Sacred Games

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Sartaj said. ‘Don’t mention.’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘About your investigation of Ganesh Gaitonde. I tried to think about Jojo, if I could remember anything.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  She smiled again, and again this time it came suddenly, without warning. She raised her left hand and did a curious little wave, holding out her hand towards him and turning it only from the wrist. Sartaj nodded, and shut the door.

  An hour and a half of shifting and coiling had left Sartaj exhausted, but more awake than when he had got into bed. He had settled in just after midnight, feeling virtuous about the earliness of the hour, and clean from a long shower. But now a small and relentless agitation was working under his skin. He had drunk three whisky-and-waters. And still there was no sleep. He sat up. Shadows of wires swayed across the window-pane. He couldn’t remember the name of the dog. There had been that small white dog that Kamala Pandey’s husband had thrown out of the window. Sartaj remembered its stiff-legged sprawl in the car park, but he couldn’t remember the name of the gaandu thing. He still had her number. He could call Kamala Pandey and ask her, what was the name of the dog your husband killed, that the two of you killed together, as you played your dirty games?

  Sartaj swung his feet to the floor, rubbed at his eyes. He couldn’t do that, it would be police harassment, persecution, something. But he knew who would be awake at two in the morning. He dialled, pressing at the lighted keys with a shaky finger. He listened to the ring and waited, holding up his hand. He was very tense. I need to get a blood-pressure test, he thought. There was a history in the family: Sartaj’s father had struggled against hypertension and high cholesterol all his life. He had survived one heart attack, and died quietly in his sleep nine years later, of causes that the doctors said were natural.

  ‘Peri pauna, Ma,’ Sartaj said.

  ‘Jite raho, beta,’ she said. ‘Did you just get home?’

  ‘Yes. Casework.’ Work was an acceptable reason for calling this late. Admitting to insomnia would occasion an enquiry into his eating habits, his consumption of alcohol and his health. He would be pre-emptive. ‘Ma, you sound hoarse. Are you getting a cold?’

  ‘A cold, me? I never get colds. Your father was the one who always got colds. He had that thin Bombay blood. We grew up in a good clean climate, we were used to good cold winters.’ This was an old theme, that the north-western sardar was tougher than the Bombay sardar. The sisters were the toughest of all, and Navneet-bhenji was the eldest and the hardiest of the sisters. Here it came, the story of the stalwart and long-lost aunt. ‘Navneet-bhenji used to bathe in cold water even on January mornings. At six-thirty in the morning because she had to get to early class at college. Even Papa-ji would tell her to put in a little hot water, but she never listened. And if you looked at her, you would think what a delicate, beautiful thing! She was a literature student, she looked like she should be counting pearls in a palace, but she was strong as some peasant. She used to paint really well also, you know. These scenes of the village fields, and houses, and cows. There was one she did of our new house that was wonderful, it was so exact.’

  Now there was a pause. This halt was also a familiar one, as Ma mourned the dead sister. Navneet-mausi had been killed during Partition, but Ma had been talking about her for as long as Sartaj could remember. She was dead, but she had always been in Sartaj’s life. All the children and grandchildren in the family knew her well, this absent mausi. They had lived with her, with the stories and the rigidity that would come over the faces of the elders as they spoke of her. Sartaj had tried now and then to press past that constriction of muscle and nerve, that freezing of emotion, to what exactly had happened during those bloodstained days. But all that Ma had ever said was, ‘Those were bad days, very bad days,’ and that was all. And that was what they all said, all the uncles and aunts and grandparents. That, and an occasional curse against Muslims: beta, you don’t know, they are bad people, very bad people.

  But tonight Ma was not angry about old hurts, or bitter, she was just quiet. So Sartaj finally said, ‘I don’t know how you remember such old things. Exact paintings and things like that. I can’t even remember the name of a dog.’

  ‘What dog?’

  So Sartaj told her the story: the husband, the wife, the dog thrown out of the window.

  ‘What a horrible man!’ Ma said. She liked dogs, and they liked her. ‘Did you arrest him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The wife wouldn’t file charges.’

  ‘Arre, there was abuse of an innocent animal.’

  ‘She wouldn’t even say he had thrown it out of the window.’

  ‘Maybe she was scared of him.’

  ‘She’s not so innocent either.’

