Sacred Games

by Vikram Chandra

  His best friend, David, got sloppy drunk one night, grabbed Talpade’s hand and said, ‘Bastard, come, touch that thing between her legs. Then you’ll know what she is.’

  Talpade said, ‘I know she’s not a woman.’

  ‘So then?’

  ‘I like looking at her.’

  ‘Tell me why.’

  ‘It just feels good.’

  And that’s all he would say. David cursed Talpade for subjecting himself to open ridicule, for spending money and getting nothing, for plain stupidity. Talpade smiled and went back to watching Kukoo.

  Two months later, Kukoo called David. She told him that Talpade was now weeping as he watched her. He had been doing this for the last three nights, watching her for hours as usual, and then, very late, crying without a sound or any indication that he was unhappy. ‘Now he has finally gone mad,’ Kukoo said. She wanted the friend to get Talpade away from her. He was depressing her with his big watery eyes, and offending the other customers, who came to have fun, not to mourn.

  This time, David asked gently, ‘Why?’ And Talpade said, ‘She reminds me of my childhood.’

  They took him out of the bar, took him home, put him to sleep. The family brought in doctors, kept a careful watch over Talpade, comforted him and made him take his prescribed rest. He went back to work two Mondays later, and that same night he was at the Golden Palace, where Kukoo was dancing now. This time, when he began his usual tamasha, she had the bouncers take him out, followed them on to the road and screamed at Talpade, ‘Don’t follow me.’ Once she had been afraid of him, but now she couldn’t help herself. ‘Bastard, making drama out of nothing. I don’t want to see your face again.’

  Talpade obeyed her. He never tried to see her again. He went about his life, but he was a listless man, emptied of all his ferocious force and energy. He died four months later, peacefully passing in his sleep.

  Sartaj sighed. That was the end of the story. Like all the other police stories Katekar liked to tell, this one stopped suddenly and remained enigmatic, refusing to give up a moral or even a purpose. Sartaj had heard it before, from other people, and in its details he believed it was true. No doubt it had been embellished and changed in the telling and in the passing along.

  ‘This is them,’ Sartaj said. There were three figures throwing shadows across the pavement now, far up, too far to really make out, but Sartaj knew they were male, and that they were murderers. He felt it in his nostrils, in his teeth. He forced back the upper half of his body, which had risen in anticipation, back into the semblance of sleep. He waited.

  ‘What are their names?’ Sartaj whispered.

  ‘Bazil Chaudhary, Faraj Ali and Reyaz Bhai.’

  In the distance, there was a Fiat’s particular whine as it turned a corner, and very faint, a flat electronic buzz from a light, and a metallic clinking down the tracks, all the silence of the city. The three men walked past Kamble’s position, and then past the lit window. Katekar breathed out. And then the three stopped, turned and went back. One reached up, rattled the bottom of the second-floor door. ‘Okay,’ Sartaj said. Katekar slid out from under the cart, went right. Sartaj went left.

  ‘Police,’ Sartaj shouted. ‘Put your hands up. Don’t move.’ Kamble’s people were moving at the edges of Sartaj’s attention, somewhere to his left. The three apradhis were twisted together, frozen in a clutching cartoon tangle, and then they broke, right and left. One ran up the road, and Sartaj let him go out of vision, out of sight. He was concentrating on the middle one, who had run forward, then back. He was skittering back and forth, holding a sharp, moving glint. ‘Let it go, maderchod. Let it go. Hands up or I’ll take your head off.’ Something clattered on the road, hands went up and Sartaj risked a glance to his right. Katekar was aiming down a narrow gap between the shacks, a crevice that led to the fence.

  ‘Out, bhenchod,’ Katekar said. ‘Throw it out.’

  A square blade spun out into the light. A chopper, Sartaj thought. The stupid bastards are still carrying the choppers. He still had the high pulse of victory in his throat when a dark figure exploded from the shadowed cleft and collided with Katekar. Sartaj heard a snicking zip and then Katekar was sitting down and the apradhi was running. Sartaj took two steps back, steadied his arm, found the light polished smoothness of his sights, front and back, and then the kinescoped, flashing figure of the apradhi and he fired, two three four times. The apradhi slid into the ground. The flash subsided slowly from Sartaj’s eyes. And Katekar was still sitting.

