Sacred Games

by Vikram Chandra

  The owner of the restaurant was standing on a chair, fiddling with the knobs on the radio tucked away into the little shelf above a cupboard. He got the reception right, at last, and a song dropped into the small whirring clatter of the ceiling fans, ‘Gata rahe mera dil, tuhi meri manzil’. Sartaj finished his Coke, and asked for another. So Kamble had faith in Ambadevi, through the agency of Sandilya Baba. It must be good to have faith, Sartaj thought. He had never had it himself. Even as a child, when he had stood next to Papa-ji in the gurudwara, and shut his eyes and prayed as instructed, he had to make an effort to conjure up a proper feeling of devotion. Papa-ji had known Vaheguru as a living force, present in every day of his life, he prayed to Vaheguru every morning, and whispered his name when his toe swelled with gout. But for Sartaj, Vaheguru had always been a distant, fuzzy concept, an idea that he would have liked to believe in. When he reached for Vaheguru, what he found was an aching loss. Still, he went to the gurudwara with Ma, he kept his hair long, he wore a kara and carried a little miniature kirpan in his pocket. He did this for the comfort the tradition brought him, for the affection he bore for his parents, for his pride in being a Sikh. But he carried this secret loss, this absence of Vaheguru inside himself. Yes, it would be nice to have a guru, an intermediary who had personal conversations with the Almighty. But Papa-ji had disapproved of all new-fangled babas, all these charlatans: the khalsa has the Guru Granth Sahib, he said, and that book is the only guru a Sikh needs. He was very strict about it.

  Three boys came into the dhaba, followed by Jayanth. They came past Kamble, and Sartaj nodded at Jayanth. ‘Sit,’ he said.

  The chokras sat on one side of the booth, elbow to elbow. The very smallest one sat last, on the right, and reached for a spoon and began to turn it over and over. Jayanth edged in next to Sartaj and did the introductions, from left to right. ‘This is Ramu, Tej, Jatin. This is Singh Saab, who I told you about.’

  ‘What’s the work?’ This was Ramu, who was oldest and clearly the ringleader. He was wearing a black T-shirt with silver stars on it, not the red one that Jayanth had seen him in. He was as skinny as the other two, with the same layering of grime and the same dust-stiffened hair, but he had style and unblinking black eyes and he wasn’t scared. He was just wary. Sartaj would have picked him to get a package, too.

  ‘Want a Coca-Cola?’ Sartaj said. ‘Something to eat?’ Ramu shook his head. The other two kept still, following his lead, but Sartaj felt their hunger like a shimmer of heat coming across the tabletop. He raised his hand. ‘Eh,’ he called. ‘Four Cokes, three chicken biryanis. Fast.’

  Ramu didn’t like this delay in talking business, but he wasn’t ready to bolt yet. He kept quiet, and the other two once more followed his lead. They were all twelve, thirteen maybe, roughened up and full of precocious wisdom. Tej had a scar that ran up his neck, into the hair. They all three dug into the huge mounds of rice and chicken as soon as the plates were put on the table. Jatin, the little one, ate as fast as the others, but was now fascinated by his glass of water. He turned it in quick circles between bites, and never looked up. Over their bobbing heads, Kamble tapped at his watch. He had a wedding to get to.

  ‘Who is that?’ Ramu said, twisting around. He had caught Sartaj’s glance. As he turned back, Sartaj saw the blackened tooth. Kamala Pandey had done well to spot the cosmetic defect in the seconds she had had Ramu near her. Yes, that one was a slim churi, sliding through an affair under her husband’s nose. But here was Ramu, holding a chicken leg, and looking very nervous.

  ‘He’s a friend of mine,’ Sartaj said.

  ‘Why isn’t he sitting here?’

  ‘He likes to sit there. Listen to me, Ramu. You know who I am?’

  Ramu put down his chicken.

  ‘Saab asked you a question,’ Jayanth said. He had emptied his Coke, and was now patting the corners of his mouth with a clean white handkerchief. ‘Do you know who Saab is?’

  Ramu and Tej were reading Sartaj now, eyes wide, food forgotten. Then Ramu looked over his shoulder. Kamble was now sitting on the seat behind him, his arm along the back of the booth.

  ‘Bhenchod,’ Ramu said to Jayanth, with a hard-edged bitterness. ‘You gaandu old man, you brought us to the police. Bhenchod, I’ll see you some time. I’ll take care of you.’

