Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

It amused him how they hankered for cars and mobile phones and convent-educated girls, and how they spoke endlessly about what big apartments they would buy when they had made their fortunes. They were full of desire and they had no viable plan. Sometimes they whispered, and Aadil knew they were trying to talk themselves into some petty crime, some pilferage to afford them money for cinema tickets or hair cream. Their parents were quiet, hard-labouring people who were terrified of the police, but the boys had ambition. They told stories to each other, excitedly, about the great gangsters of the city, about Suleiman Isa and Ganesh Gaitonde and Chotta Madhav. They enacted the plot of Company for Aadil, all of it from Africa to Hong Kong, in the four feet of muddy lane before his door. But Aadil knew they had never stolen anything more than some scrap metal from a dealer in Kailashpada, and that they were never going to get to Singapore. Not without him leading them.

'Stop babbling,' he told them, 'and listen. If you want to make money, you need discipline. And four choppers.'

Aadil had called them in one April night when the heat lingered long after sunset. They sat on his floor in a row, like wide-eyed, damp puppies. When they understood he was talking about a robbery, they shrank into themselves and became very quiet. Aadil had seen this, of course, in new recruits who had just realized that the combat they were about to go into was real. He outlined his plan, and finally Faraj said, 'You have done this before?'

Aadil let them know that he had, many times, and he gave them no details. But they were satisfied. He had been a mystery to them, and now they knew just enough about him to make up more stories. Like most young men, they wanted to be led, and they slipped easily under his command. He gave them tasks, and praised them, and they were his. They needed no ideology, because they were already convinced that they needed money, and it was theirs to take. They had no need to believe in a future workers' heaven because they believed in a present paradise of cash. In any case, Aadil had no ideology left to give. He felt all higher purpose had been burned out of him, leaving behind a purity of vision. His money was running out, and he needed to eat, and to have a small place to live. He could work, perhaps as a driver, or as a labourer, but he would not. He was incapable of it. He did not trouble himself with anger at the enormous hoarding of wealth in this city, or the daily violence of poverty visited upon millions and millions. All that was as it was. Aadil only wanted this much – food, room to sleep in, and to be left alone, and he would take these necessities.

Two weeks later, Aadil and his boys mounted their first operation. The target was a third-floor apartment in Bandra, near Hill Road. Shamsul had three times delivered packages there, addressed to the daughter of the house, a thirty-year-old woman who was an executive in an advertising agency. During the day only her parents were at home. The father was a frail man, much troubled by asthma. The mother was the one who opened the door of the apartment to Bazil, who was wearing a courier service uniform especially commissioned from a tailor. Bazil held up a large brown package. Faraj and Aadil were waiting in the stairway. Aadil had told the watchman at the building gate that he was an electrician, and Faraj his assistant. The old woman opened the door, Shamsul gave her a piece of paper to sign and then Aadil was at her side, the chopper held up for her to see. They pushed her inside, woke the husband from his sleep. Faraj reached into his electrician's bag and handed Aadil a thick loop of rope. As Aadil tied the parents to chairs, he talked to them. 'Don't worry, Mata-ji,' he said. 'Nothing will happen. I will look after you. No noise, no trouble, and I will look after you.' He had told the boys that the threat of violence was always more effective than the practice of it. Terror, he had told them, gives you power. Their choppers had cost them only nineteen rupees each, but they were effective. Aadil put one on the table in front of Mata-ji and Papa-ji, and said, 'See, if you are good, I won't have to use my patra. Just give us twenty minutes, and we will be gone.'

Aadil sent Shamsul down first, with his courier bag stuffed with jewellery. In precisely twenty minutes, he and Faraj left with the cash, both Indian rupees and an unexpected roll of dollars recovered from the back of a godrej safe. Faraj wanted to kill the old couple before going. 'They have seen our faces,' he said. 'It would be safer.' Aadil cuffed him on the back of the head, and pushed him to the door. He spoke quietly to Mata-ji again, and then loosely gagged her and Papa-ji.

'Don't forget,' he said, 'that we know where your daughter works. Be quiet.' He had no idea where the daughter worked, but he was sure that was enough to keep them quiet until he and Faraj were down the stairs, past the watchman and out on the road. And so it went. They all got out safely, and there was no noise, no fuss and no killing.

The boys were overjoyed with the takings, which amounted to sixty-seven thousand in cash, two hundred dollars and the jewellery. Shamsul knew a receiver, and he had the transaction all set up. They moved the jewellery the same day, for a lakh and forty thousand. The dollars were in small bills, ones and fives and tens, so they got a low rate. But after all, the boys had never seen so much cash before all in the same place, in their hands, and they were suddenly kings. Aadil tried to convince them that they must be careful, that to be suddenly flush with cash and new clothes and sunglasses and shoes might invite suspicion, maybe a visit from the local beat constable. They agreed, and promised to be careful, but Aadil could see that they were little children with new toys, making promises that they could not keep. The next day, he moved again, to a room on the far side of Navnagar. His room here had a smooth tiled floor, which had been put in by the prior tenant, and running water. He forbade the boys from coming to see him, and met them only outside the basti. They protested at first, Bazil especially, but Aadil explained to them the need for security and discretion. 'If you want to continue,' he told them, 'you must be invisible, you must move like fish in the sea. And do what I tell you, if you want to continue.' The boys did want to continue, even then, when their pockets were heavy with money. They needed more.

Aadil wanted very little. He had his room, he cooked his own food, he drank cups of very sweet chai through the day. This was his only luxury in his new life, apart from books. He spent his days reading zoology. The books were second-hand university texts, mostly, bought from pavement dealers. He was surprised by how much of the material he remembered, and how easily it all came back to him. There was no direction or purpose in his reading other than the comfort it gave him. To follow the species to the phylum, to trace the structure in one direction and then back again, this provided meaning enough. There was no need for politics. So Aadil lived on, and lived quietly, and every month he and the boys planned and executed another job. Shamsul wanted to do more, but Aadil counselled patience and stealth. The boys wanted not only to rebuild their kholis and buy new stoves for their mothers, they now dreamt of cars. But for the moment, at least, they obeyed. One good job a month, the target carefully selected, based on good intelligence, brought in enough to satisfy them. For seven months they worked. Aadil was now occasionally reading chemistry, interspersed with the zoology. He had gone through many books on organisms and cells, and now he wanted to watch substances act against each other and make something new. There was an obscure pleasure in the elements coming together, making heat and fire and life. As far as he could see, there was not any grand purpose in these interactions. They happened, that was all. This fitted perfectly with his sense of his own life now. He had thought sometimes of suicide, in a distanced, theoretical manner, but had discovered that he wanted to live. He was not quite sure why, other than the sweetness of chai and the palliative effects of facts. Probably the reason for wanting to go on was very simple, he thought. A virus wanted to reproduce, and an insect ran from danger. So Aadil wanted to live.