Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

Finally, finally, they got my case before the Bombay High Court and fought a good battle, all the way to a victory. The judge said he would let me out, on the condition that I should not threaten or even attempt to make contact with the government witnesses in the other cases pending against me, and that I was not to leave the city limits, and this, and that. Agreed, I said, agreed to anything and everything, your honour. And suddenly I was out. I was in court one morning, and then it was over, and I was in a car on the highway, on my way home. It was that simple. Suddenly I was sitting in my bedroom, with Subhadra to my left and my son running around the bed. It was stunningly quiet, and the rooms seemed immense, much larger than I remembered them. There were visitors, but Kataruka kept them at bay. He was an old hand at going into jail, and coming out. He insisted that a party and visitors and noise was the wrong thing, appropriate as it may sound. And a quiet evening is what I wanted, true. I ate the dinner that Subhadra served me, I put Abhi to bed. When the door was shut to Kataruka and the others, I reached for Subhadra. She came to me pliantly, and I truly went home.

After she was asleep, I got up, put on a kurta and slid open the door. I went up to the roof, to my old perch by the water tank. The night was hazy, no stars, just a low glow from the scattered lights. I was twenty-seven years old and I was home once again. There was that old smell, oil and burning and refuse, slightly stinging in the nostrils but alive, so full of life. I took it in, and I called Jojo.

She picked up on the first ring. 'Gaitonde.'

'I'm out.'

'I know.'

'Will you meet me?'

'No. How is Subhadra?'

'She's fine. Don't talk about her.'

'Okay. We won't talk about her.'

'So you refuse to meet me?'

'I completely refuse.'

'I could have you picked up and brought to me.'

'You could. Will you?'

'All right, no.'

'Good. I'll tell you what, Gaitonde – I'll send you a girl.'

'You'll what?'

'Don't act shy with me, Gaitonde. I know what you need. You'll like this one. High price, but good for you.'

'You know what I need?'

'See if I do.'

I did see. The next morning, she sent me the girl. Her name was Suzie, and she said she was eighteen, from Calcutta. She was half Calcutta Chinese and half Brahmin Bengali, and she had long straight black hair, long delicate arms that she crossed and folded when she laughed, and skin like thin white marble. I put her face-down and kissed the back of her neck while I was inside her. She moaned and drove back against me.

Afterwards, from the car, I called Jojo. 'What did I tell you, Gaitonde?' she said. 'Isn't she something?'

'Yes, yes, you were right.'

'In two years she'll have a show on MTV, you wait.'

'That may be. But I was thinking of you while I was on top of her.'

'You are on top of an eighteen-year-old, and you're thinking of an old woman like me? Gaitonde, you are an idiot, like every other man in the world.'

I had to laugh with her. I had waited for Suzie in a small hotel near Sahar, and now we were on the highway, going home. The traffic was moving fast, and the sun flashed off the roofs of the cars. I was free. 'I feel good,' I said to Jojo.

'Enjoy,' Jojo said. 'Enjoy, enjoy.'

We were home by eleven. In jail I had got used to waking up early, so already I had done my yoga, eaten, had Suzie. I was feeling light. But some of the boys were yawning. I set them to work. I played for a while with Abhi, who was now speaking in babbles of words and nonsense sounds, who held my face and tried to tell me things. He had little grammar, and no understanding of past and future, and still I could listen to him completely fascinated, my heart yielding in love. At noon Kataruka came into the hall where I was sitting with some petitioners. He leaned close to me to whisper, 'The nau-numberis are here. They say they have to take you to the station. Interrogation for another case.'

'Who is it? Majid Khan again?'

'No, I don't know these chutiyas. They say they are with Parulkar.'

'Bastards. Tell them to send whatever questions they have to the lawyers.'

'I did. They have an order from a magistrate.'

'Yes, and the magistrate chodos their mothers in the gaand every night. Tell them to wait. Tell them I'll come when I can. And get one of the lawyers down here.'

'Yes, bhai.' Kataruka was smiling. 'These maderchods have no manners. I don't feel even like giving them chai.'

'No manners?'

'They parked their van right in front of the house and refused to move it. Very pushy, bhai. Get him here now, like that they're speaking. They are some special commando types, two of them are carrying carbines, and one has a jhadoo. Think they are heroes.'

And he went off, humming a song. I turned back to my petitioners, parents who wanted a job for their son. But I was distracted, and thinking about this new nuisance. Commandos with Sten guns and AK-47s meant that there was some new task force maybe, some government initiative set up so that they could look serious about organized crime. Which would amount to nothing in the long run, but which would be a botheration. I made my promises to the petitioners, told them to check back in a week. When one of the boys opened the door for them, we all heard clearly the angry voices, a shout and then Kataruka's reply. He was hoarse and very loud. Bhenchod police, they were bellowing in my house. Maderchods. I got up, and walked down the long corridor, brushing past the family of petitioners, mother and father and uncles and son. Even in that anger, I was aware of that smell of home, that smell of onions and haldi and oil from the lunch they were cooking in the kitchen. I breathed it in. 'Get Gaitonde here now ,' the policeman roared. Between him and me there was a scattering of my boys, and other visitors, all clustering around the argument, but through them I could see the policeman's shoulders and face, and behind him another one, and the long glint of an AK-47. 'When he is ready, he will come and see you,' Kataruka answered, as loud and as bloody-eyed as the policeman. I squeezed through the press. I wanted to get to shouting myself. I could see two policemen, but no more. In front of me was Dipu, grown city-smart and polished after his service with us, with a new haircut.

I asked Dipu, going past him, 'How many of them are there?'

Into my ear, he said, 'Four, bhai.'

I could see a third policeman now, standing to the left. He had his carbine shoulder-slung and ready, with a finger on the trigger. It came to me in the middle of my stride: four policemen, and only four, armed with automatic weapons and in a van, sent to fetch Ganesh Gaitonde. It made no sense. The shouting policeman leaned in even more towards Kataruka, and in that motion he saw me. Our eyes met. I turned and ran.

I went low through the blast from the guns, through and over the flailing bodies in the corridor, through the screams. Then I was in my bedroom, scrabbling and pawing behind the headboard for a pistol, and I had slammed the door shut behind me but the bullets fountained through the walls, scattering plaster, and I had less than a moment, and I went through the window to the right of my bed. I fell between the side of the house and the compound wall, and I knew I had broken something in my arm but I had to keep running. I ran out of the rear gate, and now two of my boys were with me, and they took me into the nearby lanes. We turned twice, and went into a house and the door shut behind us and we all three of us fell to the ground, dropped flat from exhaustion, as if we had run ten miles.

The firing was booming near by, but now with the hammering of the AK and the carbines, there were single shots in reply. Then, suddenly, it was over. No more shots, just screams now, desperate shouting flurrying across the basti. I was alive.