Sacred Games (59 page)

But I was beset by bodily troubles. My stomach was keeping unwell, I had a bulging pain that came upon me often, late in the afternoons, a feeling of congestion in the lower abdomen, and then of expansion, as if something was trying to get out. Gas, the doctors diagnosed, and prescribed tablets and light food. But only Scotch whisky soothed it, made my tissues calm, took away the sudden pressures that threatened to tear. I couldn't let the boys see me drinking, so Bunty arranged another bunga
low for me, this one within easy reach in Juhu, just down the lane from the Holiday Inn. I went every other day to this haven by the sea, where Bunty kept a bottle of Johnny Walker in a locked cupboard, and soda in the fridge. I sat alone on the terrace at sunset, and drank. Two small pegs was what I allowed myself. The drink was calming, but it brought on spasms of nostalgia. There were evenings when I cried for the early days with Paritosh Shah, when we were poor and young, when we had faced insurmountable odds and defeated monstrously strong villains. Where had those mornings gone, when we had gathered our weapons for good fighting? Where were our friends of those bright evenings? Where were the songs of our fleeting spring? I drank and listened to old numbers and remembered. ‘
Chala jaata hoon kisi ki dhun me, dhadakte dil ke tarane liye…
'

Meanwhile Bunty tried to learn everything he needed to, to manage our complicated affairs. He had started with us as a shooter, had been noticed early on in our war with Suleiman Isa, and now he was my trusted and main controller. He was full of confidence and vigour. ‘Everyone knows what you did, bhai. From Matunga to Dubai, they've heard. They know that you found Suleiman Isa's bastards and tumbled them. Your partner is now fully paid for. You won this one too.' He said it to cheer me up when I was silent for long hours in the car. I knew that I had won. And I knew also that there was no victory in this world without another, larger loss hiding inside it, that in our triumph we were already hunted by some disaster. I knew something was coming. Suleiman Isa was coming. I told the boys to be careful, I increased security in Gopalmath, I forbade Subhadra from leaving the house. Not even to the temple, I told her. You are to stay at home. She looked glum but obeyed.

Twenty-one days from the day of Chotta Badriya's death, on a Friday, in the early afternoon, the bombs exploded. I heard about the first one minutes after it had happened, a phone call came in from one of our boys, he called from the city sobbing, bhai, there was a foot on the pavement, there was a sound, a huge boom, and I didn't know what it was and people were running and nobody knew what was happening and I ran around a corner with them and there was this foot on the pavement, bhai, it just lay there, sliced off at the shin, there was no blood, and then someone pointed around the corner, I looked, the stock exchange is gone, the stock exchange, it's blasted, burst. There was an exposion, bhai, a bomb, a bomb.

I calmed him down, told him to go home. Then more detonations
came, at the Masjid Bunder grain market, at Nariman Point, and I had Bunty on the phone to the Goregaon police station, to headquarters, and I was dialling and there was the busy signal again and again, and then the phones went dead, and yet the news came in, an explosion near the Rakshak headquarters, now against the abrupt, numb quiet in the street there were quick flurries of shouting. Now there were boys hurrying up and down the street, and mothers gathering their children in, a car came to a halt, and there was the sound of running feet and Bunty ran in with yet more news, fishermen had died in Mahim from an attack, bombs had fallen from the sky, there were men wading ashore with machine guns. I told everyone to get indoors, lock down, and I put my boys on guard, armed them and stood them at the peripheries of Gopalmath. By evening we knew the shape of what had happened: there were no armed marauders from the sea, but there had been grenades thrown at the Fisherman's Colony, and twelve bombs had lifted up clouds of concrete through the length of the city, twelve times in two hours a blunt, cataclysmic ringing had torn at the heads of men and women and children, had killed hundreds of them, maimed thousands. On television the torn buildings stood eviscerated, all sags and twisted metal inside, and the ministers and policemen said an investigation was being conducted, they said it again and again. But in Gopalmath, my wife huddled against me, subdued and grateful, and I knew what they were whispering in the streets outside: Bhai knew, he knew something was going to happen. Yes, I had known. Yes. I had stood on this battlefield long enough to learn its rhythms, the falling drumbeats of its narratives. We were carried along in the story's surges, and many died, and I lived. I had dug deep holes for many, but I had survived because I had come to feel the subterranean sequences of cause and consequences, I knew in my flesh where the bone-white lightning would fall next. I was awake. I was playing the game.

