Sacred Games

by Vikram Chandra

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Katekar said. He hummed the tune, marking time with a forefinger across the steering wheel. ‘Bas itna sa khwab hai…shaan se rahoon sada… Mmmmm, mmmmm, then?’

  ‘Yes, yes. Bas itna sa khwab hai…Haseenayein bhi dil hon khotin, dil ka ye kamal khile…’

  And they sang together: ‘Sone ka mahal mile, barasne lagein heere moti…Bas itna sa khwaab hai.’

  Sartaj stretched, and said, ‘This Shamsul Shah, yes, he had a big khwab.’

  Katekar snorted and said, ‘Correct, saab, but the big khwab took his gaand finally.’

  They both burst out laughing. In the auto-rickshaw to Sartaj’s right, two women turned their startled faces away and leaned back under the cover of the canopy. This made Sartaj laugh even louder. He knew it was frightening to other people, this furious, rasping mirth coming from policemen in a Gypsy, but that made it all even funnier. Megha used to say, ‘You tell these horrible police stories and then you cackle like some bhoot, it’s very scary.’ He had tried, for her sake, to stop, but had never been completely able to. It felt good now, anyway, to be rolling across the city with Katekar, laughing wildly, and there was no need to restrain himself, and so he laughed some more.

  They were quiet when they pulled up into the curve of Juhu Chowpatty, through the compacted clog of rush-hour traffic. Sartaj walked around the front of the Gypsy, feeling a faint brush of air from the ocean. The chaat stands were neon-lit already, and the customers were streaming in from the road. ‘Tell the boys I said Salaam,’ Sartaj said.

  Katekar grinned. ‘Yes, saab.’ He put his hand on his chest for a moment, and then walked towards the beach.

  Sartaj watched him go, the confident rolling walk, the heavy-shouldered sway, the clipped hair. An experienced eye would pick him out for a policeman in a moment, but he had a talent for shadowing, and they had made some good arrests together. As he rode through Ville Parle, Sartaj hummed Man ja ay khuda, itni si hai dua, but he couldn’t remember the end of the song. He knew the tune would spin in his head all day, and the last antra would come to him very late, somewhere between night and sleep. Man ja ay khuda, he sang.

  Katekar found the boys and Shalini waiting, as appointed, near the stall called Great International Chaat House. He rubbed Mohit’s head, poked him gently in the stomach. Mohit gurgled out a titter that made Rohit and Shalini smile.

  ‘They’re late again?’ Katekar said.

  Shalini twisted her mouth to the side. Katekar knew that look: what could not be changed had to be endured. And Bharti and her husband were always late.

  ‘Let’s go and sit,’ Rohit said. ‘They know where we sit.’

  Katekar looked up and down the row of stalls, and across the road. There were two buses staggered behind each other, and it was hard to see. ‘Rohit, go and see, maybe they’re trying to cross.’

  Rohit didn’t like it, but he went, flapping his chappals angrily on the concrete. He had been stretched thin by his recent growth, but Katekar was certain that he would fill out once he hit his twenties, once he was married and settled. All the men in the family had attained an impressive thickness, shoulders and arms capable of intimidation, a respectable stomach. Rohit turned back, shaking his head.

  ‘Papa, I want sev-puri,’ Mohit said, tugging at Katekar’s shirt.

  ‘Let’s go and sit,’ Shalini said. ‘They can find us.’

  Rohit hadn’t really gone far enough, but Katekar didn’t need any more urging from Shalini. Bharti was her sister, and if Shalini thought they could go and sit, Katekar would sit.

  They found two mats, as far right as possible, and arranged themselves. Katekar took off his shoes, sat cross-legged, sighed. The sun was still high enough to heat his knees, but there were the beginnings of a breeze against his chest. He opened his shirt, and mopped at the back of his neck with his handkerchief, and listened to Shalini and Rohit and Mohit place their orders with the boy who had shown them to their places. Katekar didn’t want to eat yet. He was savouring the feeling of being at rest, of not having to shift from foot to foot like the waiter, who now sped off to his stall.

