Sacred Games

by Vikram Chandra

  Ganesh Gaitonde Remakes Himself

  I gave myself a new face that winter. I had been worrying for a while about the many photographs of me that had been published in the newspapers and magazines in India. Television programmes regularly ran video clips of me leaving the law courts in Bombay. I was too recognizable, too well-known. Once, on the beach at Ko Samui, a group of young Indian tourists had turned to stare at me, and had whispered nervously to each other. I had left India not only to avoid jail, but also to elude my many enemies. I needed to change. I had seen Zoya transform herself, so I understood how it could be done, what it cost in pain and money, what its possibilities were. I needed to be new.

  I knew I wanted this transformation, and not for security reasons only. There was a dissatisfaction working under my skin, a discontent. Every morning I looked at myself in the mirror, and the face I saw was not the man I knew myself to be. I knew myself to be sculpted lean, as if the terrors and triumphs of my life had carved me a new shape. But the years had sagged my cheeks, thickened my nose. My chin sank into a bulge of flesh, there was a droop at the corners of my eyes. The blurring of my features was unbearable. I wanted to alter the outside to match the inside.

  I went, of course, to Zoya’s Dr Langston Lee. I gave him two months and a lot of money, and experienced more pain than ever before in my life. He gave me a long, elegant nose with a sharp bridge, new cheekbones, a narrower chin that balanced the nose, and a complete absence of jowls. He did some subtle things with my eyebrows, and put a dimple in each of my newly taut cheeks. And I was a different man. The first time I looked into a mirror, after the surgery was complete, after the bandages had come off, I wanted to hug Dr Langston Lee, the little Chinese bastard. Even past the remaining swelling and the stitches I could see that he had understood what I wanted to become. His talent was not only in his fingertips, it was in his eyes and in his imagination. He could share your dream, and cut through skin and fat to make it come alive. I looked nothing like the Ganesh Gaitonde that had been. I was the Ganesh Gaitonde that I wanted to be. I was myself.

  ‘Zoya is not going to know who you are, bhai,’ Suhasini said when she and Arvind visited that afternoon. ‘I can hardly tell who you are myself. This Langston Lee is a genius.’

  It hurt to smile, but I did. I liked the idea of Zoya not knowing who I was, of her being baffled by this new man. I wanted her confused and jittery, unsure of herself. She was shooting two films in America, in Detroit and Houston, and I had not told her about my plans for a new look. My surgery had been kept a secret, from her and anyone else who did not need to know. ‘Let’s surprise Zoya,’ I said.

  ‘She’s going to jump like a cow with a stick jabbed up its gaand,’ Arvind said. ‘If it wasn’t for the voice, bhai, I wouldn’t have recognized you.’ He peered at me, leaning over the foot of the bed. ‘It’s not like anything has changed that much. But somehow all the changes together have completely changed you.’

  I healed fast. As soon as Dr Langston Lee gave me the go-ahead, I flew to America. Zoya couldn’t get much time off from her shoots, and I really wanted to see her. Or, rather, I wanted her to see me. So I went. Our operations in the US were very limited, so there were no teams of boys to set up the logistics for me, and no bodyguards. I travelled alone, under an impeccable Indonesian passport, and I was sure I would be safe. I was protected by my new look. I had new clothes as well, a suitcase full of light linen suits and cotton shirts in pastel colours. Arvind had been nervous about sending me off alone, but I’d told him that I was safer on my own, that I would attract less attention without an entourage. More so because this broke the pattern that my enemies expected and watched for, they knew that for years I had always been surrounded by my boys. They would never look for me by myself.

  I said all this, and believed it. Yet, when the plane took off from Bangkok, and I was soaring off to this new world, I dipped headlong into terror. I was alone. On the Lucky Chance, I could hear my boys walking on the deck, their laughter was the first thing I heard in the morning. Now, in this little bubble of first-class air, in this cabin hurtling far above the earth, I couldn’t reach them. They were gone. I touched my chin, my nose. Under my handsome new skin there was only me. I felt that I was far away, far from everyone and everything I knew. I calmed myself, told myself that this was an unexpected but natural response to a situation I was not used to, that my body was anxious in its new form. I asked for water, and shut my eyes. The perspiration rolled off my neck, and I knew I was making myself conspicuous. But I couldn’t fight down the panic, and finally I gave in and used the airline phone to place a call to Arvind. He was quite agitated when he picked up and heard my voice, we had agreed to maintain an emergency-call-only policy over this trip. ‘Bhai,’ he said. ‘What’s wrong?’

