Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

I listened to him and I was not afraid, although I had reason to be. I had come to him with a nervous stomach full of troubles, a spirit that was tired, and courage that was being tested. I had come to him, leaving behind my boys and my protection, because I needed to be in his presence. And already, in a few minutes, I was calmed. I had grown up sceptical of sadhus and sants, I had always thought they were charlatans and tricksters and confidence men, but here was a man who cracked through the shield of my doubt with his ineffable power. You may indulge yourself in the bitter satisfactions of scepticism, you may think me weak-headed, a paralysed fool looking for comfort, a tottering man wanting a crutch. All these thoughts – and I had had them too – are blinders against the truth, against reality itself, which was simply the peace I found sitting in the same room with him. Of course it wasn't just me who gained this tranquillity, but also all those Germans in the room. And thousands of others all over the world, who responded to him, his call, his teachings. He had that effect. Call it 'charisma', if that eases your mind, your desire for a certain limited logic. That was exactly the trap of reason that Guru-ji spoke about at the end of his sermon that night.

'Listen with your heart,' he said. 'Reason can stand on the path to wisdom, like a watchman with a lathi. Logic is good, it is powerful, we use it every day. It gives us control of the world we live in, it enables our daily living. But even science tells us that everyday logic cannot finally describe the reality of the world we live in. Time contracts and expands, Einstein told us this. Space curves. Below the level of the atom, particles pass through each other, a particle exists in two places at the same time. Reality itself, the real reality, is a madman's vision, a hallucination that the small individual human mind cannot hold. You must explode the ego, recognize everyday reason for the small and limiting jailer it is. You must walk past it, into the boundless expanse beyond. Reality waits for you there.'

I waited for him patiently, after the sermon was over. He had the usual line of devotees waiting to talk to him. I sat on a chair in the emptying hall, as the sadhus let the Germans one by one into a private room to the side. I wasn't worried that they would halt the audiences before they reached me, this time Guru-ji knew I was coming. So I was content to sit and watch the firangis emerge from their personal darshans, smiling, transformed.

'You are Indian?'

It was one of the Germans. She was wearing a deep red sari and had her blonde hair caught up in a jooda on the back of her head. There was a mangalsutra on her neck, and sindoor in her hair. She was young, maybe in her mid-twenties, but she looked like a traditional Indian mother from thirty years ago, from a small town at that. 'Yes,' I said.

'From where?' she said. Her English was clear and clangy. I had heard this accent on the beaches of Phuket.

'From, from Nashik,' I said.

'I have not gone,' she said. 'But Nagpur, you know Nagpur?'

I nodded.

'Guru-ji married me there, and gave me a new name.'

'Guru-ji married? You?'

'No, no, married me to my husband. To Sukumar.'

'Sukumar, he is Indian?'

'No, also German. After I met him I became Guru-ji's disciple. Then Guru-ji married us.'

'And gave you a new name.'

'I am Sita.'

'A very good name.'

'Guru-ji says it is a high ideal.'

'What?'

She gestured up, up towards the heavens. 'Sita is a good woman.'

This Sita had bright blue eyes, and a happy, beaming countenance. I smiled back at her. 'Sita was the best woman.' One of the sadhus waved at me then. It was my turn. 'Bye,' I said to Sita.

'Namaste,' she said, with an elegant folding of the hands and a deep bow. 'It is always nice to meet someone from home.'

I stood up, and fought off a sudden dizziness. I was tired, yes, too much travel in a short time. I stood by the green door to the private room, flanked by two sadhus, both firangis with bushy brown beards. They were both completely calm, quite silent. Then the door opened, and I was in.

Guru-ji was seated on a gadda near the fireplace, and his hair was a silver halo. The chairs and couches – it must have been a meeting room – had been moved to the sides, leaving the open space that he liked. He watched me come to him. I knelt in front of him, and touched my forehead to the ground, clutched at his feet. He put his right hand on my head, and said, 'Jite raho, beta.' He took me by the shoulders and raised me up.

I kept quiet. I should have said something, in gratitude for his blessing, but I held myself back.

'What is your name, beta?'

I hadn't planned this silence on my part, I had no intention of testing Guru-ji. But suddenly, I wanted him to know me. Not one other man or woman had seen through the disguise of my new face. But Guru-ji knew my soul, he knew even the small, hard, cinder-like fragment at the centre, which I had never shown to anyone. He knew the softness and yearning which lay under that black surface. He was waiting now, expectant.

'Are you dumb?' he said. 'Can you not speak?'

A smile came slipping across my face. I was being very silly, but the fact that he thought me mute amused me greatly. I knelt there, smiling.

'Ganesh?' he said.

I was amazed. I had wanted him to recognize me, but I hadn't expected him to. It was merely a wish, from the deepest core of who I was. There are many longings that float close to the surface of our skin, and I had achieved many of these: power, money, women. But there are needs so deep that they are not named, not even to oneself. They operate like subterranean flows of molten liquid, on which the continents move. They burst up sometimes with the fury of volcanoes, and then vanish, gone to the underground again. This is the true underworld, where desire boils eternally. I had wanted, like a child, to be named and known. And Guru-ji had done it.

'How?' I said. 'How did you know?'

'Do you really think you can hide from me?' He patted my cheek, then hugged me close.

'Guru-ji.' I was laughing. In one touch, I was rescued from my exhaustion, my anger, my fear. This is why I came to him, across the world and alone. I held his hands. 'Guru-ji, I know seeing me is…'

He shook his head. 'Not here.'

So he called up one of his sadhus, told him that I was a bhakt named Arjun Kerkar, that I had a very personal problem that would require a long consultation. His staff seemed used to this. Guru-ji climbed into his wheelchair in one powerful movement, and I followed him down into the garage. There was a flight of seven stairs down from the elevator lobby to the floor of the garage, and he took it easily in his wheelchair. The fat black wheels made little whirring and clicking noises, and the wheelchair danced down the stairs, perfectly balanced.

'Excellent, Guru-ji,' I said.

'Latest model, Arjun,' he said to me, with a flash of teeth over his shoulder. 'Everything is computerized. I can balance on two wheels. Look.'

And he did, whirling slowly on his two wheels. I clapped. There was a special van waiting in the garage, with a ramp to let the wheelchair in, and we skimmed off to the house where Guru-ji was staying, a devotee's mansion just outside the city. Everything was efficiently organized, and the sadhus spoke to each other on little walkie-talkies, and there were no delays or wasted motion. In fifteen minutes we were in Guru-ji's suite, which had been set up exactly the way he liked it, with fresh flowers in every room, and fruits on the table, and his CDs of sitar music and devotional chants by the bed. I took my shoes off, and found a comfortable chair in a little anteroom. I waited. Guru-ji took a bath, dictated some essential letters to his aides and then dismissed them. He called me in, and I found him seated on his bed in the centre of the room, wearing a white silk kurta and a dhoti.