 

It made perfect sense, it fell neatly like a wheel into a muddy groove, when it was announced by the police investigators that Suleiman Isa and his people had planned and executed the bomb blasts. Of course, of course. I knew it all from our paltu policemen before it was announced on television that in the simmering and swelling of anger after the mosque was pulled down, after the riots, young Muslim boys from Bombay had been flown to Dubai and then to Pakistan, that they had been trained by Pakistanis, that greasy packets of RDX had been brought in by sea by Suleiman Isa's vastly seasoned smugglers, that the trainees had made
RDX bombs complete with timing devices and planted them in cars and scooters, that they had distributed these vehicles in the most crowded and best-known parts of the city, and then the massacre had followed. This was their revenge for the riots, for the many Muslims who had been killed.

There had been one small war, my inevitable war with Suleiman Isa, the war between our companies. This combat had been long, it was eternal. Now its connections to a larger war were becoming apparent. The game was many-tendrilled, webbed and seductive and infinitely dangerous. I heard about Suleiman Isa sending the bombs and I laughed, and I said, of course. And I asked myself, where next do
I
go? Where's the next move? What's coming for me?

It took a while, many months, but it came, sure enough. It came a day after my son was born. Gopalmath was bright and noisy with celebration, and my house was full of visitors. I was a bit shaky myself from the unfamiliar gusts of joy that came from my belly, from the quite unprecedented swelling of heated, helpless emotion that I felt when I looked down at my son's wrinkled little face.

In the middle of all this commotion Bipin Bhonsle called and asked for a meeting. He was now not only an MLA but a party leader, and so we had to take precautions and double precautions, and we met at a resort on Madh Island. They had rented a private bungalow, away from all the other cabins, and were waiting when we drove up at dusk. We sat under the palm trees, under the sky that out here seemed to be choked with stars. Bipin Bhonsle drank beer, which I turned down. With him was a man he introduced as Mr Sharma. This Sharma was one of those fair-skinned UP brahmins, very soft-spoken in fancy, All-India Radio Hindi. He was dressed in a long brown kurta and sat cross-legged on his chair, very poised, like he was practising yoga.

‘Sharma-ji is an associate of ours from Delhi,' Bipin Bhonsle said. He wiggled his toes and tossed kajus into his mouth and drank. For a few minutes he talked about recent political struggles, rivals he had humiliated, profits he had made. Then he waved his boys back into the shadows, and jerked his creaking aluminium chair over to me, and leaned confidentially closer. His chest was plump and bulging under the shiny shirt.

‘Sharma-ji needs your help, bhai,' he said. ‘He is a very close friend of mine. Not in our party, of course, but we understand each other.'

‘What kind of help?'

‘These Muslims, you know.'

‘Yes,' I said. ‘What about them?'

‘This war hasn't ended, bhai,' he said. ‘They are here. They are growing. They will come against us again.'

‘Or you will go against them.'

‘After what this bastard Suleiman Isa has done, we will have to crush them. They live here but they're maderchod Pakistanis at heart, bhai. That's just the truth.'

‘What do you want from me?'

This time Sharma-ji spoke. ‘We need arms.'

‘The Pathans move arms through Kutch and Ahmedabad. They'll sell you what you want.'

‘They're Pathans, Bhai Saab,' Sharma-ji said, and under all the soft inflections there was iron. ‘We can't trust them. We want our own pipeline. We want a steady supply.'

‘There must be companies in the north.'

‘Nobody has an organization like yours. We want to bring in the material by sea. We need someone to move the arms in. They have Suleiman Isa.'

‘And you want me?'

‘Exactly.'

I lay back in the chair, stretched. Suleiman Isa was the Muslim don, so I was the Hindu bhai. It was necessary. There was a low moon over us, plump and gentle. I breathed, and took in the fragrance of jasmine. So beautiful, I thought. It is a terrible world, I thought, and it is a perfect world.

‘There's a lot of money in it, bhai,' Bipin Bhonsle said. ‘And you know you should be with us. We have to protect Hindu dharma. We have to.'

‘Relax,' I said. ‘I'll do it. I'm yours.'

