Sacred Games

by Vikram Chandra

  The question was ridiculous, and I knew it, and yet it stayed with me. We ate breakfast sitting at the dining table in the main room, and as usual it was a wonder to watch her eat. She drank a jug of orange juice, and put away three omelettes. I watched her, and she was beautiful again, she was Zoya Mirza the film star herself. Be happy, I told myself. She is with you. And then the phone rang. Not the hotel phone, and not my mobile, but the secure satellite phone which was on the bedside table. I hurried to it. Only Arvind and Bunty had that number, and they would use it only under extraordinary circumstances.

  It was Arvind. ‘Bhai?’ he said. ‘You should come back.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Our potato business,’ he said. The ‘potato trade’ was our phrase for our armament-smuggling operations, which we ran for Guru-ji. We had been doing this for years now, bringing shipments of arms and ammunition to the Konkan coast and handing them over to his people for transportation. ‘They have found out about it. They have one of our shipments.’

  ‘Who has found out?’

  ‘The Delhi people.’ Which was Dinesh Kulkarni, otherwise known as Mr Joshi, and his organization, and therefore the maderchod Indian government.

  ‘I will be on the next plane,’ I said.

  ‘Please come fast, bhai,’ he said. ‘They are very angry.’

  What he meant was that he was afraid for my safety, exposed as I was in this foreign country, out here in this grand hotel suite without any bodyguards. This is why he was being so careful and cryptic, even on a secure line. ‘I understand,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry. I’m on my way.’

  I said goodbye to Zoya, and I went.

  ‘Why did you do it, Ganesh?’ This was Kulkarni, who was now being sternly schoolteacherish. ‘Why?’

  ‘We needed samaan for our own people.’

  ‘Don’t lie to me. In the shipments the police caught, there were one hundred and sixty-two AK-56 rifles, forty automatic pistols and eighteen thousand rounds of ammunition. That’s not personal use, Ganesh. That’s armament for a war.’

  ‘We might have sold some. It’s good business, and income is down from all other sources. The whole economy is down. As you know, saab.’

  He came back sharp and quick, ‘Are you working with someone? Are these weapons intended specifically for someone? For some group, some party?’

  ‘No, no, saab. We just need the cash, and this was a good market. You know how the situation in the country is nowadays, everyone wants insurance against everyone else. We were just distributors, to everyone.’ I was sweating. I was back on the yacht, in Phuket waters, and I was covered and guarded on every side, but I knew our situation was very serious. We had a problem. And Kulkarni was letting me know exactly how bad our problem was. I was wishing now that K.D. Yadav had not retired, and that he was still handling my business with his organization. He was a practical man, he understood our necessities. This bastard Kulkarni was talking to me like some little boy he had caught with stolen goods.

  ‘We overlooked your other projects and businesses,’ he said. ‘But this…I don’t know if we can overlook this. Even with the organization, those who objected to having a relationship with you are now completely justified.’ He was certainly very angry himself. ‘How many shipments were there?’

  I knew he wouldn’t believe that there had been just the single shipment, so I told him that there had been one more, a much smaller one. I told him that there would be no more. I tried to talk him out of his anger, and told him how loyal I was. I reminded him of all the operations I had run for his organization, all the hard and completely reliable intelligence I had fed them. I made allusions to our many conversations, and the years of my work for Mr Kumar. He remained grim, and unyielding, and kept burrowing for more information on our arms business. I warded him off, gave him as little as I could and finally put the phone down feeling harried and afraid.

  Arvind had come down from Singapore, and he was pacing around on the deck outside. He was on the phone to Bombay, trying to track the police case as it developed, following tips from our sources inside the department. I waited. There was no moon out that night, and the water shifted its silver-black surfaces at the corners of my eyes. Someone was watching me. I was sure of it. They were out there. Maybe they were listening to Arvind’s conversation on his phone. The instrument was supposed to be secure, but whatever was secure could be cracked. Mr Kumar had taught me that.

  Arvind thumbed off his phone. ‘Nothing new, bhai,’ he said. ‘They’re holding a press conference tomorrow morning at ten. Maybe something new will come out then.’

  We still didn’t know how the police had found our shipments. We didn’t know how they had connected the shipments to us. They had had some good intelligence. Who had given it to them? Suleiman Isa and his boys? Or did the police have their own informants high up in our company? Quite possible. We would have to investigate. But I had an urgent, immediate worry. Our potato operation was compromised. I had to alert our client. I had to go to Guru-ji.

  Guru-ji once again foretold my future, and this time he saved my life. I met him in Munich, where he was conducting a five-day workshop and a yagna. I flew alone. Arvind and Bunty tried to keep me from going, and then they tried to send half a battalion of shooters with me. I told them I was much safer alone, that I was protected by my new face. I demonstrated this to them: I walked past boys who had worked for me for years, and none of them recognized me. As long as I kept a low profile, I would be protected.

