Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

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'Do you have a guru?' Sartaj asked Kamble on Sunday afternoon when they met near Apsara. They were waiting at a restaurant down the road from the cinema, sipping at Cokes. Kamble had turned out in his Sunday best, a grey bandhgalla suit with an edge of silver to the cloth. He was going to a wedding later.

'Of course I have a guru,' Kamble said, taking off his jacket. Underneath, there was a silvery shirt with a stiff Nehru collar. 'He lives in Amravati. I go once a year to take his darshan. Here.' He leant forward, and pulled at one of the two gold chains he wore around his neck. In a hexagonal pendant he had a small picture of his guru, a round-faced man with a bushy beard. 'His name is Sandilya Baba. He's a devotee of Ambadevi. She has given many darshans to him.'

Sartaj had to work hard to flatten the irony out of his voice. 'She comes and talks to him?'

'Yes, she talks to him. He is the most content man I have ever known. Happy all the time.' Kamble tucked the pendant back under his shirt. 'You sardars have gurus, or not? Apart from the original ones?'

'Yes, we have babas of various sorts. Some people follow them.'

'Not you?'

'No, not me.'

'You don't have a guru. Why not?'

It was a perfectly reasonable question, and Sartaj had no answer. He tapped his watch. 'It's almost time,' he said. 'Better get ready.'

Kamble edged himself out of the booth, and picked up his bottle. 'You should find a guru,' he said. 'No man can get through life without a guide.'

He walked away from Sartaj, sat at a table near the door and busied himself with a newspaper. He was now supposed to be a stranger to Sartaj, to work as a hidden tactical reserve in case the boys ran. He would have been more useful as a fielder if his suit and shirt hadn't been quite so spectacularly showy, but then that wasn't Kamble's style. Sartaj wiped the pitted formica of the table with a tissue, and wondered what Sandilya Baba thought about shiny suits, and money taken in bribes, and encounters. Maybe it was just his job to get misdemeanours fixed in the larger justice system of the sky, maybe he wasn't so personally strict about rules bent here and there. He was a guide for Kaliyug, this Sandilya Baba.

The owner of the restaurant was standing on a chair, fiddling with the knobs on the radio tucked away into the little shelf above a cupboard. He got the reception right, at last, and a song dropped into the small whirring clatter of the ceiling fans, ' Gata rahe mera dil, tuhi meri manzil '. Sartaj finished his Coke, and asked for another. So Kamble had faith in Ambadevi, through the agency of Sandilya Baba. It must be good to have faith, Sartaj thought. He had never had it himself. Even as a child, when he had stood next to Papa-ji in the gurudwara, and shut his eyes and prayed as instructed, he had to make an effort to conjure up a proper feeling of devotion. Papa-ji had known Vaheguru as a living force, present in every day of his life, he prayed to Vaheguru every morning, and whispered his name when his toe swelled with gout. But for Sartaj, Vaheguru had always been a distant, fuzzy concept, an idea that he would have liked to believe in. When he reached for Vaheguru, what he found was an aching loss. Still, he went to the gurudwara with Ma, he kept his hair long, he wore a kara and carried a little miniature kirpan in his pocket. He did this for the comfort the tradition brought him, for the affection he bore for his parents, for his pride in being a Sikh. But he carried this secret loss, this absence of Vaheguru inside himself. Yes, it would be nice to have a guru, an intermediary who had personal conversations with the Almighty. But Papa-ji had disapproved of all new-fangled babas, all these charlatans: the khalsa has the Guru Granth Sahib, he said, and that book is the only guru a Sikh needs. He was very strict about it.

Three boys came into the dhaba, followed by Jayanth. They came past Kamble, and Sartaj nodded at Jayanth. 'Sit,' he said.

The chokras sat on one side of the booth, elbow to elbow. The very smallest one sat last, on the right, and reached for a spoon and began to turn it over and over. Jayanth edged in next to Sartaj and did the introductions, from left to right. 'This is Ramu, Tej, Jatin. This is Singh Saab, who I told you about.'

'What's the work?' This was Ramu, who was oldest and clearly the ringleader. He was wearing a black T-shirt with silver stars on it, not the red one that Jayanth had seen him in. He was as skinny as the other two, with the same layering of grime and the same dust-stiffened hair, but he had style and unblinking black eyes and he wasn't scared. He was just wary. Sartaj would have picked him to get a package, too.

'Want a Coca-Cola?' Sartaj said. 'Something to eat?' Ramu shook his head. The other two kept still, following his lead, but Sartaj felt their hunger like a shimmer of heat coming across the tabletop. He raised his hand. 'Eh,' he called. 'Four Cokes, three chicken biryanis. Fast.'

Ramu didn't like this delay in talking business, but he wasn't ready to bolt yet. He kept quiet, and the other two once more followed his lead. They were all twelve, thirteen maybe, roughened up and full of precocious wisdom. Tej had a scar that ran up his neck, into the hair. They all three dug into the huge mounds of rice and chicken as soon as the plates were put on the table. Jatin, the little one, ate as fast as the others, but was now fascinated by his glass of water. He turned it in quick circles between bites, and never looked up. Over their bobbing heads, Kamble tapped at his watch. He had a wedding to get to.

'Who is that?' Ramu said, twisting around. He had caught Sartaj's glance. As he turned back, Sartaj saw the blackened tooth. Kamala Pandey had done well to spot the cosmetic defect in the seconds she had had Ramu near her. Yes, that one was a slim churi, sliding through an affair under her husband's nose. But here was Ramu, holding a chicken leg, and looking very nervous.

'He's a friend of mine,' Sartaj said.

'Why isn't he sitting here?'

'He likes to sit there. Listen to me, Ramu. You know who I am?'

Ramu put down his chicken.

'Saab asked you a question,' Jayanth said. He had emptied his Coke, and was now patting the corners of his mouth with a clean white handkerchief. 'Do you know who Saab is?'

Ramu and Tej were reading Sartaj now, eyes wide, food forgotten. Then Ramu looked over his shoulder. Kamble was now sitting on the seat behind him, his arm along the back of the booth.

'Bhenchod,' Ramu said to Jayanth, with a hard-edged bitterness. 'You gaandu old man, you brought us to the police. Bhenchod, I'll see you some time. I'll take care of you.'

'Eat your food,' Sartaj said. 'Nothing's going to happen to you.'

Ramu wanted to run, but Kamble had his hand on his shoulder, gently rubbing. 'Listen to Saab,' Kamble said. 'Eat.'

Tej and Jatin were waiting for instructions from their leader. Ramu took his elbows off the table, and sat back, his jaw set. He was very stubborn. Sartaj liked him.

'All right,' Sartaj said. 'Let's make a deal.' He put a fifty-rupee note on the table, smoothed it out. 'This is yours just for listening to me. I am not interested in bothering you, I am not going to take you to the remand home. I just want some information from you. I am not going to force you or anything. I'll give you this now, you just listen to me. Yes?'

Sartaj slid the money across the table, left it near the far edge. Ramu gave him another half-minute of steely hostility, then picked up the note. He examined it, held it up to the light, turned it over. Kamble was grinning over his head. Ramu put the money in his pocket. 'Talk,' he said.

Sartaj nudged the edge of Ramu's plate. 'Just relax, don't take tension. I have no reason to pick on you. Come on. Your chicken will get cold.' Ramu nodded, and the other two boys set to. But Ramu was concentrating on Sartaj, and he wasn't interested in chicken. 'What I want is this,' Sartaj said. 'About a month, five weeks ago, you did a little job outside Apsara. You went to a car, and picked up a package from a woman in a car. You delivered the package. You remember this?'