Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

Здесь есть возможность читать онлайн «Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games» весь текст электронной книги совершенно бесплатно (целиком полную версию без сокращений). В некоторых случаях можно слушать аудио, скачать через торрент в формате fb2 и присутствует краткое содержание. Год выпуска: 2009, Издательство: HarperCollins, Жанр: Современная проза, на английском языке. Описание произведения, (предисловие) а так же отзывы посетителей доступны на портале библиотеки ЛибКат.

Sacred Games: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

Предлагаем к чтению аннотацию, описание, краткое содержание или предисловие (зависит от того, что написал сам автор книги «Sacred Games»). Если вы не нашли необходимую информацию о книге — напишите в комментариях, мы постараемся отыскать её.

Seven years in the making,
is an epic of exceptional richness and power. Vikram Chandra's novel draws the reader deep into the life of Inspector Sartaj Singh — and into the criminal underworld of Ganesh Gaitonde, the most wanted gangster in India.
Sartaj, one of the very few Sikhs on the Mumbai police force, is used to being identified by his turban, beard and the sharp cut of his trousers. But "the silky Sikh" is now past forty, his marriage is over and his career prospects are on the slide. When Sartaj gets an anonymous tip-off as to the secret hide-out of the legendary boss of G-Company, he's determined that he'll be the one to collect the prize.
Vikram Chandra's keenly anticipated new novel is a magnificent story of friendship and betrayal, of terrible violence, of an astonishing modern city and its dark side. Drawing inspiration from the classics of nineteenth-century fiction, mystery novels, Bollywood movies and Chandra's own life and research on the streets of Mumbai,
evokes with devastating realism the way we live now but resonates with the intelligence and emotional depth of the best of literature.

Sacred Games — читать онлайн бесплатно полную книгу (весь текст) целиком

Ниже представлен текст книги, разбитый по страницам. Система сохранения места последней прочитанной страницы, позволяет с удобством читать онлайн бесплатно книгу «Sacred Games», без необходимости каждый раз заново искать на чём Вы остановились. Поставьте закладку, и сможете в любой момент перейти на страницу, на которой закончили чтение.

Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

'What?'

'Tonight's shipment, bhai. The police have it. They were waiting at Golghat. They were above the beach, behind that line of trees. They waited until all the maal was loaded into the trucks, then they came out and arrested everyone and took it all.'

All of it was forty lakhs worth of computer chips, vitamin B-complex tablets and video cameras. The maal was brought to the coast off the fishing village of Golghat on a hundred-foot dhow, then put on neat little fishing boats for the trip to the beach, where three trucks were waiting with plastic sheets on the flatbed, all ready for my precious cargo. But now the police had it.

'They knew,' I said. 'They had information.'

'Yes,' said Chotta Badriya.

'It was only police? No customs?'

'Yes, only police.'

'Who was it?'

'Zone 13 officers. Kamath, Bhatia, Majid Khan, those fellows. Parulkar's boys.'

We both knew what that might mean. It was possible that the police had their own sources who had tipped them off, or it could be that one of our rivals had given them my maal. At the time, there were four other big companies in Bombay, the Pathan company down in Grant Road, the Suleiman Isa outfit in Dongri and Jogeshwari and Dubai, the Prakash brothers and their company in the north-eastern suburbs and the Ahir company in Byculla. Any of those four – no, five, if you counted the Rakshaks – could have thought us tiny fish, easy to feast on. It wouldn't be the Pathans, they were weak from their long war with Suleiman Isa, which they had barely survived. Any of the other companies could have thought of us as a tasty passing snack, we were by far the youngest, the most inexperienced, least connected, with the smallest money and weapons. Which was it?

Parulkar had just come in as Assistant Commissioner in Zone 13, and he was said to be close to Suleiman Isa. And Suleiman Isa and his brothers headed the most politically connected, best-armed, largest gang that Bombay had ever seen. Maybe they saw us as a growing threat, and maybe they were trying to eat us.

'Is that all we know?' I said.

'That's all, bhai.'

I was so angry that I felt it as a pain in my joints, a shifting throb in my stomach. I wanted to kill someone. But slowly, slowly. Suleiman Isa was big. I had to know for sure. 'Call Samant. Find him wherever he is. I need to speak to him.'

* * *

Who was hunting us? Samant investigated, inside the department, fielding rumours, giving out a little cash here, a bottle of Black Label there. He had friends everywhere, constables and clerks and peons, and through these hands the secret would finally slip. But it was taking too long. There was a spy in my company, somewhere close to me, some chutiya who had sold the secret of my shipment, and with every passing minute the danger to me loomed and grew, like a leaning hill. I had to pick up the mountain, or it would topple and crush me. I could lift this weight, I knew it. But first I had to find the snake in my house, I had to crush his head. Where was he hiding? How to get him out in the open? In my air-conditioned room I slid the heads of the girls into patterns, formations, and thought. On the last day of May, I went to Paritosh Bhai. 'I want to do something,' I shouted at him. 'I'm sitting here like a chutiya while a bunch of bhenchods laugh at me. My own boys are laughing at me.'

'Nobody's laughing at you,' he said. 'Be patient. It's a big matter, and nothing big gets done in a day.'

