Sacred Games (57 page)

He spoke without blinking, without moving from his statue-like sprawl. ‘The word came from the top: show the maderchods. So we showed them.'

‘The order came from the top?'

‘From the very top top.' He yawned. ‘I cut a head off. I mean clean off, sattack! like that. I had to use both hands on the sword. It bounced twice,
the head. The funny thing is the blood. It goes far. Like from a pichkari, all over the place. The boys were all running, ducking away from the blood. The head didn't look surprised or anything. The head had no expression.'

‘You showed him.'

‘Yes. But you're sitting here, safe in your house, Ganesh Bhai.'

‘The word didn't come from my top, Bipin Saab.'

‘The landyas killed Paritosh Shah. And still you don't want to do anything.'

I could've pointed out that although Suleiman Isa was Muslim enough, he had plenty of Hindus working for him. And also that Suleiman Isa had nothing to do with the Muslim families who lived down the highway, and that cutting their heads off wouldn't make him bleed. But I said simply, ‘There's no gain for me in doing this.'

He looked at me, flicked his reddened eyes at me. ‘I'll bring you profit. I have much to do, so I'll make you a quick deal. There's a Muslim basti in Abarva. Know it?'

‘Behind the white life-insurance building. Yes.'

‘The land it's on belongs to an associate of mine. He bought it three years ago, good price, good area for development, but he can't get those slum maderchods off the land. Water connections, electrical, they have it all. They say they've been there for years, all that usual bhenchod nonsense. So, get them off. Burn it down. We'll pay twenty lakhs.'

‘Bipin Saab, Bipin Saab. That land is worth four crores, easy.'

‘Twenty-five, then.'

‘I'll need a lot of boys.'

‘Your boys can keep what they find.'

‘Find in some miserable hut, while a fire is roaring over their heads?'

‘Thirty.'

‘One crore.'

He laughed. ‘I'll give you sixty lakhs.'

‘Done.'

‘When?'

‘Tomorrow.'

‘All right. Do it fast. We'll keep this open season going as long as we can, but at some point they'll tell the army to start firing, not just do flag marches, and then things will become difficult.' He put his hands on his knees and pushed himself up, remained bent over for a moment, wriggling his back. ‘Aren't you going to offer me a drink?'

‘Bipin Saab, I should've asked.' I called out to the corridor, ‘Arre, bring water, tea, something cold.'

Bipin Bhonsle grinned. ‘I was thinking of whisky. Or rum. But you are the same, bhai. Water-water all the time.'

‘Keeps me alert.'

‘Whisky keeps me strong,' Bipin Bhonsle said, and picked up his sword. ‘Water is bad for my heart.' He hefted the sword, pointed it at me. ‘Good you are with us,' he said. And with that he went flouncing down the stairs, his heels clacking sharply on each step. The jeep spun in tight growling turns, and then they were gone. And I was now with us, I was against them.

 

This is the elegant way to burn a basti: you do it at night, you move a dozen cars full of boys to the east, to the life-insurance end of the basti, and there you launch a loud frontal assault. Your boys fire pistols and swing swords at the men of the basti, who emerge from their hovels to put up a despairing fight, their faces are maddened caricatures under the ranked headlights. Meanwhile at the far south-western end of the basti another group of your boys is near the clustered shacks and houses. They are crafty and stealthy, your boys, they get in close and they can hear the screams and curses from the life-insurance end, and now they heave bottles filled with petrol, bottles primed with petrol-soaked rags. There is the crisp tinkle of glass and the small sparking flares now bloom into flowing rivers that run smoothly across rooftops, down walls, into windows. The fire speaks now, it makes a joyous, throaty grumbling as it eats, there is no stopping it. There are no phones, there is no fire brigade to come, no police. The defenders are no longer defending, they run, they dodge back into the corners, now illuminated by the bright glow above the roofs. Your boys chase them, kill some of them, the others flee to their women, their screaming children, and bolt away from the fire, they stagger and drop and get up and go, they disappear. They are gone. The flames swing easily from house to house, and our work is complete.

In the morning, the western façade of the life-insurance building was stained sooty grey, and where there had been a basti there was an empty field of cinders, spiked here and there by a blackened doorpost, a twisted pipe.

