Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

Ramu reached behind Tej and batted the back of Jatin's head. 'He's my brother, but he's a yeda.'

Jatin started to fold another tissue. 'Bip-beep-beep-bip- bip -bap.'

Sartaj watched Jatin's fingers on the tissue. The other triangle stayed miraculously upright. 'Kamble!' Sartaj shouted, startling the owner, the waiters and the three other customers. 'Kamble!'

Jatin had finished his triangle by the time Kamble got back to the table, looking distinctly annoyed. 'What?'

'Give me your handy,' Sartaj said. He took the phone, cleared the display and put it flat on the table in front of Jatin, in front of his triangles.

Jatin reached out, and with a very skinny and very dirty finger pressed keys on the phone. When he got to the top of the keypad, the phone began to connect. Sartaj pressed 'End.'

Kamble was leaning over Jatin's shoulder. 'It's a mobile number,' he said, with the awestruck voice that he usually reserved for a new sixteen-year-old dancer at the Delite Dance Bar. 'It's the number I was just dialling.'

Sartaj nodded, and pressed 'End' again to clear the numbers. 'Jatin, do you remember the number that Taklu dialled that day?' he said to Jatin. 'What was it?'

'Bip-beep-beep-bip- bip -bap,' Jatin said. He continued, with more bips and beeps, varied in pitch and tone. Then he nodded, and pressed keys on the phone, moving without hurry and with absolute confidence from one to the next. He finished with a little flourish and went back to folding yet another tissue.

'This is the number that Taklu dialled, Jatin? After you gave him the package?' Sartaj said, turning the mobile phone around on the table.

'Yes,' Jatin said, and put another triangle on the table. Along with the other two, the triangle made a perfect larger triangle.

Kamble put his hands on his hips. 'Maderchod,' he said. 'Amazing. Give the man a falooda.'

* * *

'Very often,' Sartaj told Mary, 'detection is nothing but luck. Mostly it's like that. You sit around, and something drops into your lap. Then you pretend that you knew what you were doing all along.'

'That is not true in this case,' Mary said. 'You were not sitting around. You found the pickpocket. You made him find the boys. You gave the boys lunch. You were kind to them, instead of beating them like that fool wanted.'

'Kamble,' Sartaj said. They were sitting on a bench on the Carter Road seafront, under a truly spectacular sunset full of feathery circles of reddened cloud. The walkers were coming by briskly, and now, for a moment, a passing puppy on a leash nuzzled at their ankles. 'He was just playing his part. And anyway, getting the apradhi is not going to be that simple. I'm sure of that. We tried calling the number, from two different PCOs, and he didn't pick up. This bastard is careful. I can feel it.'

'You'll get him. And this Kamble, he would have tried to be rough with the boys if you had let him, and that little one would never have given you that number. You got that success in your detection because you were prepared for it. You were listening for it. You know that.'

Sartaj did know this. He had believed it for years, had learnt it from his father even before he had entered the force, and he had said as much to many a trainee. But still, it was nice to have Mary telling him this, reassuring him with a hand on his wrist. The puppy came back now, tripping in the other direction, and she bent to scratch its ears, and Sartaj felt her hand on his skin even after it was gone, even more acutely. 'Yes,' he said absently. 'Yes.'

'Yes, what?' The puppy was paddling away on its oversized feet, and Mary was looking at Sartaj with a sort of teasing amusement.

'That only,' Sartaj said hurriedly. 'You have to be listening, but sometimes the trouble is that you don't know what you're listening for. Like there's a song, but you don't know what the tune is. So you just have to wander around, looking and listening. It can make you feel like a fool.'

She was very direct now, her eyes locked on to his. 'You are not a fool,' she said.

It was a declaration, and Sartaj didn't hesitate now. He reached out and took her hand, and they sat together, holding hands. He very much wanted to kiss her, but there were walking grandmothers, and babies, and sprinting urchins. So, they sat. Sartaj thought of what Mary had just said: 'You are not a fool.' If he told Kamble about it, Kamble would mock Sartaj for the smallness of his romance, for the small, back-handed compliment that had finally brought them together. But Kamble was very young. Yes, no ghazal ever declared fervently that the beloved was not a fool, no Majrooh Sultanpuri love song had ever felt it necessary to claim this. Kamble believed in big romance and big tragedy, properly so. But Sartaj was content: to be rescued from one's foolishness was the greatest tenderness. We are all fools, he thought. I know I am. To find one person who forgives you for this, that is big. That is great.

They stayed on the seafront as dusk thickened and the sea receded into darkness, as the waves became uncurling ribbons of white. Mary squeezed his hand suddenly, and said, 'What will become of those boys?'

'Which boys? Little Red T-shirt and his gang?'

'Yes.'

'They'll survive.'

'Yes, but how?'

Sartaj shrugged. 'Like everyone else does.'

She nodded. But Sartaj could see that the boys stayed with her, that she was thinking about them still. He put an arm around her shoulder. He didn't want to tell her what Kamble had said when they had finally left the boys and Jayanth the pocket-maar and the restaurant. They had been talking about the amazing little crazy kid, and then Kamble had said, 'That Ramu is quite a leader, the bastard. Ten years from now he's going to give us trouble, you'll see.' Sartaj had agreed. Ramu was sharp and brave and hungry. He would be a good apradhi, maybe a shooter. And then Kamble had said, 'We should take him into the gali and encounter him now. Save us the trouble later of chasing him down, and save him the trouble of growing up.' And Sartaj had laughed and thumped Kamble reprovingly on his back, but he had known that Kamble was probably right. With some kids, you could see their future written on their foreheads. You could see how badly they wanted the good life, and how that life was going to run away from them. But he didn't want to think of Ramu and his troubles and his coming misfortune, not now. So he held Mary, and told her about his own childhood, and how he had never wanted to become a policeman like his father, but had become one anyway.

Now they were quiet. Sartaj could hear, even across the broad expanse of the road, the trills and laughter and hoots from a group of teenagers, boys and girls, sitting near the bus stop. They were sitting on car bonnets and sideways on the seats of motorcycles, and they were young and confident and happy and well-off. They were flirting, and later that evening some of them might try to find a hidden nook to touch in, to reach hungrily for each other. But Sartaj was content to hold Mary's hand, and later, to have the weight of her leaning against his back as he drove the motorcycle towards her house. He stopped at an intersection, and from the auto to his left came the well-known refrain from an old song: ' Tu kahan yeh bataa, is nasheeli raat mein .' Mary hummed it against his shoulder. 'You know this song?' Sartaj said.

'Of course,' she said. 'It's Dev Anand, right?'

It was indeed Dev Anand, it was Dev Saab walking through a foggy night in an old black-and-white film, Sartaj couldn't remember the name. But he remembered that it was a cool night – maybe Mussoorie or Nainital, no, Shimla, it was Shimla – and Dev Saab was as weightless as the melody, light on his feet and limber, and lovely Nutan was waiting for him. The lights changed, and Sartaj drove slowly next to the auto, followed it away from Mary's home, so that they could listen to the song. ' He, chand taaron ne suna, in bahaaron ne suna, dard ka raag mera, rehguzaron ne suna .' The wind moved smoothly over Sartaj's cheeks, and Mary sang into his ear, and he laughed and thought, this is happiness, just this much: to be driving through these unruly, well-known streets, with an old song, with a hand on your hip, and with a new love. Just this much, suspended between past and future: this woman, this song, this dirty and beautiful city.