Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

The song ended, and with a swerve and sudden speed Sartaj left behind the auto. At Mary's house, he kissed her twice, and then once more. It was very easy. She got off the bike, and put a hand on his shoulder. She was very close to him, and he leaned forward and kissed her. She closed her eyes, and he kissed her again. She was looking at him from under long lashes, and she smiled wide, and he kissed her. 'Go,' she said, and pushed him gently in the chest. He went, and he sang – badly, he knew – all the way home.

* * *

The kisses stayed with him the next morning, as he drove to Katekar's house. He parked the motorcycle, and stepped over the gutter. It was quite early, before seven, and the narrow lane was quiet. But Shalini was sitting in her door, picking pebbles and waste out of a pile of rice grains. She got up when she saw him, nodded and went into the house. Rohit brought out a chair for Sartaj. He had a moustache now, a few straggly strands that made him look even younger, but he was trying his best. 'Hi,' he said.

Sartaj stopped a smile at the hip English, and said his hi too. 'How are the classes going?' he said. He sat, and tugged an envelope out of his hip pocket. Rohit had started evening computer classes and had told Sartaj on the phone about e-mail and Linux and other things that Sartaj didn't understand.

Rohit took the envelope and riffled through the hundred-rupee notes inside. 'Thank you. The classes are going well,' he said. 'It is all very interesting.'

But he was pensive. He was wearing new blue jeans and a banian, and there was something new about his hair. Sartaj could see that he was dressing to be a new person, a person who said ' Hi ' and ' Thank you ' and who found computer classes very interesting. But it wasn't quite working. The jeans were flimsy, with a loose orange stitch that fell far short of international sophistication. There were a pair of blue sneakers just inside the door, and they had the same look of bedraggled hopefulness. There would be boys and girls in that computer class who spoke this language fluently, who would know the nuances of T-shirts and dark glasses. They would be hard on Rohit, and Sartaj felt twinges of sympathy as Rohit leaned against the wall and talked about how busy the classes were, and how some of its graduates had got work in Bahrain.

Shalini brought out a glass of tea. Sartaj sat up: she looked new. He sipped at his tea, and listened to her, and tried to puzzle out what exactly it was about her. She was talking about her work, not the jhadoo-katka work she did to make money, but the volunteer work she did with her organization. The group was called SMM, which stood for Shakti Mahila Manch, and they went out into the bastis to educate women. 'We talk to them about hygiene, and family planning,' she said to Sartaj. 'But the thing that upsets the husbands is when we tell the women that they should open their own bank accounts.'

Sartaj laughed. 'The husbands think you are taking away their cigarettes and their drink. You'd better be careful.'

Shalini laughed. 'They make a lot of noise. But they don't do anything to us. They beat their wives. Brave men.'

'There was that one incident,' Rohit said. 'In Bangalore.'

'Yes,' Shalini said. 'Our team leader told us. This was last month. The Bangalore branch had a group in a basti there. They were threatened by some men from a religious organization, some parishad or the other. The branch complained to the police, but the locals wouldn't do anything. They had to get the local MLA to intervene. But there'll be trouble yet.'

Sartaj was thinking of Mary, of how her upper lip had felt under his. He got it suddenly: Shalini's eyebrows had been plucked. Where there had been straightforward, rough brushstrokes, there were now delicate, precise arches. The change brought out her cheekbones, her eyes. Sartaj had never much noticed Shalini before, she had always been Bhabhi, Katekar's wife. Now he looked at her. She was wearing a dark blue sari, and a blouse of the same material, but with blue stitching at the collar and sleeves. She would never wear red, yellow or green again, not unless she remarried. She wore no jewellery, and her hair was tidily taken back into a bun. She was far from pretty, but there was a spare elegance about her that Sartaj had never noticed before. 'There is always trouble,' he said, his heart suddenly full of his dead friend Katekar. Did Shalini have a boyfriend, a lover? She seemed calm, even as she spoke about men and their anger, and possible violence.

'We have to keep working,' she said with an air of finality. 'Let them do what they want.'

Mohit appeared in the doorway, rubbing his eyes. He was wearing a pair of brown shorts, and that was all. His chest was narrow, with a black birthmark under his left nipple. He had a black thread around his neck, with a silver amulet on it. Sartaj remembered how Katekar had objected to that amulet, how he had cursed ignorance and superstition. But Shalini had insisted on it, to protect Mohit from sorrow and misfortune. 'Eh, Mohit,' Sartaj said.

Mohit started. He came out of his sleep, and in that fragmented moment, between his muzzy half-consciousness and full waking, Sartaj saw his anger. His loathing for Sartaj was full and fierce, a child's hatred as vast as the sun. Sartaj was the only one who saw it, and he flinched. Then Rohit, who was leaning against the jamb, tapped Mohit on the head and said, 'Wake up, Kumbhkaran. Sartaj Uncle is here.'

Mohit ducked his head, and when he looked up again he was sweet and harmless. 'I'm hungry, Aai,' he said.

'Go and get ready for school,' Shalini said. 'You're late. I'll give you something.' There was an edge to her voice, an undertow of sorrow.

'I am late also,' Sartaj said. 'I should go.'

Rohit walked with Sartaj down the lane, towards the corner. 'He keeps getting into fights,' he said suddenly. 'And twice this month already he's skipped school.'

'Mohit?'

'Yes. I try to watch him as much as I can. But both Aai and I have so much to do. He was never like this before.'

Before the event, before the death, before a fleeing apradhi trapped against a fence. Before everything. Mohit would measure his life before and after. And he would know who to blame. 'He'll grow out of it,' Sartaj said. 'It takes time. It's all so soon after. It takes time.'

Rohit nodded. 'Aai says that too. She prays every morning, especially for him.'

'How is she?'

'Aai?' Rohit said absently. 'She's fine.'

She couldn't be all fine, Sartaj thought. She and Katekar had spent years together, they had brought up two sons. Yet, this morning, she had seemed strong. There were those eyebrows, and her work with SMM. Was this a new Shalini, or had he never seen her clearly before? Women were resilient, he knew that. Ma had survived Papa-ji's death, after two days of weeping she had decided that the house had become unacceptably dusty. And then she had cleaned, not only the inside but also the little patch of garden in front and the courtyard at the back. She had called in workers to scour the wall at the back, and whitewash it. She had lived on, a little more austere than she had been before, but ever more capable, more sinewy. A time or two Sartaj had thought – with a slight queasiness arising from the observation – that she seemed more calm after Papa-ji had gone, more steady and self-possessed.

Sartaj kicked the motorcycle into life, and tilted it around. Then he had to wait. A man with a long white cast on his leg was trying to manoeuvre the down-sloping turn to the left. He had to position his crutches exactly right to get the cast over the gutter, but the lane was troughed through and uneven and very narrow. There was a woman next to him, picking at his arm to position a crutch. The man cursed at her. His face was dense with fury, and his crutch scraped at the side of the gutter and slipped.