Sacred Games (82 page)

‘Zoya, is she pretty?' Mary said.

Sartaj shrugged. ‘She's all right. Nothing much.'

Mary reached out to nudge his forearm. ‘You're smarter about women than you pretend. But really, she's beautiful, isn't she?'

‘Arre, I am not just saying that. She's okay, bas. Tall and all that, but just okay. You know she's not even really six feet. Jojo made that up. She's only a little above five ten.'

‘Ooooooh,' Mary said, quite pleased by the detail. ‘Jojo liked doing things like that.'

They looked past each other, and the silence grew long.

‘I should go,' Sartaj said.

‘Okay,' Mary said. ‘I, I liked the drive.'

‘Yes, me also.'

‘Okay, bye.'

‘Bye.'

She took a step up to him. He was quite stopped for a moment, and then he stuck out his hand. She smiled, shook it. I should kiss her on the cheek, Sartaj thought, but by then she had turned and was away from him. He watched her climb her stairs, waved at her and drove to the station laughing at himself. Where was all that smoothness gone, those old Sartaj-the-deadly-Singh moves? Absolutely vanished, leaving him an absolute bhondu. I am not ageing well, he thought. But he was very cheery, and he hummed
mehbooba mehbooba
all the way to work.

 

Anjali Mathur called him at eleven that night, while he was still working at the station. ‘There's no mention of a guru in all our files on Gaitonde,' she said. ‘Was this woman sure about this?'

‘Yes. She mentioned several conversations.'

‘Odd. He must have kept it hidden.'

‘Very hidden. He kept Zoya hidden. He must have kept a lot of things hidden. He was good at it.'

‘Yes. I did a search in our databases for the word “pralay”. I came up with nothing. So then I looked for “qayamat”. I found it three times, all in literature from one outfit. This is a militant outfit called Hizbuddeen. They are very shadowy, we have never captured or killed any of their people. We don't even know where they are based, where they operate. But we've found their literature in raids on other Islamic groups in the Kashmir valley, in Punjab, in the north-east along the Bangladesh border.
This Hizbuddeen has supplied money and arms to these groups, beyond that we don't know anything about them. They first seem to surface just around the time of the Kargil war. Now, their literature specifically promises “Qayamat”, and talks about the signs of the last days. They quote verses from the Qur'an: “Closer and closer to mankind comes their Reckoning: yet they heed not and they turn away.” Now, this is interesting. Mumbai is specifically mentioned, in each of the pamphlets.'

Sartaj could hear her leafing through paper. Through the open door, he could see the end of a bench, an empty hallway and a scrubby garden edged by a wall.

‘Here,' Anjali Mathur said. ‘It says, “A great fire will take the unbelievers, and it will begin in Mumbai.” This line is repeated in the other pamphlets with minor changes. “A fire will begin in Mumbai and sweep across the country.” But always, Mumbai is mentioned.'

Sartaj was outraged. ‘What do these bastards have against Bombay? They don't mention any other cities?'

‘No. They just talk about the nation of India as dar-ul-harb, and about its coming destruction. They insist on destruction. The name of the outfit comes from “hizbul”, which is “army of”, and “deen”, which I think is used here in the sense of the Last Judgement. The word can also mean “religion” or “conduct”, but in this case it refers to the third verse of the first chapter of the Qur'an, I think. So the Hizbuddeen is the “Army of the Final Day”. Anyway, all this would be too little to propose a connection. But I thought the name of this organization sounded familiar. I had been analysing our records of counterfeit money which comes over the border, and I went back and did a cross-check in the databases. Hizbuddeen has been named five times as the source for large sums of counterfeit money. The samples we have from these incidents are exactly the same as the ones from the Kalki Sena, and the ones from Jojo's apartment, and what we found in Gaitonde's bunker.'

Sartaj's head was starting to hurt. What could be the connection between Jojo and rabid extremists promising annihilation? Between Gaitonde and this Muslim militant outfit? Maybe there was no connection at all. He pressed his fingers hard into his forehead, and said, ‘It is all still too vague.'

‘I agree. There is no reason to conclude that this money indicates any connection. We have only possibilities. Nothing yet that holds together. Only more questions. Who is this guru? What was Gaitonde's relationship with him?'

‘I will work on it.'

‘Yes. I will keep looking here.'

