Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

Every week, Subhadra visited the station with my son. She would have come every day, but Parulkar used her visits as leverage. He only gave me these weekly visits after I began feeding him information, and said that he would let me see my wife and son more often if I co-operated more fully. But I wouldn't give him too much, he thought he was crafty, but I was his baap. So we played our game, Parulkar and I, and I waited from Monday to Monday for my family.

I loved my son. His name was Abhijaya, and he made me helpless. I thought I had loved other people before, but now I found that I had either wanted them, or had depended on them, that was all. I had never known what love really was. When they had talked about love in the films, gone on about how true love meant wanting nothing for yourself, desiring only the happiness of the other, I had dismissed all that as poetic babble put about by weak men and women who hadn't the strength to take what they wanted. But now, holding this squirmy little bundle in my arms, I knew it was all true. He was a year old, very confident, and he reached up for my face and rubbed his hands over my stubble and giggled. I felt an irresistible soft gushing force crack open my chest and reach into me, and a low laugh came out of me, a feeling up and down my spine: a man has a bond with his own blood that goes down to the beating core, to the nerve and the bone. I had become a father absently, in passing, but nothing I had known before was like this storm-like current of connection that passed from this tiny brat to me. I would let him do anything to me, and I would do anything for him. With him I had no statesmanlike grandeur to protect, no power to extend.

But I told Subhadra that she must be careful of her dignity in these filthy holes filled with police, that she had to learn to be strong, to be mother to the boys, that aside from our own Abhijaya she had these other hundred sons, hundreds of sons, the whole strength of the company. I told her that she had to protect my izzat both inside the lock-up and outside it, that she had to be strong. She looked more mature now, not older but now with layers of experience under that still-girlish face. There was just more of her there now, as if the floating particles of the flighty girl she had been had settled against each other, become more dense and strong, and now there was this Subhadra who listened quietly and gave good advice and would go out and tell my boys what to do. Bunty was my main support, but Subhadra was no less, and everyone knew this. The boys took this as somehow natural, but she had surprised me, I who took pride in never being surprised had been astonished by her and her son, and I didn't mind that somehow my wicket had been clean-bowled by these two frail creatures.

They were playing a game now. Subhadra was hiding her face behind her hands and revealing herself, and Abhi was laughing each time. I was content to watch them. 'How is your stomach now?' Subhadra said, from behind her hands. She was a good girl. She had been trying to get me to eat basketfuls of plums, which she insisted would get rid of all my aches. I bantered with her, and rocked my boy, and I was happy.

And when my wife and son were gone, when Parulkar had finished with his attentions to me, when Majid Khan had put away his poisonous politeness, when Salve had left with his cringing obedience, when I was alone and pacing my ten feet of space, I was haunted by that bastard Salim Kaka, who had once taken me on a boat to find gold. I had killed him so long ago, and had never worried about it, but now I couldn't get away from him. He was there in my cell, walking next to me, taking one of his huge strides for every two of mine, handsome in his red lungi. I had shot him, yes, and taken his gold to start my life, but what of it? He had been stupid to have me behind him if he didn't know enough about me to trust me absolutely. He had not implanted fear and loyalty carefully in me, as I did with my boys. He had been careless, and so he had died. Why was I remembering him now? I didn't know, but I kept remembering how he had taught me to shoot, and his filthy jokes, and his sudden gifts of money. 'Here's a hundred, bachcha, go and see a picture, get a woman,' he would say. And I would. But now I needed no money from Salim Kaka, but here he was.

