Sacred Games

by Vikram Chandra

  It was sleek and brilliant, our operation. Even Mr Kumar said so. ‘Nobody will ever believe this is an Indian operation,’ he said.

  ‘What, they think that my boys aren’t smart enough to pull something like this off? We’re too dehati to do anything involving computers?’

  ‘Not just you, Ganesh,’ Mr Kumar said. ‘The entire world, including our very own, very free Indian press, will refuse to believe this is ours.’

  ‘Saab, I can provide positive proof…’

  ‘Let it be, Ganesh. Let them think it was the mighty Israelis. Let them underestimate us. A confused enemy is always better than an impressed but careful enemy. Let it be. I told you, we are the invisible soldiers, we win no medals.’

  So we let it be, we let it go. It was frustrating not to take credit for a great victory, but I saw Mr Kumar’s point. He had spent a lifetime not taking credit, but I can tell you it was hard for us. I gave a triple bonus to everyone involved in the operation, and sent them off to holiday in Bali. And of course I restrained myself from talking about the operation to Guru-ji, who was fascinated by the particulars of the event. ‘These Israelis really observe the psychology of the target,’ he said. Sometimes I was glad his clairvoyance was not total. But Guru-ji did see images of a group of violent men looking for him, hunting him, so he tightened his own security. I advised him on what he needed. After all, in Bombay, I had been able to get physically close to him without once being searched.

  I didn’t even begin to understand the psychology of Guru-ji, but here’s what I knew about him: he was born near Sialkot, on 14 February 1934, at nine forty-two in the evening. He grew up all over western Punjab, transferring from one air-force base to another with his aircraft-technician father. They were thrown eastwards by Partition, but they made their journey safely, under the protection of the services, and settled first in Jodhpur, and then in Pathankot. Guru-ji soon became a famed sportsman, the captain of every cricket team he played for from the eighth class upwards. There were hopes, expectations, that he would play for the country. In Pathankot, on the day before his eighteenth birthday, he had borrowed his father’s motorcycle to go to the cinema, to meet his friends. He spun off the road near the main entrance of the army cantonment, near the captured Pakistani tank with the drooping cannon. It was a bright sunny day, there was no water or oil on the road. Nobody ever knew why it happened. The military police picked him up and took him to the nearby military hospital, and they gave him immediate attention. But there was an injury to his lumbar vertebra, and he lost function in the lower part of his body. ‘I woke up on my first day as a man,’ he told me in Singapore, ‘to find that I was only half a man. But then, Ganesh, there was the other thing.’

  The other thing was his visions. Before the accident he had been a normal Punjabi boy, interested in cricket, fast motorcycles, good food, his yaars, his exams. He had a kind of general belief in fearless Hanuman, and he went to the temple with his mother, and gossiped at weddings while the priests chanted. That was the extent of his spirituality. But after his accident, he was visited by visions. He saw the past and the future. These were not dreamlike images, confused and fuzzy. He saw details, he could see the colour of a man’s tongue, the embroidery on a woman’s handkerchief. He could smell cooking oil, hear the splash of water on brick. Two days after recovering consciousness, he told a nurse, ‘That man – Fred, Phillip? – who gave you a gold necklace is still thinking of you.’ Hospital staff are used to dealing with raving patients. But this nurse had been in love with a much older cousin by marriage, and they had never told anyone, and she had certainly not told this injured boy. From that moment his reputation grew and unfurled across the city and beyond. And from that moment he began his great journey inward, his attempt to understand the nature of the self, of time and the universe. ‘I had to try to understand what was happening to me, Ganesh,’ he said. Right from that hospital bed he began his meditations and his reading, his meetings with philosophers and sadhus and tantrics and pandits. It had been a long, ceaseless search. ‘In my injury I found myself,’ he said. ‘From the outside I was brought to the inside.’