  The boy hurried back, expertly balancing the food as he manoeuvred around and through the walkers. ‘Eh, tambi,’ Katekar said, ‘get me narial-pani.’

  ‘Yes, seth,’ the boy said, and he was away.

  ‘Narial-pani?’ Shalini said, looking arch.

  He had told her the previous month about an article he had read in an afternoon paper which asserted that coconuts were full of harmful fat. She had waved her hand at him and said that she didn’t believe all these new-fangled things he read in papers, who had ever got ill from eating coconuts or drinking narial-pani? But she never forgot anything, and she wasn’t going to let him get away with his backsliding from science. He tilted his head to one side, and smiled. ‘Only today.’

  She smiled back, and let him be. So Katekar sat and drank his narial-pani, and watched Mohit devote himself to his sev-puri, and Rohit watch the passing girls. A ship balanced on the gleaming horizon. Katekar watched it, and he knew it was moving but could not see it move.

  ‘Dada!’

  Katekar turned, and there was Vishnu Ghodke, waving frantically. He made his way over, followed by Bharti and the children. There was the usual flurry of greetings, and a lot of shifting about, and then the family was finally established on two mats. Shalini had Bharti close to her, and Vishnu was near Katekar. The children were hemmed in between Bharti and Vishnu. The two girls were typically beribboned and fancy-frocked, but the boy, who had been born last after much prayer and ritual, was dressed as if he were going to a wedding. He had on a little blue bow-tie, and a big red plastic wristwatch which he was winding and rewinding. Mohit and Rohit leaned over to push him about, and Katekar felt a surge of affection for the two, for wanting to mess up the prissy little brat’s careful coif. He squeezed the cheeks of his two nieces as Shalini and Bharti launched instantly into an animated conversation about some ongoing family intrigue involving relatives of relatives. Katekar liked his older niece best, the girl who had quietly watched the boy become the centre of her parents’ world with an increasing understanding and resignation.

  ‘You’ve grown taller, Sudha,’ he said. ‘Already, so soon.’

  ‘She eats like a horse,’ said her father, with a guffaw and a hand on her head.

  Katekar saw the angry squeeze of Sudha’s jaw as she ducked away to whisper something in her sister’s ear. Vishnu had a voice that didn’t need any loudspeakers. Katekar said, ‘She wants to grow up to be tall, like me. Sudha, you come here and sit next to me. I’m also very hungry. Arre, tambi.’

  So Sudha sat next to Katekar, and they went over the menu together, and from that much-stained paper, chose a feast of bhelpuri, papri chaat and Sudha’s favourite, pav-bhaji. They ate together, and now Katekar relished the break of sour into sweet on his tongue. Food was the greatest and most reliable of pleasures, and to sit on Chowpatty and eat it with wife and family, with the sea heaving gently, was as close to contentment as Katekar had ever been. So he sat and listened to Bharti go on. She was wearing a shiny green sari. A new one, Katekar thought. She had been a stocky little girl when he had first seen her, too shy to speak to him. A very few years later, Vishnu had given her a heavier mangalsutra than Katekar could remember from any wedding in the family, and she had never stopped talking since. She was wearing the mangalsutra now, along with a gold chain that went around her neck twice.

  ‘That Bipin Bhonsle is such a haraamkhor,’ she said. ‘Before elections he told us that he would get a new extra water pipe to the colony. Now there is no new water pipe, but even the old one gets leaks every second week. Three children and no water, it is impossible.’

  ‘Vote him out in the next election,’ Katekar said.

  ‘That is impossible, Dada,’ Vishnu said. ‘He has too many resources, too many connections. And the other parties have all gadhav candidates in that constituency. None of them can win. Putting a vote in for someone else is a waste o
f a vote.’

  ‘Then find a good candidate.’

  ‘Arre, Dada, who will stand against that Bhonsle? And where does one find good candidates nowadays? You need someone who is tough, who can give a jhakaas speech, who is attractive to the people. That type doesn’t exist any more. You need one giant, all you get nowadays are crowds of small men.’

