Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

'Listen, saali,' I said. 'You want to end up in a ditch? I'll make you dig your hole yourself, before I put you in it.'

'That's a dhaansu line,' she said, and roared again. And then quietened down, and said, 'You want to kill me, Gaitonde?'

'It would be easy.'

'Fine. Come on, then.'

And she hung up.

I raised my hand to throw the phone, then very slowly lowered it. I pressed redial, and waited.

'Yes? Tell me,' she said. She was very calm.

'Are you completely mad?'

'Many people think so.'

'You're lucky to be still alive.'

'I think that every morning.'

I liked her. From that very first conversation, from the very first time I heard that voice, hoarse like a man's, I liked her. She laughed at me, and I liked her. But I made my voice hard, and spat out, 'You've always been off? You were born mad?'

'No, no, Gaitonde. I had to work very hard to get crazy. What about you, Gaitonde? What made your screws come loose?'

'Saali, control your mouth.' It was strange, I was furious at her, but somehow glad. 'My screws are fine.'

'Yes, yes. That's why you're sitting in jail and killing people on every side and behaving like Hitler.'

'You're lucky you're not here, in front of me.'

'I'm sure you can have me killed anyway, you big man.' And she burst out laughing again, with that baffling and hearty hilarity.

'Don't waste my time and my battery,' I said. 'Bunty said you were making problems.'

'Bunty is a chutiya. I won't send any girl to that jail. And a woman like you want is not going to come to any jail in the first place.'

'Bunty is an intelligent boy, and he would have listened to you if you hadn't sounded like a…'

'Like a what?'

'Can you get a woman like we want? A film star?'

'Maybe some television actress. And not at the jail.'

'Forget about the maderchod jail.'

'It'll cost money.'

'Everything costs money. Just be reasonable, and don't try to take advantage of us.'

'I do honest business.'

'Do good business with me, and you'll have a lot more business.'

'Good.'

'And don't call me Hitler again. You don't know how much I work for…'

'Yes, yes, you are a great benefactor of the poor. You give like a king. Listen, I need to go, I have work to do. I'll get in touch with your Bunty about arrangements.'

And she clicked off. Mad and maddening. But she was a good businesswoman – she got us a television actress, or at least an actress who was on television now and then, named Apsara. This Apsara was actually a film star too, a vamp who had been in a couple of movies with Rajesh Khanna during the downward slide of his career, when he started to look like a fat Gurkha. Apsara had been around ever since, one of those faces you remembered but couldn't quite put a name to. 'For this you're making me pay fifty thousand?' I told Jojo. She had set up the transaction with Bunty, but I had called her to argue over the price. It was an excuse, I admit. I wanted to talk to her. I told her, 'At least get us a real star from the period. You know, like Zeenat Aman or someone.'

'Gaitonde, that's the trouble with you men. In your dreams you think every famous woman is secretly for sale. From the period you want? Why don't I get you Indira Gandhi?'

'What? You're saying this to me? You're making a deal with me for this woman, and you're telling me that I'm imagining things?'

'The deal is happening because men imagine things. Poor Apsara. She needs the money.'

Poor Apsara turned out to be something of a drinker, but she was a happy drunk. We set it up: Advani showed up at the Juhu Centaur the next Saturday afternoon, to meet one of our boys who had a suite under the name of Mehboob Khan. Advani had a drink in the suite, my boy gave him a brown paper packet containing five lakhs, and then left him alone. A door opened, and Apsara floated in, wearing a white garara, very Meena Kumari. She had got heavy, but her skin was still luminous and light, and Advani must have thought he had gone to heaven. She asked him for a drink, and then sang songs to him. He told her he was her biggest fan. She acted out scenes for him, and he took the part of Rajesh Khanna in the scene from Phoolon ki Rani where the vamp takes the bullet for the millionaire playboy hero because she's so in love with him. Advani remembered every line of dialogue.

I got all this from Jojo the next day. I couldn't stop laughing. 'So they acted for each other?' I said. 'And then? Did he actually do anything?'

'The old man's got a lot of dum for someone that skinny and that old, that's what Apsara said. I think she liked him.'

'She thought he was Rajesh Khanna, saali drunken old buffalo. Women are crazy.'

'As crazy as men.'

And we laughed together. By this time we were talking every day. Somehow it had become a routine: at first it was me that called her, usually in the mornings, after I had finished my early call with Bunty. Then on a court day I didn't call her, and when I got back to the barrack I slept, and was wakened by the phone. 'Where were you, Gaitonde?' It was her. So we talked. After the Apsara deal, we did some more business – Advani needed more apples, as did certain other lawyers, and policemen, and judges. But Jojo and I talked, and business was only a small part of it. We talked of everything.

Thirteen months passed.

Thirteen months can pass just like that. The days slid into each other. I went to court, I took care of my company. Things changed, things remained the same. We got the charges against Dipu and Meetu dismissed. Date went off to Nashik jail to serve the rest of his sentence, Kataruka was released. Bunty was arrested, came into the barrack. The baba log in the children's barrack changed, and there was a new Mumtaz for me. Bunty was released. Our war with Suleiman Isa continued. The government changed in Maharashtra, the government changed in Delhi. I ruled over and mediated disputes in the jail. In the barrack, I had to set up a committee to make decisions over television-watching, since the Sunday mornings full of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana made the Muslims and Christians feel put down and want programmes of their own, and the Tamil and Malayali boys wanted to watch their Hot Songs programme at midnight, and then the Marathi lads demanded regular film-viewing. We provided whole goats to the Muslim prisoners on their festival days and told them that we would make any arrangements necessary on their fasting days, and see to it that the jail staff didn't interfere. So everyone was happy. Outside the jail, we fed Advani his apples, and inside he accommodated us, adjusted with us. My son grew, he walked, and on his weekly visits I played with him in Advani's office, and held him in my arms, taking in that dewy smell of the top of his head while he struggled and laughed and spoke to me in languages I couldn't understand. I changed also, inside this jail. Perhaps because of the time I had, I grew more quietly reflective, more interested in the world. I regularly read the newspapers, watched all the news programmes on television, and the political debates on Sundays, and the American movies in English. From television, I learned history. In jail I educated myself, I became a man aware of my past, my country's long story. But in spite of this thoughtfulness, or maybe because of it, I developed an embarrassing ailment: I suffered from piles. A minor indisposition, not an illness really, but how I suffered. I rose from the latrine trembling, dizzy with pain, nauseated by the bright red blood. I consulted doctors, changed my diet, took herbs prescribed by famed ayurvedic sages, but no, I still squirmed and squeezed and suffered, I suffered.

'You have too much tension,' Jojo said. 'Your life is entirely tension. And your trouble is that you carry all the tension in your gaand. You need to relax.'