  Which didn’t mean that he wasn’t interested in the outside. He had a passion for science, for the new knowledge of today. He read every scientific magazine he could find, and thick books about what walked on earth before humans ever existed, and what would fly in the spaces of the future. He keenly followed all the latest inventions and innovations in computers, and talked to me about medicine, and lasers, and cloning. He had a wheelchair that could climb stairs by itself, and turn corners on two wheels, and balance on one. His eyes burned when he talked about gyroscopes and software and non-polluting power generation. He sat on the board of three universities. He was a secular man. He didn’t have that unreasoning hatred for Muslims that I had encountered so often in India and abroad, that disgust for burkhas and beef-eating and dirty personal habits. Guru-ji welcomed them at his sermons, was glad to have them in his following. What he didn’t like was a certain Muslim tendency to expand, to grasp, to want to rule always. He pointed out that they were the cause of societal trouble in whatever country they lived in, and said that they grated against the grain of time. He told me this only in private, of course. In his public speeches, he was circumspect. But when we were alone, he told me, ‘After the fall of the masjid, and after the riots, Ganesh, they have been importing weapons.’ This was true. I had confirmed it from my own sources. Huge shipments of automatic rifles had come in, and grenades. There were even stories about anti-tank weapons, and Stinger missiles. If they only lived as co-operative members of our culture, Guru-ji said, if they only knew their place, and tried to blend in, then there would be no problem. But there is a tendency in their religion that makes them dangerous. ‘So,’ said Guru-ji, ‘we too must be prepared. We must arm ourselves too, despite the cowardice of our politicians.’ So we prepared. We armed, and he continued to fund this secret work, and also his effort to inform and prepare the world for the coming cataclysm, the end of Kaliyug.

  We were sitting on a rooftop in Singapore when he told me about his work with his universities, about his educational hopes for the future. This was Singapore, so I kept having to restrain my urge to spit past the railing, on to the street and the orderly Singaporeans below. But Guru-ji loved the place. He liked the hygiene and the rules and the strictness and the Singaporeans, and used the city as a hub between his travels. He had another rich devotee here, a property magnate, and Guru-ji had the use of a large penthouse apartment on Tanglin Road. The penthouse had a sizeable balcony, with full-sized trees and a thick carpet of turf. From this balcony we looked out at the sparkling skyline. Guru-ji enjoyed this high garden. ‘If only our country was managed well, Ganesh,’ he told me, ‘we could have all this. What don’t we have? We have the resources. And we have more than enough talent. But we don’t have political will, and we don’t have the right structure. We don’t have discipline, external or internal.’

  ‘You will bring us to Ram-rajya, Guru-ji.’

  ‘Are you flattering me, Ganesh?’

  He was crunching on carrot sticks and crinkling his eyes at me. ‘Of course I am not, Guru-ji.’ I was sprawled on an armchair next to him, my bare feet up. I had used a different passport and name to leave India, from Delhi, and I had shaved off my beard. I came every evening to Guru-ji, as a business consultant, and we had dinner in the garden. We talked of everything – the world, my life. I told him about the early days in Gopalmath, the death of my son. He knew me as well as anybody ever had, better than anyone.

  ‘Are you getting impatient?’ he said.

  ‘Impatient, me?’

  ‘It has been five days. You want to get through the initiation, go home to work.’

  ‘No, Guru-ji, not like that. My work is always going on, and it’s all over the phone anyway. And my time here with you is a peace that I have never had. But I am concerned.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Security. The longer I sta
y, the more risky it is. For me, for you. If someone recognizes me…’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And people are always looking for me.’

  ‘Your enemies.’

  ‘I don’t want to expose you to danger, Guru-ji.’

  ‘I understand. And I agree. But this is necessary.’ He ate another carrot stick. ‘Do you have any idea what the initiation is, Ganesh? What we will do?’

  ‘Some sort of puja. Some secret mantra. Some rite.’

  He was grinning at me again. ‘Some ritual involving human sacrifice? A baby killed at the altar of some unspeakable goddess?’

  ‘If that is necessary…’

  He threw up his hands. ‘Arre chup, Ganesh. No, it’s nothing like that. Ritual is very powerful, but you have already been through a ritual with me. You came with me through the sacrifice. No, ritual is not what you need right now. No. You want to know what your initiation is? Here it is: these past five days were your initiation.’

  ‘Guru-ji?’

  ‘You sat here and told me about yourself. You gave me every part of yourself. You told me things you had never confessed before.’

  It was true. I had told him about my fear of bullets, my longing for women, the gold I had started my career with and how I had got it. I had told him everything, except that I worked for Mr Kumar. That was another me, and I could not give that self to Guru-ji.

