Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

Chotta Badriya noticed this. He had been quiet, he had been upset by what had happened, by the masjid and the days that followed, I could see that. So I kept him close, I took him everywhere. And I could see that he was trying, that for my sake he was fighting himself. He tried to take care of me. 'Bhai, these dance-girls are second-rate finally. I have much better for you.'

'Much better? Where?'

'Actresses, bhai. Stars.'

'Every one of these wants to be a star, chutiya.'

'No, no, bhai. Really, actresses. Promise.' Those days, everyone was becoming a television producer. Oil traders and taxi-owners were suddenly making television serials. One of these was Chotta Badriya's cousin, and he had told Chotta Badriya about a woman who was a model and actor co-ordinator, and also trying to be a television producer. Naturally this woman came into contact with many young girls, all lovely and fresh and young and new in the city, struggling to make their fortunes.

'So she helps them to struggle a little with men, and make themselves and her some money?' I said.

'Exactly, bhai. Otherwise, you know how hard it is in this city. How can a young actress survive, alone in this city? She helps them, bhai, she helps them.'

'Well, we must help them too. And what is the name of this saint?'

'Jojo.'

Jojo. A strange name, but the girls she sent were indeed a cut above the common randi. They were educated, and some of them English-speaking. With them I was successful. With them I was easily hard, and profoundly able. With them I acrobated and strong-manned and warriored until they collapsed on the field. But at home I was nothing. I examined my wife closely, took in her slightly crooked smile, the straight slash of her eyebrows, the small powder-and-toothpaste smell of her, and found her to my liking. I wanted her. But there was no having her. My strength vanished when I was in the safety of my own bed, and I had no recourse. I read the advertisements for clinics on billboards and at the back of magazines, the promises of vigour from tablets and potions, but I was unable to tell anyone, not even Chotta Badriya. I was shamed. I picked up the phone and called one of the clinics, asked to speak to the Vaid, but they wanted money and they wanted to know my name, and the woman on the line was quick and brusque, and I called her a gaandu and slammed the phone down. Subhadra came in then with a glass of milk, and I drank it, and I thought bitterly, yes, that randi on the phone I could have ploughed, but drink my wife's milk is all I can do. So I went through Jojo's girls, one after the other.

But I found that when I was far away from Subhadra, unable to hear her talking, I was even more afraid. Perhaps being at home was the better thing, perhaps my near presence would constrain her a bit, keep her from telling somebody about my failures. So back I went. And I found her happy in her house. That was the truth, she seemed happy, she was happy. Her marriage was a joke, at its centre it had a limp nothing, but she bustled about with her keys in her pallu and rattled pots in the kitchen and ordered servants about and nagged me about eating, and seemed content. She bloomed as we worried about the ruins of the mosque, as the newspapers unfurled ancient histories of bitterness and the convulsing speeches of politicians. The magazines published maps of the country festooned with spiky outgrowths of little cartoon explosions, each tiny detonation representing a riot, bodies, bricks, swords, and meanwhile I was unhappy, and she was happy. One night, she bustled into our bedroom and sat next to me.

'I've been hearing about your friend,' Subhadra said.

'Who?'

'Your friend Paritosh Shah.' She sat next to me, held on to the sleeve of my kurta. 'All the boys keep telling me how he made you marry, what a good influence he was on you. Tell me about him.'

So I told her about carrying gold to him, about his enormous paunch, his feeling for money, his love for the game of gain, our adventures together, his pleasure in festivals and rituals and celebrations, his need for high flight. She listened to me, her hand on my sleeve, head down but eyes shining and blinking up at me, with stray strands of her hair lit up by the lamp behind, each filament aglow, making a small wheel of light above her head. 'And that motu friend of mine,' I said, 'he wouldn't do a thing without praying, if he had to go from Colaba to Worli he would pray, if he had to steal a crore he would pray. And then they killed him.'

'Did you kill them?'

'Kill who?'

'The ones who killed him!'

She spoke of killing men, this little virgin, as if she was speaking of cutting chickens. 'We killed some of them.'

'No, but the ones who actually did it?'

How to explain to her that finding out exactly who pulled the triggers and who swung the hammers was not exactly easy? What would she understand of intelligence-gathering, safe houses, double and triple bluffs, setting fielding and lurkaoing men? She had asked the simple question, did you punish the men who actually did it? There was no simple answer. And then it came to me, looking at the sindoor in her hair and the full trust in her eyes, that she had asked the only question that was worth answering. I had failed Paritosh Shah. I had killed some of Suleiman Isa's men, and considered that revenge. But to take random men and destroy them, that was no revenge. Paritosh Shah had worried about me, he had loved me, he had married and settled me down, and I had abandoned his memory, made excuses to his soul about the punishments I had exercised on his enemies, while his actual murderers ran free. This is why I was cursed within the marriage he had made for me. I could not consummate while his soul was unconsummated, while it searched for its rest. My incompleteness was a direct reflection of his. I laughed. It had taken Subhadra to show me this, Subhadra was also the name of the sister of the god Paritosh Shah had worshipped. It made a kind of sense, really it did. I jumped up. I bent over and kissed my wife. I was rejuvenated, reborn. I ran out to the meeting rooms, and called up my boys, woke up Chotta Badriya.

'What have we done lately to find out which shooters came after Paritosh Shah? Have we offered money? How much? Who have we asked? Who have we captured?'

In an hour I had made new plans, set new schemes into motion, doubled and tripled the flow of money that would ease men's tongues, talked to policemen and company-men and shooters and khabaris, collected names and half-names and the shadows of names, addresses, rumours of dissatisfactions and intrigues. The house hummed and sang and I felt my force extending across Bombay like electricity, because of me women and men were talking, running, moving in patterns that I had set in motion, I had thrown the net of my self wide, and in it I would gather the assassins, I would take them in. They could not escape. Watch me, Paritosh Shah, bhai, fat man. You will have to restore me to myself. I will give you your murderers, and you will give me Subhadra, my marriage, you will give me back to me.

* * *

And then the riots were upon us again. News of new murders came to us from the anguished lanes, from the roads still mourning old injuries: Muslim stabbed here, Hindu killed there, and then mathadi workers stabbed and killed, a family burnt to death, and the whirlwind took us again. Again the empty roads and the long silent afternoon and the rushing slap of many running feet on the ground and the sun rolling overhead, and screams, screams moving with tiny rattles up our windows, and news of men and women and children doused with petrol and burnt alive, and Subhadra huddled into a corner, and the abrupt tapping of gunfire lasting into the night. I put my boys on the peripheries of Gopalmath, in relays, and told them to sit tight, to watch, to guard. After three days Bunty came to me, bringing complaints. 'I can't control the boys, bhai,' he said. 'They want to do something.'