Two days later my payment was delivered in full. It came in stacks of crisp new plastic-wrapped notes, which I broke apart to distribute to the boys. By now almost all of them were back with me. Over the next four
days we cleared two more plots of land. And we were all satisfied, me, the boys, Bipin Bhonsle. Riots are useful in all kinds of ways, to all kinds of people.

 

Finally, in the third week of January, the burning and killing stopped, under the bullets of the police and the army, and under orders from Bipin Bhonsle's bosses, and their boss. Finally there were too many dead bodies even for the very supreme top, and the reeling roar of the approaching chaos too deafening, and so it stopped. The city cringed and shook itself and began to clean up the debris, bulldozers swept up the emptied grounds and dug foundations, bodies were lifted from the gutters, from the rubbish heaps, and traffic churned through the lanes again. Here we were, slowly back to normal. And I was restored. Yes, I was able. I came home late one night from a meeting with Bipin Bhonsle, to collect more monies he owed us from the riot-time work, to discuss new projects, and I took off my shoes and sat back on the bed, my head resting on Subhadra's new embroidered pillows, they were a deep red. She had rearranged the furniture in the room, so that we could look out of a double window as we lay in bed. I could see my darkened basti and the stars overhead. Subhadra brought me my milk, then sat cross-legged on the bed to watch me drink it. I sipped, and she rested her chin on her hand and hummed softly.

‘What's that song?' I whispered. The night was so quiet, so fragile and cool, so shadowed, that I could only whisper.

Subhadra peeked up at me, and hummed on.

‘What, saali? What's the song?'

She smiled, small and mischievous, and stuck out her tongue at me. And kept humming.

I grabbed her arm playfully, but she let out a theatrical little scream and twisted away. ‘Let go,' she said. ‘It hurts.'

‘Don't act too much,' I said, releasing her. ‘I hardly even touched you.'

‘No,' she said. ‘You're strong.' She rubbed her arm hard. ‘See, you left a mark.'

‘I can't see anything.'

‘Even the boys say it.'

‘Say what?'

‘That you didn't know how strong you were. Yesterday they were saying, now finally he's showing his true strength. Now we know he's a true Hindu leader.'

‘Hindu?'

‘Yes.' She was looking down at her pale arm, where the skin showed a soft bloom from my fingers. ‘They said, now he's showing those bastards what a Hindu bhai can do.'

There was a sloping river in the sky, a sinuous curve of light. There was the sky above, and us underneath. There were Hindus, and there were Muslims. Everything sits in pairs, in opposites, so brutal and so lovely.

‘Close the door,' I said.

Now she spoke: ‘What?'

‘You heard.'

What happened to me then? Until then, all my life, I had felt like a ghost, a thousand ghosts roaming around inside my body, each equally possible and every one of them more lost than the other. I had come from nowhere and made a name for myself, but I had felt always that I was playing a part, many parts, and that I could switch from this name to another easily, that if I was Ganesh Gaitonde today, I could well become Suleiman Isa tomorrow, and then any of the men I had killed. I had felt anger, and pain, and desire, but I had held back always from allowing the fragments inside me to settle into a shape, a form. I had led men to believe in me, in Ganesh Gaitonde, and always secretly despised them for believing in me, because I was nothing. I had believed in nothing. I had committed to nothing. And so I was a phantom of a man, capable of frenzied couplings with whores, in whose sopping chuts I tried to make myself real, but I was not fit for marriage. Marriage is belief. Marriage is faith. Marriage is wholeness. I could see it now, I had been incapable of marriage, incomplete, imperfect and so impotent. But all the roads I had walked, thinking myself alone, all those broken paths had brought me inevitably to belonging, to the certainty of becoming something, one thing. I had burnt bastis, and so I had chosen, I had been forced to choose one side of the battlefield, wily old Paritosh Shah had had his way after all. I stood ready now. I knew who I was. I was a Hindu bhai. And so I hovered lightly above my wife, my wife, feeling the confident beat of my pulse along every length of my body. I went into her. Her scream thrilled over my shoulders. Afterwards there was blood, on the sheets, on my thighs. I was content. I said to Paritosh Shah, I haven't forgotten about you. I will find your killers. I slept deeply, sprawled in the evidence of my victory, late into the evening.