  ‘Eat your food,’ Sartaj said. ‘Nothing’s going to happen to you.’

  Ramu wanted to run, but Kamble had his hand on his shoulder, gently rubbing. ‘Listen to Saab,’ Kamble said. ‘Eat.’

  Tej and Jatin were waiting for instructions from their leader. Ramu took his elbows off the table, and sat back, his jaw set. He was very stubborn. Sartaj liked him.

  ‘All right,’ Sartaj said. ‘Let’s make a deal.’ He put a fifty-rupee note on the table, smoothed it out. ‘This is yours just for listening to me. I am not interested in bothering you, I am not going to take you to the remand home. I just want some information from you. I am not going to force you or anything. I’ll give you this now, you just listen to me. Yes?’

  Sartaj slid the money across the table, left it near the far edge. Ramu gave him another half-minute of steely hostility, then picked up the note. He examined it, held it up to the light, turned it over. Kamble was grinning over his head. Ramu put the money in his pocket. ‘Talk,’ he said.

  Sartaj nudged the edge of Ramu’s plate. ‘Just relax, don’t take tension. I have no reason to pick on you. Come on. Your chicken will get cold.’ Ramu nodded, and the other two boys set to. But Ramu was concentrating on Sartaj, and he wasn’t interested in chicken. ‘What I want is this,’ Sartaj said. ‘About a month, five weeks ago, you did a little job outside Apsara. You went to a car, and picked up a package from a woman in a car. You delivered the package. You remember this?’

  Ramu shook his head curtly. ‘I don’t remember anything like that.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure. Even if I had done something like that, I do ten jobs a day. How can I remember something from long ago?’

  Tej and Jatin had their heads bent over their plates, but Sartaj was sure he had seen a very small stiffening in Tej’s shoulders, a barely discernible break in the steady rhythm of his chewing.

  ‘Think hard,’ Sartaj said. ‘You were wearing a red T-shirt. It was in the evening.’ Ramu was very good, with his impenetrable glare, but Sartaj was sure that Tej had been along that evening too. He was twitchy now, working hard to keep up the eating.

  ‘No,’ Ramu said.

  ‘Why don’t we just take them out behind the dhaba?’ Kamble said. ‘And give them a lathi up their gaand? They’ll remember then.’

  Sartaj slid a photograph out of his pocket and put it on the table, between Ramu and Tej. ‘This was the woman you took the package from,’ he said. ‘Remember now?’

  ‘I told you,’ said Ramu with exaggerated patience. ‘I didn’t do anything like that.’ He was getting into the part now. He raised his hands, let them drop.

  But Tej had stopped eating, and was staring at the studio glamour shot of Mrs Kamala Pandey.

  ‘Maybe you don’t remember,’ Sartaj said. ‘But Tej knows her all right.’

  Tej tried his best now, his chin sticky with rice and grease. ‘No, no, I don’t know her,’ he said.

  Sartaj put a fifty-rupee note next to his plate. ‘Yes, you do. I saw you look. She’s like a film star, isn’t she?’

  ‘Be quiet,’ Ramu said to Tej, who had a dreamy fix on the money as he gathered up another large chunk of rice in his fingers.

  ‘Ramu,’ Sartaj said. ‘Why do you want to fight with me? Are the men who hired you to get the package your friends? You think you have to protect them? Or are you scared of them? You think if you tell me, you’ll get into trouble?’

  ‘I’m not afraid of anyone.’

  Ramu had his head down, and his shoulders up, and his voice low. Sartaj recognized the anger: it was Amitabh Bachchan in Deewar, or Shah Rukh in any of his films. ‘I don’t mean to insult you, boss,’ Sartaj s
aid. ‘You have information I need. You name your price.’

  Ramu leaned back, rubbed at his nose with the back of his hand. He was very thoughtful. Sartaj thought he had a price in mind already, but he was being the businessman for the benefit of his followers. He announced it finally. ‘Five hundred rupees.’

  ‘Too much,’ Sartaj said. ‘I’ll give you two hundred.’

  Ramu came forward now, his eyes sharp. He put his elbows on the table. ‘Three-fifty.’

  ‘Let’s settle at three hundred,’ Sartaj said. ‘Not yours and not mine.’

  ‘Fine. Let’s see the cash.’