On Tuesday morning there were five messages waiting for Sartaj from a Mrs Kamala Pandey. Sartaj shut his eyes, and through the smooth white plane of his headache tried to remember who Kamala Pandey was. It was a whisky headache, even and narrow and persistent. The morning sounds of the station house tapped at Sartaj's skull, the constables arguing in the corridor outside, the slushing of water on concrete and the steady rasping of a jhadoo, the insistent bluster of the crows, the anguished groans of a prisoner as he was led hobbling back to the cells from an interrogation. Sartaj wanted to go home to sleep. But the day was only beginning.

‘Did this Kamala Pandey say what she was calling about?' Sartaj asked Kamble.

Kamble was rooting impatiently through desk drawers. He had spoken to his contact in the Flying Squad that morning, about an opening in the squad, and he was already acting as if the humdrum business and casual chaos of a mere suburban station was beneath him. ‘No, she did not say. I asked. She said it was personal. And she left only a mobile number.' Now he looked up to grin. Kamble always had time to leer. ‘She sounded like a real hot item, boss. Tip-top convent accent. Your girlfriend or what?'

‘No. But I remember the name from somewhere.'

Kamble slammed the drawers shut. ‘Definitely some trouble over there, boss,' he said, and turned to check the shelves behind his desk. ‘A woman calls five times in one day, either she's in love with you, or she's in some ghotala. I asked if I could help her, but she insisted, no, only Inspector Sartaj Singh.' He turned back, and he had found the file he had been looking for. ‘This maderchod station is like a bhenchod rubbish dump,' he said. His smile was huge and happy.

‘But you're leaving us soon?' Sartaj said.

‘I am, absolutely,' said Kamble. ‘Soon, soon.'

‘What's the delay?'

‘Price has gone up. I'm short. Not by a lot, but by enough.'

‘I am sure you're working hard to make it up.'

Kamble shook the file at Sartaj. ‘A little here, a little there. I'm off to
court,' Kamble said, tucking the file into a brown rexine briefcase. ‘Come out with me tonight, boss. I'll introduce you to a couple of good girls.'

‘I have an appointment. You go.' Kamble spent his evenings with a changing cast of bar girls. There was always one who was getting too old, one who was in her prime and a young one he was helping to get into the business. ‘Have fun. Be careful,' Sartaj said. But he knew Kamble was not going to be careful in the least. He was bouncy with confidence and daring, content with how he was raising the money to get into the Flying Squad and hungrily looking forward to swathes of action and mounds of cash. He was young, he felt strong, he had a pistol in his belt and he knew he could take life and bend her to his will.

‘You look after yourself today, Sardar-ji,' Kamble said, and he was quite healthily rosy in his twill shirt and new black jeans. ‘Call me on the handy if you change your mind about anything. Or if you need help with anything.' And he strutted off, his briefcase tucked under his arm.

Sartaj sank down into his chair. He didn't much mind the condescension. He was himself getting used to the idea that he was washed up, that he had reached the crest of his career and that he wouldn't advance very far past his father's rank. He knew now that he wasn't going to be the hero of any film, even the film of his own life. He had once been the promising young up-and-comer, marked for advancement. Even the fact that he was a Sikh in a department full of Marathas had been an advantage as well as a burden, a marker of his separateness. He had stood out, and was known far and wide, and journalists had loved to write about the handsome inspector. But the years had worn away the shine, and he had become just like a thousand other time-servers in the department. He had his consolations, and he plodded through the day. Maybe even his memory was failing him, a little by very little. This was true. This was the truth that Kamble no doubt saw, as he went swinging up on his upward road. The Flying Squad had been very successful lately, as well. They had been killing Suleiman Isa's men rapidly over the last three months, and not just small-time taporis either. The newspapers had been publishing the life stories of important, highly valued shooters and controllers as they had fallen one by one to the bullets of the Flying Squad. Suleiman Isa, the chief minister had proudly announced just the week before, was in retreat. The Flying Squad was going to be an exciting place for Kamble, and he was sure he was in.

But this was Sartaj's life, stretching forward and inescapable. There was nowhere to go but here, to this daily trial, to this untidy mess of a station. Still, there was work. On his current roster of investigations he had
three burglaries, two missing teenagers, one case of embezzlement and fraud and one domestic murder. All the usual desolations. And now there were these calls from Mrs Kamala Pandey. Who was she?

