Sacred Games

  ‘That only,’ Sartaj said hurriedly. ‘You have to be listening, but sometimes the trouble is that you don’t know what you’re listening for. Like there’s a song, but you don’t know what the tune is. So you just have to wander around, looking and listening. It can make you feel like a fool.’

  She was very direct now, her eyes locked on to his. ‘You are not a fool,’ she said.

  It was a declaration, and Sartaj didn’t hesitate now. He reached out and took her hand, and they sat together, holding hands. He very much wanted to kiss her, but there were walking grandmothers, and babies, and sprinting urchins. So, they sat. Sartaj thought of what Mary had just said: ‘You are not a fool.’ If he told Kamble about it, Kamble would mock Sartaj for the smallness of his romance, for the small, back-handed compliment that had finally brought them together. But Kamble was very young. Yes, no ghazal ever declared fervently that the beloved was not a fool, no Majrooh Sultanpuri love song had ever felt it necessary to claim this. Kamble believed in big romance and big tragedy, properly so. But Sartaj was content: to be rescued from one’s foolishness was the greatest tenderness. We are all fools, he thought. I know I am. To find one person who forgives you for this, that is big. That is great.

  They stayed on the seafront as dusk thickened and the sea receded into darkness, as the waves became uncurling ribbons of white. Mary squeezed his hand suddenly, and said, ‘What will become of those boys?’

  ‘Which boys? Little Red T-shirt and his gang?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They’ll survive.’

  ‘Yes, but how?’

  Sartaj shrugged. ‘Like everyone else does.’

  She nodded. But Sartaj could see that the boys stayed with her, that she was thinking about them still. He put an arm around her shoulder. He didn’t want to tell her what Kamble had said when they had finally left the boys and Jayanth the pocket-maar and the restaurant. They had been talking about the amazing little crazy kid, and then Kamble had said, ‘That Ramu is quite a leader, the bastard. Ten years from now he’s going to give us trouble, you’ll see.’ Sartaj had agreed. Ramu was sharp and brave and hungry. He would be a good apradhi, maybe a shooter. And then Kamble had said, ‘We should take him into the gali and encounter him now. Save us the trouble later of chasing him down, and save him the trouble of growing up.’ And Sartaj had laughed and thumped Kamble reprovingly on his back, but he had known that Kamble was probably right. With some kids, you could see their future written on their foreheads. You could see how badly they wanted the good life, and how that life was going to run away from them. But he didn’t want to think of Ramu and his troubles and his coming misfortune, not now. So he held Mary, and told her about his own childhood, and how he had never wanted to become a policeman like his father, but had become one anyway.

  Now they were quiet. Sartaj could hear, even across the broad expanse of the road, the trills and laughter and hoots from a group of teenagers, boys and girls, sitting near the bus stop. They were sitting on car bonnets and sideways on the seats of motorcycles, and they were young and confident and happy and well-off. They were flirting, and later that evening some of them might try to find a hidden nook to touch in, to reach hungrily for each other. But Sartaj was content to hold Mary’s hand, and later, to have the weight of her leaning against his back as he drove the motorcycle towards her house. He stopped at an intersection, and from the auto to his left came the well-known refrain from an old song: ‘Tu kahan yeh bataa, is nasheeli raat mein.’ Mary hummed it against his shoulder. ‘You know this song?’ Sartaj said.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘It’s Dev Anand, right?’

  It was indeed Dev Anand, it was Dev Saab walking through a foggy night in an old black-and-white film, Sartaj couldn’t remember the name. But he remembered that it was a cool night – maybe Mussoorie or Nainital, no, Shimla, it was Shimla – and Dev Saab was as weightless as the melody, light on his feet and limber, and lovely Nutan was waiting for him. The lights changed, and Sartaj drove slowly next to the auto, followed it away from Mary’s home, so that they could listen to the song. ‘He, chand taaron ne suna, in bahaaron ne suna, dard ka raag mera, rehguzaron ne suna.’ The wind moved smoothly over Sartaj’s cheeks, and Mary sang into his ear, and he laughed and thought, this is happiness, just this much: to be driving through these unruly, well-known streets, with an old song, with a hand on your hip, and with a new love. Just this much, suspended between past and future: this woman, this song, this dirty and beautiful city.