  Sartaj suppressed a smile, and put the money on the table. ‘Let’s see the information,’ he said. ‘So who were they?’

  Ramu took the currency notes, riffled professionally through them, put them away. ‘I don’t know who they were. They just found us near the cinema.’

  ‘How many of them?’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘Old, young, what?’

  ‘Old.’

  ‘How old? Like Uncle here? Or like me?’

  Ramu stabbed a contemptuous thumb towards Kamble. ‘No, old like him here.’

  Kamble knuckled the top of Ramu’s head, crisply enough to make him wince. Tej and Jatin grinned. ‘Careful, chutiya,’ Kamble said. ‘I’m not as nice as Saab over there. So, these two men, you got names?’

  ‘No. They didn’t give names.’

  ‘So how did it work?’ Sartaj said.

  ‘They came up to us just before the evening show. They said they would pay us to get a package.’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘We walked with them.’

  ‘Down the road?’

  ‘Yes, a little bit. They showed us the car. They stayed on one side of the road. I went across. I knocked on the window. The woman rolled down the window. She gave me the package.’

  ‘Did you say anything?’

  ‘Yes, I said, “Give me the package.” They had been speaking to her on her mobile. She was expecting me.’

  ‘So you brought the package back?’

  ‘Yes. And gave it to them. One of them made a call on his mobile. They walked away, they went. Bas, that was it.’

  ‘You ever saw those two again?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What did they look like?’

  ‘Nothing special. Just ordinary.’

  ‘Ramu, your information is not worth the money. Come on. Try again.’

  ‘There’s nothing to tell you. They were wearing shirts and pants. Bas, what else to tell you?’

  ‘Something useful, Ramu. Something useful. How tall?’

  ‘Not like you. Like him,’ Ramu said, jabbing a thumb towards Jayanth.

  That was all Ramu had. ‘Tej, did you notice anything?’ Sartaj said.

  Tej shrugged. ‘No, they were like he said.’

  ‘Tell me anyway. What did you see?’

  But prompting Tej elicited nothing but the same vague impression of two average men wearing average clothes.

  Jatin, the little one, hadn’t said a word so far. He didn’t look up now, and kept turning his glass.

  ‘Jatin, you also tell me. What were these men like?’

  ‘They were both wearing black jeans,’ Jatin said. Kamble blinked, and leaned over the back of the seat, trying to get a look at Jatin. And Jatin went on steadily, ‘One of them was half-taklu, no hair over here. The one who had the phone, that one, he was this taklu.’ Jatin tapped the front of his head. He spoke without looking up, in a quiet, small voice, and said ‘jins’ for ‘jeans’, but he was very sure about the two men.

  ‘That’s good,’ Sartaj said. ‘Now, this taklu one, what kind of shirt was he wearing?’

  ‘White T-shirt. And the other one, he had a blue shirt with long sleeves.’

  Jatin was smaller than the others, with a malnourished mouse-face. He tilted his head when he spoke, towards Sartaj’s breast pocket, and in that quick glimpse Sartaj saw that he had a bit of a wandering eye. He wouldn’t look at you if you were looking at him, and so he passed unnoticed, with his bony shoulders and his drooping head. Sartaj took a tissue and began to fold it, over and over, and he kept his eyes on it. ‘Yes, Jatin,’ he said, ‘so what else did you notice?’

  Jatin was shy now. He turned his head away from the table, and twisted his arms together. But Ramu, with the money in his pocket, was feeling magnanimous. ‘Ay, Jatin,’ he said. ‘Tell him if you know anything. It’s all right.’ And then, to Sartaj, with a little twirling motion of the forefinger at his temple, ‘He’s always like this. But he remembers everything.’

  Sartaj unfolded his piece of paper, and then began folding it again. ‘Jatin, were they driving a car? How did they come?’

  ‘We didn’t see them driving anything,’ Ramu said confidently. ‘They weren’t the type who would have a car. Maybe they came in a bus.’

  Kamble shook his head at Sartaj. Jayanth was starting to look sceptical, now not quite as enthusiastic about the possibilities of successful detection. Sartaj felt the let-down himself: maybe this was all the boys had. Maybe this was a dead end. ‘Were they carrying anything, Jatin?’ he said. ‘A book, a newspaper?’

  Ramu shook his head patiently. ‘I told you, his bheja is fried.’ He tilted his head to one side, and hammed up a cockeyed impression of Jatin. Tej giggled. And Jatin sat very still, not flinching.