He dialled the number. She picked up on the first ring, and she was terrified. ‘Hello?' she said. ‘Hello?'

‘Mrs Pandey?'

‘Yes. Who is this?'

‘Inspector Sartaj…'

‘Yes, yes. I need to meet you.'

‘Is something wrong?'

‘Listen, please…' She stopped herself. ‘I just need to meet you.'

She was used to getting her way. Sartaj remembered her now. Her husband had thrown a puppy out of a window. Sartaj remembered the dog, poor little white thing with her skull opened on the asphalt. Mr Pandey had suspected Mrs Pandey of infidelity, so he had murdered her dog. Mrs Pandey had refused to file charges against her husband, and the husband had refused to complain about her assaults with stick and knife. Sartaj hadn't liked either of them, and Katekar had liked them less. He had wanted to put them both inside for a night or two, on charges of disturbing the peace. Or at least shove them around a little, teach the spoilt little rich snots to keep it quiet, frighten them a little. Or one of them will end up dead, Katekar had said. Maybe that's why Mrs Kamala Pandey was calling now, maybe the husband was dead already, and had been tucked and bent until he fitted into a bedroom cupboard. It had happened before. ‘What about, Mrs Pandey?' Sartaj said. ‘What's the trouble?'

‘Not on the phone.'

‘There is trouble?'

She hesitated. ‘Yes,' she said. ‘I can't come to the station.'

‘All right,' Sartaj said. ‘Do you know the Sindoor Restaurant?'

 

On the way from the station to the underpass, Sartaj was flagged down by Parulkar, who was convoying in the other direction in a brand-new official car. Sartaj did a U-turn and followed Parulkar, who slowed down at the next patch of empty shoulder and stopped. Parulkar's security men sprang out alertly from their jeeps and made a perimeter and held their ferocious automatic rifles at the ready. Their number had increased over the last two months, or three, ever since Parulkar had pulled off yet another of his amazing feats of survival. Whatever the dispute had been with the Rakshak government, it had been settled. Suddenly Parulkar was
their grey-eyed boy, the chief minister and the home minister were consulting him every two days. The enemies had become allies, and both sides were profiting. Organized crime was retreating, bhais and controllers and shooters were being killed at such a pace that soon there would not be many left to shoot, at least until the next generation showed up. All was right with Parulkar's world. He had made it so, and once again he had proved he was amazing. The rumour was that he had paid twenty crores to the chief minister alone, and much else to various functionaries. In any case Parulkar was back, glorious and jovial again.

‘Come, come,' he called. ‘Quick.'

Sartaj slid in beside him. There was a new fragrance inside the car, something quite delicate.

‘You like it?' Parulkar said. ‘It is called Refreshing Nectar. See, from there.'

A sleek aluminium tube with fins sat on the dashboard vent, blinking a red light that Sartaj assumed signalled the release of Refreshing Nectar. ‘Is it from America, sir?'

‘Yes, yes. Are you well, Sartaj?'

Parulkar had just come back from a two-week visit to Buffalo, where one of his daughters was a researcher at a university. He looked rested and contented and bouncy, very much like the Parulkar of old. ‘You look very healthy, sir.'

‘It is the clean air over there. A morning walk, over there, revives you really. You cannot imagine.'

‘Yes, sir, I cannot.'

‘I brought something for you also, a portable DVD player. It is so small' – holding his squared thumbs four inches away from each other – ‘and the picture is sharp, absolutely sharp. You can take it anywhere with you and watch films, you see. Very good for a policeman.'

‘That is a wonderful thing, sir. There was no need…'

‘Arre, don't tell me about need. I know what you need. You come home, tomorrow, day after, and we will talk. The player is also at home.'

‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.'

Parulkar thumped Sartaj on his shoulder and sent him on his way. Sartaj thought about the new DVD player, and worried. Now he would have to buy or at least rent DVDs and then watch them. Parulkar was sure to ask for reports on his viewing. But maybe that was all right. Maybe Parulkar really understood better than him what he needed. Some entertainment might be exactly what would fix him up, and revive him like a good morning walk in Buffalo. Where in America was Buffalo?
And why was it called Buffalo? Sartaj had no idea. Some more of life's mysteries.