  I left Singapore the next day. On my way to the airport, I met Guru-ji one last time, just for five minutes. He was preparing to travel also, to South Africa this time. We met in the kitchen of a convention centre where he was giving a lecture to a Hindu historical studies group. I touched his feet. ‘I feel light, Guru-ji,’ I said. ‘I feel like some curtain has been drawn. Like a window has been opened.’

  He was proud of me, he had that gladness about him. He was full of joy, just looking at me. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘You are truly a vira. The journey inside is what takes most courage. And you have been fearless. Now you are ready to move on.’

  He had a plan, I could tell. I knew him better now, too. That is what comes from darshan. We had looked into each other. ‘Move on to what, Guru-ji? Where am I going now?’

  ‘That girl.’

  ‘Which girl?’

  ‘Forgotten already? That girl you spoke to me about, you had sent me her details.’

  ‘Ah, the big girl.’

  ‘The Muslim virgin, yes. Send for her, Ganesh.’

  ‘Our stars match up, Guru-ji?’

  ‘You’ve slanted the stars, Ganesh. You are a brave man. Get the girl. Now we are going to move this world. Get that girl. And from now on, you must have only virgins.’

  ‘Virgins?’

  ‘You are a vira, and virgins will give you the greatest power. You will know they have been pure, and that will feed your strength. And you will need power in these coming times.’

  Then he had to go back to his historians. So we said goodbye to each other, embraced closely under that smell of cooking food and flowers. I went home, to my castle floating on the waters. And I sent for the big virgin.

  Investigating Love

  K.R. Jayanth the pocket-maar called Sartaj late on a Saturday night. ‘I have the red T-shirt chokra,’ he said. He didn’t actually have the boy with him, but he had his whole name, the names of the boys he worked with and the location of the stoop on which they slept. Jayanth explained at great length how he had kept a vigilant lookout for a red T-shirt, how he had been ceaselessly alert, how he had stayed beyond his usual working hours at the cinema. Then, on this Saturday night, after the late-show rush, he had noticed Red T-shirt skipping about near the car park, begging from the late arrivals. Jayanth had been canny, he had kept his distance. When the lane and the car park had quietened down altogether, he had motioned Red T-shirt over. The boy had been suspicious, but he had come, flanked by his two yaars. Jayanth contrived to be in the right position, at the right angle, and as soon as Red T-Shirt talked, Jayanth saw the black tooth. He had the right chokra. They were a tough little crew, barefoot and hardened and wary. But he had charmed them, mostly by giving them money. He had told them that he had a friend who was looking for some likely boys to do some work for him. ‘What kind of work?’ said Red T-shirt, stabbing his middle finger through a circle he made with his other hand. Jayanth had reassured them that there was no chodoing to be endured, that the friend in question was in fact a dealer in various interesting goods, and he needed some sharp lads to fetch and carry and messenger. And he had given them a hundred rupees, and he had told them that more cash would be forthcoming, fat reams of it.

  ‘You told them I was a bhai?’ Sartaj said.

  ‘No, no,’ Jayanth said. ‘Just an import-export kind of man, you know. Otherwise I could never have got anything out of them. As you can see, it worked very well. We have the little bastards. I’ll bring them to you tomorrow.’

  Informants liked to be praised even more than witnesses, so Sartaj praised Jayanth. Some of them fancied that their informing made them part of a crime-fighting team, that it was them and Sartaj against the other criminal bastards. Sartaj had heard it all a thousand and one times, and it never ceased to give him a little thrill of amazement, how even the lowest of thieves could fancy himself a detective, how easy it was to gild one’s own misdeeds in the cheap gold of morality. We all stink, he thought, but not one of us likes to smell our own stench. And he said, ‘Yes, we have the little bastards. Well done.’

