Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

'Gaitonde, most men are stupid. But you don't have to be. Listen to me. Think about it. Here is this girl from a completely ordinary family in Lucknow. The father owns some little family restaurant, there is a mother who is a mother. A grandmother who lives with them. There are brothers, both older and younger. The parents managed to send all the children to English-medium schools.'

'Haan, so?'

'Imagine this girl, what her world is like in Lucknow. She goes to an all-girls school, she comes back to mother and grandmother. She doesn't talk to any boys, even the ones who make fun of her on the road for being five foot eight in the sixth. But this is one very intelligent girl. She reads, she watches. Somehow she makes up her mind that all this is not enough for her. Lucknow and marriage at eighteen is not what she wants.'

'Whole of India is full of idiots like her. Bad influence of films and television.' That made Jojo laugh, and for a few seconds she left off from her bhashan and laughed with me.

'Be quiet, Gaitonde. So, she decides this. She makes up her mind. At eighteen. Somehow she leaves. Somehow she makes her way into the world and shows up at my doorstep. Do you know what that takes?'

'Yes, she's a heroine. I should put her in charge of the boys in Bombay.'

'Gaitonde, you are a man after all. A man cannot understand what courage it takes to go against everything, to be a woman and to stand up and ask for just this much, that you can live out what you dream. All your boys put together don't have one-thousandth of that courage.'

'Okay, so she's the Rani of Jhansi. Then?'

'Then understand this. This girl wants everything. And she has the strength and courage to get it. She's not bad-looking right now, but because she wants it she will be beautiful. She wants to be a model and an actress, and she will. I'm telling you. I failed, I couldn't do it, but she will.'

'How are you so sure?'

'I'm sure because she reminds me of you.'

'Haramzadi, a woman reminds you of me?'

'Gaitonde, it's a compliment. You'll see what I mean. She reminds me of you because she's a little frightening.'

'I thought you weren't scared of anything. Including me.'

'Arre, I'm not scared of you. You know that, chutiya. What I mean is that she's so big and serious and one-pointed that she seems like one of those rakshasa women on those Ramayana serials. You're the only one who can handle her. I'm giving you a compliment.'

'You mean I'm the only one who can afford to pay for this giant virgin. How much?'

'A lot.'

'Of course a lot. Tell me the price.'

'But she doesn't want that much cash, actually.'

'Then?'

'It took me a while to understand, when she first talked to me. She doesn't want just a man. She wants an investor.'

'An investor in what?'

'In her. In her future.'

In that moment I felt the first warm stirrings of genuine interest in this creature of Jojo's. Maybe she really was as sharp as Jojo said. 'She said that?'

'Yes, she did. She understands this, Gaitonde, that a career in this modelling-acting game can't come out of nowhere. If you have rich parents, maybe they can pay for clothes and acting classes and dance classes and a gym and a mobile phone and a flat in Andheri and a car. If you're just a girl from Lucknow, with no fluid cash, you'll be just one more among thousands going from producer to producer by auto-rickshaw, and every photographer who agrees to take a picture for your portfolio will want to introduce you to his bed upstairs in the loft. And what you'll get out of all this in the end is a lot of bambooing and maybe a dance or two in videos. Bas. If you want to be a star, first you've got to have the ability to say "No," then you need money to sustain yourself and present yourself in a way that gets respect out of these bhenchod industry men. This is why all these children-of-stars dominate the industry, because they have not just connections but also resources.'

'So she needs resources to produce profits. Good that she understands.'

'Yes. But more resources than these also, Gaitonde. She wants to do a lot of work on herself. It's expensive.'

'Work?'

'Plastic surgery. She showed me her plan. She's researched it. She has a little chart of the body and she's got it all marked on that. With prices next to each part. And she knows exactly which doctor, what the procedures are. She's got photographs of actresses and models and rich women, Gaitonde, and she knows what each one has had done. You won't believe the kinds of operation all these famous people have had, Gaitonde, and how much this girl knows. This nose is good, she says, but that one's better. She's an expert. She has it all in a file marked "Body".'

Very interesting, I thought. A woman with a systematic mind. 'Fine,' I said. 'Let me see this amazement. How much?'