 

Sartaj sat at his usual booth in the Sindoor Restaurant and nursed a Coke. During a recent renovation, Sindoor had gained festive new red tables and a new menu which included Bengali and Andhra food. Sartaj was reading through the Bengali desserts when Shambhu Shetty walked in. ‘Hello, saab,' he said and sat. They had last seen each other a week ago, when Sartaj had come in as usual to pick up the monthly Delite Dance Bar contribution to the station. Shambhu had complained as usual about the necessity of raids and rising prices, and had told Sartaj about his dream trek, through the forests of Arunachal Pradesh. Now Shambhu had auspicious news. He was engaged. He had sampled from the revolving tray of feminine delights that his bar brought to him every day, but now he said he wanted to settle. ‘Those were only trailers, boss,' he told Sartaj. ‘This is the main film.' The heroine of Shambhu's life-film was a nice girl that his parents had found, of course within the Shetty community. The two families had common friends in Pune, and had known vaguely of each other for decades. The girl had a BEd, but was content not to work after marriage. She was a virgin, that went without saying, or asking.

‘Well done, Shambhu,' Sartaj said. ‘When is the date?'

‘May. The cards will be printed at the end of this month. I will send you.'

It was four-thirty in the afternoon, and the restaurant was almost empty. A pair of college lovers sat next to each other, on the same side of a booth, nursing their Cokes and pressing thighs against each other. Shambhu was relaxed but brimming with energy. He had marriage plans, and also plans for another bar, this one in Borivili East. This new bar was to have a filmi theme, pictures of film stars everywhere. There would be different halls for the dancers, each with a distinct decor. There was going to be a Mughal-e-Azam room, and a DDLJ room. ‘You should invest,' Shambhu said. ‘I guarantee good returns. Invest for your future.'

‘I am a poor man, Shambhu,' Sartaj said. ‘I'm sure you're not interested in investors who come with five hundred rupees.'

‘Poor, you? Even after that Gaitonde hit?'

‘That wasn't a hit, Shambhu. The man shot himself.'

‘Yes, yes.' Shambhu was smiling, very wise to the ways of the police. ‘And how did you happen to find him?'

‘Anonymous phone call. Tip-off.'

‘If you get a tip-off about some ready money, saab, come straight to
me. This is a good time to invest.' Shambhu uncoiled himself out of the booth. His face sloped forward to the chin, and his eyes were too close-set, but he carried himself very well. He was at ease in the world. ‘I'm expecting a beer delivery,' he said.

Shambhu shook Sartaj's hand and walked briskly to the door. He stood aside then to let Mrs Pandey through. She paused to take her sleek dark glasses off, and then marched straight up to Sartaj.

‘Hello,' he said. Sartaj stood up, and pointed her around a partition, to a small table near the kitchen door. Here they were quite private, alone with each other.

She was wiping at her nose with a tissue, and Sartaj saw that she was strained, exhausted, but well turned-out. Her hair was glossy, in a sweep down to the shoulders, and she was wearing white jeans and a white top with very short sleeves and a cut that exposed a bit of her toned midriff. She was smaller than he remembered, but had a spectacular chest which filled out the white top very nicely. It wasn't exactly the outfit Sartaj would have recommended for a private meeting with a seedy policeman in a very middle-class suburban restaurant, but women had their own reasons. Maybe all the jhatak and matak made her confident. Maybe she liked the fact that men always looked.

She finally spoke. ‘Thank you for meeting me,' she said. Her Hindi had just that little awkwardness that came from living her life mostly in English. ‘Pani,' she said sharply to a waiter who had stepped up. ‘Bisleri pani.'

Sartaj waited until the waiter had poured the water and walked away. Mrs Pandey's fingers had a clear gloss on them that Megha had worn sometimes. Megha would have described her as a ‘hot little number' and steered Sartaj away from her. But Sartaj felt no desire now, only curiosity. ‘It is my duty,' he said. ‘But what is the trouble?'

She nodded. ‘Trouble,' she said. Her eyes were her best feature, large and almond-shaped and the colour of a glass of good Scotch with one or two ice-cubes melted in. Megha would have said that she wasn't classically beautiful, but had worked and polished herself into hotness. She was in some very big trouble now, and it was difficult to talk about.