Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

'So, Bhonsle Saab,' I said. 'What can I do for you?'

He put his teacup down and sat forward on his chair, very eager. 'Bhai, first we need help with the campaigning. They intimidate our workers when they go out to canvass, only yesterday they pushed around some of our people and grabbed our posters from them. They took two hundred and fifty posters. Later we heard they made a bonfire out of them.'

'And you Rakshaks are so helpless? I've never heard of you people needing to hire anyone. You have your own boys and your own weapons.'

He heard my sneer, and didn't like it. But he was still soft and polite. 'Bhai, we aren't scared of anyone. But I am very junior in our organization, this is my first election, and anyway this constituency is not considered that important. All the resources will go elsewhere. And I know those Congress and RPI bastards have brought in a lot of muscle. Even those Samajwadi fellows, I hear, are planning to strengthen up.'

'All right. So?'

'Once the campaigning stops, on the voting day, those are the crucial hours. We want to make sure that certain people don't vote.'

I laughed. 'Okay. You want the election given to you.'

He wasn't embarrassed. He smiled, and said, 'Yes, bhai.'

'I thought you Rakshaks wanted to clean out corruption in the country.'

'When the whole world is dirty, bhai, you have to get dirty to do any cleaning. We can't fight their money without tricks. Once we are in power, it will all be different. We will change everything.'

'Don't forget me then. Don't forget and clean me out with the general cleaning.'

He held out both his hands towards me. 'You, bhai? No, no, you're our friend, one of us.'

He meant that I was a Hindu, and a Maharashtrian. I didn't care for any of those things, not where business was concerned, but he was reassured that I was Ganesh Gaitonde. I shook his hand, and said, 'We'll meet in a day or two. We'll talk then about how much money will be needed.'

'Bhai, money can be managed. Please take your time to think about it, and just tell us what your requirements are. I think we will need fifty, sixty boys.' He stood up and folded his hands. 'Let me know when to come.'

After he was gone, I said to Paritosh Shah, 'Level-headed chutiya.'

'He's a little mad, like all those Rakshaks.'

Paritosh Shah believed fiercely in profit, and gain was his god, so anyone who let religion interfere in money-making was quite obviously crazy to him. The Rakshaks believed in a golden past, and blood and soil, and all such things, which made no sense to Paritosh Shah. I said, 'Not so mad. He's hiring us as much because he doesn't want us to work for one of his opponents as he is hiring us for our help.'

'That is true. I didn't say he was stupid. These Marathas are mad but cunning. You know that.'

'Where are you from?' I said. 'From Bombay?'

'I was born here. My great-grandfather came here from Ahmedabad, we still have relatives there.' He was puzzled. We had known each other for many years but I had never asked these questions. But now since I had asked, he did also. 'And you?' he said. 'Where are you from?'

I waved my arm over my shoulder. 'Somewhere.' I stood up. 'How much do we charge them for an election?' And so we talked about money. It seemed to me that to give somebody an election was to make them a raja, or at least a minor nawab, and so our help was worth a lot. But it seemed that this business of giving and taking elections was an old-established one, and there were already set rates, not princely ones. Twenty-five thousand to each boy, maybe fifty for the controllers. So for only twenty-five, thirty lakhs to us, Bipin Bhonsle would become a member of the Assembly. 'You can buy democracy for that much?' I said to Paritosh Shah.

'Now you want to become a politician yourself.'

'Not even if they were giving away seats.'

'Why?' He was smiling indulgently.

I shrugged. I had a congestion in my throat, a swelling of memory and anger, and I didn't trust myself to speak. So I spat out of the window, dismissed the whole filthy business of it, the lying posters and the whorish speeches and the pretended humility, and he knew me well enough not to ask more. Anyway, he was happy to talk about business.

After he left I turned to my English books. I was teaching myself, with children's books and the newspapers and a dictionary. Only Chotta Badriya knew, because he had bought me the books and the dictionary. I closed my door when I studied English because I didn't want anyone seeing me squatting on the floor, one uncertain and slow finger on the letters, which I had to laboriously knock together with moving lips until they adhered into a word: 'p-a-r-l-i-a-m-e-n-t…parliament'. It was humiliating, but necessary. I knew that much of the real business of the country was done in English. People like me, my boys, we used English, there were certain words we used with fluency in our sentences, without hesitation. ' Bole to voh edkum danger aadmi hai !' and ' Yaar, abhi ek matter ko settle karna hai ,' and ' Us side se wire de, chutiya '. But unless you could rattle off whole sentences without having to stop and struggle and go back and build them bit by bitter bit, unless you could make jokes, there were whole parts of your own life that were invisible to you yourself, gone from you. You could live in a Marathi world, or a Hindi colony, or a Tamil lane, but what were those hoardings speaking, those towering messages that threw their sharp-edged shadows over your home? When you bought an expensive new shampoo 'Made with American Knowhow', what was that it said in red on the label? What were they laughing about, the people who skimmed by smoothly in their cushiony Pajeros? There were many like me, born far from English, who were content to live in ignorance. Most were too lazy, too afraid to ask how, why, what. But I had to know. So I took English, I wrestled with it and made it give itself to me, piece by piece. It was difficult, but I was persistent.

At four in the afternoon I closed my books and lay myself down on the floor and took a nap. I had a good bed, soft pillows, but of late I had been sleeping badly at night. An uncontrollable twitching in my limbs woke me as soon as I settled into slumber. I sometimes managed an hour in the afternoon, but today I thrashed about, full of plans, angles for the future, thoughts of expansion, suspicions about this man and sudden insights into that one. I ruled my corner of the island but couldn't still my mind. The cool pressure of the floor seemed to help, its rigid discomfort drew me to the surface of my skin and kept me there, in a hazy doze. When a boy knocked on the door at five, I jerked up with my heart squeezing hard. I washed my face, took deep breaths and then we went out. Once a day, at different times but always once a day, I took my boys and walked through my area. We took different routes, I wasn't stupid, but I wanted to show myself, to be seen. I won't tell you that there was no fear in me, but I had learnt to bury it, to layer it over with thick sheets of indifference. Ever since that bullet had hurled into me, I knew how real death was. I had no illusions. I had seen that a woman can be alive one day, eating mutton and sneering and joking and thrusting out her chest, her eyes humming with laughter and hunger, and then the next day can find her unconscious in a hospital bed, her mouth open and gasping. I knew I was going to die, I was going to be killed. There was no escape for me. I had no future, no life, no retirement, no easy old age. To imagine any of that was cowardice. A bullet would find me first. But I would live like a king. I would fight this life, this bitch that sentences us to death, and I would eat her up, consume her every minute of every day. So I walked my streets like a lord of mankind, flanked by my boys.