Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

Navneet sits up, yawns and then gets up and walks across the courtyard. She goes into the room that she shares with her two sisters, and then emerges, wearing her going-out chappals. She must be going to that college again. Ram Pari doesn't know what use it is to educate a girl so much, but she respects reading and writing. She herself can't do either, and knows she is too old to learn. But she knows that men who read and write have an advantage. She has her own bitter experience to prove that. But she doesn't want to think about such disasters, and her illiterate husband's failures, so she whispers, 'Rabb mehar kare,' and pumps water, and the splash fills her ears.

Navneet is standing near her. 'Ram Pari,' she says absently, 'your eldest daughter is very pretty. When she's old enough, you should find a handsome boy for her.'

Ram Pari feels irritation swirl in her throat. This vain cow with her white skin thinks that everyone has time to look at themselves in the mirror all day long, and think about handsome lafangas. 'She's already married,' she says shortly.

'What, that little thing?'

'She's not that small. She will go to her sasural soon.'

'How old was she when she got married?'

Ram Pari moves a flat hand in the air, less than the height of the hand-pump. 'Among our people it is like that.'

Navneet puts a hand over her mouth and sits on the stool near the pillar, which her father uses every morning when he puts on his shoes. 'And she has never seen her husband since then?'

'No. Why should she?' Ram Pari says this and then is afraid that she is being too curt. But she doesn't know how to demonstrate now that she is appropriately docile and respectful, so she picks up a karhai and puts it under the pump. She scoops up a fistful of ash, and as the karhai rattles under her scrubbing, she understands what Navneet wants. So she turns, and smiles sweetly, and says, 'But, you talk to him all the time, no?'

'No, no. I don't talk to him, I only write letters once in a while.' The girl has a shadow of darker pink on her cheeks, and she does have the grace to look somewhat embarrassed.

Ram Pari is confident now. She laughs, and says, 'Maybe, but he writes all the time, every day.'

Navneet shrugs shyly, and Ram Pari – despite herself – feels a kinship with her. Yes, it is good to be very young, to be full of anticipation and longing and a little dash of delicious fear, to hover on the edge of a new life. She decides to be generous. 'Is he very handsome?'

'You want to see a photo?' Navneet is on her feet already, and even before Ram Pari can get out her yes, she is half-way across the courtyard, and even Ram Pari recognizes – without a trace of envy – the unconscious grace in her youthful run. Let the girl be happy. It is her time to be happy.

Navneet comes back and squats next to Ram Pari. She opens a notebook filled with indecipherable marks, flips a page, and there is her man. He wears a very high-pointed turban, and stares at Ram Pari with insouciant arrogance, a hint of a smile playing over his lips. He is indeed very good-looking. The photo has been tinted, and the red of his cheeks stands out against the blinding brilliance of his teeth. 'Vah,' Ram Pari says, 'just like some hero.'

'Yes, I tell him all the time that he could easily be an actor if we went to Bombay. But of course he doesn't want to shave his beard, and of course I don't want him to. He used to act in college, and a lot of his friends say he looks like Karan Dewan, but I think he really looks like Ashok Kumar.'

Ram Pari nods.

But Navneet wants more. 'Don't you think so?'

'I don't know Ashok Kumar.'

'What? Haven't you seen Kismet ?'

A great burst of raucous laughter bursts out of Ram Pari. All her rancour is swept away. 'No, I haven't seen Kismet .' She now feels only tenderness towards this child who believes that everyone has the money and the time to go to some Kismet , who sees her future unfolding before her on a screen that glitters with romance and promise. Ram Pari feels in her stomach, in her groin, the heartbreak that awaits Navneet, which will come only because she hopes for so much. Ram Pari does not know what the catastrophe will be, but she knows it will arrive. She says as kindly as she can, 'Maybe I will see Kismet some day.'

Navneet is beginning to realize that she has said something maybe a little silly, and is confused. She stutters, and blushes again. Ram Pari wants to reach out and touch her, but she doesn't. She knows that Bibi-ji may come in at any moment, and shout at her for wasting time. But she can shrug off Bibi-ji's bellowing for all eternity, and just now, just in this moment, she loves this Navneet. She says, 'Tell me what Kismet is about,' and she settles down to listen.

III

Rehmat Sani watches the night sky emerge from the fading bloom of a flare. He is comfortable and dreamy, settled into a hollow in the earth he has come to know well after using this route for almost three months. He is sixty yards from the fence, on the Pakistani side, and he is in no hurry. He has five hours before first light, and he has patience. The first time he crossed the border was when he was a boy, and back then you could just walk across, being careful to avoid the patrols and the minefields. Then, the bribes for the Rangers and BSF men had been smaller, and the mines more scattered, and the fence hadn't been put in. But no matter. Rehmat Sani knows every inch of ground for a hundred miles south and north, and the border is many thousands of miles long. Even if it is all fenced, he will still get across. He has business on both sides, and of course family.

He has done well this trip. Instead of the usual quarters of rum, this time he had carried two big bottles of foreign whisky for his cousin on the Pakistani side. Mushtaq has a captain who wanted the whisky, and a captain could be very useful, so Rehmat Sani had acquired the whisky from Aiyer and taken it across. Aiyer is small and dark and wears very thick glasses and looks quite unlike an intelligence man, but he is no fool. He knows when to be flexible. So Rehmat Sani has profited from the captain, from the money he has carried for his cousin the havildar, and also from a bottle of rum he took across for his own private gain. He has no new information for Aiyer, but Aiyer will wait until the captain can be developed. Aiyer is young but he is learning well. Rehmat Sani has high hopes for him.

Rehmat Sani stretches, easing his muscles. Maybe he is getting too old for this. He can smell the damp from the deep, watery nullah which he will use to get to the fence. The crawl through the twisting defile will leave him soaked and cold, and it is this last bit of this route that makes him wish, every time, that he had sons who were earning already. But his first wife had given him only four daughters, and the younger wife had become pregnant only after three years, after he had gone to Ajmer Sharif and tied a thread and wept and appealed to Khwaja Sahib. Only then had Khalid been born. He is in school now, in the fifth standard, and Rehmat Sani intends to educate him fully. Rehmat Sani understands the demands of the time, he knows that a man without education – like himself – will not get far, or live well. But it is hard to bear the burden of two daughters married, and two still sitting at home. When Rehmat Sani was Khalid's age, he had already travelled with his father as far as Lahore. He cannot remember much before that first journey, but he remembers the rooftops of Lahore glowing in the morning sun.

Rehmat Sani shakes off the nostalgia and readies himself for the descent into the nullah. It is dark again, and the singe of the flare has faded from his eyes. He does not need to raise his head to check for threats. He can tell from the loud silence of the night, from the steady pinging of insects, from the ease of his own body. Against his chest, he can feel the plastic packet he has tucked away under his banian. The Pakistani captain paid for his whisky in crisp new Indian notes, which is convenient for Rehmat Sani. At home, he will take the money out of the plastic and give it to his senior wife to deposit in his bank and get his passbook updated. He cannot read the passbook, but he likes looking at the notations when she returns from her half-day trip to the bank. The scribbling makes him feel safe. Now he wonders where the Pakistanis get so much new Indian money. It's strange that the freshly minted notes are taken over the border one way and then come back the other way with him. But this has been his whole life, going one way and the other, over this immense line in the ground, under the fence and around it. He doesn't think much about why it winds its way across the fields, but it exists, so he has made his living from it. He yawns, and turns over. Time to go. It will take him two hours to get to the fence, another two hours before he is over to safety on the other side. Then he will stand up, shake off the mud and go home.