Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

And so I maintained my grip, my reign. Fear was part of it, the fear the shopkeepers felt when they looked at me, the fear in the eyes of women who stepped back into doorways to let us pass. But that was not all, not at all. There is of course an excitement in the exercise of power, but there is also a safety in the bending to it. I tell you this is true. I felt it when they gave me chicken tikka and bhakri, and asked me if I wanted a cold drink or tea, I knew it in the widening pools of their pupils when they dragged out their best chair for me and dusted it with their pallus. The truth is that human beings like to be ruled. They will talk and talk about freedom, but they are afraid of it. Overpowered by me, they were safe, and happy. Fear of me taught them where they could live, it made them a fence, inside which was home. And I was good to them. I was fair, and didn't ask for so much money that it would hurt, and I taught my boys restraint, and above all I was generous. A factory worker had his leg broken under a tipping loader, and I supported his family for six months; a grandmother needed an operation to widen her veins and save her heart, and I gave her life, a chance to play with her children's children. 'Ganesh Bhai,' said a printer to me one afternoon, 'let me make a first-class business card for you.' But I didn't need any card. My name was known in my raj, and there were many who blessed it.

That evening, after my conversation with Bipin Bhonsle and my walk, I went to Paritosh Shah's house. His eldest daughter, first of four, was to be married in seven days. The house was sparkling already, three storeys of cascading lights, red and green and blue, blinking happily. It was a big house, finished only a year ago by him and his two brothers, and they lived in it all together, wives and cousins and countless visiting mamas and kakas, a whirling Gujarati chakkar. Dandia raas before weddings was definitely out of style, but for all his business innovation, Paritosh Shah was a firm traditionalist. So there were excited eddies of young girls in the courtyard, swirls of heady silk. They were waiting for me to start the dancing, and once I was seated in an armchair, all the men and women fell into four circles, the children in the inner two, and the singer raised a declamatory hand and began, ' Radha game ke game Mira' , and the circles whirled slowly, and then faster, and the steady clap-clap of hands echoed out the happy beat. When they brought out the sticks for dandia I stood up and asked for a pair. They laughed to see me tripping clumsily, unable to keep time inside the circles moving against each other, unable to find the clicking rhythm. I think at first this was equally the fault of the other dancers, especially the men, who were afraid to be dancing with me, stripped of their grace by my presence. They hesitated to knock their dandias against mine, they were scared of putting in too much force, they shrank from my strokes. But when they saw how I laughed at myself, and when my boys, who were leaning against the pillars, shook their heads and smiled, everyone relaxed, and the disco-dandia song tumbled on gleefully, and I found my hips loosening, and my shoulders were easy, and I was flowing, falling into step without effort, and the dandia rose and fell, a flourish here and click, another swing and click, a round face spinning to me and click, and I was dancing.

* * *

At home Chotta Badriya had a woman waiting for me. I was happy from the dancing, humming away and doing a step here, another one there. But she brought me down. There's nothing more depressing than a depressed randi. She was nicely plump and with a little round nose, and nineteen, but she lay there with a swollen batata-wada face, and I tried to liven her up with a few nips and pinches and squeezes, but she winced and set her jaw, so I took her by the hair and threw her out. Then I drank some milk, lay on my side wrapped around a pillow and tried for sleep, but it larked away from me and my head was full of the dandia and Paritosh Shah and the lights skidding down the side of his house and up again, and I turned to the other side, and now I thought of the men I had killed. I stood them in a row and compared them for character and strength and I decided I was better than any of them, and then I made plans to have the approaches to my house checked and tested, and to put more boys in place at the head of the lanes, just in case. It was late now, very late, and for the first time in many months, I used my hand on myself, and all the women I had known came and slid over me and also Rati Agnihotri with her malai skin. After I was finished I turned again, back to the other side, settled down into comfort and took regular, deep breaths. But finally I threw off the covers and cursed and reached for the clock. Three forty-five. I would have drunk then, anything, a bottleful of whisky or rum, but there was nothing in the house, and I would have got the boys to bring some, but the thought of what they would think and not say made me ashamed, and I lay on my back and decided to see it through. I would get up from bed at six and have an early day. I watched the fan gleam in its flight and then suddenly I was waking up and it was bright day, and I could hear the street fully alive outside. Noon. I had slept for six hours, maybe seven, but I was tired.

* * *

My exhaustion deepened as the days passed, as we fought the elections. My boys went out with the Rakshaks, and we pushed their campaign into every nook, their posters harangued the voters from every surface for miles. Two of my boys, armed with pistols, with a group of Rakshaks was enough to keep the peace and let them do their work calmly, no bhangad. A reputation for ruthlessness can do wonders for peace. For us, it was easy money. Meanwhile, it was almost time for the wedding. Even before the ceremony I went to Paritosh Shah's house for the mehndi party, and I could see that he appreciated it, that I was so much a part of his joys and sorrows. Even in the midst of the thousand things he had to do, food and gifts and hotel arrangements for the groom's relatives, he noticed my wobbliness, how I was holding on to wakefulness with effort. 'Your doshas are out of balance,' he said. 'I'll set up an appointment for you with my Ayurvedic man.'

'I won't put myself in that bastard's clutches,' I said. 'It's just insomnia. It'll pass.'

'Nothing is just anything. The body is speaking to you. But you won't listen.'

Then he had to go and sit with the women, and the jewellers. There was some question of how many tolas of gold were to be used in the wide necklaces and bracelets and earrings for the dowry, how much payment for the making. I watched him step delicately down the steps to the courtyard and wondered what his body was speaking. How did one read those sheets of fat that surged and billowed on his frame? I rubbed my eyes. He had been good to me. He had never lied to me about money, he had never pretended to lay aside his self-interest, he had backed me as far as possible, to the risk of his life and then a little further, and he had shown me how in this world one thing connects to the next, where business comes together with politics and bhaigiri, how one must live. In this way we had been friends. He was a good man as far as he could be, he had grown fat with hard work, and so his bulk was his virtue. That was why his fat was light on him.

The whole house was fragrant from the cooking. I was hungry, but very tired, and eating would tire me more, I knew this. But to leave without eating would be an insult, so I took a thali and touched some food, and then pushed myself to my feet, and waved up the boys, and told Paritosh Shah to take care of his guests while he tried to see me to the door, and after a little argument, finally off we went. I was looking for my shoes in the great sprawl of footwear near the front door when Dipika came to me. Dipika was Paritosh Shah's second-oldest daughter, a serious-faced, quiet one with big-big eyes. She held out a thali piled with puris, and a glass, and said, 'But you haven't had any ras, Ganesh Bhai.' I had, but I was willing to take another puri from her, polite as she was. As I reached out she whispered, with her head still down, 'Can I please talk to you, Ganesh Bhai?' On the edge of the thali her thumbs were white.