Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

Sartaj was relieved that Mary shook her head. It was a long time since he had dandiya-ed, and he was sure he didn't want to wade out into this spiralling sea of experts.

'You go,' Mary said. 'I'm a bit tired.'

Jana and Suresh vanished into the whirling wheels of dancers, which were now four, one inside the other.

'Very beautiful,' Sartaj said. It was, in the halo of bronze spotlights, this sparking set of circles.

'They met here,' Mary said. 'Jana and Suresh. His father is one of the organizers.'

Sartaj remembered meeting Megha on garba nights, in a time so long ago that it was ancient. The music hadn't been quite so disco, then. 'Have you been coming for a long time?'

'Ever since I met Jana, four years ago. It's fun. I like dressing up and coming out.'

He had to grin back at her very pleased grin. 'Blending into the Gujaratis.'

'They're nice people.'

'Except when they're murdering Muslims.'

'That's true for everyone, no? Even the Muslims murder people sometimes. Christians do.'

'Yes. I didn't mean that…Sorry. Suresh seems like a good man.'

'It's okay.' She turned in her chair, to look directly at Sartaj. 'You think everyone is a murderer.'

'Anyone can become one. Sorry, sorry. This is not the talk to have at a garba. It's just the way policemen see things.'

Mary didn't look disturbed, not in the least. 'So what else do you see at a garba? Tell me.'

'Navratri nights are good for pickpockets, certainly. Chain-snatchers and that lot. And a lot of cash gets handled, you know. At five hundred rupees per ticket in some places, that's a huge amount. People get tempted, the people who are handling the money.'

'Life is like that, full of temptations.'

'True. That's the other thing. Boys and girls at these things. Even the very orthodox families, they bring their unmarried daughters out to these garbas. You can't watch them once they go out into that, that mess. So the boys find them. You know, every year, for the month or two or three after Navratri, all the clinics in town report a rise in abortions.'

'Really?'

'Really. Really, we police should take care over that kind of thing.'

'You want to have policemen watching the boys and girls at garbas?'

'If there were enough policemen, maybe that wouldn't be such a bad idea. It's getting worse.'

'Maybe the boys and girls think it's getting better.'

She was exaggeratedly serious, and Sartaj was suddenly aware that she was making fun of him. Amazingly, he found himself blushing. 'No, you are right,' he said, looking down and rubbing the back of his neck. 'It's very easy to become old-fashioned these days. I sound like my father. He was a policeman also.'

'Here in Bombay?'

'Yes. Here. Actually, you know, Suresh wouldn't have liked his stories. He was also one of those people who couldn't get to Bandra without visiting Thane.'

'I thought policemen were supposed to be brief.'

'Oh, he could be brief. But he always said that what was left out of the final case-report was actually the case. So he would be telling you about a robbery in Chembur, and suddenly you would be in Amritsar. My mother used to laugh at him.'

'Where is your mother now?'

So Sartaj told her about the house in Pune, and the advantages of having Ma close to family and gurudwara, and then he told her one of Papa-ji's interesting murder cases which had actually extended from Colaba to Hyderabad. Maybe not as far as Amritsar, but he thought she got the point. She didn't say much, but the two questions she asked went to the very heart of the bloody matter. It was only when Jana and Suresh came back – with their son sleeping on Suresh's shoulder – that Sartaj realized that more than an hour had passed. It was long past midnight. Sartaj walked them out, the little group, and saw them into an auto and waved them goodbye. He stood with his back to the ornate, flower-laden garba gate, his hands on his hips, and considered Mary Mascarenas. She was a quiet and complicated one, and surprisingly easy to talk to. She was intelligent, and she didn't like to reveal this. She had opinions, and she was stubborn. In a Gujarati ghagra she was glossy and somehow modest and small and lush. She was trouble, somehow. Or at least troubling. She was dangerous. She would bear watching.

* * *

Over his chai the next morning Sartaj decided that the whole bomb scare was ridiculous. He felt ashamed of having been afraid, for believing something that so obviously had been imagined by a credulous woman who just happened to be an intelligence officer. And these spies were from a paranoid tribe anyway, they were a caste of secret warriors who always saw a foreign hand in every crime, and a terrorist behind every corner. Sartaj had his chai, and he did not feel afraid. It was an unseasonably cool morning, for the very end of September, and he felt cheerful and energetic. He sat near the window with his second cup and the Dainik Jagran , and watched the birds wheel up out of the swamp into the opening light. The news was bad, or as bad as usual, there was further tension on the border, there had been a grenade attack in Jammu, the ruling coalition at the centre was shaky again and threatening to disintegrate. Things were falling apart, but Sartaj stood in the shower and soaped his chest and sang Bhumro bhumro along with the radio from the apartment below. He could hear children in the apartment above, laughing and singing along also. It was a good morning.

His mobile rang just as he was locking the front door. Today, he was confident. He was sure it was Mary, not somebody from the station. He thumbed a button and said, 'Hello, hello?'

'Hello,' Mary said, and Sartaj laughed out loud. 'You're very happy today?'

'Hello, Mary-ji,' Sartaj said. 'Sorry, sorry. I just heard a song on the radio, and some children singing it also.'

'That made you laugh?'

He could feel her smiling. 'Yes. It's a little crazy, I know. You know what they say about sardars.'

She giggled, then stopped herself short. 'It's not twelve o'clock yet, though.'

'You should see me then.'

'I have seen you in the middle of the day, and you were not happy at all. You were frightening.'

'I was investigating, I have to put on that face.'

'Put on another face for Zoya Mirza, okay? Otherwise she'll run from you.'

'Zoya? You found an approach?'

'Of course. And where she's shooting today and tomorrow. Write all this down.' Sartaj wrote, in his diary, the name of Zoya Mirza's make-up man and his pager number, and the name of the production in-charge and his mobile number. 'This make-up boy, Vivek, he's your main contact. He knows you are coming, and he has talked to the production in-charge. All they know is that you are a policeman and you are a big fan of Zoya Mirza, that you really want to meet her.'

'This is true.'

'You are a fan?'

'Yes.'

'You and every other Indian man. You just remember who made it possible for you to meet your Zoya. So phone us as soon as you get back from your meeting with her. Today, not tomorrow. Don't forget.'

'I won't. Thank you. It seems you are a fan also.'

'We just want to know. Everything.'

'Don't worry. I will call you.'

'I'll be waiting.'

Half an hour later, paused at a traffic light in Andheri, heated by a gushing of foul exhaust from a BEST bus, Sartaj was still thinking of Mary. She was eager to learn about the life of film stars. Everyone wanted to know about stars, about what they did and didn't do. Even those who professed to hate films and filmi people, these anti-filmis criticized the stars with a venomous intensity that revealed much knowledge, both current and historical. And Mary had a personal curiosity, she had lost a sister, and perhaps Zoya Mirza would reveal something essential and illuminating about Jojo. So Mary had lots of reasons to wait for his phone call. But he had a day of work to get through, thefts and bandobasts to look into, before he could get to film stars, even though he really wanted to ask Zoya Mirza some questions. He wanted the information. But film stars and Mary would have to wait. Sartaj was sweating now, and now he believed in the bomb a little, it had come back and it hovered at some distance from him, like a needle-toothed rat lurking unseen in thick grass. He could feel it was close, he could feel it on his forearms and his back just below the neck. He cursed it sincerely, at length, and went to his work.