  Sartaj knelt beside him. Dark fluid gouted from the nape of Katekar’s neck in steady beats.

  ‘Artery,’ Kamble said from somewhere above Sartaj’s head.

  ‘Gypsy,’ Sartaj shouted. ‘Get the Gypsy.’ He fumbled in his pocket, put his handkerchief on Katekar and the blood welled smoothly through Sartaj’s fingers, swelled and billowed over his wrist.

  ‘Here,’ Katekar said calmly. ‘Here.’

  Three of them lifted Katekar into the vehicle. Sartaj struggled with his legs, and Kamble was whispering in his ears, so close that Sartaj felt his lips on his beard. ‘All three apradhis died in the encounter. Yes?’

  Sartaj heard the small sounds through the roaring of his own panic. He shook his head and ran around the car and pulled himself into the seat.

  Kamble slammed the far door. The light fell on his face from above, dividing it into triangles of black and gold. ‘All three,’ he said. ‘All three finished.’

  There was no time to talk. Then they were careening past the blurring fence, and Sartaj was trying to hold Katekar steady and had a hand on the wound. Now the sense of what Kamble had said came to Sartaj. The jeep took a yawing left, and he heard the shots, mere pops, a rapid series of them.

  At the Jivnani Nursing Home, at two forty-six a.m., Ganpatrao Popat Katekar was declared dead on arrival.

  Sartaj felt old. From the paperwork he had learnt, remembered again, that Katekar was five years older than him. But he had always thought of Katekar as younger, young. Katekar had a complaint for every hour of the day, he had antic Marathi songs, he had obscure scientific facts, he had endless stories about the short lives of hard men. He took a paunchy pleasure in eating the aged-and-cured wickedness of the city, its piquant scandals, its bitter breakdowns, its ferociously musty unfairness, he made a meal of its resplendent and rotting flesh. Now, Sartaj had to write in a box on a form: ‘Cause of death’. He shaped the letters carefully, convinced somehow that good writing on a departmental form was a kind of respect for the departed. He inked in, slowly, all the way to a full stop, and his hands started to shake. It was a vibration that started in the elbows, a pain drawn from the bone that went straight to his palms. Sartaj put his hands under the table, on his thighs, and waited for the shaking to pass. He clenched his fists, relaxed them. The shaking stopped, then came again. Sartaj looked about. Two constables sat just outside the door, he could see their shoes. The inspector on duty, Apte, was in the office across the hall to the left. He had left Sartaj alone out of concern, sympathy, given him his privacy. Sartaj breathed in, edged his chair back. The hands lay on the dirty white cotton, trembling. That was the word: tremble. Not twitch, not shake, but a small quivering that came from within to the skin. How melodramatic, Sartaj thought. He thought the word in English. Melodramatic. He remembered it. He made an effort and stopped the trembling. With a delicate, firm grip, he turned the form over. He picked up the pen again and poised the nib and then had to put it down. What strange things are hands. A belly cushioned by bulbous fleshy pads, fine fur patterning the back. Sartaj bent a finger back against the wood of the desk. If he leaned in with the weight of the shoulder, he knew the finger would break. The pain stood sharp against the humming haze of Sartaj’s confusion, like a blue light in fog. Sartaj knew the sound a breaking finger makes. He had had Katekar do it once, break an apradhi’s finger, a kidnapper’s, the man had come to collect the money for a child, a businessman’s daughter taken from her nursery school. The finger had bee
n the kidnapper’s little one, on his right hand. They had got the girl back, from a hotel in Bhandup. The sound of a finger breaking is not very large, but it is dry, sharper than you expect. It is a quick, creaky sound, a small firecracker bursting. Katekar had done it. Sartaj had made him do it, he had done it for the girl. Katekar had heavy hands. Sartaj remembered them and took the pressure off his own finger and stood up. This was self-indulgence, all of this, the hands, the memories, the form. He was avoiding what he knew he had to do next, what he had put off until morning: the visit to Katekar’s family. He had said to Apte, let them sleep. Why wake them up now, in the middle of the night?

  But light was inevitable. It was time to put his uniform back on.

