Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

This became Aadil's daily routine. He was disciplined about getting out and to classes early every morning, but in the evenings he sat with the boys and talked about politics, corruption, films, international events, the changing climate, women, cricket. The conversation moved fast, in a mixture of Hindi and Bhojpuri and Magahi with English sprinkled over it all. Sometimes Aadil kept quiet, when the allusions escaped him, or when the slang flew so fast that it left him quite behind. During and through these sessions, because of the nights at restaurants, he was realizing how much there was that he didn't know about the lives of his new friends, about people who didn't live in the Ansari Tola. Despite all his reading, his world had been limited, and not only because of the smallness of Rajpur. Now that he was friends with boys who had grown up with televisions in their homes, who took motorcycles and trips to Calcutta for granted, whose parents subscribed to newspapers and magazines, Aadil understood that poverty was a country of its own, that he was a foreigner stepping clumsily through unknown landscapes. But he was a good learner, and he applied himself. He had a terror of embarrassing himself, and so he was shy, and always reluctant to assume familiarity. But Jaggu always knocked on his door, and included him in all the group's plans. 'Wake up, Dilip Saab,' he would say, 'time to go.' Jaggu insisted that Aadil was an exact duplicate of the young Dilip Kumar, down to the soft voice and the tragic mumbles. 'Put a rifle in your hand,' he had said, 'and you're straight out of Ganga Jamuna .' Aadil understood that this, in Jaggu's lexicon, was high praise. But since Jaggu thought that he himself was the spitting image of Jackie Shroff, and modelled himself with nitpicking precision on his namesake, Aadil didn't take the compliment too seriously. Jaggu's generosity was exactly equal to his self-deception. He believed sincerely that he had fully repudiated his Bhumihar medium-sized-zamindar ancestry by studying history and getting involved with theatre and poetical circles in Patna, but he lived on fat monthly money orders from home. He said he didn't believe in caste or creed, but he once confessed to Aadil – late at night, after many bottles of beer – that he thought people from the lower castes were unclean. 'They don't bathe,' he whispered confidentially. 'It's not in their sanskars, you see. That you can't deny.' He never told Aadil whether Muslims bathed or not, but he especially favoured patriotic films about combat with Pakistan. He ate tandoori chicken avidly, and believed that the narrative of history must be deduced from corroborated facts and archaeological evidence, but he grew wildly furious when he read in the paper about a professor who had published a book proving that Vedic Indians ate beef. 'This is all a plot,' he had muttered, his face crimson, 'a maderchod plan.' He didn't say whose plan it was, and Aadil didn't ask. It was understood.

And yet Jaggu was an affectionate and faithful friend. He went out of his way to help Aadil and his other hostel-mates, he organized outings, he went on his motorcycle and fetched medicines when someone was sick. Even though he wasn't in Aadil's department, he collected gossip about Aadil's professors, and advised him on the subtleties of academic politics. He was a constant support, and Aadil was glad to have him as confidant. It was impossible to admit, even to Jaggu, but university was very hard for Aadil, and getting more difficult. It wasn't just the studies and the research, which took hours and effort and the energy from Aadil's body. This he could manage, even though he was now competing with boys who were truly gifted, and not just the ragged lot of Rajpur louts. It was the chronic shortage of money that wore him down. How could you read, and concentrate on what you were reading, when your stomach twitched and ached from hunger? As the weeks passed, Aadil's small reserve of cash in the bank was being whittled down. There were always unexpected expenditures, fees and hostel collections and antibiotics for a sudden fever. There were books that were not on the curriculum but which professors casually declared to be essential pre-exam reading. And there were new hungers, for a play, for dinner at a restaurant and maybe a Coca-Cola. But the rupees vanished rapidly, and Aadil struggled, and tried to reduce his spending. But there was no excess to trim away, and he felt as if his discipline were cutting into his own flesh. He suffered, and he hid his suffering.

'Beta, what is happening to your hair?' Jaggu said to Aadil one evening, tugging him down by the shoulder so he could peer closely at Aadil's head. They were sitting on top of the wall, outside the hostel, waiting for the group to gather for an expedition to the Ashok cinema.

'My hair? Nothing,' Aadil said. He patted down his parting, and was reassured of the fullness of the growth.

'Yaar, it's going completely white.'

'No.'

'I'm telling you.'

'It's the same. It has been like this for a long time.'

'No, no. Full white, I'm telling you. Come and look.'

They went back into the hostel, upstairs to Jaggu's room, which had many mirrors. Jaggu positioned Aadil in front of one on the wall, and held another one behind his head. 'Look,' he said.

Aadil looked, and he saw that the back of his head was indeed quite white. From behind, he was an old man.

'I think it's spreading from back to front,' Jaggu said. 'But listen, it's nothing to worry about.' And he proceeded to list hair dyes, and pronounce on the virtues of different brands, and instruct Aadil in their usage. He was outraged when Aadil shook his head, and refused to colour.

'Why, bhai, why? I ask you, why?' Jaggu said. 'Nothing could be easier. It's not like you have to do it every day. You need to take care of yourself, and you refuse to do even this little thing.'

Aadil held Jaggu's wrist, and smiled, and shook his head, and led him down, back to the gate and the others. It was impossible to explain to Jaggu that hair dye even once a month could be an unbearable expenditure, a luxury reserved for people not like Aadil. Jaggu, who threw away his toothbrush every second week because he thought it looked worn and tired, couldn't know what it really meant to live without a thick fold of rupees available at all times. He didn't lack intelligence, or sympathy, or insight. He was just different, he couldn't understand. Aadil couldn't blame him personally. Aadil couldn't tell him, either, that there were many days now when he felt like an old man. Maybe Aadil had aged prematurely, which was why there was this debilitating weariness seeping through his veins. He fought to rouse himself from bed every morning, struggled through fatigue to get through lectures, studying, exams. The exhaustion was not just in his muscles or cells, this he could have perhaps isolated and controlled and defeated. He had somehow been eroded, ground down until only a thin sliver of will was left, steely and brittle. He was on the verge of breaking, and yet he had to go on. He survived. He kept at it, and by the end of the year, by the time that exams were done and plans were being made for the future, Aadil had had enough. He wanted to go home.

'Why?' Jaggu said. 'Go back to what? You have to get a PhD, that's the only thing you can do.'

Getting a doctorate was the only possible choice if you wanted to teach, which Aadil did want to do. But paying for another degree, for three or maybe four years, was something he was not capable of, not any more. Maybe a human being could only expend so much effort, he thought, and he had been trying so very hard from class one onwards, he had no strength left to exert. He knew that he couldn't drive trucks any more, or miss another meal, or borrow books and make fervent promises that he would return them before dawn. He tried to explain to Jaggu. 'I am just very tired,' he said.