  Shalini leaned to the side and brushed her hands off, then neatened her sari over her knees. ‘You’re looking everywhere but the right place,’ she said.

  Vishnu was very surprised. ‘You know someone?’

  Shalini pointed with both hands at Bharti. ‘Here, here.’

  ‘What?’ Vishnu said.

  Katekar pitched forward and back, shaken by laughter. It came more from the dismay on Vishnu’s face, from his abject horror at his wife somehow becoming a giantess, than from Shalini’s joke, but the children took it up and instantly they were all guffawing.

  ‘See,’ Shalini said, ‘my sister Bharti is brave, she can impress anyone with her style, and nobody gives a speech like her. You should make her a mantri.’

  Vishnu had understood by now that this was all humour, and he was grinning tightly, stretching his lip over his lower teeth. ‘Yes, yes, Taai, she would make a good chief minister actually. She will keep everyone in control.’

  Bharti had both hands in front of her mouth. ‘Arre, devaa, I don’t want any such thing. Taai, what are you saying? I have my hands full with these children, I don’t want to sit on top of fifty thousand people.’

  Katekar wanted to say something about her weight crushing fifty thousand, but then thought better of it and contented himself with a snort at the image of Vishnu’s face compressed by her ample haunches. Vishnu looked uncertain, and then laughed along with him.

  After Katekar finished eating, he and Vishnu walked along the water. Katekar had his pants rolled up, and he had left his shoes behind with Shalini. He liked to walk on the wet sand where it had been smoothed by the sea, feel it under his soles. Vishnu was walking a good five feet away, protecting his sandals. He hopped away now to save himself from an oncoming surge. ‘Dada,’ he said, ‘one of these times you must let me pay. Otherwise we will feel embarrassed to come again.’

  ‘Vishnu, don’t start that whole argument again. I am elder, so I pay.’ A bitter wash of irritation gushed up from Katekar’s stomach. It was stupid, this pride of his that refused to eat meals paid for by Vishnu, but he could not stomach Vishnu’s smugness, his satisfaction at his own success.

  ‘Yes, yes, Dada,’ Vishnu said, raising both hands. ‘Sorry. You are doing well nowadays?’

  ‘I am getting along,’ Katekar said. Vishnu had of course noticed the thousand-rupee note that Katekar had used to pay the waiter. He never missed anything, the watchful Vishnu.

  Vishnu stepped thoughtfully over a ragged branch from a palm tree. ‘Dada, at this age, you should be doing much better.’

  ‘At what age?’

  ‘Your sons are growing up. They will need education, good clothes, everything.’

  ‘And you think I can’t give them all that?’

  ‘Dada, you are getting angry again. I will stop talking.’

  ‘No, say what you mean.’

  ‘I’m saying only a little thing, Dada – this chutiya sardar inspector of yours will never make a decent income.’

  ‘I have what I need, Vishnu.’

  Vishnu lowered his head and became very meek. ‘All right, Dada. But I don’t understand why you stay with him. There are other postings you could have very easily.’

  Katekar didn’t answer. He turned and went back to the families. But later that night, lying in bed with Shalini next to him, he thought about Sartaj Singh. They had worked together for many long years. They were not friends exactly, they did not visit each other or go on vacations together. But they knew each other’s families and they knew each other. Katekar could tell what Sartaj Singh was feeling from moment to moment, he could read his melancholy and his delight. He trusted the sardar’s instincts. They had done some good detection, and when they had failed, Katekar always had the knowledge that they had tried hard. Yes, there wasn’t as much money as could be made elsewhere, but there was job satisfaction. That was something that Vishnu would never understand. People like him wouldn’t believe that a man could want to be a policeman for reasons other than money. The money was welcome, of course, but there was also the desire to serve the public. Yes, really, Sadrakshanaaya Khalanighranaaya. Katekar knew he could never confess this urge to anyone, much less Vishnu, because fancy talk of protecting the good and destroying evil and seva and service would elicit only laughter. Even among colleagues, this was never to be spoken about. But it was there, however buried it may be under grimy layers of cynicism. Katekar had seen it occasionally in Sartaj Singh, this senseless, embarrassing idealism. Of course neither of them would ever so much as hint at the other’s romanticism, but perhaps this was why their partnership was so enduring. Only once, when they had rescued a trembling ten-year old girl from a shed in Vikhroli, from her kidnappers, Sartaj Singh had scratched at his beard and muttered, ‘Today we did good work.’ That had been enough.