 

I had woken up, and for wakening to myself I was rewarded. This reward brought with it a curse. It was a videotape, and on it was a momentary
glimpse of the man who had betrayed Paritosh Shah, who had delivered him to our enemies. The videotape came to me from one of our sources in Dubai, a man named Shanker who worked in an electronics store called Mina Television and Appliances. Shanker's boss, the owner of this Mina Television, had a side business of videotaping engagements and weddings and parties, and in November he had been called to a party at the revolving restaurant on top of the Embassy Hotel to tape a shaandaar party, to record for posterity a small but fantastically expensive birthday celebration, complete with Govinda flown in from Bombay to dance. The owner of Mina Television busily taped, he caught the toasts drunk in champagne; the men standing in little semicircles in their glossy suits, their fists around stubby glasses full of Scotch; the women off in a great cluster by themselves around the sofas, their diamonds glinting, stabbing the lens with their quick flashes; and Govinda dancing, his twists and dips, his white shoes reflected in the black marble floor; and the birthday boy, Anwar, third brother to Suleiman Isa. And Suleiman Isa, yes, the bastard himself, swaying to Govinda's beat but with no expression on his face, no life. The Mina Television man brought his video back to the shop, he had been told to make three copies of it. He handed it to Shanker, told him to make the copies. Shanker made four. He kept one, and he brought it to Bombay when he visited in early February. He gave it to Bunty, and Bunty gave him money. And here it was, the tape, now on my television, in my office.

Suleiman Isa had a broad, flat face, with a sparse beard along the edges of his jawline, and a pencil moustache. In the tape he was wearing a white shirt with a round collar, and a dark grey suit with fancy embroidery on the lapels. I couldn't tell what he was drinking, but he ate kebabs from a plate and laid the toothpicks in a tidy row on the edge of the table. Neat, methodical. I watched the tape late into the night, running the Suleiman Isa bits back again and again. Chotta Badriya watched with me, and we counted four of the brothers at the party, we knew their faces from police file photographs. Finally Chotta Badriya started yawning about once every minute, and I sent him home to bed. I watched Suleiman Isa again, how he washed his fingertips in a little brass bowl, and patted them dry on a napkin. It was late now, and late in the party on the tape. Govinda had long gone, and even Suleiman Isa had left. Still the camera wandered, taking in men sprawled on the sofas, their shoes off, their ties twisted loose. One of them saw the camera, pushed himself up, three tries it took him, he raised his arms and attempted a Govinda twirl and fell, his legs
kicking up against a table. A glass shattered on the floor. Much laughter. This was footage I hadn't seen before, we had always gone back to Suleiman Isa and the brothers. But now I watched it through, I wanted one look at all of it before sleep. The drunken man was picked up off the floor by two of his friends, and now all three of them stepped, skipped left-right-left, their arms over each other's shoulders. The camera panned left with them, overshot, and a man sitting on a chair ducked away from it, he slid off the chair and out of frame, his left shoulder raised high and face turned sharply away from the lens, from me. And then the camera twitched back to the right, and found the three dancing men.

But I went back. I scrabbled for the remote, pressed at buttons. There had been something about the man's big shoulder, something effortlessly fluid about his body even as he jerked out of sight, something so confident. He wasn't afraid, just easy, just making sure, he just didn't want to be seen by the camera. There it was, barely a second of blur, he was good, but not that good, not good enough – behind him was a sheet of blackish glass, a tall window with darkness outside, in one bottom edge of it I could see streetlights far below, but also in its flowing sheen I saw a face, a sharp blade of a nose, a long chin, strong neck, the quick undulating dangle of a gold chain with a shiny locket at the end: it was Bada Badriya. Our Chotta Badriya's older brother, Paritosh Shah's faithful bodyguard. It was him. It was him. It was so quick, barely a glimpse, but I was certain. And then I was unsure. When I slowed down the tape, pushed it forward frame by halting frame, the face broke up into blocks of light and slivers of dark, and became shapeless under my straining eyes. I pressed close to the screen. Was it a dull haze of shifting light, or was it him? In the still frames, there was only this vague cloud, this nothing. But when I ran it at speed, there he was, it was Bada Badriya, I was sure.