  The song ended, and with a swerve and sudden speed Sartaj left behind the auto. At Mary’s house, he kissed her twice, and then once more. It was very easy. She got off the bike, and put a hand on his shoulder. She was very close to him, and he leaned forward and kissed her. She closed her eyes, and he kissed her again. She was looking at him from under long lashes, and she smiled wide, and he kissed her. ‘Go,’ she said, and pushed him gently in the chest. He went, and he sang – badly, he knew – all the way home.

  The kisses stayed with him the next morning, as he drove to Katekar’s house. He parked the motorcycle, and stepped over the gutter. It was quite early, before seven, and the narrow lane was quiet. But Shalini was sitting in her door, picking pebbles and waste out of a pile of rice grains. She got up when she saw him, nodded and went into the house. Rohit brought out a chair for Sartaj. He had a moustache now, a few straggly strands that made him look even younger, but he was trying his best. ‘Hi,’ he said.

  Sartaj stopped a smile at the hip English, and said his hi too. ‘How are the classes going?’ he said. He sat, and tugged an envelope out of his hip pocket. Rohit had started evening computer classes and had told Sartaj on the phone about e-mail and Linux and other things that Sartaj didn’t understand.

  Rohit took the envelope and riffled through the hundred-rupee notes inside. ‘Thank you. The classes are going well,’ he said. ‘It is all very interesting.’

  But he was pensive. He was wearing new blue jeans and a banian, and there was something new about his hair. Sartaj could see that he was dressing to be a new person, a person who said ‘Hi’ and ‘Thank you’ and who found computer classes very interesting. But it wasn’t quite working. The jeans were flimsy, with a loose orange stitch that fell far short of international sophistication. There were a pair of blue sneakers just inside the door, and they had the same look of bedraggled hopefulness. There would be boys and girls in that computer class who spoke this language fluently, who would know the nuances of T-shirts and dark glasses. They would be hard on Rohit, and Sartaj felt twinges of sympathy as Rohit leaned against the wall and talked about how busy the classes were, and how some of its graduates had got work in Bahrain.

  Shalini brought out a glass of tea. Sartaj sat up: she looked new. He sipped at his tea, and listened to her, and tried to puzzle out what exactly it was about her. She was talking about her work, not the jhadoo-katka work she did to make money, but the volunteer work she did with her organization. The group was called SMM, which stood for Shakti Mahila Manch, and they went out into the bastis to educate women. ‘We talk to them about hygiene, and family planning,’ she said to Sartaj. ‘But the thing that upsets the husbands is when we tell the women that they should open their own bank accounts.’

  Sartaj laughed. ‘The husbands think you are taking away their cigarettes and their drink. You’d better be careful.’

  Shalini laughed. ‘They make a lot of noise. But they don’t do anything to us. They beat their wives. Brave men.’

  ‘There was that one incident,’ Rohit said. ‘In Bangalore.’

  ‘Yes,’ Shalini said. ‘Our team leader told us. This was last month. The Bangalore branch had a group in a basti there. They were threatened by some men from a religious organization, some parishad or the other. The branch complained to the police, but the locals wouldn’t do anything. They had to get the local MLA to intervene. But there’ll be trouble yet.’

  Sartaj was thinking of Mary, of how her upper lip had felt under his. He g
ot it suddenly: Shalini’s eyebrows had been plucked. Where there had been straightforward, rough brushstrokes, there were now delicate, precise arches. The change brought out her cheekbones, her eyes. Sartaj had never much noticed Shalini before, she had always been Bhabhi, Katekar’s wife. Now he looked at her. She was wearing a dark blue sari, and a blouse of the same material, but with blue stitching at the collar and sleeves. She would never wear red, yellow or green again, not unless she remarried. She wore no jewellery, and her hair was tidily taken back into a bun. She was far from pretty, but there was a spare elegance about her that Sartaj had never noticed before. ‘There is always trouble,’ he said, his heart suddenly full of his dead friend Katekar. Did Shalini have a boyfriend, a lover? She seemed calm, even as she spoke about men and their anger, and possible violence.

  ‘We have to keep working,’ she said with an air of finality. ‘Let them do what they want.’

  Mohit appeared in the doorway, rubbing his eyes. He was wearing a pair of brown shorts, and that was all. His chest was narrow, with a black birthmark under his left nipple. He had a black thread around his neck, with a silver amulet on it. Sartaj remembered how Katekar had objected to that amulet, how he had cursed ignorance and superstition. But Shalini had insisted on it, to protect Mohit from sorrow and misfortune. ‘Eh, Mohit,’ Sartaj said.