  Of course I couldn’t tell him what was really wrong, about the steely taste of longing and loneliness at the back of my throat. I couldn’t say, I just wanted to hear your voice, you bastard. I spoke to him about some investments we had made the week before, and the movement of money from an account in Hong Kong to funds in India. It was all trivial stuff, not material for an emergency call at all. He was puzzled, but he knew his manners, and so he asked no questions, just listened to my instructions. I hung up, and then called Bunty in Bombay. I had nothing to discuss with him that was even vaguely urgent, so I talked to him about Suleiman Isa and our latest intelligence on S-Company’s activities. I left Bunty as confused as Arvind, and then I called Jojo. ‘I’m in the middle of a meeting,’ she said. ‘I’ll call you back.’

  ‘You can’t.’

  ‘Why not? I’ll be free in half an hour.’

  I hadn’t told her about my trip to America, or my surgery. And I certainly couldn’t tell her now, sitting next to a Thai grandmother with stern, steel-rimmed glasses and very sharp ears. ‘I will be in meetings myself,’ I said. ‘Tomorrow. I will call.’

  ‘Is something wrong, Gaitonde?’

  She knew me too well, this Jojo. ‘No, no,’ I said. ‘Go back to work. Tomorrow, we’ll talk tomorrow.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow.’

  I thought about Jojo as I lay back in my seat. She was my friend, and she could tell more than anyone else what my mood was, whether I was generous or angry, hard or heated or just sad. I trusted her, but I had to keep certain facts from her for reasons of my security. I lived in constant and unrelenting danger, and I had to keep secrets. I had to be careful. I had to assume that this grey-haired Thai woman in the next seat, who was now eating peanuts with the very tips of her glossy fingers, this harmless old lady may also be a spy capable of hurting me. Maybe she understood the Hindi that I spoke to Jojo, maybe she worked for Suleiman Isa and his allies. It was impossible, but I had to allow the possibility.

  No wonder I felt lonely, I thought. I lived a life of secrets and suspicion. I had necessarily to separate myself from even my friends, and this was the price I paid for power. I was a ruler, a king, so I could never relax. Even a new face couldn’t completely liberate me from fear. I was compelled to walk alone. But this solitude that I felt on the flight to America, this was new. I had never felt anything like it. I felt like I was a whirling ball floating in immeasurable space. I was suspended in a complete vacuum, quite free. Yes, this was freedom, I was independent and alone. And I was terrified.

  I broke my rule of years and asked for a Scotch. I held my breath and drank the bitter brown medicine. Then I drank two more, and finally I was able to sleep.

  I woke up to Los Angeles spreading like a long stain to my right. It was vast, and I felt very small. I couldn’t shake it off, this feeling of my own littleness, this childlike apprehension. It stayed with me in the limousine to the hotel. The streets were wide and clean, and the cars moved in orderly rows, and it all seemed very foreign. I had never felt so apart in Thailand, or even in Singapore, so unlike the drivers who sped past me. I saw an Indian man parking his car next to a market, and I watched him as he walked to a phone. He was bald,
paunchy, and he could have walked down any gali in Bombay without attracting any attention. His name was probably Ramesh, or Nitin, or Dharam. But still I felt very far from him. Maybe it was an effect of this huge, hazy sky above, and this clear, colourless light. Space was different here, and so was gravity. I felt weightless.

  My suite at the Mondrian floated twelve storeys above Sunset Boulevard. The traffic slid along below in silent ribbons of metal. The silence was unsettling. I switched on the television, turned it up, took a quick shower, and then called Zoya. She was in a room on the seventh floor. She had caught an early flight from Houston that morning and had checked in under the name of Madhubala. I had to spell the name out to the operator twice, finally the call went through, and there was Zoya. ‘Hello?’ she said. She had picked up an American accent.

  ‘It’s me,’ I said. ‘I’m in Room 1202. Come up. The door is open. Come in.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m coming.’

