Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

Their leaders were Rajendra Date and Kataruka, both of whom I knew from operations outside. Both had been senior shooters, and though I had been distanced from their activities by their controllers, I had spoken to both on the phone, and rewarded them. Both were serving murder sentences, and so both were jail veterans: Date had finished five years, and Kataruka seven. But neither had broken, or given up their controllers or anyone else, and they were doing their duty with honour. So we had supported their families outside with regular monthly salary packets, and bonuses, and had seen to weddings and hospital bills and property debts. Now they sat with me, knee to knee, and told me everything about the daily routine in this jail.

Date did the talking, mostly, with Kataruka nodding along and grunting occasionally. 'Inside the campus, bhai, inside the big wall, there are eight barracks, bhai, each with its own chotti wall. First barrack is for new prisoners, which you skipped. That's the most crowded, maybe seven, eight hundred men in it. From it they move prisoners into the other barracks. Number Two barrack is Suleiman Company, bhai. Number Three is the baba room, all young boys, children. Four is us. Five has the old ones in it, all white-haired. There's one chutiya there who is eighty-four, he suddenly killed his wife, finally couldn't stand her snoring. Barracks Six and Seven is all the general lot, your average prisoner is put in there. Behind the barbed wire, over there, is eight, for women and girls. Very close, but no traffic goes from here to there.' He grinned. 'Only the maderpat jailers and inspectors exploit, not the common citizen. But here, in our barrack, we have settings for all other things. We can get oil, tea, masala, all kinds of food through the warders. We've already made the setting for you to get tiffin from home, bhai, so you don't have to eat this dirty jail food. In a day or two that should start. But if you're ever hungry, we can make a handi out of tin cans, burn coconut oil and cook with that. But if the constables see the fire they shout, bastards, and sometimes they put offenders in chains. But they don't trouble us, bhai, we can make you chai any time. Anything else you want, you let us know. The warders are all ours in this barrack, all doing life terms. And through the lawyers, we have a setting with many of the sessions court judges, we can usually get court dates moved around. Sometimes if a judge is paid enough, we can get emergency decrees for bail. But not for you, bhai.' My case was too heavy, too much in the news for quick bail. That we all knew. 'It's hot in here, bhai, in the summer, and cold in the winter. On the other end, close to Barrack One, there is a hospital, where there are actual beds with real mattresses, and fans. We have a setting with the doctors, for a small amount you can get admitted for a few days. The food is better there, too. If you want, you can go to the hospital for a holiday. That's easy.'

I didn't want a holiday. I wanted Suleiman Isa, or a few of his men. 'I want to hit those bastards in Barrack Two,' I said. 'They're happy that I'm in here. Let's show them what it means.'

'That's not so easy, bhai. They only let them and us out into the yard at different periods. When we're locked up, they're out. After a riot last year they started doing that. It's a jail rule, the warders can't go against it, or the staff. Or we would have done it already.'

They were both glad to see me ferocious, Date and Kataruka. Of course they had heard the rumours too, that I had broken under Parulkar's pressure. They were my men, pillars of my company, but I was sure a little doubt had seeped through their protective walls of faith. It was time to make things orderly again, set the world back to rights. I quizzed them some more, about jail procedure and customs, and then I told them to let me sleep. It was only early evening, hours still to go before the eight o'clock lights-out. But Date and Kataruka hushed the barrack, and I lay on my dhurries, and turned on my right side, and put an arm over my head, and fell instantly into black sleep. After weeks of trying to twist myself into rest, and thrashing awake from shallow dozing, I slept deep and long.

I awoke to the morning whistle, at five o'clock, feeling fit and fine, and ready for my war. The boys knew my need for cleanliness, so they had seen to it that the latrines had been rescued from their usual filth, and in the bathrooms full buckets of water were waiting, and a fresh towel. I was quick, and then Kataruka and Date came to get me. 'The mamus are here,' Date said. The constables were waiting by the door, and they led us outside in rows of two for the counting. Under the greying sky they walked up and down, counting, and while this ginti was going on, I discussed my plan with my two controllers. I had a plan already, the beginnings of a plan. Through the ginti and over breakfast we talked it through, and filled it in, and stretched it out, and I began to see it could really be done. After breakfast, the havaldars saw us back into the barracks, where the mass of the prisoners now queued and quarrelled over the bathing and washing. A great hubbub arose under the rafters, a noise of men telling stories and arguing and playing cards and praying. At the north end of the barracks there was a makeshift temple, with bright pictures of Rama and Sita and Hanuman pasted on the wall, and here men sat in rows and sang bhajans. At the south end, the Muslims knelt in namaaz, facing a clean white wall. And through the long room men sat in clusters, and saw each other through the long hours until lunch. The warder and four of his assistants sat in pride of place, near a big radio turned up to full volume, and the songs trickled and floated to the far ends of the barracks: ' Mere sapnon ki rani kab aaye gi tu, aayi rut mastaani kab aaye gi tu …'

In three weeks I was able to execute my plan. And in those three weeks, I learnt the rhythms of this new life: the whistle at five in the morning; the drowsy rows outside for the ginti; the rattling of aluminium plates and bowls and the crackling of the tari on the dal, for which tari you paid extra; the long hours of the morning, and then the smell of cooking from the bissi where they kneaded the atta with their feet and threw rotting vegetables into huge bowls; after lunch at ten, the murmur of conversation and the snores and the smell of hundreds of men sweating; the smokers with their precious little balls of charas and their long rituals of burning and crumbling and rolling; the shifting games of chess, and teen-patti, and Ludo, and the curses and the laughter over the rattle of the dice; my boys ranged around the only two carrom boards in the barracks, feeding their passionate following of the championship league they had set up, complete with blackboards for singles and doubles ladders; the tussles and sudden enmities that flared between men packed together, that spread like winding fire through the rows of beds; the shouting and threats as two men faced each other under the eyes of a hundred, each too afraid of shame to back down; the brawny kalias from Nigeria selling tiny fifty-rupee packets of brown sugar in the yard; and their clients, hunched knee to knee in tight little circles over their chaser-pannis, breathing in the smoke with the devout expression of men who had seen another, better world. And the long wait for five o'clock and the dinner of the same watery dal, and the lumpy, coarse rice, and the rubbery chappatis, and then sleep at eight.

We lived this life, and dreamed of the outside. But this is the life we had to live, the only one. So I told Date and Kataruka something of my plan, and told them I needed two fresh men, two men unconnected to our company. But these needed to be two hard boys, capable of action, not the type who would boast and preen but then be paralysed by the sight of blood. Date and Kataruka complained, they shook their heads and said it was impossible to depend on men who had remained untested, untried. That's exactly why we make it hard to get into the company, they said, so we can see if the applicant has the belly for the job. That's why we send them on errands first, a minor beating or two, so they can prove themselves, make their way up in the proper manner. But no, I insisted. I want new faces, two with no earlier connection to us.