I was about to let loose at him again, but there was a knock at the door. Bada Badriya peered around the door, then let a timid little tailor into the room. Paritosh Bhai was getting fitted for new safari suits. The tailor stretched his tapes around him as Paritosh Shah kept up a rapid series of calls on his cordless phone. I sat and watched. He had been very busy recently, launching his airline. My fat man wanted to fly. He had dozens of businesses, he gloried in his construction companies, his restaurants, his rental properties, his plastics factories, his garments factory near Ahmedabad, but he dreamt of soaring high above the earth, and so he had been appearing recently in all the newspapers, beauteous and polished from his gleamy hair to his gold chain with Krishna locket and the gold Rolex which set off all the birth stones on his fingers. There was some comfort for me in the thought of him flying high above the stepped cliffs of Bombay's buildings, above the brown lowlands of its bastis, of him hovering like a smooth and rotund balloon over it all, shading the city's long-toothed silhouette in the benevolent umbra of his blue safari suit, more delightfully blue than the sun-bleached sky. Maybe one day his shadow would fall west and north, all the way to Delhi, and beyond. He had the intelligence, the ambition, and a clear cold eye. But for now the airline would extend its service from Bombay to Ahmedabad and Baroda. He was arranging the celebrations and formalities surrounding the maiden flight.

'Listen,' he was saying. 'Just listen. I knew that randi when she would suck a lauda for a whole night for five thousand rupees. Now she's become such a big star that she wants three lakhs to sit on a plane for an hour? To cut one ribbon? Be serious.' He was talking to Sonam Bhandari's secretary, negotiating a personal appearance. He listened, then settled into his no-nonsense negotiating voice. 'I can give one lakh. I'm starting an airline, not a fund for starlets who are already finished. One lakh.' The tailor was measuring from waist to floor now. 'How much? Okay. One-fifty. Done. I'll send over fifty thousand today. Okay.' He put the phone down. 'Done,' he said to me. 'A film star will come for the flight. We shall be on TV.'

'You be on TV,' I said. 'I'm not coming anywhere near your flight.'

'Not even with Sonam Bhandari on it?' he said. 'If you see her jiggle those coconuts, you'll forget all about your shipment.'

'No woman has coconuts good enough to make me forget that.'

He was quiet until the tailor gathered up his scribblings and samples and left. 'You've done everything that can be done,' he said. 'Now we just have to wait.'

And wait and wait and wait. Waiting was grindingly hard for me. 'Listen,' I said. 'I don't want to wait. We have to do something.'

'At times like these, we need help,' he said, looking crafty. 'Let's do a puja.'

'Fine.'

'What, really? You mean that?' That he was amazed was only natural: in all our years I had never said a prayer, never begged for divine favours, had eaten prasad only as a quick snack. But now he wasn't interested in my reasons, just in moving fast through this unexpected opening. He was picking up one of his phones already. 'We'll do a Satyanarayan Katha. I know just the pandit. You'll see, all his kathas bear fruit without fail. Not to worry. Before you blink we'll be on top of the situation.' He was smiling at me most benevolently. I could see the story he had in his head, hear the katha he was going to tell as resoundingly as if he was loud-speakering it into my ear: Bhai has come home, he was going to tell the boys, he has come home to the Lord, by the grace of God he has been woken up, in his heart devotion has come alive like a flame. The truth was that I didn't feel very lit-up, just inert. I had the sensation of drowning slowly, and as the water eased over my cheeks I had flung up a hand and clutched at whatever was floating by. This puja was a twig, and I grasped it.

* * *

I could see the heavy boat motionless on the shifting silver surfaces of the enormous waters. Paritosh Shah had picked a bhaiyya pandit for his puja, so I could understand the katha in Hindi without effort. This pandit was a very dramatic story-teller, and he was doing the Satyanarayan Katha with vivid expression, with different voices for the characters and full Dilip Kumar expressions, and now we were at the part where the trader and his son-in-law were on their way home with a boat laden with gold and pearls and perfumes and ivory, all the weighty profits of a long, windy voyage away from home. Then a dandi-swami appeared on the bank, crafty old Satyanarayan himself in disguise, to ask the simple question, 'Bachcha, what's in the boat?' And the businessman, afraid of having to give alms, greedy short-sighted bastard, said, 'Oh, nothing, Swami-ji, just some lata-pata,' and the dandi-swami nodded and said 'Tathastu' and the boat was indeed suddenly bobbing up like a cork, filled now only with fluffy grass and dry hay. The dandi-swami now went into a deep meditative trance, and exactly at that moment, before we could get to the businessman's final comeuppance and regret, Chotta Badriya tapped me on the shoulder, and whispered, 'Come, bhai.'

Читать дальше
Тёмная тема
Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

Похожие книги на «Sacred Games»

Представляем Вашему вниманию похожие книги на «Sacred Games» списком для выбора. Мы отобрали схожую по названию и смыслу литературу в надежде предоставить читателям больше вариантов отыскать новые, интересные, ещё непрочитанные произведения.


Отзывы о книге «Sacred Games»

Обсуждение, отзывы о книге «Sacred Games» и просто собственные мнения читателей. Оставьте ваши комментарии, напишите, что Вы думаете о произведении, его смысле или главных героях. Укажите что конкретно понравилось, а что нет, и почему Вы так считаете.

x