Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

As the priests chanted, Guru-ji gave the little figure to the fire. So, just like that, all afternoon and through the day, little casts of cows and bulls and men and women – made out of crystallized sugar or lime – were thrown into the sacred fire. The conflagration was fragrant and enormous. I was close enough to hear it. It had a steady rhythm, this music.

* * *

That evening, I waited late in a long queue for a meeting with Guru-ji. At eleven, he left the altar and retired to the film producer's house for the night. From eleven till midnight, he met members of the public in private audience. There was a queue that stretched from the gate of the house and wound around the maidan twice. I was somewhere in the middle. At midnight the policemen came through the maidan telling us that Guru-ji had to sleep, telling us to go home. There was a great groan, but people dispersed easily, without protest. We could imagine how tired Guru-ji was, how even his massive strength must be taxed by a full day of talking to us, of taking us along on his journey. The policemen looked relieved. They were tired themselves, and they were used to the jostling, tumbling energy of the Ganapati processions, where thousands of young men in shorts and banians danced for Ganesha, drunk on sweat and brotherhood and surreptitious swigs of beer and bhang. But we went home in good order, all of us, Guru-ji's followers.

Bunty was waiting at our room, with food and his mobile phones. We took care of business. 'Bhai, my wife thinks I have a woman,' Bunty said when we had finished with the calls. 'I keep telling her it's just a busy time right now, special night-time jobs to do, but she saw me taking some of her adrak pickle for you, and now she's convinced that I feed my woman food from her kitchen.'

He was grinning, but I had met his Priya, who was a plump Punjabi with a convent-school education and the look of a Patton tank about her. Bunty had had his women on the side, of course, but in a very discreet way. Dealing with a raging Priya because he had to take care of me was evidence of his total dedication. 'I'll have to give you a double bonus on Diwali, beta,' I said. 'Buy her bangles.'

'Triple bonus,' he said. 'She was spectacular this evening. In the middle of the Red Fort, bhai. And she didn't hold back. I had to give her one on her ear, to shut her up.'

This year, for the festival, we had spent a crore and a half to build a replica of the Red Fort, complete with a glittering Peacock Throne, on which Ganesha sat. We had used real marble for the floors, and even the carving was exact, taken from photographs. People came from all over Bombay to Gopalmath, to see our Red Fort, it was a huge hit, bigger and better than any other pandal in the city. To imagine Bunty and Priya at it in the middle of the darbar hall was hilarious. 'Your Priya must have the Mughals rolling in their graves. We should send her to Pakistan, she'll finish off all those S-Company bastards.'

Bunty had to clutch at his stomach at the thought of Priya rolling over the border. When he could speak, he said, 'Everyone in Gopalmath remembers you, bhai. The boys think you are somewhere in Europe, but they all want to thank you, at least on the phone.'

I shook my head. 'Tell them I'm thinking of them. But no outside contacts, Bunty. This is my time with Guru-ji.'

It was true: I hadn't called Jojo even once, and I knew she must've been worried. She knew that I had gone on a trip, but from all my trips, I had called her. This time I hadn't called. It couldn't be helped. I needed to concentrate, to purify myself. And so the days passed in prayer and contemplation. Every day I went early to the maidan, to get a good seat. Every night I stayed late, lining up in the queue to get a personal darshan of Guru-ji, just like any other follower. But there were too many of us, just too many, and there was never enough time before midnight to let us all in. But I was patient, and came back the next day. Guru-ji took us through the sacrifice, and my days passed listening to him, to his explications of the Vedas and the Brahmanas. I knew I was learning new things every day, and each day I felt lighter inside my body, as if some thick sediment was being washed away. Or, as Guru-ji put it in his discourses, some part of my karma was being burnt in the heat of the sacrifice.

'You even smell better,' Bunty told me on the eleventh morning.

'You mean I smelt badly before, bastard?' But I was smiling. I could whiff the improvement myself. Maybe it was just the smoke of the burning samagri from the sacrifice that had settled into my pores, or maybe this was how an unburdened soul was supposed to smell. I hugged him, and scootered off. I hummed a movie song, a Koli song: 'Vallavh re nakhva ho, vallavh re Rama .' At the grounds, I settled myself into what had become my accustomed seat. At this time in the mornings, when the tents were empty, with the loudspeakers and the televisions turned off, I really did feel like the yajman, as if it were all for me.

'You're even earlier today.'

It was the sardar inspector. He was standing right behind me, his thumbs inside his belt, making his shirt neat. And yes, of course it was you, Sartaj. It was you in a crisp khaki uniform and a tall pagdi, and you were smiling. But then I only knew the sardar inspector. He was amused, friendly, this inspector.

'I have to come early,' I said. 'Otherwise I have to sit all the way back.' I kept my voice very mild.

'You can watch on these televisions even if you're far away,' he said. 'In the close-ups you can see each hair in their nostrils.' He tilted his chin towards the priests. He was a good-looking sardar, this one, and very stylish with his blue patka and matching socks.

'It's not the same thing at all,' I said, and even as I said it I realized I was being too sharp, too snappy. I had to be deferential, like a normal member of the public when faced by a policeman. It had been a very long time since I had been afraid of an inspector, but I had to act it now. 'What I mean, Sardar Saab, is that nowadays people think they can have darshan over television or phone. But you only get the full benefits of darshan if you come face to face, eye to eye. Guru-ji's glance has to enter you, his voice has to come into you. I've not seen him before, and I can tell you I have been changed over the last few days. All my television-watching from far away didn't add up to one moment of real darshan. Seeing the Golden Temple in a photograph is one thing. Going to Amritsar is another blessed thing altogether.'

'You're not from Bombay?' He had the policeman's trick of sudden questions, and that calculating glance. And under all that chikna film-star prettiness, the relentless brutality born of a thousand interrogations. I knew his type.

'Not originally. But I moved here some years ago.'

'What do you do?'

'I work in an import-export company.' He had turned it into a question-answer session after all, the suspicious bastard. Typical, typical. I very slightly turned back towards the yagna. But he wasn't going to let it go yet.

'I've seen you somewhere before,' he said. 'You look familiar.'

I stayed very still, didn't even let myself tense up. I looked at him over my shoulder and smiled. 'I have a very familiar face, saab,' I said. I had kept up with the shaving of my head, and let my beard grow in. I looked something like one of those Afghan mullahs myself. In my mirror I was most unfamiliar to myself. But this maderchod had a good eye. 'People always tell me I look like someone they know. My wife used to laugh about it.'

'She used to? Not any more?'

He was very attentive, this chikna inspector, and he was not at all the thick-brained sardar of all the jokes. You had to be on full alert with him. 'She's dead,' I said, very quietly. 'She was killed in an accident.' He nodded, looked away. When he came back to me he was the maderchod inspector again, but I had marked that small blink of sympathy. I could be sharp too. In my life I had learnt to read men also. 'You also lost someone,' I said. 'Who, your wife?'