  ‘Why? You saw her again?’ Ma had spent decades tussling with a policeman, two policemen, so she had developed her own skill at catching nuances and unvoiced truths. ‘What’s wrong with her?’

  It was an ugly story to tell this late at night to his mother, but Sartaj told it. He made a quick little report on the wife, the pilot, the camera, the blackmail. He left out the bribe the wife had offered, and her tight little white top. Ma had severe opinions about shamelessness in any guise, and he didn’t want to overly prejudice her against Kamala Pandey. The errant wife was surely condemned in any case. ‘Of course I told her that I couldn’t work on her case, without a complaint. She’s a fool,’ he said. ‘A fool who thinks she can get whatever she wants, can do whatever she wants.’

  ‘Yes,’ Ma said. ‘Her father must have done whatever his little daughter wanted, and given her no discipline. People spoil their children nowadays.’

  Sartaj laughed out loud. This was why he called his mother in the middle of the night, for these sudden vaulting leaps of insight, these confirmations of his own hunches. She was quite amazing sometimes. ‘Yes, she’s a brat. Very irritating.’ He sat up in bed, and drank a long draught of water. He was feeling better already, hearing her voice, listening to her breathing. ‘Did you and Papa-ji talk much about his cases?’

  ‘No, no. He didn’t like to talk about work with me. He said a policeman’s life meant that you couldn’t escape from work until midnight anyway. Then to come home finally and keep thinking and talking about work, that would drive you mad. So we talked about other things, and he said that relaxed him. That’s what he said anyway.’ She sounded dryly amused. He could see the tilt of the chin, that downward glance. ‘The truth is that he was old-fashioned. He thought that I would be scared by all the murder and the dirty things they had to investigate. He thought women shouldn’t be exposed to that kind of thing.’

  ‘And you went along with that?’ She loved action movies, and in recent years had developed an inexplicable taste for all the really bad, blood-dripping, moonlight-and-screams horror series on television. She read the crime columns in the papers every morning with relish and offered commentary, and the repeated observation that the world was a bad place, and getting worse.

  ‘Beta, you adjust. Adjust. He didn’t want to talk about work, so I didn’t. That’s how you go along. That’s what this new generation doesn’t understand.’

  She meant Sartaj’s generation, and Megha’s. She knew that Megha was married, finally and completely out of Sartaj’s reach, but occasionally she would revisit what had happened, what should have happened, what Sartaj should have done. Sartaj had long given up arguing, or even responding with anything other than the occasional ‘Yes’. He lay back and listened. She was his mother, and he adjusted.

  ‘Achcha, go to sleep now,’ she said, ‘or you’ll be tired for your shift.’

  ‘Yes, Ma,’ Sartaj said. They said their goodbyes, and he turned towards the window so he could feel the air on his face. He fell into sleep easily, and dreamed. He dreamt of an enormous plain, a cloudless sky, an endless line of walking figures. He woke abruptly. The phone was ringing.

&n
bsp; It was before seven, he knew that without opening his eyes. There was that stillness, in which a single bird was chittering. He waited, but the phone was not going to stop. He reached for it.

  ‘Sartaj,’ his mother said, ‘you must help that girl.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That woman from last night, the one you told me about. You should help her.’

  ‘Ma, have you slept?’

  ‘Where is she going to go? What is she going to do? She’s alone.’

  ‘Ma, Ma, listen to me. Are you all right?’

  ‘Of course I’m all right. What would be wrong with me?’

  ‘Fine. But why all this about that stupid woman?’

  ‘I was just thinking this morning. You should help her.’

  Sartaj kneaded his eyes, and listened to the bird. Women were mysterious, and mothers were more mysterious. Ma was quiet now, but it was her strict silence. It was a calm that tolerated no back-talk, no resistance. He wanted very much to go back to sleep. ‘Yes, all right. Okay.’

  ‘Sartaj, I’m serious.’

  ‘I am too. Really, I will.’

  ‘She’s all alone.’

  So was everyone else in the world, Sartaj wanted to say. But he mustered up obedience. ‘I understand, Ma. Promise I’ll help her.’

  ‘I’m going to the gurudwara now.’

