Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

This was a theme they had explored for years: his family was extravagant but fun-loving, hers was thrifty but boring. Variations on this theory took in the boys, Rohit had gone on Katekar, Mohit on his mother. Now Shalini was thinking of her sons. 'Will you be done early enough to stop at Patil's?'

Patil was the tailor who had a shop two lanes down, tucked into a long narrow building that stood on what had once been a broken wall and an unused gutter. Patil had filled in the gutter, closed off the rear, put on a roof, and now he sat two full-time tailors at sewing machines. He made uniforms for the boys, good ones, strong enough that Mohit could wear what Rohit grew out of. 'Not today,' Katekar said. 'I'll pick it up tomorrow. One half-pant, one shirt, yes?'

'Yes,' Shalini said. Her irritation had melted away. She liked that he remembered, he could see that.

Outside, the clouds sat in luxurious orange tiers. It was too early for rain, but Katekar could feel it coming. The sky was histrionically spectacular, but nobody was stopping to look at it. Katekar walked briskly, cutting an efficient loop to go to the bus-stop by way of the playground. He was thinking about sex. He had been quite unfaithful in the years immediately after he and Shalini had been married, before Rohit had been born. Looking back now, it seemed like a feverish madness, the visits he had made to dance bars and the money he had spent on girls, on grimy rooms, on taxis late at night. Shalini had been hardly more than a girl herself then, and he had lowered his head into the arc of her neck nightly, and found in the clutch of her hands on his shoulders an answering hunger, more carefully quiet than his own but as insistent, as fierce. And still he had gone to other women, randis. There was no reason for it but an urgency he felt at the offering of unknown, anonymous bellies under cheap, diaphanous nylon. It was a kind of common madness, accepted by the men of the world, and at least he had had the sense and the knowledge – even in those long-ago days when the girls themselves were surprised by this carefulness – to always wear a condom. After Rohit had been born, after he had held the tiny body of his son against his chest and felt the enormous, inescapable weight of his own love, it had become almost impossible to spend his hard-earned money elsewhere. There were these new urgencies, first among all desires: school uniforms, books, shoes, hair-oil, cricket bats, evenings at Chowpatty. Yet, it had happened even after he had come to know what amount of childish happiness was contained in a twenty-rupee note, in two kulfis as the sun set over a calm sea, he had still gone to women, despite his two sons and the two futures he was building. But it had happened rarely, the women countable on one hand in twice as many years. Men, Shalini said sometimes, there is madness in men. He always kept quiet, but he always wanted to say, the madness is in their bones, not in their hearts, not in their heads. Logic doesn't fail, it just gets worn down sometimes, a little tired, and it wants to lie down. But I struggle for you.

The maidan held what looked like a dozen games of cricket, with pitches angled to each other and very close. Fielders from various games ran past and behind each other. There must have been a couple of hundred boys racing past each other, on this narrow strip of packed yellow earth backed up between a sludgy nullah and the back wall of a municipal shamshan ghat. Katekar walked along the wall, his right shoulder brushing against its intricate whorls of graffiti and torn posters. He worried sometimes about children playing one wall away from burning bodies, about the billowing smoke depositing unclean ash on to the pitches. But you needed a place to cremate the dead, and the only alternative was to play at the edge of the basti, on the open road next to passing traffic. In any case, today there were no fires, no smoke. There were no more dead on this day. Mohit was sitting on a little rising mound, next to a cluster of chappals. He was looking seawards, dreamy and happy, and Katekar felt something squeeze inside his chest and give way. Rohit was the son just like his father, he was confident and practical, often funny, but it was Mohit, with his thoughtful inwardness, who made Katekar helpless with worry. Rohit's ambition and his anger might get him into trouble, but what would become of sensitive little Mohit? What would happen to such gentleness? Katekar squatted beside him.

'Not playing?' Katekar said.

'Papa.' Mohit shrugged. He looked away, and started biting his lower lip, which he did when he was embarrassed.

'It's all right,' Katekar said, with a pat on Mohit's shoulder. He had told them often, his sons, that sports developed character. 'You didn't feel like it?'

Mohit shook his head, fast. Katekar wanted to ask, what were you thinking about just now? What were you seeing in the little sliver of watery horizon between buildings? But he smiled and rubbed Mohit's head. 'Where's your brother?'

'There.'

Rohit was bowling. It was a fast ball, a little wild but with good speed. The batsman missed it altogether, hardly saw it, and the wicket-keeper took it smoothly and gave it back to Rohit in the same motion. Rohit jogged back to the wicket, easy and thinking about the next delivery. He was a good player, Katekar could tell that just from his effortless poise, from his confidence and his scientific precision as he waved his fielders in, you to the left, a little more, yes, there. Rohit saw his father then, stopped short. And there was just a small moment when Katekar saw him flinch, tighten into a resentful frown at being interrupted, invaded by his heavy-stepping father. Then he smiled and started forward. Katekar waved him back with an overhand motion: bowl. Rohit went back to his crease, stepped out his run-up and now his action was good but the ball was wide. The next one was short.

Katekar got up. 'Mohit,' he said. 'Don't be late going home. Study well. I'll see you tomorrow.'

'Yes, Papa,' Mohit said.

Katekar squeezed Mohit's shoulder, then walked away, fast. He was tempted, but he didn't turn his head to see Rohit playing.

* * *

PSI Kamble came along for the raid on the Delite Dance Bar. 'I'll be your undercover man,' he said, and laughed loudly at his own wit, because they knew him at the Delite better than they knew some of their own dancers. He sat always in a prime centre booth facing the dance floor, and there were always special dispensations in his bill. In the van, on the way to Delite, he was in a glorious mood, and he told them jokes. 'How do you fit thirty Marwaris in a Maruti 800? You throw a hundred-rupee note inside.' The constables in the back of the van, including two women, laughed.

Sartaj asked, 'Why so happy, Kamble? What was the score today?'

Kamble shook his head, and was silent and smug, and then jovial again. On they drove, to the sound of his laughter. At the Delite, after they had parked the van, and were waiting for the appointed time, Kamble came out of the building carrying a whisky and water. He drew Sartaj to the side, away from the constables, and walked him a little way down the road. He smelt powerfully of some musky aftershave, and was wearing a white Benetton T-shirt with striped green sleeves, tucked into blue jeans. He leaned back and raised one foot at a time, showing off an impressively complicated and colourful pair of running shoes. 'Very musst shoes, no?' he said.

'Very. Foreign?'

'Yes, boss. Nike.'

'Very expensive.'

'Expense is all relative. When there is money in your pocket, expenses get small. No money, expenses get big.'

'Money got in your pocket?'

Kamble considered Sartaj for a moment, head lowered over his glass. 'Suppose –' he said. 'Suppose a bright young police officer had a khabari, a very useful one who came up with information only once in a while, but ekdum solid information when he did.'