  ‘All right,’ Sartaj said. ‘Want a falooda, Jatin?’

  Kamble held up a hand. ‘I’m going to go,’ he said. ‘Okay, boss?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sartaj said. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow at the station.’ He motioned at a passing waiter. ‘Three Royal Faloodas over here, quick.’

  Jatin reached across the table for a tissue. Kamble unfolded himself out of his booth and walked towards the entrance. He was pressing keys on his mobile phone. Jatin was folding his tissue.

  ‘Bip-beep-beep-bip,’ Jatin said, and his tissue was a triangle now.

  ‘What?’ Sartaj said.

  ‘Bip-beep-beep-bip-bip.’ Jatin balanced the triangle on one side. It stayed in place, balanced.

  Ramu reached behind Tej and batted the back of Jatin’s head. ‘He’s my brother, but he’s a yeda.’

  Jatin started to fold another tissue. ‘Bip-beep-beep-bip-bip-bap.’

  Sartaj watched Jatin’s fingers on the tissue. The other triangle stayed miraculously upright. ‘Kamble!’ Sartaj shouted, startling the owner, the waiters and the three other customers. ‘Kamble!’

  Jatin had finished his triangle by the time Kamble got back to the table, looking distinctly annoyed. ‘What?’

  ‘Give me your handy,’ Sartaj said. He took the phone, cleared the display and put it flat on the table in front of Jatin, in front of his triangles.

  Jatin reached out, and with a very skinny and very dirty finger pressed keys on the phone. When he got to the top of the keypad, the phone began to connect. Sartaj pressed ‘End.’

  Kamble was leaning over Jatin’s shoulder. ‘It’s a mobile number,’ he said, with the awestruck voice that he usually reserved for a new sixteen-year-old dancer at the Delite Dance Bar. ‘It’s the number I was just dialling.’

  Sartaj nodded, and pressed ‘End’ again to clear the numbers. ‘Jatin, do you remember the number that Taklu dialled that day?’ he said to Jatin. ‘What was it?’

  ‘Bip-beep-beep-bip-bip-bap,’ Jatin said. He continued, with more bips and beeps, varied in pitch and tone. Then he nodded, and pressed keys on the phone, moving without hurry and with absolute confidence from one to the next. He finished with a little flourish and went back to folding yet another tissue.

  ‘This is the number that Taklu dialled, Jatin? After you gave him the package?’ Sartaj said, turning the mobile phone around on the table.

  ‘Yes,’ Jatin said, and put another triangle on the table. Along with the other two, the triangle made a perfect larger triangle.

  Kamble put his hands on his hips. ‘Maderchod,’ he said. ‘Amazing. Give the man a falooda.’
<
br />   ‘Very often,’ Sartaj told Mary, ‘detection is nothing but luck. Mostly it’s like that. You sit around, and something drops into your lap. Then you pretend that you knew what you were doing all along.’

  ‘That is not true in this case,’ Mary said. ‘You were not sitting around. You found the pickpocket. You made him find the boys. You gave the boys lunch. You were kind to them, instead of beating them like that fool wanted.’

  ‘Kamble,’ Sartaj said. They were sitting on a bench on the Carter Road seafront, under a truly spectacular sunset full of feathery circles of reddened cloud. The walkers were coming by briskly, and now, for a moment, a passing puppy on a leash nuzzled at their ankles. ‘He was just playing his part. And anyway, getting the apradhi is not going to be that simple. I’m sure of that. We tried calling the number, from two different PCOs, and he didn’t pick up. This bastard is careful. I can feel it.’

  ‘You’ll get him. And this Kamble, he would have tried to be rough with the boys if you had let him, and that little one would never have given you that number. You got that success in your detection because you were prepared for it. You were listening for it. You know that.’

  Sartaj did know this. He had believed it for years, had learnt it from his father even before he had entered the force, and he had said as much to many a trainee. But still, it was nice to have Mary telling him this, reassuring him with a hand on his wrist. The puppy came back now, tripping in the other direction, and she bent to scratch its ears, and Sartaj felt her hand on his skin even after it was gone, even more acutely. ‘Yes,’ he said absently. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes, what?’ The puppy was paddling away on its oversized feet, and Mary was looking at Sartaj with a sort of teasing amusement.