  She was a good girl, she didn’t need any more instructions than that. I had drawn the curtains, so that there was only a single sweep of light across the room. I sat in an armchair, backlit. It was a very dramatic shot, from her point of view. I wanted a full impression on her, a total high-impact moment that would stop her short. And then the revelation of my face.

  It worked just as I had planned. She came in, paused, then shut the door. ‘Saab?’ she said. She was wearing a white skirt, very short, and a white blouse that tied high. There was that oppressive curve of her waist, that cutting jut of her hip. She knew just what I liked. Saali, she was smart. But today I had her. I switched on the lamp next to me, and she said quickly, ‘Who are you? Who are you?’ She was afraid.

  I wanted to laugh, but I kept it in. The bafflement and the fright on her face were too delicious. She crossed her hands in front of the long slot of her belly button, and got as far as ‘Where is he? Where is…?’ before she stopped herself. She set her jaw, and said, in English, ‘I am in the wrong room. Sorry.’ I was proud of her. She had maintained security. I had taught her well. She turned and stepped smartly towards the door.

  ‘Zoya,’ I said.

  She stopped, came around. ‘Allah,’ she said. That was the only time I ever heard her call on her god. ‘Is it you?’

  ‘It’s me.’

  ‘But how can it be?’

  ‘What, only you can change?’

  She came up to me, knelt at my feet. She reached out and touched my cheek with the very tips of her fingers. The wonder moving through her slack jaw slowly ebbed as she narrowed her eyes and calculated, considered. She turned my face gently towards the light. She whispered, ‘Dr Langston Lee?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, he is a master. This is excellent work. It is very subtle, and very effective.’

  ‘Do you really like it?’

  ‘Dr Langston Lee is really too good.’

  That was enough about Dr Lee. I grasped Zoya’s wrist with my left hand, and took her chin with the other. ‘Do you think it suits me? Do you think it is me?’

  She lost that model’s measuring look instantly, and smiled at me, her eyes instantly afire with admiration. ‘You look very handsome, saab,’ she said. ‘Even better than before. You could be a star in a film, you know.’

  ‘What, me?’

  ‘Yes, yes. You should make one. With me as the heroine. International Dhamaka Part Two!’

  ‘Sequels never work in India,’ I said. ‘And anyway the first one was a flop.’

  ‘With the new Ganesh Gaitonde as hero,’ she said, ‘it would be a superhit.’

  She leaned into me and kissed me then, and in that moment I really was a hero. I led her into the bedroom, and we came together in a true international dhamaka. This one was a hit, at any rate. There was no time to take off our clothes, even. She tugged up her skirt, and I grabbed the tiny stretch of cloth underneath and twitched it off, and then I climbed on to her, and into her. We were stretched diagonally across the bed, and behind her head the undraped windows gave me the city of Los Angeles. I was laughing like a madman, with my new face, and that was how I came to America.

  We went to Universal Studios the next morning. I was reluctant, but Zoya insisted that with my new face nobody would know me, that there was no danger. ‘And what about you?’ I told her. The rides were sure to be full of maderchod Indian tourists, who now flocked about the world with their cameras and their kids and their new money. Her fans were everywhere. She assured me that she could look very different, that nobody would recognize her if she chose not to have them recognize her. She was quite certain, and she really wanted to go, so we went. And we had a fine time. For me, the pleasure came from watching Zoya’s pleasure – she was like a child at her first village fair. She sped from one ride to another, and screamed louder than anyone else when the big shark lunged its open mouth towards us. I hadn’t seen many of the films the rides were about, but Zoya knew them all, and she told me their stories. She was wearing spectacles – very plain, large ones – on the tip of her nose, a blue cap, a large white T-shirt with long sleeves, and black jeans. Her hair was in two long ponytails, and she wore no make-up at all. People stared at her, she couldn’t hide her height, but nobody recognized her. Not even the teenagers from Delhi who sat in the next car on the Jurassic Park ride and called me ‘Uncle’. So Zoya could transform herself into ordinariness as well. With her eyes and face and body, she was capable of anything. She was an actress.

