Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

'Gaitonde,' she said. 'What's happened?'

'Nothing has happened. Why would something be happening?'

'You never call me this early in the afternoon.'

'I got free today and decided to call you. Are you going to prosecute me in court now?'

She shut up, but only for a moment. Then she was back, dangerously soft. 'So where are you, Gaitonde?'

'Where would I be? I'm in my room. I'm at home.'

'But where?'

'Why do you want to know?'

'I'm just asking. Just like that.'

'In your whole life you've never done anything "just like that".'

'So where are you?'

'In Kuala Lumpur.'

A car came around the corner outside.

'That sounds just like an Ambassador. They drive Ambassadors in Kuala Lumpur?'

Somebody should have made her a spy, this Jojo. She was absolutely correct, an Ambassador had just turned the corner near the gate, and it was rattling down the road now. 'That's a Japanese jeep, idiot,' I said.

'So the Japanese are making noisy khataras now. Okay. But Malaysian birds sound like that? And the kids play cricket?'

I was in an exclusive, expensive bungalow, but of course there was no escape from the noise. There were the crows and there was the cricket game down the street, and there were also labourers working on the construction site two streets away, shouting at each other in Telugu. There was filmi music somewhere, a radio, but very low and far away. I cupped a hand over the phone and turned towards the corner. 'There are lots of Indians in this building,' I said. 'Don't argue with me. I'm not in the mood.'

'All right, all right, Gaitonde. So how is life?'

How was my life? I felt old, I was alone and I was afraid. 'My life is fit,' I said. 'It is absolutely top-class. You tell me about yours.'

So she told me about hers: problems with girls who thought they deserved more money than they were worth, a leaky wall in her apartment that seeped beads of water even after it had been waterproofed twice, a television-show deal that had slipped through her hands. I listened to her and thought how well I knew her, and how well she knew me. With Jojo, distance made no difference, whether she was near or far I felt her presence, as if she were sitting next to me. We had learned each other's breathing, so that now when we spoke and joked there was an easy rhythm to it, like a boy and girl on a seesaw pushing each other off into air, like circus acrobats turning and finding each other in mid-flight.

Jojo was real to me, and distance made no difference. I was barely a mile and a half from her apartment, less if I went directly across swamp and sea. I could be there in ten minutes. I could have walked up her stairs, knocked on her door and asked her for a cup of chai. But I had no desire to go, no need to see her. She was with me, even when she was away. I could feel her inside me. She was more real to me than myself. Me, I had faded and broken into pieces. This was true. I could hardly admit this to myself, but it was true. The thing I called me, myself, it felt to me like an old brown blanket, tattered and patched and barely holding together. I, who had once been Ganesh Gaitonde, who had been glorious and whole to the entire world, I was now gone from myself. I felt like a small boy walking alone through an endless plain lit by funeral fires, afraid and lost. In this ashy haze, in which I no longer knew what was good or worth having, I clung to Jojo. She was my strength and my only pleasure, my anchor and my only friend. I listened to her, and laughed, and collected myself for my search.

'Gaitonde,' she told me, 'it sounds just like you're sitting at a corner in Tardeo. But you move around so much that you confuse me also, not just yourself. You should stay in one place for a while now. Even if it's this Kala Langur.'

I told her what she could do with her Kala Langur, which made her giggle, and then she told me a story about a woman who had gone to Nepal for a holiday and had been abducted by a bear which fell in love with her. 'Really, Gaitonde, it happened. Bears take women all the time.' Which I think, in some roundabout way, was meant to be an argument for staying at home. I didn't tell her that I couldn't stay in one place, that I had no choice, that I had to travel. I just listened to her, and left the next day for Delhi. Five of my boys met me there, all the main crew from the yacht. They had flown into airports all over the country, from Sydney and Singapore and Mombasa, and had rendezvoused at two hotels in Greater Kailash. They were to be my special squad, my undercover commandos. Bunty's assistant Nikhil had come from Mumbai to head this contingent. He hadn't been exactly happy to leave behind his good money-making operations and his family in Mumbai, but I had insisted, and he had packed his bags. He knew me well enough not to argue. He was completely bald already at thirty, and he had an older man's stolid patience. He had managed the details: the boys had good cover stories, new documentation that had been dirtied for a properly aged look, and sober clothing and decent haircuts. I brought money and weapons, and we were ready to go.

We started in Chandigarh. Guru-ji had suffered his crippling motorcycle accident in Pathankot, and he had been brought to a hospital in Chandigarh, and during his recovery he had formed an attachment to the city. It was here, among these broad avenues and circles, that he had finally settled his parents, and it was here that he built his first ashram and headquarters. The ashram complex had been large to start with, but now it sprawled over a hundred acres on the outskirts of Sector 43. We got to Adarsh Nagar in the late afternoon, with the setting sun on our shoulders. The massive blue gate at the entrance was manned by white-clad sadhus, the usual mix of Indians and foreigners. Nikhil had called ahead and set up a meeting with Sadhu Anand Prasad, who was the governing head of Adarsh Nagar and the top sadhu in the national organization. The sentry sadhus made phone calls, and Nikhil chatted with them, and as we waited I got out of the car and strolled down to the barrier. The gate was actually a monument by itself, like one of those gigantic guardhouses that you see at the front of castles and fortresses, with rooms and chambers and armouries inside. Guru-ji's gatehouse was a glorious shimmering blue, it had delicate rounded turrets and pointed spires and little balconies, and despite all its bulk it sat lightly on the earth, as if it had been transported in from another era. It could have guarded the palace at Hastinapur, or stood before Ravana's golden fortress. Inside the compound, there was a thick covering of green grass, cut straight and even, and long boulevards, and widely dispersed buildings, all in blue and white. There were clipped trees, and flapping orange and red flags along the roads. The shaded archway of the gate was suffused with fragrance from neat blocks of yellow flowers that lined the steel fences.

'Okay, bhai,' Nikhil said to me. 'We can go in.'

We drove along, past sadhus walking purposefully in small groups. There was an infinite hush over these gardens, a quiet removed from time, so that even the gathering flocks of evening birds spoke only in mild tones. There were children strolling in the meadows, but they walked in orderly columns and bowed their heads with a namaste when an elder passed. I had seen this ashram on video, but now in life it looked a little smaller than I had imagined it. But it was perfect in its shape, it was quite balanced and square. At the other end of the campus there was another blue gate, and two more at the east and west, and exactly half-way between all of them, at the geometrical dead centre of the grounds, there rose a massive stepped pyramid of white marble, a pillar pointing at heaven. This was the main administration building. We parked in front of it, and went through another cordon of secretary sadhus. Then we were shown into a lounge lined with low couches, and here we waited.