Sacred Games

by Vikram Chandra

  ‘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”.’

  Very interesting, I thought. A woman with a systematic mind. ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Let me see this amazement. How much?’

  ‘Gaitonde, don’t try anything funny with this one. If she thinks you’re trying to give her a hool, she’ll kill herself before she lets you do anything.’

  ‘Yes, yes. How much?’

  ‘Nothing for a meeting. You meet her and see. I’ll pay for the air ticket.’

  This was truly amazing. ‘Jojo, you sound like you’re in love yourself. In your old age you’ve become a chut-chattoing sixty-six. Bidhu, for you I’ll pay. Take her, take her.’

  ‘Gaitonde, stop talking like an idiot. If I liked girls, I would have told you. What I’m doing is also investing in her. Not just to persuade you. I believe this girl. She can sell herself.’ Jojo used the English word ‘sell’. It had a sexy ssss sound to it, on her tongue. Like that other English word ‘sexy’.

  ‘You’ve bought her stock? Before the IPO even?’

  ‘Gaitonde, you buy too. If you’re smart you will too. But there’s one more thing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Are you as secular as you keep telling me you are?’

  ‘I put up with you, don’t I? That makes me secular and tolerant.’

  ‘This girl is Muslim. Her name is Jamila Mirza.’

  ‘Jojo, I still have some Muslim boys working for me in India. And when have I had a problem taking Muslim girls?’ I took girls of all shapes and sizes and creeds. I was impartial.

  ‘This is different, Gaitonde. Even your friend Suleiman Isa is secular like that, he doesn’t have any problems taking Hindu girls, or Jain girls, or Christian girls. All men are secular down below. This is different. I’m telling you, investing in her means you have to really help her. You are connected to her. Not for a day or two or a week on the boat, but for the long run.’

  ‘True. I see that. Let me think about it. When was she born?’

  ‘You are going to do your astrology again?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re mad.’

  ‘Tell me the date and time and place.’

  She gave me the birth details, I wrote them down. She was the hardened sceptic that I had once been, but Guru-ji had shattered my defences. Now I was remaking myself.

  Jojo said, ‘What about for the boys?’

  We discussed that for a minute or two, girls for my boys. Then Jojo had to get to a production meeting, and I went up on the deck. The boys were playing cards under a blue canopy. I had six of them on board, along with one accountant and one computer man, and one Maharashtrian cook and five Goanese crew (including three ex-Navy boys). The boys split the shifts, and there were always three of them awake and on guard, which meant playing interminable rounds of teen-patti for small stakes, as now. Arvind was taking his usual ten minutes to pick out his discards, and Ramesh and Munna were giving him gaalis. All was as usual. We were anchored within sight of the bright umbrellas on Patong beach.

  The boys stood up as I came up to them. ‘Bhai,’ they all said, and touched my feet.

  ‘Who’s winning?’

  ‘This crawling gaandu here. Because of him, one game goes on for years.’

  This also was usual, that Arvind won. He was slow and steady. But their mood was sour this morning, I could see that. When they were back home, in Bombay, all the boys begged for foreign service. They wanted the foreign jeans, and the foreign girls, and the salaries in foreign currency. They had competed with each other to come to Thailand, to my yacht and my overseas operations, and demonstrated their eagerness and hard work and commitment every hour. But after a month or two or five in these alien waters, they always grew sour. They became sullen. Their bodies missed Bombay. I know, because after a year away from Mumbai I still got attacks of yearning, I craved the spittle-strewn streets of that great whore of a city, while waking up I felt that pungent prickling of auto-exhaust and burning rubbish at the back of my nostrils, I heard that swelling rumble of traffic heard from a high hotel rooftop, that far sound that made you feel like a king. When you were far away from the jammed jumble of cars, and the thickets of slums, and the long loops of rail, and the swarms of people, and the radio music in the bazaars, you could ache for the city. There were some afternoons when it felt like I was dying a little. Under the foreign sky I could feel my soul crumbling away, piece by piece. And I felt a loneliness I had never imagined, that I wouldn’t have earlier believed could exist. Only after coming away from India did I realize that at home I had never been truly alone, that I had been secure in my web of family and company and boys. Even when I was by myself, I was still connected, still whole. Even when they had put me in the anda cell all by myself, I had been a part of this vast, invisible net, joined heart-to-heart. On Indian soil you couldn’t be truly solitary, even when you were sealed in an evil-smelling tomb. Only after sailing away across these black waters had I known the meaning of this word: alone.

  So we flew out these boys, and for these boys we flew out Indian girls, and Indian films, and Indian music, and gave them bi-weekly phone calls to India. Usually, in their first month, the new boys would be eager to mount every Chinki girl they could get their hands on. They spent all their cash on Thai and Indonesian and Chinese maal, and went mad for the German blondes showing their mangoes on the beaches. But once their first frenzy was quietened, they looked forward to the Indian girls like starving, flood-hit Biharis waiting for government food drops. It was comfortable to chodo a plump Ghaatan, it was comfortable to hum a Kishore Kumar song to a giggling Punjaban and have her understand, just understand without any effort. It felt like home.