Then the police let me out at last, and away I went to jail. I cared little for the long charge sheet they were putting together – murder, giving shelter to criminals, extortion, issuing threats – and was mostly glad to see my boys again. It was the solitary confinement that had addled my mind, I thought, and brought on this attack of useless memory. Because I had been taken away from my home, from my entire web of closeness, I had been driven into the companionship of Salim Kaka. Now I was to be held in judicial custody, and from the court itself I was taken to jail. They didn't keep me waiting in the car park in the basement, like they did with the hundreds of other prisoners on their way to prison. They had a special escort for me, and a vehicle all to myself. All through this, I dreamed of Salim Kaka. In the van, on the way to jail, I grinned and grinned at my own silliness. Majid Khan and the other escorting inspectors were puzzled. 'Don't be too happy,' the muchchad said, putting aside his carefulness for once. 'You're not getting out in a hurry.' What he didn't know was that I was getting out, getting out of myself. In solitary I had known my own prison too well. I was ready to be smothered by the proximity of my boys again, by their love. The jailers and Majid Khan took me through the big red double doors of the jail, through the small inset gate. They signed me into the jail, and then there was a long wait in the superintendent's room until he showed up. He was a wiry old bandicoot named Advani who gave me a lecture on co-operative living. My boys were in Barrack Four, he told me, and the Suleiman Isa crowd was in Barrack Two. He was depending on me to keep the peace, he said. There had been too much trouble lately, too much fighting, even though he tried to keep old enemies apart as much as possible. Since we all had to make the best of our situation, he said, it was best to live in peace. And so he was depending on me.

I listened quietly. I agreed with everything he said. Despite all the stories I had heard about jail, this was a new world to me, and until I knew my ground I was quite willing to be a silent mouse. Advani was very satisfied with himself, the balding bastard thought he had impressed Ganesh Gaitonde by the force of his personality and the strength of his logic. 'If you have a problem,' he said, 'don't fear to come to me.'

'Yes, superintendent saab,' I said. 'Of course.' Of course he must have heard that the famous Gaitonde had been broken by Parulkar, that the fearsome don was really just a scared little roadside dog, dirty and scarred, who might run to him at the first outbreak of trouble. I bore his condescension, and lowered my gaze, and was led out by the warders into the jail. We passed through three great slotted metal doors, and then into the long inside court, where the barracks stood sparkling white inside their respective walls. Superintendent Saab had them painted recently, one of the warders told me, Superintendent Saab was keen on cleanliness. There was white trim along the paths, and flowerpots at the corners. In this late afternoon the prisoners were confined to barracks, and so there was nobody on the paths, or in the yards that lay between the barracks, or under the eight trees that marched up the expanse. But when we walked by Barrack Two, there was a great eruption of catcalls and cries and jokes. 'Please, please, Parulkar Saab,' they shouted. 'Don't make me dirty my pants, Parulkar Saab,' they called. They had heard, Suleiman Isa's bastards. No matter. I walked on.

In Barrack Four they were waiting for me, my boys. They had put together a garland from saved gulmohar flowers and neem leaves. I let them put the garland on me, I hugged them all and then I put them to work. Clean this place up, I told them, you're a disgrace. They grinned and laughed and set to work. Bhai doesn't put up with a mess, they said. They were glad to be ordered, to be directed. There were fifty-eight of them, known and accredited members of the company, out of a total of three hundred and nine in this barrack, which was one of the smaller ones, built originally to house a hundred. My boys ruled the barrack, owned the most space and all the best beds, ran the games, and controlled what went in and what went out. A small band of committed men loyal to each other will always rule a large, disorganized majority, and with me there, their force was increased tenfold. It is in the mind that cowards are overpowered, and the mass of men is always full of fear. My boys set about cleaning and straightening, and the whole barrack followed them, without having to be told. Soon the long room, with its double rows of thin blue dhurries lining either wall, was swept and ordered and clean. There wasn't much we could do with the shirts on the dangling wires, and the drying underwear strung on the walls, and the little piles of papers and photographs and magazines. But still, here was a place I could live in, that had my impress on it. The boys had a bed for me at the far end of the barrack, the furthest from the main door and therefore the safest. They arrayed themselves on all sides of me, in a protective series of rings, and in the centre they put three new dhurries piled on top of each other to make a mattress, and a pillow, and a little shelf made out of plywood taken from the jail workshop. They were good boys.