  Sartaj wrote down the names of the chokras, and set a rendezvous with Jayanth for the next afternoon. He hung up, feeling the small stir of excitement at a case moving, at finding a very precarious purchase on the steep cliff of the unknowable. But then, instantly, the worry about bombs and gurus and annihilation descended on him like a monsoon fever. He felt foolish for being pleased with Jayanth, for working on his other cases. What use was it to be concerned with the everyday matters of blackmail, thievery, murder, when this enormous fear billowed overhead? It was an abstracted danger, this grim notion of a sweeping fire, it was unreal. But with its cold drip of images, it crowded out the mundane. Sartaj blinked. He was at his desk, in his dingy little office with the weathered benches and untidy shelves. Kamble was hunched over a report. Two constables were laughing in the corridor outside. There was a little pool of sunlight from a window, and a pair of hopping little sparrows on the sill. And all of it was dreamlike, as gauzy as the wafting of early morning. If you let yourself believe in that other monstrous thing, even a little, then this ordinary world of bribes and divorces and electricity bills vanished a little. It got eaten up.

  Stay with the details. Sartaj rubbed his eyes, shook his head. Stay with the details. The specifics are real. It was important, somehow, to care about Mrs Kamala Pandey and her sordid adultery and the chokra in the red T-shirt. Sartaj felt a loyalty to the ordinary, a sudden affection for Mrs Pandey and her glossiness and her made-up face and her greed for glamour. But the question kept coming back: who was Gaitonde’s guru? Sartaj had no idea. There were gurus at every corner, and in every locality. There were Mohameddan gurus, and Vedic gurus, and gurus who had been born in Hawaii to Japanese parents, and gurus who denied the existence of God. There were gurus who sold herbal powders, and others who cured cancer by having the patients swallow magic goldfish. Gaitonde could have been devoted to any of these. Maybe he had a guru who was not a guru to others, maybe he was a chela to a private guru. Sartaj had known a pharmaceuticals executive in Chembur who lived only on fruit, who accepted no disciples other than his sons and daughters and close friends, who took no gifts, who was said to glow with a golden sheen on Guru Purnima. Gaitonde’s secret guru could be an unknown guru. People found spiritual connections in odd and unexpected places, they found succour and consolation in farmers and postal clerks. There were police constables who told fortunes and practised left-handed tantra. Where to look for Gaitonde’s guru? Sartaj had no idea.

  ‘Do you have a guru?’ Sartaj asked Kamble on Sunday afternoon when they met n
ear Apsara. They were waiting at a restaurant down the road from the cinema, sipping at Cokes. Kamble had turned out in his Sunday best, a grey bandhgalla suit with an edge of silver to the cloth. He was going to a wedding later.

  ‘Of course I have a guru,’ Kamble said, taking off his jacket. Underneath, there was a silvery shirt with a stiff Nehru collar. ‘He lives in Amravati. I go once a year to take his darshan. Here.’ He leant forward, and pulled at one of the two gold chains he wore around his neck. In a hexagonal pendant he had a small picture of his guru, a round-faced man with a bushy beard. ‘His name is Sandilya Baba. He’s a devotee of Ambadevi. She has given many darshans to him.’

  Sartaj had to work hard to flatten the irony out of his voice. ‘She comes and talks to him?’

  ‘Yes, she talks to him. He is the most content man I have ever known. Happy all the time.’ Kamble tucked the pendant back under his shirt. ‘You sardars have gurus, or not? Apart from the original ones?’

  ‘Yes, we have babas of various sorts. Some people follow them.’

  ‘Not you?’

  ‘No, not me.’

  ‘You don’t have a guru. Why not?’

  It was a perfectly reasonable question, and Sartaj had no answer. He tapped his watch. ‘It’s almost time,’ he said. ‘Better get ready.’

  Kamble edged himself out of the booth, and picked up his bottle. ‘You should find a guru,’ he said. ‘No man can get through life without a guide.’

  He walked away from Sartaj, sat at a table near the door and busied himself with a newspaper. He was now supposed to be a stranger to Sartaj, to work as a hidden tactical reserve in case the boys ran. He would have been more useful as a fielder if his suit and shirt hadn’t been quite so spectacularly showy, but then that wasn’t Kamble’s style. Sartaj wiped the pitted formica of the table with a tissue, and wondered what Sandilya Baba thought about shiny suits, and money taken in bribes, and encounters. Maybe it was just his job to get misdemeanours fixed in the larger justice system of the sky, maybe he wasn’t so personally strict about rules bent here and there. He was a guide for Kaliyug, this Sandilya Baba.