Sacred Games (65 page)

 

The next morning, there was a message waiting at the station house for Sartaj. It was from Mary: ‘Come to the Yari Road apartment tomorrow evening.' And that was all. Sartaj turned the note over, puzzled, then folded it carefully in half and put it into his pocket. He was glad that Kamble hadn't seen it, or he would have had to endure at least half a day of smirking jokes about ghochi and merry Mary and private trysts.

Sartaj spent the afternoon driving from one PCO to another, reaping the expected harvest of blank looks and bafflement. An orange-haired, sixtyish owner of a shop near Film City put a paan in her mouth and gave it to him straight: ‘Baba, I know the call was just the day before yesterday. But you see how many people I get making calls in one day. I don't sit here looking at their faces. They come in, they make their calls, they give me their money. Bas. I don't even remember the ones who came today.' She bent to the electronic meter on her desk, squinted at it. ‘Already today there have been a hundred and thirty calls. And the busiest time is the evening.' Her hair was appallingly hennaed, but she was telling the truth.

‘You have a good turnover,' Sartaj said.

‘Everyone needs to ring home,' she said.

There was a small queue of carpenters waiting for her two phones, pretending that they weren't listening to the policeman's questioning. They were Punjabis, stubbled and brawny. They had walked over from the shop three doors down, where they were building shelves. They were interested in the fact of a Sikh policeman in Bombay, but they were too scared of police inspectors to talk to him. Their families were probably in Gurdaspur, or Amritsar, and they had learnt caution.

Sartaj went on to the next PCO. He went to nineteen in all, and at all of them there were the same men and women, making calls across the city and across the country. None of the owners or cashiers could remember
two men among these thousands. At seven Sartaj called a halt and veered off to Yari Road. The traffic was dense, and by the time Sartaj got across the subway, the twilight was losing its fantastic range of orange hues. The bulb in the lift was fused, and Sartaj had to grope for the buttons. But Mary had light. She opened the door into a well-lit drawing room and grinned up at Sartaj. She had a duster in her hand, and a chunni tied around her hair, giving her something of a Rani-of-Jhansi air. ‘Hello, hello,' she said. ‘And sat-sri-akal. Come in.'

‘Hello,' Sartaj said. The drawing room was crowded with cardboard boxes, but had been scrubbed clean. Mary had put in a day of work all right, but she seemed relaxed, buoyant. ‘You have electricity.'

‘Jana has a friend at BSES. I paid the past bills, and her friend got it all switched on.'

Jana was the kind of practical woman who would of course have a friend who could get electricity from BSES in a few days, instead of in a month or two. There was loud filmi music sweeping down the hall, from the bedroom. ‘Jana's taking care of the shoes?'

Mary nodded, twinkling. ‘And the clothes. She gets upset every two minutes because Jojo was too small for anything to fit her. Come on.' She stepped past Sartaj, calling, ‘Jana! Jana!'

Jana also had a chunni tucked behind her ears, and the rapt look of a woman absorbed in her work. She greeted Sartaj with a quick nod and ‘Hello,' and led the way into the study. ‘We started cleaning in here first,' she said. ‘Because mostly we were going to throw all these papers and files away.'

‘We were throwing,' Mary said. ‘And then Jana noticed one thing.'

They were pleased with themselves, for being able to tell Sartaj that they had noticed. But they were pleasured also by the knowledge itself, by the pleasure of detection. Sartaj said, with exactly the right degree of eagerness, ‘What did she notice?'

From the top of the filing cabinet, Jana snatched up an envelope. From it she pulled out a photograph, and held it up with a flourish. ‘This.' And another photograph. ‘And this.'

Sartaj put out a hand to steady the picture she was holding up. A girl. A girl in a model pose, looking over her shoulder. She wasn't an especially attractive girl.

‘The photograph was in the bottom drawer of Jojo's desk,' Mary said. ‘Under some bills.'

‘Yes.' Sartaj was trying to remember if he had examined these photo
graphs himself when he and Katekar had searched the study. There was nothing distinctive about them, nothing to remember. ‘And so?'

Jana was astonished. ‘You don't recognize her?' She held up another photograph.

Sartaj took it from her. This one was a portrait, with the hair falling forward and a wistful look. He turned it over. The name was noted in a neat hand, ‘Jamila Mirza'. Which meant nothing to Sartaj. ‘Who is she?'

Both Jana and Mary were looking at him with that tolerant, motherly patience that women practised when faced with male stupidity. Jana held up another piece of paper. ‘This is a list of monies. I think they're payments, and they go on over months and years. Copies of passport pages, see, same girl. And copies of plane tickets, to Singapore. She went lots of times, see, sometimes every month. This wasn't a casual thing. This one was a regular girlfriend.'

