Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

Mothers came to me then. 'A job in the Post Office for my boy, Ganesh Bhai,' one said. 'Settle him somewhere, Ganesh Bhai,' another said. 'You know best.' They wanted jobs, and justice, and blessings. I gave them all that, and water, and electricity over wires pulled from the lines near the main road. I lived in a pucca house at the foot of Gopalmath hill, we had built it with two bedrooms and a big central hall, and on the steps outside every morning a crowd gathered, seekers, supplicants, applicants and yes, devotees. They came to ask for things and to lower their heads. 'We just wanted your darshan, Ganesh Bhai,' some said, and so I gave it to them, and they gazed and folded their hands and retreated, storing goodwill against the certain disasters of the future. And their blessings came to me, and money, cash from the shopkeepers and traders and garage-owners and dhaba-owners of the area, and we kept them and their establishments safe. Businessmen caught up in quarrels and wranglings came to me, and I listened to all sides of the case and gave a decision, a fair and fast ruling that would be enforced by my boys, with force if necessary, and for this mandvali and for being able to avoid the endless and useless law courts, all the disputants paid me a percentage of the contested value as fee. Money came in and went out. In eight months I had a payroll of thirty-seven people, brawlers to break heads, yes, but not only that, also boys to run errands and others to take care of the police-wallahs and municipality-wallahs and the electricity-wallahs. In my bones I understood something that Paritosh Shah never had to teach me, that you have to spend money to make money. I had good relations with the inspector who had the charge of our area from G.T. station, Samant his name was, week by week we met his sub-inspectors and slipped them envelopes. We gave them many thousands, but it was only money. With a big heart I spent it and more came.

That year we celebrated Diwali with strings of electric lights along all the main lanes, a big dais at the central chowk with bhajan-singing and mithai, and finally, after dark, I stood at the gate of my house and gave basketfuls of atom bombs and rockets and phuljadis to the children of the basti. The sky over Gopalmath showered sparking streams of gold and silver, and the rising detonations sounded the return of good and the victory of virtue over death. My house was outlined in flickering points of light, in the darkness I couldn't see the walls but the flames from the hundreds of diyas told me that I had a place of my own, my earth, and I was home. Paritosh Shah came along then, with Kanta Bai and Bada Badriya, and he found me standing outside, and he drew me into the house. 'Let us welcome Lakshmi,' he said.

We sat on two gaddas pulled together, and we played cards. I said, 'I'm not very good at this.'

Kanta Bai laughed, and said, 'Ganesh Gaitonde, you are the wildest gambler I have ever met. And you're not good at teen-patti? How can that be? But I'll teach you.' She was sitting cross-legged with a pillow in her lap and her elbows resting on the pillow while she shuffled the cards, fast, fast. They made a whirring noise under her fingers. 'But, Paritosh Bhai, pull out some of the good stuff,' she said. Then we had to send out for ice, and three of the boys to Vyas Bazaar, where they took the owner of Parthiv Household Goods from his dinner and down to open his shop, because Paritosh Shah wouldn't drink Johnny Walker out of steel tumblers, which were all I had. He held up the sparkling new glasses my boys brought back, and said they weren't so bad. And when I held my glass in my hand, and ran my finger over the sharp edges patterned into its sides, and felt its solid weight, I had to admit that there was a rightness about it. I knew now that drinking the good stuff meant that you drank it out of good glasses. Paritosh Shah held up his glass and shook it gently, next to his grinning face. 'Listen to it, boss,' he said. 'Listen, listen.' I brought up my glass to my ear and shook it, and heard the small, perfect music the ice made against the glass. 'Cheers,' Paritosh Shah said. I hesitated, it was an English word I had heard before but had never said. 'Chee-yers,' Paritosh Shah said.

'Cheers,' I said. Kanta Bai laughed and dealt a hand. I sipped at Johnny Walker, and liked all of it, the taste of it, the ice against my teeth, the cold, smooth surface under my lower lip. 'Cheers,' I said again, and understood that for Johnny Walker you needed a whole different home, a brand-new setting.

We played cards. I lost and lost all night. The notes went from my side to theirs, but I was happy. I knew it would come back, let Lakshmi go with happiness, don't be afraid, and she comes back to lavish blessings on you, she takes you into her lap and holds you close, like a son. In this going and coming is Lakshmi's happiness. So we slapped the cards down, and the money went, but I was content, it would come back multiplied and grown, from Paritosh Shah and his businesses and his knowledge of all the businessmen in the area who made fortunes, who ate and drank in my kingdom and owed me tribute, from Kanta Bai and her satrangi hooch and the hundreds who drank it and the thousands more who would drink it if I helped her, and that Diwali night was golden. Somebody had put on a cassette recorder and the songs flowed – 'Jab tak hai jaan jaan-e-jahaan ' – and outside there was the slam of bombs and the long, hysterical rattles of entire ladhis of crackers, and we played, and the circle of players got wider, and Paritosh Shah told jokes, and Inspector Samant arrived and joined the circle and showed us how to play paplu, and Kanta Bai's palloo slipped from her shoulder and she roared in amusement at Chotta Badriya, who shyly turned his face away from her bountiful brimming-over, her over-run over her blouse, and the cards flew, and I lost, and lost.

I awoke under a sheet pulled from the gadda. I must have dragged it over myself during the night, to protect against the hissing table-fan set on 'High'. The room was empty, filthy with cigarette butts and smeared plates and empty glasses. I stood up and pain pressed up through my neck and into my head. I looked around for my chappals, then gave up and walked outside in my bare feet. Chotta Badriya was asleep just outside the door, his shirt smeared with vomit, the reek of it made me choke, and I rushed to the gate and bent over and heaved endlessly, and brought up only a mouthful, and yet it was hot and bitter as poison. It was still before the first grey, and the road in both directions was completely empty, and anyone could have come into Gopalmath, walked into my house and killed me as I slept. It would've been easy. I turned and went back in, up the stairs to the roof. I sat on top of the water tank and waited for day. I was thirsty but wouldn't drink. I wanted to remember the pain and the disgust.

The shape of what I had built came slowly out of the darkness, in a series of slow leaps. The cement we had used was stained and brownish already, and the people who had moved into the kholis had added colour, the blue and green of their clothes strung up in doorways, the winking pearl of plastic on roofs; there were red slogans on the walls, and brightly coloured women in posters, and all the kholis close to each other, a dense patchwork of rectangles and squares strung over with electric wires, connections taken from here to there and knitting it all close. This was mine.

Chotta Badriya's head came through the roof. 'Bhai?' he said.

'Here.'

He came up, and I saw that his hair was slicked back, wet. He had washed himself, and put on a new shirt. He was a good boy.

'We will sell liquor,' I said, 'but we will never have another drop of it in this house.'

'Bhai?'

'Not satrangi, not narangi, not Johnny Walker, nothing.'