Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

I tried to reason this out, to remember my conversations with Guru-ji and deduce my way into his intentions. But even as I tried, I knew my attempts were useless, that my ordinary mind was incapable of holding – even for a moment – his extraordinary understandings. And my thoughts felt ragged, frittered away by fear and the thousand concerns of my reeling company. My attention was shredded, there were too many problems to address, too many matters of reorganization to think about and implement, too many wounded men and widows to take care of. I couldn't keep focused on any subject, and found myself floating in fuzzy dreams during the day, and unable to sleep at night. I knew I was in bad shape, and there was nothing I could do to make myself better. Guru-ji was gone. I was afraid. I dreaded going to the bathroom because I winced and writhed and left streamers of blood on the porcelain. Pascal had bled from ulcers around his mouth, I had seen photographs of his face, his glazed eyes. I spent more and more time in the computer room, getting the boys to help me find information on radiation and burns and death. I had of course read in the newspapers that our country had incredible new weapons, and missiles that would deliver them, but I had never known much about Trombay, or uranium, or Nagasaki, but now I learnt, I learnt fast. I spoke to Jojo about all this, about the danger in the world, at our borders.

'Arre, Gaitonde,' she said. 'Nobody is going to fire off those things. Nobody is that crazy.'

'You never know. Somebody may not be crazy and they may set one off. They may have their reasons.'

'What reasons could those be, Gaitonde?'

She was really being quite patient with me, talking to me about this without cursing or slamming down the phone. I think she knew how tattered and tired I was, and she was trying to be kind. Usually, she had no patience with fear, or fantasies, or what she called men's terrors. I didn't want to tell her about my crawling panic about Guru-ji and what he may have had us smuggle and his disappearance, mainly because I understood very little of it myself. I just had a dread, and fragmented images of fire, always fire. I wanted her to leave Bombay. 'You never know,' I said. 'Pakistan might do something. And then we might do something. Some general may decide this is a good time for an attack. Bombay is the first place that would get hit.'

'We are all friendly with the Pakistanis right now, Gaitonde. And even when we are shouting at each other, it's all show. They always make noise, and then we make noise, bas. Don't worry so much, Gaitonde.'

I tried to get her to take a holiday in New Zealand, to go to Dubai even, for shopping. But no, she had work in the city, she was producing and managing, and there was money to make and people to see, she was just too busy. 'And if it happens, Gaitonde,' she said finally, 'so what? We all have to die some day. And if Bombay is gone, then where will I live anyway? I can't go back to my village.' She laughed. 'Or do you want me to go and stay with what's-his-name in Kuchaman City? Listen, baba – if this city is gone, my office is gone, my home is gone, all my work is gone, what I know is gone. Then there's nothing to stay alive for anyway.'

And she dismissed my attempts to send her to Australia, and burst into wild laughter when I told her that she should expand her business to London maybe. She said, 'Don't worry so much, Gaitonde. I saw this in an American picture last month, somebody sets off a big atom bomb in an American city. I was scared during the film, then afterwards I was all right. This happens only in films. It's too filmi. If it happens in a film, it won't happen in life. Nobody's going to set off a dhamaka. You've already made that film. Don't take on so much tension about nothing, just relax. Go to sleep.'

I let it go, I let her have her way and spoke of other things. But I had an idea. I kept it to myself, I didn't tell her, and I got my boys working. This is our top priority, I told them. I threw money into the project, I moved material from Thailand and Belgium into the very heart of Bombay. I followed the construction closely. I had photographs e-mailed to me every hour, and I watched the immensely thick walls rise out of a precise square of darkness in an empty plot in Kailashpada. That dimness came from an immense excavation, down into the earth. I built a safe house, a shelter. I built walls that would hold back fire, a profound deep that would keep the poison from Jojo's skin. I made this house for her, in case of emergency she could descend into it. But I found that if I thought of this small white house at night, I was able to go to sleep. On my yacht, this is what I did every night: after I had made sure that the sentry teams had been set up, and the motion detectors and the short-range security radar had been tested and adjusted and activated, I locked myself into my bedroom. I settled into a comfortable seat on the floor, and meditated. I tried to keep my mind still, concentrated into a point, and tried to experience the consciousness that was the universe, that was me. I went beyond gods and goddesses, beyond blue-skinned Krishna and his bloody open mouth with its threats of dissolution, I journeyed beyond all form, to the essence that lay beyond language. Then I got into bed. I curled myself almost round and then I was in Bombay, in Kailashpada and inside my white cube, I was far under the surface, I was sheltered and held by good thick steel and the best, hardest cement in the world. In this imagined embrace, I at last found peace. I was secure.

Kamble was still heartbroken about the conclusion to the Kamala Pandey case. He said it again, 'That maderchod bhenchod pilot, he is lower than the bhadwas, even. They take money from women, all right, I can understand that. You put a randi to work, you help in bringing customers, you put in time and effort, you get something back. But this Umesh, this bastard, he didn't even have the guts to stand face to face with Kamala and demand, "Give me money." He hid and took photos of this woman, and he used other men to extract money from her. And she loved him.'

'Shocking,' Sartaj said. 'Just shocking to think that a man may do such things to a woman.'

Kamble threw off Sartaj's sarcasm with an angry shrug. 'Arre, boss, okay, yes, I have lots of women. Maybe I hurt them too, but I give everything to them, they also hurt me. I am not talking about money only. I give this –' He thumped his chest. '–and anything else they ask for. Money? I shower money, I throw it away. I give it away and delay my own plans because I am ready to let them hurt me. You understand?'

He was ridiculous and he was completely serious, and Sartaj reached across the table and patted his arm. 'Yes, this pilot is a complete bastard,' he said gently. 'We will take care of him, don't worry.'

Sartaj then told Kamble about waking up that morning with a memory of a guru preaching, and remembering that he had once been part of the bandobast for a big public ceremony in Andheri West, a religious ritual that had gone on for days, that had been conducted by a deep-voiced guru who had used a very sophisticated foreign wheelchair. 'This was many years ago,' he told Kamble, 'but more recently I went to see the body of an apradhi named Bunty, who had been thokoed by some small-time chillar shooters after his own company fell apart.'

'Bunty, bole to Gaitonde's man?'

'That one. I had talked to this Bunty on the phone just a few days before he was killed. And he was talking about his fancy wheelchair, which could go up and down stairs and do all kinds of tricks. And he said that Gaitonde gave him the wheelchair.'

'So you think…'

'I'm telling you, Kamble, that guru had the same wheelchair as Bunty. I remember very clearly. Maybe not the same model, but the same make.'