  He had no idea what that had to do with calling him out of a perfectly good slumber, but he whispered, ‘Yes, Ma,’ and hung up the phone. Sartaj’s bed was moulded to his body, the bird was not too loud, the morning was cool under his silent fan, but sleep was gone. He cursed Kamala Pandey. Saali Kamala Pandey, she is a kutiya, he said to the bird, bloody raand, and he got up.

  Sartaj spent the morning writing redundant reports on small burglaries which would be perfunctorily investigated and never solved. His afternoon trickled away in court, between two magistrates and three cases. At five he drank a cup of tea in the restaurant across the road, and ate a greasy omelette. The restaurant was called Shiraz, and was full of gossiping lawyers. Sartaj hid himself away at the rear of the first-floor air-conditioned annexe, and tried to avoid meeting the lawyers’ eyes as they walked to the washbasin. He chugged down a tall glass of chaas, wiped his moustache and started to feel better. He managed to get through the annexe without having to talk to anyone, and all the way down the stairs. But half-way to the entrance a weedy, pock-face rose up to intercept him.

  ‘You’re Sartaj Singh?’

  This wasn’t a lawyer. His grey shirt was sweat-stained, and he had the mean, foxy deference of someone used to people stepping around him. But he had a voice that made up for his build, brassy and deep. ‘Who are you?’ Sartaj said.

  ‘You don’t remember. I met you at the funeral. And two-three times before that.’

  Of course. This voice. ‘You’re Katekar’s…Shalini’s sister’s husband.’

  ‘Vishnu Ghodke, saab.’

  ‘Vishnu Ghodke, yes. Yes.’ Sartaj remembered him from the funeral, but not before that. At the funeral he had been busy bringing things, organizing the mourners, directing the priests. ‘Everything all right, Vishnu?’

  Vishnu Ghodke touched his breastbone. ‘By your blessings, saab. Although…’

  Sartaj nodded. ‘Yes. Katekar was a good man.’ He waited for Ghodke to step aside. ‘We’ll meet again some time.’

  Ghodke wasn’t ready to leave Sartaj quite yet. He turned sideways to let Sartaj pass, and then followed him out on to the pavement. ‘Have you seen Dada’s boys?’ he said into Sartaj’s shoulder.

  Sartaj was abruptly aware that he didn’t like Vishnu Ghodke very much. He wasn’t quite sure why, but he wanted to put a hand over his face and back him fast into the wall. ‘Yes, I saw them yesterday. In the evening yesterday. Are they all right?’

  ‘Of course, of course, saab. No, nothing like that.’

  ‘Then like what?’

  ‘Was their Aai there?’

  ‘No, she was out.’

  Vishnu Ghodke turned his head to the side, to look across the evening swell of cars towards the court house. Above his head was the red ‘Shiraz’ sign, with the lettering delicately arranged in four languages. ‘This is what, saab?’ he said, coming back to Sartaj. ‘What is it? A woman should be at home. A woman should be with her family.’

  ‘She has to work, Vishnu.’

  ‘But this is not work, roaming about in the evening, leaving her children to go hungry.’ He was making wide gestures towards the road and the courts beyond, as if Shalini was running wild among the black robes and the stained arches.

  Sartaj’s shoulders came up, he felt the dense throb of violence along his forearms. Maderchod. This bastard had to show up now, today. ‘Those boys are fed and happy,’ he said. ‘Their home is well-kept. What is it that’s tickling your gaand?’ Vishnu Ghodke squirmed away, found the wall behind him. ‘Haan? Tell me.’

  ‘Saab, I was just saying…’

  ‘Saying what?’

  ‘She has started going to these meetings.’ Vishnu was trying to find a quiet voice now, an intimate one. He wanted to be a man talking reasonably to another man.

  ‘They talk about health. So?’

  ‘Saab, health is one thing. But they tell them all these, these uncivilized things. All these things that are not fit for decent women. And they tell them to go about and talk to young girls and spread it into the community. Why does a young, unmarried girl need to know about pregnancy and nirodh and all? I have young girls, I am a father, and I tell you it is becoming very difficult. As it is, you never know what can be on television, right in the middle of the day. It is impossible for a family to sit together and watch. And then we have people like this, educated people who catch women like Shalini and turn their heads.’