  Mohit started. He came out of his sleep, and in that fragmented moment, between his muzzy half-consciousness and full waking, Sartaj saw his anger. His loathing for Sartaj was full and fierce, a child’s hatred as vast as the sun. Sartaj was the only one who saw it, and he flinched. Then Rohit, who was leaning against the jamb, tapped Mohit on the head and said, ‘Wake up, Kumbhkaran. Sartaj Uncle is here.’

  Mohit ducked his head, and when he looked up again he was sweet and harmless. ‘I’m hungry, Aai,’ he said.

  ‘Go and get ready for school,’ Shalini said. ‘You’re late. I’ll give you something.’ There was an edge to her voice, an undertow of sorrow.

  ‘I am late also,’ Sartaj said. ‘I should go.’

  Rohit walked with Sartaj down the lane, towards the corner. ‘He keeps getting into fights,’ he said suddenly. ‘And twice this month already he’s skipped school.’

  ‘Mohit?’

  ‘Yes. I try to watch him as much as I can. But both Aai and I have so much to do. He was never like this before.’

  Before the event, before the death, before a fleeing apradhi trapped against a fence. Before everything. Mohit would measure his life before and after. And he would know who to blame. ‘He’ll grow out of it,’ Sartaj said. ‘It takes time. It’s all so soon after. It takes time.’

  Rohit nodded. ‘Aai says that too. She prays every morning, especially for him.’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘Aai?’ Rohit said absently. ‘She’s fine.’

  She couldn’t be all fine, Sartaj thought. She and Katekar had spent years together, they had brought up two sons. Yet, this morning, she had seemed strong. There were those eyebrows, and her work with SMM. Was this a new Shalini, or had he never seen her clearly before? Women were resilient, he knew that. Ma had survived Papa-ji’s death, after two days of weeping she had decided that the house had become unacceptably dusty. And then she had cleaned, not only the inside but also the little patch of garden in front and the courtyard at the back. She had called in workers to scour the wall at the back, and whitewash it. She had lived on, a little more austere than she had been before, but ever more capable, more sinewy. A time or two Sartaj had thought – with a slight queasiness arising from the observation – that she seemed more calm after Papa-ji had gone, more steady and self-possessed.

  Sartaj kicked the motorcycle into life, and tilted it around. Then he had to wait. A man with a long white cast on his leg was trying to manoeuvre the down-sloping turn to the left. He had to position his crutches exactly right to get the cast over the gutter, but the lane was troughed through and uneven and very narrow. There was a woman next to him, picking at his arm to position a crutch. The man cursed at her. His face was dense with fury, and his crutch scraped at the side of the gutter and slipped.

  ‘Here,’ Rohit said.

  Sartaj watched him get the man and his broken leg over the gutter and down the lane a bit. Rohit was a good boy. He was responsible, and steady, and he loved his mother. He came back now to Sartaj.

  ‘That’s our neighbour Amritrao,’ Rohit said. ‘He was drunk one night, fell off the fast train as it came into Andheri station. He was lucky he didn’t get his legs cut off. But he fell on the platform, smashed into the cement, phachack. So now he hobbles around.’

  ‘And curses his wife.’

  Rohit grinned. ‘They curse at each other, actually. They’re famous for their fights. And our Arpana, she has better curses than him. She told him once that you could drive a double-decker bus into his father’s gaand, it was so wide from being bambooed by all the moneylenders he had borrowed from. She’s just being nice to him right now because he’s hurt. Just give it a couple of days, he’ll get better and she’ll be giving it to him.’

  But right now, Arpana was being the dutiful wife, with a hand under her husband’s elbow. He was tottering and swaying at the bottom of the lane, just before the slight rise that led to Katekar’s house. ‘He’s going to fall and break his other leg,’ Sartaj said. ‘She should get him a wheelchair.’

  Rohit was full of doubt. ‘A wheelchair in these lanes, up and down? It wouldn’t get through this last part. And imagine pushing it up the slope, over all these tilts and angles. A wheelchair wouldn’t work.’ He was looking down at the ground, measuring its slant and its condition. He really was a very serious boy.

  Sartaj pumped his engine. ‘A computerized wheelchair would,’ he said over the bike’s metallic thumping. ‘I saw one once, that thing could race up this rise like a racing car. You wouldn’t have believed it.’