'Gaitonde, don't try anything funny with this one. If she thinks you're trying to give her a hool, she'll kill herself before she lets you do anything.'

'Yes, yes. How much?'

'Nothing for a meeting. You meet her and see. I'll pay for the air ticket.'

This was truly amazing. 'Jojo, you sound like you're in love yourself. In your old age you've become a chut-chattoing sixty-six. Bidhu, for you I'll pay. Take her, take her.'

'Gaitonde, stop talking like an idiot. If I liked girls, I would have told you. What I'm doing is also investing in her. Not just to persuade you. I believe this girl. She can sell herself.' Jojo used the English word 'sell'. It had a sexy ssss sound to it, on her tongue. Like that other English word 'sexy'.

'You've bought her stock? Before the IPO even?'

'Gaitonde, you buy too. If you're smart you will too. But there's one more thing.'

'What?'

'Are you as secular as you keep telling me you are?'

'I put up with you, don't I? That makes me secular and tolerant.'

'This girl is Muslim. Her name is Jamila Mirza.'

'Jojo, I still have some Muslim boys working for me in India. And when have I had a problem taking Muslim girls?' I took girls of all shapes and sizes and creeds. I was impartial.

'This is different, Gaitonde. Even your friend Suleiman Isa is secular like that, he doesn't have any problems taking Hindu girls, or Jain girls, or Christian girls. All men are secular down below. This is different. I'm telling you, investing in her means you have to really help her. You are connected to her. Not for a day or two or a week on the boat, but for the long run.'

'True. I see that. Let me think about it. When was she born?'

'You are going to do your astrology again?'

'Yes.'

'You're mad.'

'Tell me the date and time and place.'

She gave me the birth details, I wrote them down. She was the hardened sceptic that I had once been, but Guru-ji had shattered my defences. Now I was remaking myself.

Jojo said, 'What about for the boys?'

We discussed that for a minute or two, girls for my boys. Then Jojo had to get to a production meeting, and I went up on the deck. The boys were playing cards under a blue canopy. I had six of them on board, along with one accountant and one computer man, and one Maharashtrian cook and five Goanese crew (including three ex-Navy boys). The boys split the shifts, and there were always three of them awake and on guard, which meant playing interminable rounds of teen-patti for small stakes, as now. Arvind was taking his usual ten minutes to pick out his discards, and Ramesh and Munna were giving him gaalis. All was as usual. We were anchored within sight of the bright umbrellas on Patong beach.

The boys stood up as I came up to them. 'Bhai,' they all said, and touched my feet.

'Who's winning?'

'This crawling gaandu here. Because of him, one game goes on for years.'

This also was usual, that Arvind won. He was slow and steady. But their mood was sour this morning, I could see that. When they were back home, in Bombay, all the boys begged for foreign service. They wanted the foreign jeans, and the foreign girls, and the salaries in foreign currency. They had competed with each other to come to Thailand, to my yacht and my overseas operations, and demonstrated their eagerness and hard work and commitment every hour. But after a month or two or five in these alien waters, they always grew sour. They became sullen. Their bodies missed Bombay. I know, because after a year away from Mumbai I still got attacks of yearning, I craved the spittle-strewn streets of that great whore of a city, while waking up I felt that pungent prickling of auto-exhaust and burning rubbish at the back of my nostrils, I heard that swelling rumble of traffic heard from a high hotel rooftop, that far sound that made you feel like a king. When you were far away from the jammed jumble of cars, and the thickets of slums, and the long loops of rail, and the swarms of people, and the radio music in the bazaars, you could ache for the city. There were some afternoons when it felt like I was dying a little. Under the foreign sky I could feel my soul crumbling away, piece by piece. And I felt a loneliness I had never imagined, that I wouldn't have earlier believed could exist. Only after coming away from India did I realize that at home I had never been truly alone, that I had been secure in my web of family and company and boys. Even when I was by myself, I was still connected, still whole. Even when they had put me in the anda cell all by myself, I had been a part of this vast, invisible net, joined heart-to-heart. On Indian soil you couldn't be truly solitary, even when you were sealed in an evil-smelling tomb. Only after sailing away across these black waters had I known the meaning of this word: alone .