Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

Sartaj patted Jayanth on the shoulder, talked him through the assignment once again, and then sent him on his way. Kamble looked distinctly unhappy, and Sartaj knew he was thinking about the six hundred rupees in Jayanth's wallet. 'Woman?' Sartaj said.

'What?'

'I thought you were going to find an item. To help with bomb tension.'

'Yes, yes. There's too much tension nowadays. Even apradhis give you stories of their tension.'

'So maybe you should get two women. For the double tension.'

Kamble threw back his shoulders and rested his clenched hands on his hips, exactly like Netaji on a pedestal. 'You're right, my friend,' he said. 'I will take not two, but three women tonight. For the triple tension.'

Sartaj watched him swagger away, forcing the evening shoppers to step aside and leave him an emperor's way. Maybe when he was a bit older, and a little more defeated, he would make a good policeman. Right now, he was cocky and very afraid of this new danger he had learnt about today. Sartaj was also afraid, but he had spent a lot of time with fear, and he expected no relief from it. Quick, decisive action could maybe produce the illusion of comfort, but that would be only temporary. You had to learn to live with fear, with its red tongue and its garland of skulls. Sartaj turned to the left and strolled up the footpath. He was on the job, he would stay on it for another half-hour. The bomb could wait.

* * *

The science and art of approach was something that Sartaj had learnt at an early age, in his own home. People tried to approach his father the inspector, usually people in trouble, those who needed help. So they approached through friends and relatives and colleagues, through friends of friends and political connections. Once, a woman who had been threatened by her estranged husband approached through Sartaj's secondary-school principal. You found a connection with the object of the approach, and then moved favour and obligation through this connection, so that the person being approached felt that they had to help, or at least listen. Approach was how life worked, getting through life meant strumming this web and moving along its many pathways.

So approach was a skill Sartaj had, but the trouble was that he had never before tried to approach a film star. Like everybody else in Bombay, he knew one caterer who occasionally supplied food for film shootings, two Grade-A extras and one distant cousin whose best friend's uncle was a film producer. None of these connections would get him into a room with Zoya Mirza without upsetting her. This is what he told Mary and Jana late that night, in a maidan full of dancers and bright lights. He had been unable to get away from the station till very late, but they had insisted on an in-person report on the Zoya Mirza situation. So he had met up with them in Juhu, at the Guru-ji Patta Mandal's Grand Navaratri Celebrations. The gala posters outside promised 'Largest Dandiya Raas Ever Seen', and although Sartaj didn't believe that to be literally true, he thought there were at least three thousand dancers on this field. Once he had got to the venue, he had called Jana's husband on his mobile phone, and it had still taken him fifteen minutes to find them, next to the Coca-Cola stand. Sartaj had wandered, quite ravished, in a shimmer and a haze of red and blue and green ghagras. The dancers wheeled with a great flickering of the dandiya sticks, and Sartaj was light-headed from the perfume and the tinkling laughter, from the singer and her Pankhida tu uddi jaaje . Then he saw tall Jana waving to him above the undulating river of jewelled heads. He didn't see Mary until he was right next to her, and even when he saw her he didn't know her, not for a full long glance. It was only when she smiled and said 'Hello' that he knew her.

Jana was grinning. 'She really looks like a real Gujju behn, doesn't she?'

'Yes,' Sartaj said. Mary was wearing a blue ghagra, and a deep-blue chunni that shone with silver, and her hair was held up by some sort of pearly clips. Her lips were a brilliant red. 'I didn't even recognize you.'

'I know you didn't. But it's not really that complicated a disguise.'

Sartaj thought it was quite deep, but he nodded and shook hands with Jana's husband Suresh, who was resplendent in a crimson kurta and a jari half-jacket. Suresh held up little Naresh, who was dressed exactly like him. Sartaj patted the boy's head, aware all the time that Mary was watching him.

'Here,' Jana said. She handed Sartaj a Coke, and then led the way to a sprawl of chairs to the left. She sent Suresh off with Naresh, seated herself comfortably, drew Mary down next to her and turned to Sartaj. 'Now tell.'

They both grew quite discontented when it became clear that Sartaj had nothing to tell about Zoya Mirza. 'Are you police always this slow ?' Mary said. She had her back straight and her hands on her knees, like a schoolteacher.

'Of course they are, baba,' Jana said. 'Have you ever tried reporting something at a station?'

They were both giving him a bit of a tease, and Sartaj accepted the criticism with a smile. He held his hands out wide and said, 'It would be different if this was official. I have to be very careful.'

'Obviously we're going to have to manage this for you as well,' Mary said. 'Jana, didn't that Stephanie girl who used to work at Nalini and Yasmin's have a sister who did make-up for Kajol?'

'Yes, yes. But where is she working now?'

Sartaj sat back and watched admiringly as Jana cupped a hand over one ear and put a mobile phone to the other. There was now a garba-ized version of Chainya Chainya pumping out over the loudspeakers, and under it Jana tracked down that Stephanie girl. She handed the phone to Mary, who followed a couple of leads. Sartaj was content to watch them, to admire them as they conducted their investigation. It was a peculiar kind of sideways spread, a questioning that moved not necessarily closer to Stephanie, but around her. Jana and Mary had a considered conversation about Stephanie's ex-best friend, who had also worked at Nalini and Yasmin's. They talked about this friend's boyfriend, and a shopping trip she had gone on, to that new mall in Goregaon, and her plan for a trip to Goa in the winter. As far as Sartaj could tell, this had absolutely nothing to do with Stephanie, or with Zoya Mirza. But Jana and Mary leaned close to each other and talked of the ex-best friend with great intensity and complete pleasure. Through the course of the several phone calls, they learnt about other women and their lives, other jobs and marriages and births. Mary was now talking to some woman about her grandmother's angioplasty. She hung up and said to Sartaj, 'It's too late at night, everyone's gone to sleep. But we'll have a connection to this Zoya Mirza by tomorrow.'

'A make-up connection,' Sartaj said.

'Are you making fun of us?' Mary said. 'Here we are, trying to help you, and you are making fun of us?'

'No, no, no fun. I'm admiring you two, actually. You're very impressive, how you find out things.'

'Suresh always says I talk too much,' Jana said. 'He says I go on and on about things that are completely irrelevant. He says if I want to go from A to C, I don't have to talk about L, M and Z.'

Mary drew herself back into a Suresh stance, full of superior distaste. 'You women, to get from Churchgate to Bandra you go to Thane.'

Sartaj and Jana broke into giggles. It was a very sharp Suresh imitation, it caught his posture and his quick, clipping speech exactly. Even after talking to Suresh for only two minutes, Sartaj could see that. Suresh emerged just then from the crowd, and said, 'I left Naresh with Ma,' and looked quite baffled as his wife and Mary and Sartaj collapsed into helpless laughter.

Jana stood up and put a hand on Suresh's shoulder. 'We're going to dance,' she said. 'Coming?'