Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

I opened the door. Chotta Badriya was sitting on the bed, putting away the money, stacking it neatly inside a blue travel bag. 'Everything all right, bhai?'

'All right?'

'You look a little…tired. Stomach troubles?'

'Yes. It's upset.'

'In our climate, you have to be very careful. There are too many germs everywhere, food gets spoiled fast. And we eat out too much, you know, all this greasy outside food. If you eat home food, keep a light diet, it's much better for your stomach.'

'All your light diet-shiet and you still have that,' I said, pointing to his stomach.

He threw his head back and laughed, and held the plump folds of his belly in both hands and lifted them up. 'Yes, bhai,' he said, smiling. 'That I have. What to do? We got rich.'

'We got old.'

'We're still young, bhai,' he said, and was about to go on, but then there was a rattle at the door, and Bunty backed in, carrying a tray. He put it down on the bed, handed me a cup of tea, and his pupils were small and spike-like in their questioning. I said nothing, and he shut the door very gently as he left, and there was a low drone of tension in the room now, which Bunty had stirred up with his cautious walk. Or maybe it was in my beating blood. Chotta Badriya was still looking at the door.

'What were you saying?' I asked, and my voice was too loud.

He looked back at me, and his mouth was small and concentrated as he searched for the thought, and then he relaxed into a big grin. 'I've completely forgotten, bhai.'

'Idiot,' I said. 'Drink your chai.'

'Now these are truly fattening, bhai,' he said, slurping from the cup. He held up a glistening brown bhajiya from the pile on the tray. 'There is more oil in one of these things than your body needs in a year.' He put it down carefully on the plate and took a long gulp of chai.

'Eat it.'

'What?'

'Eat it,' I said.

He had a kind of hatred for the pile of bhajiyas, a murderous attraction for them that knew exactly how much power they had over him. He pushed the plate away, sulky. 'They're bad for me, bhai. I have become fat.'

'Eat them, eat them,' I said. 'I'm giving you permission.'

'Yes?'

'Yes.'

He picked one up, held it up to the slabs of sunlight, examined the bhajiya's brown whorls and complicated branchings. He took a slow bite, and his eyes shut for a moment.

'Mmmm,' he said. 'Have one, bhai.'

'No, you eat. Can you eat the whole plate?'

'All of these?'

'All.'

'Easy. They're not that much.'

'Finish them, then.'

'No, all of them?' He really did look chotta then, with his shiny lips and surprised cheeks and boy's open face, all bright.

'It's an order.'

He began to eat, sitting cross-legged on the bed. He thumped shiny crimson sauce from a bottle on to the bhajiyas, and then held the plate up close to his chest and lowered his head to them. Now, I thought. But the pistol was tangled somewhere behind me, I could feel it cutting against my spine. I would have to get up, draw. No, no. Let him finish. When he finishes. Not now.

The pile was half-way gone now. I got up, walked to the window. The white top of my car sent up a glancing blaze of light into my eyes, and I turned and squinted. The sun was coming down, and the black shore stretched to right and left, all rocks and upthrusting edges. The trees were completely still, not a stirring of a leaf. Somewhere over there were other countries, millions of people sleeping. I saw them curled close to each other, naked, faces relaxed. Behind me was Chotta Badriya eating. I needed to turn around. Maybe he wasn't finished yet. But if he was finished he would look up, he would be looking at me. I took hold of myself, a breath, another one, and the faint swirl of the sea was close by, and I turned. He was still eating. He had two bhajiyas left. His cheek was full, plumped out and moving. Now there was one bhajiya left. The pistol came into my hand easily. It swung up. I swung it up, and I was careful, formal and correct. Get the balance right. Aim well. Hear nothing. See only the target, nothing else. That narrow space of brown skin just above and in front of the ear, just before the hair started.

His blood sizzled. The shot must have boomed, but from the long stifling tunnel of my aim I heard nothing, and in the next moment I knew that blood from a freshly broken skull froths, that it makes a small fizzling sound. It is a small, fast, stuttering hiss. It lasts for only a moment.

Bunty pushed the door open slowly, leading with his gun. He lowered it. There was no need for a second shot.

* * *

I was happy. I could understand now what Paritosh Shah had meant when he told me I needed to get settled, why he had always extolled the virtues of marriage. I was settled, I felt in place, rooted, held down to my soil in a way I had never experienced before. I knew who I was, I no longer felt that I was attempting at every moment to become Ganesh Gaitonde, that I was groping for the contours of Ganesh Gaitonde. With Subhadra next to me, and my acceptance that I was a Hindu bhai, that I was some kind of Hindu, I felt real. I was no bent-backed, harried husband – I still took Jojo's women – and I was no worshipper of gods and goddesses, but the boys understood me now, and came around me and felt comfortable. I was a leader they could identify with. Our rolls were back up to normal strength again. For the first time in my life, I experienced contentment. It puzzled me at first, this puddling of warmth inside my chest. Yes, Subhadra delighted in the everyday acts necessary to being a wife, she arranged and rearranged the utensils in the kitchen in graduated, gleaming rows, she danced about choosing my clothes in the morning and picked them up from the floor gladly in the evening. She walked efficiently about the house, her keys jingling at her waist. She was slim, not exactly pretty but pleasant-looking, and when I looked at her I was not beset by that angry desire that some randis brought forth from me. I wanted to sit with Subhadra, to watch the evening from our balcony, eat some ghavan and drink chai. Outside, our struggles and wars went on as before, but I was not consumed by these battles as before. We won, we lost sometimes, but we were still strong, and we were growing, and so I was happy.

But I was beset by bodily troubles. My stomach was keeping unwell, I had a bulging pain that came upon me often, late in the afternoons, a feeling of congestion in the lower abdomen, and then of expansion, as if something was trying to get out. Gas, the doctors diagnosed, and prescribed tablets and light food. But only Scotch whisky soothed it, made my tissues calm, took away the sudden pressures that threatened to tear. I couldn't let the boys see me drinking, so Bunty arranged another bungalow for me, this one within easy reach in Juhu, just down the lane from the Holiday Inn. I went every other day to this haven by the sea, where Bunty kept a bottle of Johnny Walker in a locked cupboard, and soda in the fridge. I sat alone on the terrace at sunset, and drank. Two small pegs was what I allowed myself. The drink was calming, but it brought on spasms of nostalgia. There were evenings when I cried for the early days with Paritosh Shah, when we were poor and young, when we had faced insurmountable odds and defeated monstrously strong villains. Where had those mornings gone, when we had gathered our weapons for good fighting? Where were our friends of those bright evenings? Where were the songs of our fleeting spring? I drank and listened to old numbers and remembered. ' Chala jaata hoon kisi ki dhun me, dhadakte dil ke tarane liye… '

Meanwhile Bunty tried to learn everything he needed to, to manage our complicated affairs. He had started with us as a shooter, had been noticed early on in our war with Suleiman Isa, and now he was my trusted and main controller. He was full of confidence and vigour. 'Everyone knows what you did, bhai. From Matunga to Dubai, they've heard. They know that you found Suleiman Isa's bastards and tumbled them. Your partner is now fully paid for. You won this one too.' He said it to cheer me up when I was silent for long hours in the car. I knew that I had won. And I knew also that there was no victory in this world without another, larger loss hiding inside it, that in our triumph we were already hunted by some disaster. I knew something was coming. Suleiman Isa was coming. I told the boys to be careful, I increased security in Gopalmath, I forbade Subhadra from leaving the house. Not even to the temple, I told her. You are to stay at home. She looked glum but obeyed.