Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

I turned to the right, to the kitchen and three other rooms. A sparrow walked along the edge of the little platform where the tulsi grew, and the sun came into my eyes. The kitchen was dark, hung with brass utensils, and had two blackened chulahs on the floor. No stoves, no gas range. There were two more rooms with beds, and a storeroom that contained only three empty steel trunks. I came back out into the sunlight. I was shivering a little, and my mouth was dry. What was this place? In a corner behind the kitchen there was another hand-pump, the bricks beneath it smeared wet. I put my weight on the handle and pumped, and with a couple of tinny creaks a shiny rope of water dropped and splattered. I drank, leaning down into the flow. The water was chilled and pure.

Nikhil came through the passageway now, feeling his way with a hand on the wall.

'There's nothing back here,' I told him. 'Empty rooms, everything is old. This place barely has electricity.'

'But it was only built twelve years ago, bhai.' He was uneasy and excited too. 'His saab lives in Delhi, goes by the name of Mrityunjay Singh. They bought the farm at the height of the Punjab troubles, got it cheap. Then they broke down the perfectly good house that was already here, dug up even the foundations. Then some years later they built this thing. This saab visits maybe once a year. I asked about the ramp outside. He said that was for a friend of Saab's who comes in a wheelchair, who has come here maybe two, three times. He doesn't know the wheelchairwallah's name, everyone just calls him Baba-ji.'

So Guru-ji had built this house, and then visited it only three times in more than a decade. Why this house, why here? It must have cost more to make it look old than just to build a new and modern house.

Nikhil pumped some water, drank and wiped his mouth. 'That tastes very good,' he said. 'The manager said this Baba-ji liked to spend time on the roof. The manager's gone to get the keys, he'll show it to us.'

Jagat Narain came into the courtyard, followed by the boys. He was rattling an iron ring hung with large keys. He led us – slowly – up a staircase that angled up from a corner of the courtyard, a staircase also equipped with a ramp. It took him five minutes to find the right key, and then he scraped with it at the door. I stood, feeling my toes on the edge of a stair, taken back suddenly to childhood, to a holiday morning and running up to the roof with a new kite crisp under my fingers. 'Maderchod,' I said. 'Nikhil, take the keys.'

But then the ancient bastard managed to get the lock open. We scattered out into the bright sunlight. There was one room on the roof, again with the sparse furnishings and the bare shelves. The flat roof went all around the courtyard, with no railing at the inner edge. I walked around to the other side, trying to get my mind to grasp something that endlessly fell just beyond its reach. It was like I had forgotten something I had just known. I could hear Nikhil talking to the manager on the other side of the courtyard.

'We have one thousand one hundred and eleven acres,' Jagat Narain said. 'All the way to the main road and beyond it. We go all the way to the fence.'

'What fence?'

'It's the border fence, boss,' Jatti said.

'A very long fence,' Jagat Narain said, nodding. He made a big gesture with both his arms, to take in the entire horizon.

Jatti explained the fence to Nikhil, with proprietary Punjabi pride. It was thousands of kilometres long, it went all the way from Rajasthan to Punjab and up beyond, into Jammu. Jatti had seen it on his last and only visit to Punjab, at Wagah. It was a double fence, much taller than a man and electrified. There were bells hung on it, to warn of infiltrators. Jatti's chacha had seen a Pakistani infiltrator who had been shot as he tried to cross one night. The machine-gun bullet had taken his face off. Jatti made a clawing motion in front of his face. 'Do you understand?' he said. 'The bastard had no face left.'

I leaned on the parapet, trying to see this deadly fence. But there was only a soft white haze beyond the arc of the earth, far on the other side of the trees. Jagat Narain lumbered over to stand beside me. 'Baba-ji looks also.'

'Looks at what?'

'Out there. He likes to sit here in the evenings. Watch the sun going down.'

What did Guru-ji see when he looked? It was pretty enough, even now. At sunset it must be beautiful. But there were beautiful sunsets elsewhere. Why come out here, to the middle of nowhere, and spend good money on all this land, and on an old house that was new? I half-shut my eyes and tried to see as he did. Here was an endless blur of green, the smell of earth, the sound of running water, and I saw the house of my childhood, and for a moment I was happy. My eyes snapped open, and I found that I was smiling.

Why?

But there was no time to ponder this mystery: a man was pedalling his bicycle furiously up the road towards us. As he came closer I saw that he was young, thirty maybe, and he was tall. 'Who is this?' I said to Jagat Narain. The bicycle man was glaring up at me as he pumped away, and he was not happy.

'That's only Kirpal Singh. He was at the Tupa Nahar fields today. We are spraying there for Karnal Bunt.'

Kirpal Singh was now at the front of the house. He flung down his bike, and a few moments later we heard him pounding up the stairs. He came out on to the roof already shouting, 'Jagate! Who are these people?' Nikhil began his looking-for-farmland-to-buy story, but Kirpal Singh wasn't having any of it. 'Saab,' he said, his chest heaving, 'you must leave. Nobody can come on to this farm without permission from our saab.' He gave Jagat Narain a bitter look.

'They are from Delhi also,' Jagat Narain said, as if that explained everything.

Close up, this Kirpal Singh was a big, rough-cut ruffian, with hair that spiked straight up into a big bush, and he gestured with dirty, cracked hands at least double the size of mine. He was wearing a worn grey Pathani suit, and despite the layers of grime on him, he had the bearing of a policeman, or a jawan.

'Listen, my friend,' Nikhil said. 'Calm down. Call your saab on the phone and we'll talk to him.'

'There is no phone here, saab.' He was very direct and firm and aggressive, under his thin politeness. 'Now you go.'

'I have a phone. I have a good signal.' Nikhil held up his handy. 'See? We can talk to him. What is his number?'

'The farm is not for sale. You go now.'

Kirpal Singh was crouched a little now, his shoulders hunched up. He was ready for a fight. I gave Nikhil the nod. 'Fine, yaar, fine,' he said. 'We will go. No problem. Thank you for the chai. Here is my number, give it to your saab if he's interested.'

He offered a card, and held it up until Kirpal Singh reluctantly took it. Then we filed down the stairs. I could feel the big lout looming behind me, breathing heavily. He was agitated, but about what? Why was he so nervous? He followed us all the way out, through the passageway and into the front veranda, and through the gate. Nikhil started the car, turned it around, and I waited, standing close to the wall. To my right, Kirpal Singh's bicycle lay on the ground, where he had thrown it. A large square can of pesticide was tied to the carrier with rope. There was a skull and crossbones on the can, in red. And a red rat, dead, upside down with his tail curled over him. 'They eat the crops?' I said to Kirpal Singh. 'The rats?'

He looked relieved, now that the boys were getting into the car. 'Yes, saab.' He was trying to make up for his rudeness. 'Not only the wheat. They eat everything. Plants, rubber. The cables for electricity also, they eat the plastic from them. Very hard to stop them.'

'Kill them all,' I said, and he finally smiled. I got into the car and we drove away.