  She took me twice through the Terminator ride. ‘Once is not enough,’ she said. ‘I just love Arnold.’ I knew who Arnold was, one of the boys had brought a pirated DVD of one of his films on to the boat the last year. I liked the special effects, of course, but on the whole the film had bored me. Like many of these American films, it had one good idea and clung to it so hard that it seemed poor in emotion and range. The scenes seemed flat because even in the most dramatic moments the American actors spoke quietly to each other, as if they were discussing the price of onions. And there were no songs. Finally, ultimately, most American films were sparse and unrealistic, and didn’t interest me very much. But here was Zoya, staring up at the shining steel skeleton of the Terminator, at his beady red eyes, in the same way she had looked at me the day before. Even through her glasses, I could see the fire in her eyes, matching his. She saw me looking, and kissed me on the cheek quickly. ‘You know,’ she said into my ear, ‘I dream sometimes of winning an Oscar. Of standing up there. But best of all, maybe I’ll get to meet Arnold.’

  Arnold. She said the bastard’s name as if she already knew him, as if she had shared pani-puri with him at Chowpatty. We went on with the rest of the rides and the exhibits, and she finished the day glowing and giggling. I was exhausted. We left Universal at five, and in the limousine she told me stories of more American films, and stories about their stars. I listened, and finally said, ‘Saali, how many of these films do you watch?’

  ‘Usually one a day. I have a little portable DVD player, you know. I can take it on shoots also. Sometimes I watch more than one movie, even on shooting days. It’s a good way to improve my English. You should do it also. You know Suleiman Isa watches English films every day.’

  I pinched her lower lip. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Arre, everyone knows that.’

  This was true. Everyone who knew something about the underworld knew something about Suleiman Isa’s film habits. ‘And everyone is wrong,’ I said. ‘He doesn’t watch movies. He watches just three films, again and again. Every evening, he sees one. Then the next, and the next. Then he starts again.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s true. We have good intelligence on this, from the inside. He watches The Godfather series again and again.’

  ‘No! Really?’

  ‘It’s true.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Ask the bastard. He’s crazy.’

  She nodded. ‘And have you seen the films, saab?’

  ‘I saw the first one.’

  ‘Did
n’t like it?’

  ‘It was okay. I thought Dharmatma was better. Even Dayavan.’

  She burst out laughing, and wrapped her arms around me. ‘You travel all over the world, bhai, but you have such desi tastes. You are so chweet.’ She kissed me then, and put a hand down the front of my jeans, and showed me how sweet I was, and I forgot about Suleiman Isa and his chutiya Godfather. But later that night, after she was asleep, I lay awake thinking about American films. My boys watched American action movies all the time. They said they liked the stunts, and the special effects. Why did Suleiman Isa watch the Godfather pictures all the time? I had never thought about this before, but now, lying in a bed under this alien sky, held up by the city’s sprawling constellations of lights, it occurred to me that his reasons for watching were maybe the same reasons I had for making International Dhamaka. He wanted to understand what had happened to him, what he had become. And for the first time, I felt a kinship with him.

  What had I become? I had become someone else, something else. As I tried to grasp how exactly I had changed, what had happened to me, a burrowing little worm of doubt moved through my belly, and up around my heart. Zoya said I was handsome now, that I could be a film star if I wanted. I knew I looked better, that I was younger than ever and sharp-featured. But, but if Arnold was who she dreamed of meeting, could I ever be as large-muscled as the Terminator? If the Terminator came to her in her dreams, even as she slept next to me, could she truly love me? I told myself that the Terminator was a fiction, that I was more powerful than some cheap American actor. I told myself, you have killed more men than some pretend Terminator. A word from you moves money and arms across continents. If anyone should be called the Terminator, it is you.

  And yet, when Zoya stirred in the early morning, and nuzzled sleepily at my side, what met her from within me was still that wriggling parasite of disbelief. I looked at the arm that was holding her, my arm, and all I could think of was that it was so scrawny, compared to Arnold’s. Actually, even the hero in the film she was shooting in Texas was more of an Arnold than me. He was short, but he had a bulky, steroided chest, and worked-up arms. I knew I could afford the best steroids, and build a gym for myself, and hire trainers, but would I ever be close to the vision that Zoya carried around in her head, this man that she could truly love? Did she love me, this Zoya, this Egotistical Giraffe?