Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

At the clinic, Anjali dashed water over her face, her arms. When she emerged from the bathroom, K.D. Uncle's head was angled at exactly the same tilt she had left him in, towards the window. His profile stood dark against the brightness, that well-known arc of high forehead and spare, bald skull, that prow of a nose. It had been five weeks since he had spoken a word. He was pliable and easy, he would walk with you if you held his hand, sit if you pushed him slowly into a chair. He ate slowly, but only if you fed him by hand, and he showed no pleasure in his favourite dishes. He was indifferent. He had gone away. Anjali knew this well, she recognized it when she sat directly in front of him and spoke to him. Behind those slow blinks there was neither happiness nor sadness. He was just absent. He had gone far beyond hate and desire, and so he could no longer love. Still, Anjali came as often as she could and sat with him. The nurses turned him over during the day, walked him to the bathroom and into the garden, but Anjali liked to turn him towards the window and the sunset. She had noticed, long ago in her childhood, how he liked the turning of colours. He liked mountains, and snow. He had told her about Himalayan peaks, about how at sunrise and sunset they turned a bright gold against blue.

The doctors gave him two months to live, maybe three. Anjali had seen how hard he had fought to come back to her, when he had told her about the counterfeit money. And after that momentary return, she had accepted, completely and without hope, the fact of his departure. What was here was not K.D. Yadav. Still, she came and sat with him in the evenings. She would not, in any case, abandon him.

She settled herself down into the chair next to the bed and opened her sheaf of papers to the marked sheet. She was reading a Xeroxed journal article titled 'Warrior Ascetics in Indian History'. The information that Gaitonde had been looking for sadhus had led nowhere, and even Anjali now thought that it was a misrepresentation, a joke or an allusion to something else, or an outright lie. But her initial reading about sadhus had taken her headlong into one of her obsessions. She called them her 'projects', but her ex-husband Arun had called them her manias: she would become fascinated by some obscure thing, some murky process that twenty people in the entire world cared about, and then she had to know all about it. Her projects had included the life cycle and social organization of the red ant, the history of terracotta sculptures on the subcontinent, the economy and organization of the Soviet gulags, the early history of the steam locomotive and railways. She had once spent four glorious months reading, in every spare moment, about the campaigns of Julius Caesar. None of this was of any practical use to her. She had tried to explain to Arun that the pleasure was in the little specifics, in finding out how something worked, how its components fitted together. When they had been courting, he had found these projects amusing, charming in their eccentricity. He had admired her curiosity and her memory. But later, after they were married, Arun grew tired of her endless reading and questioning. During one of their quarrels, he told her that he found her boring. Of course they had always known they were different, but once it had seemed that his gregariousness and her quiet calm would balance each other out. Later, afterwards, he liked to exchange visits with his ever-growing circle of friends, drink Scotch and watch Formula One racing, which he never missed, even when he was posted as a probationer in a backwater of Madhya Pradesh. He had taken a lift in a coal truck to get to a big-enough television, and some years later he had decided, also on a racing night, that Anjali was boring. She still thought he might not have thought her so boring if she had been willing to give up her career and move along with him on every new posting, like the other IAS wives did. Anyway, that was long ago, and it was all over. Anjali turned to her article and read about the Sanyasi Rebellion.

She was distracted, though. It was hard to read without being able to discuss the material with K.D. Uncle, without debate and exegesis and questioning. Even when he was travelling somewhere on the other side of the world, she had always talked to him about her reading, and now there was this absence which responded with lofty indifference. This silence made a hole inside her, a gap which threatened to expose that other, vaster chasm her father had left behind, and a shudder of panic started in her stomach. It was hard to be so alone, it was impossible. She stood up, walked away the anxiety, striding to the door and then back to the window. She was not alone. She had Ma to look after, and many friends, and good colleagues and essential, crucial work. She was needed. And there was a man, perhaps a man, a professor of sociology, a little younger than her but very gentle. She could still hope for love, or at least companionship and compassion, unlike poor K.D. Uncle, who had truly lived like some sort of ascetic. She stopped short, tightened her shoulders and told herself to stop being ridiculous. It was heartbreaking to lose K.D. Uncle, but some part of him was here, she owed him at least the serenity and discipline he had inculcated in her. She sat next to him, squeezed his wrist, held on to it and began to read.

* * *

Working with hair had taught Mary Mascarenas the ephemeral nature of happiness. Sometimes, now and then, with a client, she would achieve a blazing moment of perfection in which the reigning style and ambition and physiology came together to produce beauty, pure and breathtakingly obvious. In these moments, when the hair emerged from wrappers and coils and heat, when the client turned towards the arrayed mirrors, there was a gladness, an ecstasy as real as love, or motherhood, or patriotism. But time passed. Styles changed, the client grew older and old, and hair grew, how it grew. It lengthened, and changed, it transformed its texture and curl, it fell, it greyed and grew thin. Happiness always passed. Sooner or later the happy client looked into her mirror and grew restless and wanted a new cut. The cuts came and went, and bangs were down one year and up the next and four years later descended again. What was in this season was sure to be out the next. Blonde came and went, and short efficiency was followed by long femininity. Mary was sure that the morning after the oldest profession was invented, the professional went looking for a stylist. She was popular with clients at the Pali Hill Salon, and so she had good job security, and a very decent income from commissions, and much information. Clients liked to talk.

Comilla Marwah was talking now, as Mary worked on her hair with a Yasaka cutting scissor and a comb. 'You don't know, Mary,' she whispered, 'how that woman went after Rajeev. Such drama about how miserable she was in her marriage to that horrible husband, and all of this delivered to Rajeev in little black dresses at Indigo. So of course something started. She used to go to the Oberoi, tell her driver that she was shopping: "Driver-ji, you go and have lunch, I'll take two-three hours." Then she would go in, through the hotel and to the other entrance, catch a taxi from there straight to Rajeev's building, enter through the side gate and up to his apartment. So, nice afternoon bonk, then back in another taxi to the Oberoi, and ten minutes of shopping so she had some bags, and off to home looking like some Sati-Savitri. And telling Rajeev that she had made a terrible mistake, that she should have never left him in London, all this shit. Meanwhile she meets Kamal, who's rich, rich as in the industrialist type of rich…'

Comilla had to stop then, for a stylist to squeeze by with her client. Space was so expensive in Bombay that even the best salons always had too many chairs squeezed in, too much business. And every day the salons were full. There was a lot of money in the city, and Comilla had a fair bit of it, and she knew exactly who had how much. She went on, 'But then she meets Kamal. This is at the same time she's doing Rajeev on the side, on the side of the horrible husband I mean. Kamal is loaded, and socially he's completely connected, he's right in the centre. And let's face it, she's an attractive woman. So then she starts angling for Kamal. Right under her husband's nose, you understand. They move in the same circles, all of them. But again the same story, unhappiness, haay-haay, I'm so sad, all that. Men can't resist that. So stupid. So then she's doing Kamal and Rajeev at the same time. Can you believe that?'