Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

What was he crying for? He was mourning the dead, the captain, but also his enemies, who had waited for him on that frozen battlefield, gasping for air and wasting away their lungs. He was crying for all the names on all the plaques, and for the Sikh martyrs in the paintings in the museum upstairs who had stood in defence of their faith and had been tortured and mangled and executed. He cried for the six hundred and forty-four names on the list in the museum, for the Sikhs killed when the army had besieged the temple in 1984, and he cried for the soldiers who had been knocked down by bullets on these very stones. Sartaj walked. He wiped his face, and came in a full circle around the sarovar. Ma was still there, her back against a pillar, her eyes shut. He went past her, and started around the parkarma again. An old man looked at him curiously, gently, and Sartaj realized he was weeping again. There was no calculation that could determine exactly how much had been sacrificed or what had been gained, there was only this recognition of loss, of pain endured and absorbed. The heat came into Sartaj's feet now, and he welcomed its sting and walked on. In this circling around the Pool of Nectar, there was a kind of peace. He did not expect Vaheguru to forgive him, or even if his fragmented, doubting belief in Vaheguru entitled him to ask for forgiveness. He did not know whether he was a good man or a bad man, or whether his actions were rooted in faith or fear. But he had acted, and now this walking hurt him and comforted him. So he walked on, in a circle, past the Dukh Bhanjani Ber, which cured all afflictions, and past the platform of the Ath-sath Tirath. He came around, and then again. He forgot how many circles he had taken, and that he was walking, and there was only the movement of his body, the shining water and the song.

'Sartaj?'

Ma had a hand on his elbow.

'I was just walking,' Sartaj said. He wiped at his face with his sleeve, and led her back to the shade of the corridor.

'What happened?' she said. She reached up, straightened his collar. She was his mother again, with her little worried frown and her desire to see him completely neat and smart. That stranger he had seen in her a while earlier was gone. Hidden, perhaps.

'Nothing, Ma. Are you ready to go?'

She was, and they walked along the parkarma towards the exit. But then Sartaj stopped. That winter morning long ago, when he had come here with Papa-ji and Ma, Papa-ji had wanted him to take a dip in the pool. Papa-ji had taken his own shirt and trousers off, and in his blue-striped kachchas had gone into the water. 'Come, Sartaj,' he had beckoned. But Sartaj had hidden behind Ma, and refused to go. 'A sher like my son doesn't mind a little cold,' Papa-ji had said. 'Come.' But it wasn't the cold Sartaj had been afraid of. He had become suddenly shy. He was aware of the bulk of Papa-ji's brown shoulders, and he felt skinny and small, not a sher at all. He didn't want all those people looking at him. So he shook his head and clung to Ma, and she'd indulged him, 'Leave the boy alone, ji, he'll catch cold.' And Papa-ji had laughed and emerged from the pool, cascading water on to the steps, his kara bright against the width of his wrist.

It was summer now, and Sartaj had no shyness left in him. 'I think I'll take a dip,' he said to Ma.

She was pleased, but practical as always. 'You don't have a towel or anything.'

He shook his head, and shrugged. She waited by the Dukh Bhanjani Ber for him, holding his clothes neatly folded over her forearm. He went down the steps, turning his feet sideways on the wet stone. The water was surprisingly cool, and it pressed up against his sides. There were many men in the water about Sartaj, and the murmur of prayers. He folded his hands and lowered his face into the water, and the sounds softened. Far underneath, there was an ancient spring that led to the breathing centre of the world. A long swell, a slow shifting in the water, came up against his chest, picked him up and held him. A gentle rumbling was in his ears, a rustle, like waves on a beach heard from very far away. It was inside him, this sound. For a moment, all of Sartaj's weight receded, he felt his ageing arms and his slackening stomach lift, and he was floating. He came up, and the sparkling drops fell from his eyelashes, and he smiled at Ma.

She raised her free hand, palm towards him, and smiled back.

* * *

In the compartment on the way back to Mumbai, their travelling companions were two sisters, one eighteen and the other twenty, and their parents. The girls both wore elegant salwar-kameezes in red and green, and played Kishore Kumar songs on a portable cassette player. They were very polite, though, and asked Ma first if she would mind. She didn't, and so they all sped across the Punjab countryside to the cadence of Geet gaata hoon main and Aane waala pal , with the steady drumming of the wheels underneath. Ma was soon in a deep conversation with the girls' mother, about everything from how much Amritsar had changed to a jeweller they both knew in Andheri. Sartaj talked to the father.

'I came to Bombay twenty-three years ago,' the man said. His name was Satnam Singh Birdi, and he was a carpenter. He had come to the city with only his skills and the name of an acquaintance of his father's on a piece of paper. The village connection hadn't worked, his father's friend had been indifferent, so in those early days Satnam Singh had slept on footpaths and gone hungry. But he was a good worker, he had found jobs working for other carpenters and interior decoration companies. His speciality was fancy cupboards, ornate tables, executive rooms. After seven years he had left to form his own carpentry service with two of his brothers, and they had prospered. The youngest brother had spent half his life, nearly, in the city, and he was always well-dressed, he carried a mobile and spoke English. He was their front-man, he brought in business and negotiated the contracts. They had expanded, and hired many carpenters themselves. Vaheguru had blessed the family, and now Satnam Singh and his wife had a nice apartment in Oshiwara. The girls had grown up, and they were top students, first-class students.

'This one,' Satnam Singh said, 'wants to be a doctor. And the young one says she wants to fly planes.'

The young one reacted immediately to the tolerant sigh in her father's voice. 'Papa,' she said tartly, 'lots of women are pilots nowadays. It's nothing unusual.'

And they plunged immediately and happily into what was obviously a long-running family argument. Ma – Sartaj's mother – took the young one's part, to the surprise of her new friend, the other mother. 'This is very good,' Ma said. 'Why should girls be kept back?'

Sartaj listened to them all talk, to Satnam Singh Birdi and his wife Kulwinder Kaur and their daughters Sabrina and Sonia, and he was surprised by an infusion of joy that spread like warm syrup through his chest. He resisted, because there was no basis for this hope. This was just one family, one story. And yet, here it was: this man and woman had travelled far, and they had worked, and they had made a life. Now their daughters looked forward to more. It was not so much. No doubt there had been tragedy and tribulation already, and Sabrina and Sonia would come, in time, to their own disappointments and defeats. But Sartaj could not keep a smile from his face, and he laughed aloud at Sabrina's sallies at her mother.

They all ate lunch together, shared paraunthas and bhindi and puris, and fruits bought from the stations. After lunch, the elders slept, and the girls wanted to hear policing stories about famous people. Sartaj told them a few suitable to their age, about film stars and tycoons, and grew drowsy. He had to accept, finally, that he was one of the elders, and he climbed up to his berth and slept heavily, lulled by the rocking of the train.