be led, and there are only a very few who can lead. I had a problem, I had a choice and I made a decision. I decided, and so Chotta Badriya and the others followed me. Those who cannot decide are pliable mud in the hands of those who can. I took my boys and made them into my diamond-hard weapon, and I built the basti of Gopalmath. I didn’t skimp on the materials or the building itself, we made sturdy, spacious and very pucca kholis, laid them out according to plan. You could tell by looking at them, by feeling the solid brick and plaster that these were homes that would last, that these lanes would remain unflooded even during the heaviest of monsoons. The word spread: Ganesh Gaitonde doesn’t dilute his cement with sand, he gives value for money.

  Gopalmath filled up fast, there were citizens queuing up for the kholis even before we finished them, before we had the land cleared, before we even imagined the rows of houses. Up and down the road the basti spread, and it went climbing up the hill, it seemed to grow every day. Right from that beginning, we had Dalits and OBCs, Marathas and Tamils, Brahmins and Muslims. The communities tended to cluster together, lane by lane. People like to stay with those they know, like seeks like, and even in the thick crores of the city, in this jungle where a man can lose his name and become something else, the lowest of the low will seek his own kind, and live with them in proud public squalor. I saw this, and thought it strange, that not one man in thousands has the courage to be alone. But it was good, they crowded together, and from them I gathered the boys who made up my company. Gaitonde Company it was called, or G-Company, and we were quickly famous. Not yet in the papers, but in the north and east of Mumbai the basti-dwellers knew us, and the police, and the other companies.

  Mothers came to me then. ‘A job in the Post Office for my boy, Ganesh Bhai,’ one said. ‘Settle him somewhere, Ganesh Bhai,’ another said. ‘You know best.’ They wanted jobs, and justice, and blessings. I gave them all that, and water, and electricity over wires pulled from the lines near the main road. I lived in a pucca house at the foot of Gopalmath hill, we had built it with two bedrooms and a big central hall, and on the steps outside every morning a crowd gathered, seekers, supplicants, applicants and yes, devotees. They came to ask for things and to lower their heads. ‘We just wanted your darshan, Ganesh Bhai,’ some said, and so I gave it to them, and they gazed and folded their hands and retreated, storing goodwill against the certain disasters of the future. And their blessings came to me, and money, cash from the shopkeepers and traders and garage-owners and dhaba-owners of the area, and we kept them and their establishments safe. Businessmen caught up in quarrels and wranglings came to me, and I listened to all sides of the case and gave a decision, a fair and fast ruling that would be enforced by my boys, with force if necessary, and for this mandvali and for being able to avoid the endless and useless law courts, all the disputants paid me a percentage of the contested value as fee. Money came in and went out. In eight months I had a payroll of thirty-seven people, brawlers to break heads, yes, but not only that, also boys to run errands and others to take care of the police-wallahs and municipality-wallahs and the electricity-wallahs. In my bones I understood something that Paritosh Shah never had to teach me, that you have to spend money to make money. I had good relations with the inspector who had the charge of our area from G.T. station, Samant his name was, week by week we met his sub-inspectors and slipped them envelopes. We gave them many thousands, but it was only money. With a big heart I spent it and more came.

  That year we celebrated Diwali with strings of electric lights along all the main lanes, a big dais at the central chowk with bhajan-singing and mithai, and finally, after dark, I stood at the gate of my house and gave basketfuls of atom bombs and rockets and phuljadis to the children of the basti. The sky over Gopalmath showered sparking streams of gold and silver, and the rising detonations sounded the return of good and the victory of virtue over death. My house was outlined in flickering points of light, in the darkness I couldn’t see the walls but the flames from the hundreds of diyas told me that I had a place of my own, my earth, and I was home. Paritosh Shah came along then, with Kanta Bai and Bada Badriya, and he found me standing outside, and he drew me into the house. ‘Let us welcome Lakshmi,’ he said.

  We sat on two gaddas pulled together, and we played cards. I said, ‘I’m not very good at this.’

  Kanta Bai laughed, and said, ‘Ganesh Gaitonde, you are the wildest gambler I have ever met. And you’re not good at teen-patti? How can that be? But I’ll teach you.’ She was sitting cross-legged with a pillow in her lap and her elbows resting on the pillow while she shuffled the cards, fast, fast. They made a whirring noise under her fingers. ‘But, Paritosh Bhai, pull out some of the good stuff,’ she said. Then we had to send out for ice, and three
of the boys to Vyas Bazaar, where they took the owner of Parthiv Household Goods from his dinner and down to open his shop, because Paritosh Shah wouldn’t drink Johnny Walker out of steel tumblers, which were all I had. He held up the sparkling new glasses my boys brought back, and said they weren’t so bad. And when I held my glass in my hand, and ran my finger over the sharp edges patterned into its sides, and felt its solid weight, I had to admit that there was a rightness about it. I knew now that drinking the good stuff meant that you drank it out of good glasses. Paritosh Shah held up his glass and shook it gently, next to his grinning face. ‘Listen to it, boss,’ he said. ‘Listen, listen.’ I brought up my glass to my ear and shook it, and heard the small, perfect music the ice made against the glass. ‘Cheers,’ Paritosh Shah said. I hesitated, it was an English word I had heard before but had never said. ‘Chee-yers,’ Paritosh Shah said.

  ‘Cheers,’ I said. Kanta Bai laughed and dealt a hand. I sipped at Johnny Walker, and liked all of it, the taste of it, the ice against my teeth, the cold, smooth surface under my lower lip. ‘Cheers,’ I said again, and understood that for Johnny Walker you needed a whole different home, a brand-new setting.

  We played cards. I lost and lost all night. The notes went from my side to theirs, but I was happy. I knew it would come back, let Lakshmi go with happiness, don’t be afraid, and she comes back to lavish blessings on you, she takes you into her lap and holds you close, like a son. In this going and coming is Lakshmi’s happiness. So we slapped the cards down, and the money went, but I was content, it would come back multiplied and grown, from Paritosh Shah and his businesses and his knowledge of all the businessmen in the area who made fortunes, who ate and drank in my kingdom and owed me tribute, from Kanta Bai and her satrangi hooch and the hundreds who drank it and the thousands more who would drink it if I helped her, and that Diwali night was golden. Somebody had put on a cassette recorder and the songs flowed – ‘Jab tak hai jaan jaan-e-jahaan’ – and outside there was the slam of bombs and the long, hysterical rattles of entire ladhis of crackers, and we played, and the circle of players got wider, and Paritosh Shah told jokes, and Inspector Samant arrived and joined the circle and showed us how to play paplu, and Kanta Bai’s palloo slipped from her shoulder and she roared in amusement at Chotta Badriya, who shyly turned his face away from her bountiful brimming-over, her over-run over her blouse, and the cards flew, and I lost, and lost.