  It was still enough. Katekar sighed, turned his head and stretched his neck, and went to sleep.

  Sartaj saw the crowd first, a thick clutch of people pressed up to the front of a double-height glass window. The building was a new commercial complex, very beautiful with its expanses of grey stone and accents of polished steel. Sartaj had gone to the new office of his bank, to deposit some dividend cheques into his mother’s account, and had come out dazzled by the sweep of the counters and the unprecedented cheer of the bank clerks. Now he peered over the collection of dark heads and saw a flash of deep red.

  ‘Saab, come inside and see.’ A blue-suited security guard was beckoning to Sartaj from the left.

  ‘Ganga,’ Sartaj said, and went through the door Ganga was guarding. Sartaj knew Ganga from the old bank building, where he had kept watch over a jewellery store with a long-barrelled shotgun and a baleful stare. ‘Did your seth move here as well?’

  ‘No, saab, I am working for a new company now,’ Ganga said, pointing to his braided shoulder, where a blue-and-white patch announced his new allegiance: Eagle Security Systems.

  ‘Better company?’

  ‘Better pay, saab.’ There were a lot of new security companies, and demand for ex-servicemen like Ganga was high. He shut the door behind Sartaj, and turned towards the window. ‘Tibetan sadhus, saab,’ he said, with proprietary pride.

  There were five of them, five self-contained, serene men with very short haircuts and flowing scarlet robes. They were working around a large wooden platform, on which there was the colourful outline of a circle within a square within a circle.

  ‘What are they doing?’

  ‘They are making a mandala, saab. There were reports about it on yesterday’s TV, you didn’t see?’

  Sartaj hadn’t seen, but now he could see the apertures let into each side of the square, and the deep green that one of the sadhus was using to fill in the area just inside the innermost circle. Another sadhu was filling in the small figure of what looked like a goddess against the green background. ‘What are they using, powder?’

  ‘No, saab, sand, coloured sand.’

  It was restful to watch the fall of the sand from the sadhus’ hands, their sure and graceful movements. After a while, the general structure of the mandala emerged for Sartaj in dim white outline. Inside the final circle there were going to be several independent regions, ovals, each with its own scene of figures, human and animal and godly. Between these ovals, at the very centre of the entire wheel, there was a shape, Sartaj couldn’t make out what it was. Outside these ovals there was the inner wall of the square, and outside the square there was another wheel, and more figures, and then a rim with its own patterns, all of it hypnotically complex and somehow pleasing. Sartaj was content to be lost in it.

  ‘When they are finished, saab, they wipe
it all up.’

  ‘After all this work?’ Sartaj said. ‘Why?’

  Ganga shrugged. ‘I suppose it’s like our women’s rangoli. If it’s made of sand, it won’t last long anyway.’

  Still, Sartaj thought, it was cruel to create this entire whirling world, and then destroy it abruptly. But the sadhus looked quite happy. One of them, an older man with greying hair, caught Sartaj’s eye and smiled. Sartaj didn’t quite know what to do, so he bowed his head, touched his hand to his chest and smiled back. He watched them work for a few more minutes, and then walked away.

  ‘Come back tomorrow evening,’ Ganga called. ‘The mandala will be finished by then.’

  Sartaj spent the day in the courts, waiting to give evidence in an old murder case. He had missed the last two dates, and the defence counsel had made a mighty noise, but today the judge himself was late, so the various parties to the case waited quietly. Sartaj read about the Tibetans in Afternoon, which described them as ‘monks’ and said they were making their mandala for the peace of the world. The judge finally arrived after lunch, and Sartaj gave evidence, and went back to the station. Birendra Prasad and his two sons were waiting under the portico.