  ‘A computerized wheelchair?’ Rohit was stunned by the possibilities. ‘So it had to be motorized with a strong electric motor. Was there processing for each wheel?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sartaj said. In this shining young face, he saw again Katekar’s great faith in science, that trust in the greatness of technology, and he felt affection turn through his chest with the aching tug of a pulled muscle. ‘But it worked all right. That fellow who owned it, he said he could go up and down stairs on it.’

  ‘Was the wheelchair foreign? I’ve never seen anything like that here. That is so amazing.’

  ‘Yes, it was imported. But I don’t think it was built for Indian conditions, for dirt and monsoons. The poor bastard couldn’t get spare parts. It was very hard to maintain.’

  Rohit shook his head. ‘Our country really is primitive.’ And as he said it, he looked so like his father that Sartaj threw his head back and laughed.

  ‘Study hard, guru,’ Sartaj said, and patted him hard on the chest, and edged the bike up the lane, towards the main road. There were more people walking about now, on their way to the day’s work, and he had to go slowly. The walls still had an early-morning glow about them, and the small houses were spilling children in uniforms into the path. Sartaj had to stop often, and his calves began to ache from pedalling at the ground to make way. What will become of those boys? What will become of Mohit? Sartaj was thinking now of Mohit’s fights, his anger, his hatred. Where would he be ten years from now? What would he be?

  Sartaj was finally at the intersection. He bucked the motorcycle out on to the wide asphalt, turned to the left and gratefully sped away. It was good to be out of the basti, out of the twisty mess. He went faster. But dread followed him, an image of an older Mohit lying in a dirty lane, his back bent across a gutter. Sartaj couldn’t quite see his face, there was a blankness there, but he knew it was Mohit, and he was bleeding from gunshot wounds, and he was dead. Sartaj shook his head, and tried to think of the investigation at hand. No, no. Mohit would grow out of his trauma, he would forget, he would get better. He wouldn’t become a tapori, a thug, a bhai.
No. Kamble wouldn’t have to encounter him, no, not ten years from now and not ever. Sartaj would see to that, he was certain of it.

  Sartaj went south along the highway. He drove fast, weaving in and through the morning traffic. All his speed and his cutting close between buses couldn’t rescue him from Mohit’s revulsion, and from the certain knowledge of Mohit’s future. Mohit in a checked shirt, bleeding from three close-range bullet wounds in the chest, Sartaj could see the powder burns on the cotton. It was all very real. You’re being superstitious, he told himself, this is very silly. Mohit will be all right. Mohit will be all right. He drove on.

  Parulkar was waiting for Sartaj in his niece’s apartment in Santa Cruz. The deliveries of his money to Homi Mehta, his consultant, had slowed for a while, but now the pace was picking up again. He had no doubt spent untold sums of money as he engineered his way back to political favour, and now he was recouping. Sartaj had made a delivery less than a month ago, and now he was marvelling once again at the green marble in the lobby of the niece’s apartment building. The stone seemed to increase its lustre each time Sartaj came back. Perhaps that was one of the virtues of Italian marble. The steel in the lift was still unmarked, so that Sartaj could see his face and tend to his moustache. He decided he was looking better than he had in a long time, and then wondered how this could be so, given all the recent stress. And perhaps he was imagining it anyway.

  But Parulkar noticed it too. ‘You are looking smart, Sartaj. Good, good.’ He thumped Sartaj on the back and led him inside the apartment. The glass-topped dining table had dishes laid out on it, on lace-edged white place mats. ‘Have some poha and chai. The poha is especially very good.’

  ‘I’ve already eaten, sir.’

  ‘Try some anyway, beta. Once in a while it is good to enjoy the small things in life. I’ll have a cup with you.’

  The poha was indeed spectacular. Sartaj ate a small helping, then heaped his plate again. Parulkar drank chai and looked on benignly. They spoke about current cases and about Parulkar’s family. The renovations on Parulkar’s house were at last complete, and now his daughter Mamta – whose divorce was proceeding through the family courts – and her children could live comfortably with Parulkar. Life was getting on. Parulkar seemed content, and all his old vigour had returned, redoubled. ‘We will begin some new community interaction projects next month,’ he said, ‘after Diwali. New work for the new year.’ And he listened to Sartaj’s tales about the Gaitonde affair, and was confident that it would all amount to nothing. He shook his head and said, ‘This is all just unnecessary fear, based on very little real evidence. That woman is connecting things from here and there, making up a case for herself to pursue. People do that when their career is just sitting. Gurus and bombs! Nonsense.’