Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

But today he is worried. He is in London, and late last night, just before leaving his office at the Pakistani embassy, he learnt about a death on the other side of the world. One Gurcharan Singh Bhola had been killed by the Indian police in Gurdaspur District, in a village called Veroke. Gurcharan Singh Bhola was the commandant of the Khalistan Tiger Force, which had been relentlessly whittled down by the Indian forces over the last year. And now Gurcharan Singh Bhola is dead. Shahid Khan had met him once, in those days when he was a lieutenant and cutting his teeth in the fields and villages of Punjab. Gurcharan Singh Bhola was a tall man, impressive with his muscular wrestler's build and his burning commitment to his Khalistan. But Shahid Khan had only met him once, on a night when Bhola had passed through his picket, and it is not grief for the sardar that weighs Shahid Khan down this morning. He is now very far from Punjab, but it is obvious that the Indians are crushing the Khalistan movement. They are brutal, ruthless. With support from the central and state governments, their army and the paramilitary forces are hunting down the revolutionaries one by one. Shahid Khan knows exactly how much it cost – in money and effort and lives – to build up and support the movement. Now, it is finished. This reverse is humming in Shahid Khan's veins. He has been trained to accept losses. He believes in ultimate victory like he believes in the fact of this mirror in front of him, as something that just exists, but the humiliation of loss is something that has always maddened him. He knows it is weakness, this anger. It clouds his judgement. He had hoped that with age he would learn equanimity, but passion lingers. He tries to think of his successes, in particular the recent operation in the ruins of the USSR, which operation he resuscitated and rescued after the Indians almost succeeded in killing it. For decades, during the years of cosy allegiance between India and the USSR, the Indians had had much of their high-value national currency printed in the Ukraine. After the fall of the Soviet empire, Shahid Khan's agency had sent operatives into the Ukraine, to probe at the press where this currency was printed. These operatives had succeeded in setting up a deal – for a substantial sum paid in hard currency, the Ukrainians would give them the original plates for the Indian notes. That would have been a triumph indeed, to be able to print counterfeit Indian money from the original plates. But the Indians had got wind of the deal – everything was rotten in the Ukraine – and had claimed the original plates, and had got hold of them. Out of this complete disaster, Shahid Khan had brought a kind of victory and some dignity. He had come in after the fact and acted fast. The plates were gone, yes, but the paper was still there, sitting in huge warehouses, lightly guarded. Shahid Khan moved quickly, he made deals, he arranged logistics, he had a minor Indian embassy official picked up by local thugs and held for two days. And while the Indians were distracted, he stole their currency paper. Now the notes printed on this original, completely genuine paper – which Shahid Khan had obtained at some personal risk – are in circulation throughout India, and Shahid Khan knows that he is well on his way to becoming a lieutenant-colonel. Yes, there is that, even though the personal triumph cannot rescue him entirely from the national failure.

He shakes himself out of his reverie, puts the scissors down and runs the water. He bathes efficiently, and as he towels himself dry he can't help thinking, yet again, that the huge fluffy length of cloth is an absurd luxury. He has been able to afford such things for a while, and doesn't begrudge his family these conveniences, but he has been shaped in a harder school. After he prays and eats, he straightens out his papers and pays some bills. It is a Sunday, and the women in the household – his mother, his wife, his daughter – have gone to East Ham to visit relatives. He is alone, and finally, after all responsibilities have momentarily been discharged, he feels that he can take an hour off. He goes to his bedroom and shuts the door. The front door is locked, and he knows nobody will disturb him, but he is compelled to make sure that his privacy is secure. Until now, only his wife knows he does what he is about to do.

He sits in his favourite armchair, which faces the window. Good light is essential. He puts a pillow over his lap, the balls of yarn to his right. Then he begins to knit. He is making yet another scarf. His wife donates them, usually to a madrassa or an orphanage back home. The needles click, and click, and Shahid's Khan's shoulders ease and drop. He has been doing this for the last two years, since a doctor in Karachi told him that he had better learn to relax, or his ulcers were going to kill him. 'Learn how to really take a holiday,' the doctor said. 'Get a hobby.' At first Shahid Khan played squash. He had always wanted to learn, and it looked like a good workout. But he found that he needed to win. He took extra coaching lessons, and began reading books on technique. When he found that he was dreaming of rematches, he gave it up. He was then sent to Ukraine, and there he took up chess. Wary of playing against another person, he invested in a handheld chess machine. The cleverness of the thing was delightful, how it folded out and clicked softly into a complete board, the recessed compartments for the pieces, the little red lights with which the machine told you which piece it wanted to move, and where. While he was learning to use it, his insides felt better. But then he wanted to play it at the harder levels, and the pains flared up. Anyway the martial metaphor was too obvious, its viziers and its pawns and black-and-white battleground made him think too much of the real world. He gave the machine to a friend, and suffered for a while in silence. Then he tried riding, but that lasted only until he met a recalcitrant horse.

He called the Karachi doctor from Moscow, and almost hung up when he heard what the man had to suggest. It took him two months to buy the yarn, and another three weeks to begin. But he found, even that first time in the hotel room in Tallinn, that his hands fell naturally into the rhythms. He understood the taut opposition of knit and purl, and did not need to think. He did not need to knit faster, or better, or even competently. He just made something, something red and oddly shaped and large, and decided later that it was a scarf.

So Shahid Khan sits facing the noontide sun. His eyes are wide open, and there is only a small burning within his belly, and he does not mind it. In a little while it too will be gone. He is breathing. The white yarn stretches against his skin, and then relaxes. The needles sound against each other. The warp and weft form, and flow. His mind, his heart fills with the radiant glow of Allah's mercy. The fabric grows, and he is at peace.

I gave myself a new face that winter. I had been worrying for a while about the many photographs of me that had been published in the newspapers and magazines in India. Television programmes regularly ran video clips of me leaving the law courts in Bombay. I was too recognizable, too well-known. Once, on the beach at Ko Samui, a group of young Indian tourists had turned to stare at me, and had whispered nervously to each other. I had left India not only to avoid jail, but also to elude my many enemies. I needed to change. I had seen Zoya transform herself, so I understood how it could be done, what it cost in pain and money, what its possibilities were. I needed to be new.

I knew I wanted this transformation, and not for security reasons only. There was a dissatisfaction working under my skin, a discontent. Every morning I looked at myself in the mirror, and the face I saw was not the man I knew myself to be. I knew myself to be sculpted lean, as if the terrors and triumphs of my life had carved me a new shape. But the years had sagged my cheeks, thickened my nose. My chin sank into a bulge of flesh, there was a droop at the corners of my eyes. The blurring of my features was unbearable. I wanted to alter the outside to match the inside.