  Katekar’s wife knew as soon as she opened the door. Sartaj saw this in her face. He had rattled softly at the hasp high up on the door, she had opened it still sticky-eyed and stumbling, and the sentence that Sartaj had prepared – ‘Bhabhi, please forgive me’ – vanished into the sickening knowledge of his own responsibility. She closed the door behind her, and folded her arms across the scalloped white lacy trim on the loose gown she wore. It had a rose pattern, the gown, complete with thorns on the green stalks. Sartaj had only seen her in slightly glittery saris, on very formal occasions. Maybe three, four times in as many years. She shut her eyes for a long moment, then opened them. Suddenly, she had changed. She set her bony face forward, like a prow, and reached out and touched his forearm. He realized then that he had been trembling again.

  ‘What happened?’ she said.

  They brought the body home at two the next day. They laid Katekar on his bed, and took off the sheet in which he had been wrapped after the post-mortem. Then they sat him on a chair, and bathed him. The wound, low on his neck to the left, had been stitched shut. It looked too small to kill a man with a respectable belly, with heavy shoulders. The long post-mortem cut had been closed with thick black thread. Katekar’s skin now had the colour and texture of cardboard that had dried fast after a soaking in monsoon rain, and Sartaj tried not to look at him. Sartaj pressed himself into a corner and averted his eyes from the men and women pushing in through the door, and tried to read the labels on the stacked cassettes next to the player, across the room. He listened to Katekar’s wife speak to a relative about how many bottles of kerosene were needed, how many cow-dung patties, how much wood. Now they were putting new clothes on Katekar, his heavy steel watch on his wrist. His wife knelt and slid his chappals on to his feet. She had to struggle to get them on, she held Katekar’s heel and pushed and then gently moved his toes apart to get one through the leather hoop. She stroked gulal on to his forehead, dabbed on a red tikka. She tilted her head back, was concentrated, serious. Another woman brought her a steel thali, a match sizzled and made a flaring arc in the air and Sartaj smelt incense, burning oil. She moved the thali in slow circles around Katekar’s shoulders, his head. She was weeping.

  They walked to the shamshan ghat. A man, another constable, carried a matka full of water. Sartaj could hear the rhythmic gulp of the water as he walked. The thali full of flowers and gulal was carried by another constable, close behind. From the thali, the constable threw grain and gulal as they walked. They entered the shamshan through a tall black metal gate. Standing under the towering open-sided shed, with its corrugated tin roof, Sartaj could hear the traffic over the high walls. He could hear voices, schoolchildren shouting, a vegetable-wallah’s high cries. At the top of the wall, through drooping branches, he could see signs on the other side of the road, a tall commercial building. Katekar was laid on to the wood. A man stepped forward, this one Sartaj recognized, Potdukhe, a senior constable who had retired the year before. Potdukhe had a blade in his hand, a razor blade. He held Katekar’s white sleeve with one hand, and with a swift motion cut the cloth from shoulder to wrist. Sartaj hunched his shoulders: the hissing pass of the blade came to him over all the sounds of the street. He swallowed and held himself still. Potdukhe slit the other sleeve, then opened the buttons on Katekar’s pants: there must be no restrictions on the soul.

  There was the distant mechanical growl of vehicles stopping, and a moment later Parulkar came into the shamshan ghat. He walked straight over to Katekar, stood for a moment over him, and then stepped back. He stood next to Sartaj, and put a hand on his wrist and squeezed. Then they waited.