‘But we know that Jojo sent girls to Gaitonde. This girl is just one of those.'

‘But do you know who this girl is?' Jana said.

‘Jamila Mirza?'

‘She was that. Then she became Zoya Mirza.'

‘Miss India? The actress?'

‘Yes. That one.'

Sartaj could see a resemblance, but he was doubtful. He pointed to Jamila Mirza's waist. ‘This one's too fat.'

‘Liposuction,' Jana said. ‘Maybe the last ribs were taken out.'

Mary ran her finger over the portrait. ‘Definitely had her nose done. And the hairline's been taken up.'

‘There was work on the chin too,' Jana said. ‘See how it's longer. And the jaws have been narrowed. So now that we've found this early Zoya, we give you to her. You have to tell us what happens with her, okay? Whatever you find out, you have to tell us. Promise?' She was an old-time and very regular
Stardust
reader for sure, this Jana, she was ravenous for nippy star natter.

‘But are you sure this is her?'

‘Yes,' they both said together.

They spoke with the certainty of experts, and they were very sure. This was their work. Sartaj had to believe them. ‘Amazing,' he said. ‘I could never have seen it.'

Mary laughed, and touched his hand, near the wrist. She said, ‘That's all right. Men never do.'

I was arrested on a Thursday afternoon. They came for me in Gopalmath, at my home. Policemen were a familiar enough sight in my darbar, they knew very well my exact address, where I lived. I had never hidden away. They came sometimes to look for one of our boys, sometimes to ask me questions, sometimes even to ask for a favour on the quiet. I welcomed them always, gave them chai and biscuits and answers and then sent them on their way. This time it was the muchchad Majid Khan and three sub-inspectors I didn't know, and ten constables, all in plain clothes. ‘Sit, sit,' I said. ‘Arre, some cold drinks for them,' I called.

But Majid Khan didn't sit. His boys spread themselves about the room, and Majid Khan said, ‘Parulkar Saab got a warrant issued this morning. I have to arrest you.'

‘Your Parulkar Saab is mad, the maderpat,' I said. ‘He doesn't have a single proof against me. Not one witness.'

‘Now he does,' he said. ‘We lifted that chutiya Nilesh Dhale from Malad last week. He had a pistol on him, and another one in his suitcase. So Parulkar Saab has you for harbouring criminals and complicity in criminal acts, and also for being in possession of illegal weapons. And it being in the suitcase means it was being transported, so movement and selling of armaments also. He'll add on anti-national activities. What else does he need? After two slaps across the face, Dhale is singing like a bird. By tomorrow Parulkar will have you involved in the conspiracy to kill Mahatma Gandhi.'

‘I didn't hand any pistols to that bastard Dhale, did I? For this loose change you're going to arrest me? Parulkar can't make any of it stick.'

‘There's no need to make any of it stick, you know this. All he needs is you inside for a while, you know that.'

I knew very well: I lived under TADA, and under TADA a while could last a decade. Under this act they could keep me inside for the entire duration of any trials, no bail, nothing, not even if it took six years, or ten. At the end of it all you could be completely acquitted, but you had still spent years behind bars. This is why Suleiman Isa and his main lieutenants had
gone abroad, for fear of TADA and fake encounters. This Majid Khan was respectful enough, because he was a small inspector, and he knew my connections to the Rakshaks, who could be in power as early as the next elections, the next year. But right now there was a Congress government in the state, and his Parulkar Saab was close to them, and so I was to go in.

‘Come quietly,' Majid Khan said very deferentially. ‘I have ten more men in plain clothes outside, all armed. And two more vans around the corner, two minutes from here. Any trouble and we'll have a war neither of us wants.'

He was saying this because Bunty and two of the boys were standing at the door, facing off with the policemen. From my expression they could see something was wrong. I could hear anxious shouting from outside, and running feet. Bunty and the boys could resist, but I would be dead. Looking at Majid Khan I knew this. He was being careful out of concern for his future, but if it came down to it he was his boss's man, and he would draw his pistol. There were many who would be very happy if he shot me dead: Suleiman Isa, Parulkar and his friends in the police, a Congress administration filled with Isa's allies, a dozen industrialists who were paying us month by month. No, resistance was silly, and in this life, whoever I was married to, jail was my sasural. I would live through it, and with ease, because I was Ganesh Gaitonde. So I calmed Bunty down, and told him to take charge, and be careful. I said a quick goodbye to my wife and son, and went.