So they were to keep on working. Sartaj worked another hour at the station, and then went home. He put his feet on the coffee table and drank his whisky, only one glass today, a light one at that. He was aware that he was still working, thinking about Gaitonde and Jojo and thick chunks of money. This was one of the things Megha had hated, that he was unable ever to stop the job from working inside him. He would drink tea, talk about relatives, go and see a film, and somewhere inside him the fragments of some murder would be fitting themselves together. He had always tried to tell her that none of this was voluntary, that he would stop it if he could. That, somehow, had made it worse for Megha, that it was impulse, or instinct. But instinct had taught him its inescapable lessons, and he had learnt to trust it. Now instinct told him that these pieces somehow made a whole. You knew that sometimes, you had the truth in your mouth but no evidence in your hands. And sometimes you acted on this knowledge, you planted evidence, wrote an FIR leaving out certain facts and putting others in. Justice had sometimes to be manipulated into being properly blind.

In this Gaitonde affair, there would be no justice, no redemption. There was only a hope for some partial explanation of what had happened, and this creeping fear. Sartaj was afraid now, he truly was. Now that he was at rest, the fear came back, amplified by English-movie images of disaster, of entire cities being obliterated by special-effects fire. Work, he told himself, work on it. Do your job. So Sartaj closed his eyes and rested his head on the back of the sofa and held his glass, and let the bits and shards of information fall through his head and body. He couldn't force anything, couldn't compel an answer. If he was easy enough, if he was fearless, if he opened his mind and heart and belly, a shape would form. He just had to be patient.

On the yacht we watched a lot of films. It was a hundred-and-thirty-foot boat (they had to teach me to call it a yacht) with three decks, and enough room for a sizeable separate drawing room. In that room I put the biggest TV we could fit, and a stack of movie players and a receiver. And in that room we watched movies, hundreds of videos and laser discs and DVDs. Not that we didn't work: I woke every morning at six and exercised and did my yoga and my puja and was at the phones by seven-thirty, eating my breakfast as I took my calls. Managing my company from a distance was at first a difficult education – I had to let go, to stop worrying about details, to give responsibility to others and not tell them how jobs should be done. I felt like a god, distant from the world but directing it from above. By ten-thirty or eleven I was usually done with the day's urgent work, and a little later Bunty called from Bombay with the news about collections and the added-up numbers from the day before. At noon I ate a light lunch with the boys, then took a half-hour nap. Depending on where we were, how close to a convenient shore, I sometimes had a girl to wake me up from the nap, Indonesian or Chinese or Thai. But in any case I was up by two, with the day stretching out in front of me.

So we watched movies:
Hum Apke Hain Kaun
and
Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge
and
Sholay
yet again, and
Dil To Pagal Hai
and
Hero No. 1
and
Auzaar
. And also
Mother India
and
Anarkali
and
Sujata
. And a thousand others I had never heard of,
Bahu Begum
and
Anjaam
and
Halaku
. I also liked to watch English movies, not just the bang-bang kind the boys enjoyed, but also more talky ones to improve my English. But the boys grew restless and bored by these, the ganwar bastards, and begged to go back to some bundal maderchod film where they could watch Raveena Tandon thrust and shove her hips like some sort of crazed machine. So we watched a lot of Indian movies, even Punjabi and Tamil ones. Mukund, one of the boys, was Tamil, and he translated
Nayakan
for us, and it was true, the Tamil version with Kamalahasan was a lot better. It was strange to see Bombay in Tamil, through Tamil, but the film had dum. It was true, just like life. We watched Vardarajan's life in com
plete silence, from his beginnings in the slums and his rise up to power and fame. When his son was killed, when that choking cry came from Kamalahasan's throat, we felt that pain, it was ours. We had also lost our loved ones. I had tears on my cheeks. All of us did.

The next day I told Bunty to have flowers sent to Kamalahasan and Mani Ratnam, no name on the bouquets, just a card, ‘From a fan of
Nayakan'
. And that night when Jojo called I told her about how much we had all liked the film.

She burst out laughing. ‘So there was a whole bunch of you tough bhais sitting around crying?'

‘Kutti, it was a great performance. And a great story.'

‘That last scene of the nayakan's funeral, I bet you cried all the way through that.'

‘There were thousands and thousands of people at his funeral. Of course I cried. It was very touching.'

Off she went again. Finally she got hold of herself. ‘Oof, you men are such sentimentalists. Don't worry, there will be thousands at your funeral.'

‘Randi, you don't worry about my funeral. Whenever and however it happens, Parmatma has written it already. It has already happened, but we are fooled by the illusion of time. He has his plan. We are just actors in his play.'

‘Vah. Actors in his play.'

‘Yes. We dance along the lines of his leela. Birth, life, death, all has a shape, even if we can't see it.'

