Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

'Your enemies.'

'I don't want to expose you to danger, Guru-ji.'

'I understand. And I agree. But this is necessary.' He ate another carrot stick. 'Do you have any idea what the initiation is, Ganesh? What we will do?'

'Some sort of puja. Some secret mantra. Some rite.'

He was grinning at me again. 'Some ritual involving human sacrifice? A baby killed at the altar of some unspeakable goddess?'

'If that is necessary…'

He threw up his hands. 'Arre chup, Ganesh. No, it's nothing like that. Ritual is very powerful, but you have already been through a ritual with me. You came with me through the sacrifice. No, ritual is not what you need right now. No. You want to know what your initiation is? Here it is: these past five days were your initiation.'

'Guru-ji?'

'You sat here and told me about yourself. You gave me every part of yourself. You told me things you had never confessed before.'

It was true. I had told him about my fear of bullets, my longing for women, the gold I had started my career with and how I had got it. I had told him everything, except that I worked for Mr Kumar. That was another me, and I could not give that self to Guru-ji.

* * *

I left Singapore the next day. On my way to the airport, I met Guru-ji one last time, just for five minutes. He was preparing to travel also, to South Africa this time. We met in the kitchen of a convention centre where he was giving a lecture to a Hindu historical studies group. I touched his feet. 'I feel light, Guru-ji,' I said. 'I feel like some curtain has been drawn. Like a window has been opened.'

He was proud of me, he had that gladness about him. He was full of joy, just looking at me. 'I know,' he said. 'You are truly a vira. The journey inside is what takes most courage. And you have been fearless. Now you are ready to move on.'

He had a plan, I could tell. I knew him better now, too. That is what comes from darshan. We had looked into each other. 'Move on to what, Guru-ji? Where am I going now?'

'That girl.'

'Which girl?'

'Forgotten already? That girl you spoke to me about, you had sent me her details.'

'Ah, the big girl.'

'The Muslim virgin, yes. Send for her, Ganesh.'

'Our stars match up, Guru-ji?'

'You've slanted the stars, Ganesh. You are a brave man. Get the girl. Now we are going to move this world. Get that girl. And from now on, you must have only virgins.'

'Virgins?'

'You are a vira, and virgins will give you the greatest power. You will know they have been pure, and that will feed your strength. And you will need power in these coming times.'

Then he had to go back to his historians. So we said goodbye to each other, embraced closely under that smell of cooking food and flowers. I went home, to my castle floating on the waters. And I sent for the big virgin.

K.R. Jayanth the pocket-maar called Sartaj late on a Saturday night. 'I have the red T-shirt chokra,' he said. He didn't actually have the boy with him, but he had his whole name, the names of the boys he worked with and the location of the stoop on which they slept. Jayanth explained at great length how he had kept a vigilant lookout for a red T-shirt, how he had been ceaselessly alert, how he had stayed beyond his usual working hours at the cinema. Then, on this Saturday night, after the late-show rush, he had noticed Red T-shirt skipping about near the car park, begging from the late arrivals. Jayanth had been canny, he had kept his distance. When the lane and the car park had quietened down altogether, he had motioned Red T-shirt over. The boy had been suspicious, but he had come, flanked by his two yaars. Jayanth contrived to be in the right position, at the right angle, and as soon as Red T-Shirt talked, Jayanth saw the black tooth. He had the right chokra. They were a tough little crew, barefoot and hardened and wary. But he had charmed them, mostly by giving them money. He had told them that he had a friend who was looking for some likely boys to do some work for him. 'What kind of work?' said Red T-shirt, stabbing his middle finger through a circle he made with his other hand. Jayanth had reassured them that there was no chodoing to be endured, that the friend in question was in fact a dealer in various interesting goods, and he needed some sharp lads to fetch and carry and messenger. And he had given them a hundred rupees, and he had told them that more cash would be forthcoming, fat reams of it.

'You told them I was a bhai?' Sartaj said.

'No, no,' Jayanth said. 'Just an import-export kind of man, you know. Otherwise I could never have got anything out of them. As you can see, it worked very well. We have the little bastards. I'll bring them to you tomorrow.'

Informants liked to be praised even more than witnesses, so Sartaj praised Jayanth. Some of them fancied that their informing made them part of a crime-fighting team, that it was them and Sartaj against the other criminal bastards. Sartaj had heard it all a thousand and one times, and it never ceased to give him a little thrill of amazement, how even the lowest of thieves could fancy himself a detective, how easy it was to gild one's own misdeeds in the cheap gold of morality. We all stink, he thought, but not one of us likes to smell our own stench. And he said, 'Yes, we have the little bastards. Well done.'

Sartaj wrote down the names of the chokras, and set a rendezvous with Jayanth for the next afternoon. He hung up, feeling the small stir of excitement at a case moving, at finding a very precarious purchase on the steep cliff of the unknowable. But then, instantly, the worry about bombs and gurus and annihilation descended on him like a monsoon fever. He felt foolish for being pleased with Jayanth, for working on his other cases. What use was it to be concerned with the everyday matters of blackmail, thievery, murder, when this enormous fear billowed overhead? It was an abstracted danger, this grim notion of a sweeping fire, it was unreal. But with its cold drip of images, it crowded out the mundane. Sartaj blinked. He was at his desk, in his dingy little office with the weathered benches and untidy shelves. Kamble was hunched over a report. Two constables were laughing in the corridor outside. There was a little pool of sunlight from a window, and a pair of hopping little sparrows on the sill. And all of it was dreamlike, as gauzy as the wafting of early morning. If you let yourself believe in that other monstrous thing, even a little, then this ordinary world of bribes and divorces and electricity bills vanished a little. It got eaten up.

Stay with the details. Sartaj rubbed his eyes, shook his head. Stay with the details. The specifics are real. It was important, somehow, to care about Mrs Kamala Pandey and her sordid adultery and the chokra in the red T-shirt. Sartaj felt a loyalty to the ordinary, a sudden affection for Mrs Pandey and her glossiness and her made-up face and her greed for glamour. But the question kept coming back: who was Gaitonde's guru? Sartaj had no idea. There were gurus at every corner, and in every locality. There were Mohameddan gurus, and Vedic gurus, and gurus who had been born in Hawaii to Japanese parents, and gurus who denied the existence of God. There were gurus who sold herbal powders, and others who cured cancer by having the patients swallow magic goldfish. Gaitonde could have been devoted to any of these. Maybe he had a guru who was not a guru to others, maybe he was a chela to a private guru. Sartaj had known a pharmaceuticals executive in Chembur who lived only on fruit, who accepted no disciples other than his sons and daughters and close friends, who took no gifts, who was said to glow with a golden sheen on Guru Purnima. Gaitonde's secret guru could be an unknown guru. People found spiritual connections in odd and unexpected places, they found succour and consolation in farmers and postal clerks. There were police constables who told fortunes and practised left-handed tantra. Where to look for Gaitonde's guru? Sartaj had no idea.