The police had a remand order for fourteen days, and they extended and re-extended it six times. For eighty-four days they kept me in the police lock-up in Savara, near Kailashpada. There was one room, ten by ten, a dirty mattress, a matka of unfiltered tap water, a bucket, a stinking hole in the ground for a latrine, and me. Parulkar kept me alone, away from any of my boys who might be passing through the lock-up on the way to jail, away from friends as well as enemies. They took me to court with a hood over my head, manacles on my feet and wrists, only me in a jeep with five riflemen. ‘You're our special guest,' Parulkar told me. ‘Our VIP guest.' The drives to court were the only time I felt the sun, and even then I was afraid because if they were going to encounter me, it would be during these trips. The story would run: Gaitonde's boys tried to rescue him, Gaitonde tried to escape, so we had to shoot him. I had spent years surrounded by my boys, by the comfort of their weapons, and now I learnt all over again what it means to be truly alone. Every day I awoke to the fizzing of the tube-light in the corridor outside my cell, and
expected to die. Death had been close to me for a long time, but now I felt that I was walking, moment by passing moment, on the edge of an enormous chasm, that the difference between the sunlight and the abyss was just one quick nudge from one of Parulkar's men. Every night I was afraid to sleep, because I didn't know if I would wake up.

And every day, they interrogated me. On the days that it was Majid Khan or one of the other inspectors, the interrogation passed quickly, with rounds of tea and me making up stories about dead shooters. They pushed me, they asked quick questions, they tried to catch me out in contradictions and errors. ‘But you said yesterday that Sandeep Aggarwal took the money to Bada Badriya in June, how could he have paid off his debts in April?' They were clever, but not as clever as me, I enjoyed telling them stories. I had a very good memory, I remembered all the connections between the tales I made up, and so I remained consistent, and I frustrated them and I intrigued them. It was better to be in the interrogation room with its windows and the treetops outside and the fresh air than in my stifling grave of a cell. And for all their policemen's curiosity, and their urgent desire to know everything I knew, they never laid a hand on me. They had lives to build, careers to worry about. If my Rakshak friends were to become tomorrow's ministers, and I remembered these small policemen with malice tomorrow, tomorrow itself they might be transferred to Aurangabad. So we were men together, and they brought me good food from the hotel across the road, and paan, and fresh clothes. For my stomach-aches, which had started on my first day in the lock-up, they brought me podhina tablets and jaljira.

But when Parulkar led the interrogations it was a different game altogether. It was always at night. He sat in an armchair, his shoes off, quite relaxed. He had me stand in the middle of the room, directly under the hanging light, and he always had two of his inspectors standing behind me. He asked his questions as if he was talking to a friend about their trip to Lonavla next Saturday, easy and quiet. But then the blows would follow, sudden whipping gusts against my calves that staggered me forward, deep thumps on my back that emptied me of breath. I was driven to my knees time and again, and panting on the floor, I hated him. They lifted me up each time, and he started again. Questions, questions. His face hidden beyond the circle of light, his belly lifted up towards me. I endured. It was the insult of barking cuffs to the back of my head I could not bear, the slaps that stung tears from my eyes, the numbing flares that lit up my eyes from the inside. When Majid Khan was present during one of
Parulkar's sessions, I felt his hate in his punches to the small of my back, all that anger he hid for survival's sake. When he was freed by Parulkar's direct orders, he hit me hard. During the fifth interrogation, that fat bastard Parulkar began to laugh at me. ‘Look at the great Ganesh Gaitonde crying like a little girl,' he said. ‘Look at him bawling.' I wasn't. I wasn't crying. I was wiping tears from my cheeks, but they were from the sharp cracks on my ears, which started the tears instantly. It was automatic, my body reacting like it would to coal-dust in the eyes, and had nothing to do with me weeping. But that maderchod Parulkar was sure. He leaned forward in his chair to laugh at me, and looking at his fat pig's nose, his little teeth, I knew he would kill me. He was Suleiman Isa's man, and he was bound to his political masters, and unlike his subordinates, he was quite willing to hurt me, he would snap my bones, he wouldn't stop at the slaps and the patta, he would beat my feet with lathis and attach electrodes to my golis. He was too far gone down his road with his allies to be afraid of me. Between him and me there could be no accommodation, and he would make me suffer.

So I decided to cry for him. I had to play it exactly right, he was an old, old khiladi, and he had questioned thousands of men, broken each of them. He had come up through the ranks because he was wily as an old crow, he had tip-toed through a lifetime of traps, watching with these squinty steel eyes of his. If I wept too hard, or too easily, he would see it, know it for fraud. So I acted the opposite, that I was ashamed, that I was trying to hold it in, that I was reaching for courage. That I was flinching despite myself from the blows, and splintering under them. I gave him his victory, an easy one but one that he worked for nevertheless. When I finally begged, he was burstingly greasy with pride and satisfaction. ‘Give me something then,' he said. ‘Give me something and I'll send you back to your cell. Tomorrow you can even visit the doctor and get medicine for your stomach. Show him all your aches and pains.' I did. I gave him two shooters, small freelancers you could hire for three thousand rupees. They worked for everyone, for Suleiman Isa, for us, for anyone else, they were buyable. So I sold them to Parulkar for a little peace, for a radio in my cell, and for visits to the doctor. He was very pleased when I told him the three places they slept, and even more pleased when they picked them up that same night and encountered them before the sun was up. They must have had the reporters already tipped off that evening, because the story was in the next day's afternoon papers, complete with photographs of the dead men.