‘What a philosopher you are today, Ganesh Gaitonde. You have changed, you go on and on about destiny and karma and bhenchod gandugiri like that. What has happened to you?'

‘Nothing, except that I have started to understand a little of the truth of the universe.' Nobody but Bunty knew of my conversations with Guru-ji. I had to keep all these segments of my world apart, Jojo from Guru-ji, Guru-ji from Mr Kumar, and some of myself from everything.

‘Chutiya, you've become one of those holy Hindus.' And she made a spitting sound, as if she was expelling something foul.

‘Jojo, you should think about these questions also. Go to your church, maybe you will find some peace there.'

‘Gaitonde, now you are turning into my mother. What mixed-up times we live in.'

‘Exactly. This is why the spiritual search…'

‘Arre, maderchod, you want me to go to the church so some smelly priest can pry into my head and tell me I am a bad woman and give me punishments? And what will his god, or your god, give me? Peace? I don't want peace. I want money, I want a flat, I want my business to grow. Peace! Why don't you give some peace to those girls you thoko every afternoon, my spiritual master?'

And she tumbled about her bed, laughing. I was smiling a little too. Then she stopped abruptly. ‘Do you give them spiritual sermons also?'

‘Arre, no.'

‘Tell me the truth, Gaitonde.'

‘Saali, how will I give them lectures if they don't speak Hindi?'

‘And they don't understand your toota-phoota English.'

‘My English is getting better every day.'

‘Stay on the subject, Gaitonde. Have you tried talking to them about the path to, what did you call it, mokha?'

‘Moksha.'

‘Have you?'

‘No.'

‘Come on, Gaitonde. Tell the truth. You always have to me, even if you lie to everyone else.'

I was quiet. This was true enough, that I found myself telling her things about myself, my fears and my worries, that I revealed to nobody else.

‘Gaitonde.'

‘All right. Only once.'

‘Tomorrow's
Mid-Day
headline: “International Don Ganesh Gaitonde Becomes the Great Teacher of Whores!”' She became incapable of coherent speech for a good five minutes. Then finally she came back on the line. ‘See, I told you, something has happened to you.'

‘It was only because…Listen, there was this Thai girl, she had a little statue of Buddha in her purse. So I tried to talk to her about nirvana. She understood the word nirvana, but nothing else.'

She had laughed herself almost out already, so this time she just chortled for a minute. Then she said, ‘I know you better than anyone in the world. Admit it.'

‘Admitted, yaar.' I was smiling now. When she was in a good mood, she made me feel light and happy like no one else. ‘So if you know me this well, come and know me a bit better. Come and take a holiday on the yacht.'

‘Gaitonde, don't start that again. The only reason you let me know you is because I don't let you near me.'

‘Jojo, I won't touch you. I give you my promise. Kasam.'

‘Touching is not the point, Gaitonde. You know that if we meet, the thought of touching will be there between us. And okay, not just from you but from me also. And that will ruin the whole yaari. I'm telling you.'

‘Men and women can't have thoughts of touching and still be friends?'

‘Maybe some men and women, on some other continent. But not you and me.'

‘Haramzadi, it's not true.'

‘It is and you know it.' She was smiling now, I could tell. ‘It is written by your Parmatma. It's part of his plan.'

‘You're my daily headache. I don't know why I put up with you.' But I was grinning now, and she could tell too.

‘And I give you more good thokoing than any girlfriend ever could.'

‘True.' Every month or two, she sent girls out from Bombay. The girls were flown out to Singapore or Jakarta on a performing artiste's visa, as part of some song-and-dance troupe. Most of them were really dancers, of a sort. After the shows were over, they were bussed out to wherever the yacht happened to be. There were some for the boys, and the best were reserved for me. Jojo knew my tastes by now. ‘That's true. You're like a girlfriend who sends a new version every month,' I said. ‘You're the most generous chaavi ever.'

‘I am the most perfect chaavi in the history of man, Gaitonde. And after this special treat I'm going to send you next, you will remember me in your prayers to your Parmatma every morning.'

‘What treat?'

‘First say thank you.'

‘For what?'

‘You should say thank you to me every day for all I've done for you. But today say it specially, for what I am about to do for you.'

‘A girl?'

‘Not just a girl. This one is…This one is an amazement, Gaitonde.'

‘So tell.'

‘First of all, she's a virgin.'

‘Yes, yes, like every other randi in Bombay.'

‘Seriously. You have a doctor check her if you want. She's from a very orthodox family in Lucknow.'

‘If she's that orthodox, what is she doing with someone like you?'

