Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

He gave me back a hard glower. He was a proud man, of course, and in uniform. He wasn't going to tell me anything. 'Everyone loses somebody,' he said. 'That's what happens in life.'

'If you come into Guru-ji's protection, all this pain passes.'

'You keep your Guru-ji,' he said, but he was friendly again, with a very small grin. He raised his hand, and marched off to the back of the tents, to his duties. Guru-ji arrived at his usual punctual hour, and today he led us towards the end of the sacrifice, its fulfilment.

'We have come together on a great journey,' he said. 'For these many days you have walked with me. By participating in this great yagna, you have burnt away the inertia of hundreds of past lives. As the yajmans of this sacrifice, you will accrue its benefits, its powers. But remember what I told you about the Sarvamedha: the yajman gives away everything. To sacrifice yourself, you must sacrifice your attachments. So, today of all days, give. Give of yourself.'

It was a hot day, the last day of the Sarvamedha. After many muzzy days, the sun now burnt off the haze and slid across the tents, and moved bright strips of flame across our legs, our heads. The fragrant smoke gathered and thickened, and the slokas swept through us, and Guru-ji's voice gathered in my chest, and the crowd was packed in today, and the sweat dripped off my shoulders, and there were many who were weeping. Yes, I was crying too. I was not sad, I was not grieving. I was happy, and I was sobbing. I gave, whatever was in my wallet, and my watch. Throughout the days of the sacrifice, the devotees had given donations, had left money and valuables with the booths scattered among the tents. But today we gave everything. I saw women giving their jewellery, their mangalsutras, and men struggle with gold and diamond rings on swollen fingers. That afternoon, we truly became yajmans, and felt the power of the Sarvamedha.

Then it was over. At ten o'clock, Guru-ji put his hands together in a pranaam to all of us, and bowed his head. And then he went back to the house. This night, I was up close to the front of the queue for darshan. I had planned and made sure, and yet after an hour of waiting it became clear that I might not make it. Today all the VIPs came, there was a home minister and two actors and three actresses, and business tycoons and television news announcers and film producers and one general. Their cars came one after another and made a shiny cluster in front of the house, and our queue hardly moved at all. For the ordinary people darshan came very slowly, and tonight I stood among the ordinary. I waited. It was very close to midnight.

'Have you seen your Guru-ji yet?' It was the sardar inspector. He was tall, taller than me by a head. The black plate on his chest told me his name in white letters: 'Sartaj Singh.'

'No,' I said. 'Today, too many big people up there.'

I shrugged. I was calm, but quite drained, my legs felt like falooda, and I was a little dizzy. This inspector looked exhausted himself. There were dark stains on his shirt from all the sweat of the day, and under the white tube-lights he wasn't that chikna, just gaunt and long and tired. He was examining me with a policiya's impersonal suspicion. Then he said, 'Come on.'

He led me past the front of the line, through the parked Toyotas and BMWs and ranks of policemen and private security. He nodded at an inspector standing by the tall double doors of the producer's house, and then we walked through the crowded drawing room, and up a marbled corridor. Sartaj Singh talked to a constable, and then we angled down another corridor crowded with sadhus and devotees, out into a garden. We went to the front of the line. There were three sadhus ranged near the entrance, letting in devotees one by one. And beyond them, in the centre of the garden, the unmistakable profile of Guru-ji, seated in his wheelchair, talking to some woman.

'Okay,' Sartaj Singh said into my ear, 'I've brought you so far. Now you take care of yourself.' He barked at the sadhus: 'He's next.'

I felt his thump on my back, but before I could even turn to thank him, he was off. I would take care of myself, yes. I gazed calmly at Guru-ji's attendants, and took a step to the right and put myself squarely before them. I was going to be next. There was one tall, yellow-haired firangi sadhu who seemed to be the boss, and I smiled pleasantly at him and stared him down until he gave me back a dubious grin. I might stand in queues for Guru-ji, but I knew how to let little flunkies know I meant business.

After all the days of waiting, there was now a pause of only two minutes. The woman with Guru-ji stood up, turned away, and I slipped by the firangi sadhu. I was with Guru-ji in a moment, finally alone with him. I knelt in front of him, touched his feet, touched my head to his feet.

'Jite raho, beta,' he said, and laid a hand on my head. 'Come, come.'

He raised me up, motioned to the chair. I sat. I knew I was smiling like a happy infant, like a cheery, light-hearted madman. I sat, hands clasped in my lap, beaming at him.

'Tell me what you want,' he said, 'what you need.'

I burst out laughing. 'I need nothing now, Guru-ji. I wanted only to be with you.'

He knew me instantly. We had spent hours on the phone together, and he knew my voice as well as I knew his. He was supremely controlled, and there was no flinching, not a flicker of surprise, not a blink. Just a very long moment when he looked, took me in with hard eyes that cut through me, and I looked back at him. He tilted to one side, shifted in the wheelchair to catch me in the light, and I raised my face up so that it was open to him.

'Ganesh,' he said. 'Ganesh.'

'I came, Guru-ji.' I said it, but now I was nervous. He was very opaque then, completely still, hard as thunder. I could not say that he was pleased, and I was afraid that he was angry. I had risked myself, of course, but I had also endangered him. I had put everything to the test. 'I came because I wanted to be part of your yagna.'

'And you have been here all along?'

'Every day. From start to finish.'

Then he changed. He was warm, like a sudden sun. He had not moved, and yet I felt that I was enfolded. 'You are a fool, Ganesh,' he whispered, 'but a good fool.'

'You said it was the most important yagna of your life,' I said. 'So I had to come, Guru-ji.'

He reached out and slapped me, gently, on my cheek. 'Bachcha, you came because I called you.'

'Yes.'

'This Sarvamedha was a kind of initiation for you.'

'Yes.'

'I'm pleased you came, Ganesh. But now you must get out of here, out of the country. There is too much risk.'

'Yes.'

'But before you go, I have one question for you.'

'Ask, Guru-ji. I'll answer.'

'What happened to your father?'

His words were an inferno that started from a hard point deep inside me, and the red blaze grew and exploded and came into my eyes, and I was burnt empty. There were no ashes left even, no ashes to take away from the altar, I was simply combusted and where I had been there was a hollow. No more Ganesh Gaitonde. I had hidden something so deeply, so securely and behind impregnable barriers that even I had mostly forgotten it was there. How did this man in front of me dig through my flesh and find that tiny carapaced sphere, holding within it the huge energy of an exploding bomb? In that moment, I had no mind to ask, or answer, but I knew Ganesh Gaitonde had been simply destructed. He no longer existed. I had hidden my father for ever, even from myself, and I had forgotten my mother. But now Guru-ji was asking, he knew something had happened. And my usual answer – 'My father died, my mother died' – was no longer possible. He had cracked through, and there was no closing the fissure. So I was quiet.

He drew me close to him. I was limp, I had no strength to resist. I sat on the ground, my shoulder against his knee. He put a hand over my bald head, and I felt the breadth of his palm cradling me.