  Sartaj considered clouting this defender of the culture, once on each scrawny cheek. But that wouldn’t smash any sense into his head, it would only make him more militant in his defence of his daughters. ‘You don’t worry about Shalini’s head,’ he said. ‘And she’s not talking to your daughters. If she says something to them you don’t like, tell her to stop.’

  ‘That woman won’t listen to anyone, saab. Her husband is gone, so she thinks she can do what she wants.’

  ‘So she won’t listen to you. Is this why you are angry?’

  Vishnu brushed at his shoulder, where the plaster from the wall had left a streak. He had grown confident as he had spoken, had forgotten some of his fear. ‘Saab, I am not concerned about myself. I am only thinking of the boys, and that home. That home will suffer. We have a saying: gharala paya rashtrala baya.’

  Sartaj reached out and put a hand on Vishnu’s shoulder. He smiled. To the passing pedestrians, they were just two friends passing the time with friendly banter. But Vishnu was squirming already from the pressure of Sartaj’s thumb just under his collarbone. ‘So now you’re worried about the country also?’ Sartaj said. ‘You listen to me, Vishnu. I don’t like you going around talking, making trouble for her. You think you’re some bhenchod saint? You wander around like some bastard loudspeaker, spewing lies.’

  ‘But it’s all true, saab.’

  Sartaj squeezed, and now Vishnu was truly afraid. ‘It’s true that she’s trying to take care of her boys. And do some good. You’re a small man, Vishnu. Your brain is small, your heart is small, so you think small of people. You’re a small, mean bastard, Vishnu. I don’t like you. So shut up. Keep your mouth closed. Understand?’

  Vishnu’s eyes were sparkling with tears. He had a hand picking at Sartaj’s wrist, but he couldn’t get away from the pain.

  ‘Understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ Vishnu said. But he had the persistence of a cornered rat, this Vishnu. He whispered, looking away, ‘But I’m not the only one saying it. Other people are saying it as well.’

  Sartaj let go of him, and leaned in close. ‘Yes, other maderchods like you are always ready to say this and that about a woman who is alone. Especially when you are such a decent brother-in-law that yo
u start these rumours yourself. So you’d better keep quiet.’ Vishnu nodded, keeping his eyes down. Of course he wouldn’t stop. Of course he would keep at it, add and embroider. But now he knew there would be consequences. ‘If I hear you’re making trouble, I’ll come and look for you, Vishnu. She needs your help now. Live with her as a family should, Vishnu. Help her make that home strong, don’t destroy it with your mouth.’

  Vishnu was working his jaw, but was keeping his head down and his mouth shut, as instructed. Sartaj had no doubt he would open it as soon as he felt safe. Sartaj patted his cheek gently. ‘I’ll be watching you,’ he said, and walked away.

  Gharala paya rashtrala baya. So if the stability and prosperity of a house depended on its foundations, and that of a country on its women, what was Sartaj going to do about the glossy and very unreliable Kamala Pandey? He had his unambiguous instructions from Ma, and despite the distance, and his age, he did usually go along with what she wanted. For the most part. But she was a sentimentalist, wanting to rescue fallen women from their troubles. She was from another generation, and she had no idea what kind of trouble Kamala Pandey was. She could have no conception of how much Kamala Pandey annoyed Sartaj. It was easy to say, you must help that girl. Much harder to tolerate the bitch.

  Sartaj let it sit in his stomach for three days. He went about his business, investigated, arrested, wrote reports, drank, slept. Kamala Pandey stayed with him, and it was pleasurable to think of her in trouble, of her wincing and cowering under the shower of abusive language that came in over her mobile phone, of her money being taken from her. Yes, she should learn that the world was not made for her delectation. Yes, she should know that she couldn’t have just whatever she wanted. On the fourth day the relish ebbed, and by that evening it had been replaced by a dragging feeling of responsibility.

  ‘What’s the matter, Sartaj?’ Majid Hussain said.

  They were standing on Majid’s balcony, waiting for dinner. Sartaj was nursing his second glass of Black Label. Majid was wearing red shorts, and drinking fresh mausambi juice, and was speaking with the quiet authority of an old friend who knew exactly when Sartaj was being more morose than usual. He would press on until Sartaj talked. So Sartaj told him about Kamala Pandey, the whole story. ‘She’s one fancy item,’ he said. ‘Shows off her money. So some boys are taking some of it off her.’