  The women stood at a distance, at the other end of the yard, near the wall. A rank of uniformed policemen turned, stamped, raised rifles to their shoulders and aimed high, at something far far above. Katekar’s sons, who were still with the women, flinched under the roll of whiplash cracks. Then they were brought forward, through the cluster of men around the bier. Potdukhe put a hand on the older one’s shoulders, and led him around his father, in a circle. The son – What was his name? His name? – carried the water-filled matka, and water dropped from a hole in it, spattered on the ground and danced up in quick, stammering splashes. A dhoti-clad priest now had a splintered fragment of wood in his hand, and it was flickering at one end. Sartaj suddenly wanted to see Katekar’s face. He stepped to the left, but the wood was piled high, and what he could see was a coil of white cloth, a chin, the bridge of a nose. From this angle, close to the crown of Katekar’s head, there was no Katekar, only some fragments. Sartaj shuffled to the right, it was important to see Katekar fully, but it was too late, the priest was holding the son’s hand, showing him how to tap his father’s head with a stick. It was a small tap, symbolic, but now the real blow, from the priest, would crack the skull. Sartaj swallowed. This was always the moment during funerals when he began to feel sick. It was necessary, he told himself yet again, or the skull would explode under the fire. But he felt the churning in his stomach begin. Somebody, it was Parulkar, took Sartaj’s arm, and with the other men he moved back, three, four, five steps. Still, Sartaj heard the round crunch of the skull, when it came open, and Katekar was now open to the sky, completely and fully open. His son leaned forward, holding the burning wood. There was a small shifting inside the pyre, a series of tiny, rapid, racing convulsions. There was this movement and the gentle smell of ghee, that childhood smell from weddings and festivals. Then with an urgent gasp the fire took the wood, the body, Katekar. Now there was all motion, leaping up, up, and heat slid across Sartaj’s face. He watched the fire burn, and did not look away.

  After the friends and relatives had left, after the ashes had cooled, after the ashes had been collected and taken home and hung in a matka near the door, after everything, Sartaj went home. There was whisky, almost a bottle full, and Sartaj brought it out and put it on the coffee table, and a bottle of water, but after he poured out a drink the smell of it made him gag. So he shut his eyes, lay back on the sofa. Katekar was dead, the murderer was dead, the murderer’s friends were dead, it was all over. Nothing to do, nobody to pursue. Katekar’s death was a murder, an accident, an act of fate. It was a simple story, the way Kamble and others would tell it: three apradhis cornered, we should’ve fired first, encountered the bastards, but it was Singh’s operation, Katekar got too close and didn’t shoot, so he died. Case closed. These things happen. It’s the job. But after everything, after all, Sartaj was unable to rest with this story, to be comforted by the neatness of it, by its clean forward velocity and its final rest. He was beset by questions: where was Bangladesh, what was it? Where was Bihar? How do three men travel thousands of miles, to one city, to a particular stretch of road, to a constable waiting under a thela? We are debris, Sartaj thought, randomly tossed about and nudging into each other, splitting each other’s lives apart. Sartaj opened his eyes, and the room was still the old one, the shadows outside completely known to him, known a thousand nights over. This was his corner of the world, safe and familiar. And yet here was this question, sitting on his chest: why did Katekar die? How did this happen?

  INSET: The Great Game

  ‘The purpose, the meaning, the intent and the methodology of intelligence is the discernment of patterns.’ The students are waiting, eager f
or the revelation that will grant them understanding, hone their edges into preparedness, allow them to survive and triumph. ‘The ability to sense method, orderliness, design, is the greatest talent an intelligence officer can possess,’ K.D. Yadav proclaims, projecting to the back of the room. ‘The old saying goes: once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action. Remember that. If you can see the connections between data points, see the shape they make, read the story the data is telling, you will win. A patrol notices bootprints on a ridge in the Karakoram, a field officer on posting in Brussels writes a report mentioning the sale of miles of toughened communication cables. He who sees meaning in that, wins.’ K.D. says ‘he,’ but there is a woman in the first row, a girl. He has known her for years, he has seen her grow from a child into a serious-faced young person, and one of the great pleasures of his life has been observing that very distinct personality that gazed up at him from the pram growing into the self-possessed, independent woman who sits before him now. He likes to think he had something to do with that growth, with the nurturing of that courage. But what is her name? How can he not know her name? How could he have forgotten, when he has voiced that name for years, decades?

  And then he knows. He understands how he has forgotten. He has not forgotten her name in that room in the house in Safdarjung, in the classroom they have hidden away in a nondescript bungalow. He has forgotten it now, in this hospital room he is lying in. I am here, I am Karpuri Dwarkanath Yadav, known always as ‘K.D’. I am in a small white room with drawn curtains. I am lying on a white metal bed. I am not teaching, not lecturing. I am ill, which is why I have forgotten her name. In the real classroom, years ago, I knew it. Now I don’t.