‘Arre, baba, she wants to be an actress.'

‘Of course.'

‘Of course. She's six feet tall, Gaitonde.'

‘You want to send me the Qutub Minar, saali.'

‘You're a big bhai, you need a tall woman. And have you seen all those foreign models? Six feet is nothing.'

‘She's beautiful like a model?'

‘She will be.'

‘Maderchod, she's ugly right now? And for this you want me to say “Thank you, thank you”?'

‘Gaitonde, most men are stupid. But you don't have to be. Listen to me. Think about it. Here is this girl from a completely ordinary family in Lucknow. The father owns some little family restaurant, there is a mother who is a mother. A grandmother who lives with them. There are brothers, both older and younger. The parents managed to send all the children to English-medium schools.'

‘Haan, so?'

‘Imagine this girl, what her world is like in Lucknow. She goes to an all-girls school, she comes back to mother and grandmother. She doesn't talk to any boys, even the ones who make fun of her on the road for being five foot eight in the sixth. But this is one very intelligent girl. She reads, she watches. Somehow she makes up her mind that all this is not enough for her. Lucknow and marriage at eighteen is not what she wants.'

‘Whole of India is full of idiots like her. Bad influence of films and television.' That made Jojo laugh, and for a few seconds she left off from her bhashan and laughed with me.

‘Be quiet, Gaitonde. So, she decides this. She makes up her mind. At eighteen. Somehow she leaves. Somehow she makes her way into the world and shows up at my doorstep. Do you know what that takes?'

‘Yes, she's a heroine. I should put her in charge of the boys in Bombay.'

‘Gaitonde, you are a man after all. A man cannot understand what courage it takes to go against everything, to be a woman and to stand up and ask for just this much, that you can live out what you dream. All your boys put together don't have one-thousandth of that courage.'

‘Okay, so she's the Rani of Jhansi. Then?'

‘Then understand this. This girl wants everything. And she has the strength and courage to get it. She's not bad-looking right now, but because she wants it she will be beautiful. She wants to be a model and an actress, and she will. I'm telling you. I failed, I couldn't do it, but she will.'

‘How are you so sure?'

‘I'm sure because she reminds me of you.'

‘Haramzadi, a woman reminds you of me?'

‘Gaitonde, it's a compliment. You'll see what I mean. She reminds me of you because she's a little frightening.'

‘I thought you weren't scared of anything. Including me.'

‘Arre, I'm not scared of you. You know that, chutiya. What I mean is that she's so big and serious and one-pointed that she seems like one of those rakshasa women on those
Ramayana
serials. You're the only one who can handle her. I'm giving you a compliment.'

‘You mean I'm the only one who can afford to pay for this giant virgin. How much?'

‘A lot.'

‘Of course a lot. Tell me the price.'

‘But she doesn't want that much cash, actually.'

‘Then?'

‘It took me a while to understand, when she first talked to me. She doesn't want just a man. She wants an investor.'

‘An investor in what?'

‘In her. In her future.'

In that moment I felt the first warm stirrings of genuine interest in this creature of Jojo's. Maybe she really was as sharp as Jojo said. ‘She said that?'

‘Yes, she did. She understands this, Gaitonde, that a career in this modelling-acting game can't come out of nowhere. If you have rich parents, maybe they can pay for clothes and acting classes and dance classes and a gym and a mobile phone and a flat in Andheri and a car. If you're just a girl from Lucknow, with no fluid cash, you'll be just one more among thousands going from producer to producer by auto-rickshaw, and every photographer who agrees to take a picture for your portfolio will want to introduce you to his bed upstairs in the loft. And what you'll get out of all this in the end is a lot of bambooing and maybe a dance or two in videos. Bas. If you want to be a star, first you've got to have the ability to say “No,” then you need money to sustain yourself and present yourself in a way that gets respect out of these bhenchod industry men. This is why all these children-of-stars dominate the industry, because they have not just connections but also resources.'

‘So she needs resources to produce profits. Good that she understands.'

‘Yes. But more resources than these also, Gaitonde. She wants to do a lot of work on herself. It's expensive.'

‘Work?'

‘Plastic surgery. She showed me her plan. She's researched it. She has a little chart of the body and she's got it all marked on that. With prices next to each part. And she knows exactly which doctor, what the procedures are. She's got photographs of actresses and models and rich women, Gaitonde, and she knows what each one has had done. You won't believe the kinds of operation all these famous people have had, Gaitonde, and how much this girl knows. This nose is good, she says, but that one's better. She's an expert. She has it all in a file marked “Body”.'