So then he trusted his power over me. The very next afternoon they sent me down to the doctor, a doctor who came to the station and met me in the room next to Parulkar's office. He prodded at my stomach, wrote out prescription slips, told me I had too much tension and left. I handed the slip to the constable who had brought me into the room and had watched over the examination. This was a man named Salve. I talked to Salve. I told him to get my medicine, and that my lawyer would give him the money. And that my lawyer would help him with anything that he needed, that Salve could depend on me. That we could be friends. That friends were a good thing to have in this world, in this kaliyug we lived in. Salve was scared, but he listened. My lawyer paid him for the medicines, and added about ten times more than that as a tip. Here, he told Salve, a gift from Bhai. A man like Salve, with his three children and wife and long and broad family of mother and retired father and widowed sister and her children, a man like that needs money. He must have it. So Salve took my money, and then I had a link to my boys outside. My lawyer had carried messages before this, and brought news, but it was good to have Salve. He was in the lock-up every day, he escorted me from there to here, he brought me food and water and batteries for the radio, and also reports from the company, and questions, and requests. We were wary of using him at first, but as he took more from us, he became ours. By the end of my remand days, between him and my lawyer I felt that I was leading my company again. I was connected, reconnected.

But all these passed messages didn't save me from the four walls of my cell, from the night-time quiet when footsteps on the far stairs walked across the back of my skull and made me twistingly uneasy and unable to sleep. In the afternoons I lay sweating on the stone floor, trying to cool my shoulders, my hips. I had forgotten how to be alone. I had lived for so long with my boys and my wife and my son, so close to them, that in this cell I felt that I was dropping through a void, drifting endlessly in a cloud of shadows. They had put me at the end of a blind turn in the corridor, behind an outer door that shut me off from the other prisoners. I was alone. The radio sputtered and caught, and I positioned its aerial with a thousand fine adjustments, I held it against a part of the wall that gave it greater voice. And then, when I could coax a song from it, I was eaten by nostalgia. To the thin, crackling warbles of sixties songs I relived my own days from a decade ago, from a month ago. And when the songs stopped, I felt questions come alive in my head, like a nest of parasites: what lies in the future? What had gone wrong in the past, to bring me to this? Why was I not more
powerful than Suleiman Isa, more famous? Why was my company only third or fourth in power and prominence? Would my weapons-smuggling bring me more power, more connections? Would I grow bigger? Since I had started working with Bipin Bhonsle and his Sharma-ji, I had felt that I was participating in a very large game, a game so big that despite my recent growth I was dwarfed in it. I had become small again, and this was frightening and thrilling at the same time. In this huge, spinning battle, Bhonsle and Sharma-ji were my allies, and I had made my bonds with them, chosen them as they had chosen me. They were my side, my team. But what was the purpose? Where was the end of the war? Why? Why? This ‘why' ran in my head, round and around, like a rat trapped in an iron box. Why? And in its wake this ‘why' left behind a hole carved by its scuttling claws, an emptiness sharp and hurtful. The only thing that filled this cavity, that healed it until the next morning, was love.

Every week, Subhadra visited the station with my son. She would have come every day, but Parulkar used her visits as leverage. He only gave me these weekly visits after I began feeding him information, and said that he would let me see my wife and son more often if I co-operated more fully. But I wouldn't give him too much, he thought he was crafty, but I was his baap. So we played our game, Parulkar and I, and I waited from Monday to Monday for my family.

I loved my son. His name was Abhijaya, and he made me helpless. I thought I had loved other people before, but now I found that I had either wanted them, or had depended on them, that was all. I had never known what love really was. When they had talked about love in the films, gone on about how true love meant wanting nothing for yourself, desiring only the happiness of the other, I had dismissed all that as poetic babble put about by weak men and women who hadn't the strength to take what they wanted. But now, holding this squirmy little bundle in my arms, I knew it was all true. He was a year old, very confident, and he reached up for my face and rubbed his hands over my stubble and giggled. I felt an irresistible soft gushing force crack open my chest and reach into me, and a low laugh came out of me, a feeling up and down my spine: a man has a bond with his own blood that goes down to the beating core, to the nerve and the bone. I had become a father absently, in passing, but nothing I had known before was like this storm-like current of connection that passed from this tiny brat to me. I would let him do anything to me, and I would do anything for him. With him I had no statesmanlike grandeur to protect, no power to extend.