  So I told my three card-players about the girls coming in two weeks, and they brightened considerably. Now there was something to look forward to. ‘Don’t go mad over them,’ I said. ‘Don’t become fools, these girls know how to take money out of a man. One chappan-churi will say, just buy me a few saris, won’t that gold necklace look nice on me, and you’ll be trying to act like a big bhai, and by the time they go home you’ll have nothing in your pockets. Have fun, but keep a cold head.’

  ‘Yes, bhai,’ they said like schoolboys to a teacher.

  ‘Chutiyas, however many times I say it, it is not enough. Let’s see how smart you are four weeks from now.’

  And four weeks later, slow and steady Arvind was married. In this lot of girls there was one Suhasini, who looked a little like Sonali Bendre, so she went by the stage name of Sonali and affected starry airs. We picked up the girls at the Phuket airport, and when the van arrived at the Orchid Seaside Hotel, our Arvind straightaway attached himself to this Sonali-Suhasini. It was quite usual for the boys and girls to pair up, these short, holiday-type attachments sometimes happened of course. This one was Mukund’s girl, that one was Munna’s. Ramesh always wanted to do them all, but even he backed away if he saw that one of the other boys was fida on one girl only. So at least for a few days Munna or Mukund could pretend he had a real chaavvi, and feel safe. So this we had seen, but we had never seen anything like Arvind with this girl. Sure, she had nice skin, and a big nose that at a certain angle, in a certain light, could suggest Sonali Bendre, but finally she was one lanky thing from Ghatkopar. And she was a randi. There was no getting around that. Arvind knew this well. After all, he was getting his lauda lasoon-ed every night.

  When he and the girl came to ask my blessings for the marriage, this was the main theory
that the rest of the boys had, that she had a talented mouth and Arvind was a full, poora, akha idiot. She was bathing his chotta bhai every morning and night, and the resulting short-circuit was happening in his brain. I quietened them down, told them to shut up and not cause quarrels. Arvind had his blood up, and once he got started in his dragging way, he was dangerous. That’s why we had hired him. I sat him down alone and told him, ‘Think about it. There are two types of girls, one type for mauj-maja and the other for marrying. It’s one thing to have fun, even to go crazy over a girl for a week or two. That kind of thing happens to a man, the truth is that when you’re getting it wet morning and evening, your brain does get hijacked by your lauda. But marriage is a big thing. You have to think about it with a level head. Think about your parents, society. You and your family have to live with your relatives after all. You can’t keep this sort of thing secret for ever, who she is. Don’t get carried away just because she looks like Sonali Bendre. Just have your aish and let her go.’

  ‘Bhai, I don’t care about Sonali Bendre. To me she looks only like Suhasini. And I have thought about it. I know this is the right thing to do.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I just know it, bhai. I feel it here.’ He held his hand to his chest, a very young man in love, and in love with big dramatic gestures. He had no idea that he might seem like a comedy. Even if he had known, I think he wouldn’t have cared.

  ‘After only, what, ten days, you know?’

  ‘When you know you know.’

  He was proud. He was one of that select group who knew. He counted himself now in the fraternity of Majnu and Farhad and Romeo. He was calm. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Let me think about it. What are her details?’

  He smiled a huge smile, and yanked a piece of paper from his shirt pocket. ‘I knew it, bhai. Here. All details are there, both hers and mine.’

  I took the paper and sent him off. Being Guru-ji’s follower, I had acquired a certain expertise in the science of astrology myself. Of course I was not one-thousandth of Guru-ji, but I had picked up some techniques here and there. Guru-ji himself had told me, ‘You’re a fast learner. You have an instinct for the science, a knowledge that is inside you. Through me you’re just rediscovering it.’ He told me that this was why I had survived for so long, while so many others had died. I had a feeling for the future, I could see through the spirals of time and so I knew when danger was coming. So I had lived. I was now learning to control this knowledge, to add to it whatever Guru-ji saw fit to give to me. I practised on the boys, and they trusted me. Looking at Arvind and Suhasini’s birth-dates and times and places, it seemed to me that the two of them matched, that the influences of their respective stars paralleled each other and fitted snugly together where necessary. They had ricocheted through the world, driven by their destinies, and they had found each other on my yacht. Who could say that a perfect couple wouldn’t or couldn’t come together on my boat, which was after all called the Lucky Chance? I felt good about Arvind and Suhasini, and it would be auspicious to have a wedding. But I wouldn’t give consent, of course, without consulting with Guru-ji. None of the boys except Bunty knew about Guru-ji, but he knew everything about them. These ones were my inner circle, and since they were close to me it was important that they be looked at and vetted by a superior mind. This little bit of care could maybe save my life some day.