  Guru-ji’s security was of course paramount in my thoughts, and I had no wish to taint his reputation in any way. I didn’t trust our usual methods of communication any more, I didn’t know whether the technology we used was still safe. Our experts were getting new machines, new software, new methods. But I needed to talk to Guru-ji. So I took this risk, of being alone in a foreign country. I used the same approach I had earlier, in Bombay. I attended the Munich yagna and waited afterwards for an audience. Only this time he knew I was coming.

  I got to Munich at five in the evening and found the hall where Guru-ji had been holding his workshops. The yagna was a miniature of the one he had done in Bombay, and as the flames leaped and danced he spoke about the cycles of history. I sat at the back of the hall and watched him over the orderly ranks of firangi heads. There were television screens hanging from the roof of the hall, but I only looked at Guru-ji straight-straight, I strained my eyes and focused on him. After all these months of his voice over the telephone and his eyes in fuzzy newspaper photographs, I wanted a direct darshan. And I felt his presence, his great atman and the peace it brought to me. I was soothed, I was healed, I was revived. Only those who have seen him in person know what a light pours from him, what a glowing sweep of clarity comes from his darshan. I sat up like an eager child, and was instructed by him. He was speaking about our times, about the turbulence that was churning our world. ‘Do not be afraid,’ he said, in his rumbling Hindi, with simultaneous German translation. ‘In the last few centuries, you have heard people speak of “progress”, but you have seen only suffering and destruction. You have been terrified of science itself, of its rapaciousness and amoral power. You are told by your politicians that things are getting better, but you know they are getting worse. And you are seized by fear. I say to you, do not be afraid. We are approaching a time of great change. It is inevitable, it is necessary, it will happen and has to happen. And the signs of the change are all around us. Time and history are like a wave, like a building storm. We are approaching the crest, the outburst. You can feel it, I know you can, it is a build-up of emotion in your own body as well. The events are mounting in their intensity, they come one after another. But in this maelstrom is the promise of peace. Only after the explosion, we will find silence and a new world. This is sure. Do not doubt the future. I assure you, mankind will step into a golden age of love, of plenty, of peace. So do not be afraid.’

  I listened to him and I was not afraid, although I had reason to be. I had come to h
im with a nervous stomach full of troubles, a spirit that was tired, and courage that was being tested. I had come to him, leaving behind my boys and my protection, because I needed to be in his presence. And already, in a few minutes, I was calmed. I had grown up sceptical of sadhus and sants, I had always thought they were charlatans and tricksters and confidence men, but here was a man who cracked through the shield of my doubt with his ineffable power. You may indulge yourself in the bitter satisfactions of scepticism, you may think me weak-headed, a paralysed fool looking for comfort, a tottering man wanting a crutch. All these thoughts – and I had had them too – are blinders against the truth, against reality itself, which was simply the peace I found sitting in the same room with him. Of course it wasn’t just me who gained this tranquillity, but also all those Germans in the room. And thousands of others all over the world, who responded to him, his call, his teachings. He had that effect. Call it ‘charisma’, if that eases your mind, your desire for a certain limited logic. That was exactly the trap of reason that Guru-ji spoke about at the end of his sermon that night.

  ‘Listen with your heart,’ he said. ‘Reason can stand on the path to wisdom, like a watchman with a lathi. Logic is good, it is powerful, we use it every day. It gives us control of the world we live in, it enables our daily living. But even science tells us that everyday logic cannot finally describe the reality of the world we live in. Time contracts and expands, Einstein told us this. Space curves. Below the level of the atom, particles pass through each other, a particle exists in two places at the same time. Reality itself, the real reality, is a madman’s vision, a hallucination that the small individual human mind cannot hold. You must explode the ego, recognize everyday reason for the small and limiting jailer it is. You must walk past it, into the boundless expanse beyond. Reality waits for you there.’

  I waited for him patiently, after the sermon was over. He had the usual line of devotees waiting to talk to him. I sat on a chair in the emptying hall, as the sadhus let the Germans one by one into a private room to the side. I wasn’t worried that they would halt the audiences before they reached me, this time Guru-ji knew I was coming. So I was content to sit and watch the firangis emerge from their personal darshans, smiling, transformed.

  ‘You are Indian?’

  It was one of the Germans. She was wearing a deep red sari and had her blonde hair caught up in a jooda on the back of her head. There was a mangalsutra on her neck, and sindoor in her hair. She was young, maybe in her mid-twenties, but she looked like a traditional Indian mother from thirty years ago, from a small town at that. ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘From where?’ she said. Her English was clear and clangy. I had heard this accent on the beaches of Phuket.

  ‘From, from Nashik,’ I said.

  ‘I have not gone,’ she said. ‘But Nagpur, you know Nagpur?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Guru-ji married me there, and gave me a new name.’

  ‘Guru-ji married? You?’

  ‘No, no, married me to my husband. To Sukumar.’

  ‘Sukumar, he is Indian?’

  ‘No, also German. After I met him I became Guru-ji’s disciple. Then Guru-ji married us.’

  ‘And gave you a new name.’

  ‘I am Sita.’

  ‘A very good name.’

  ‘Guru-ji says it is a high ideal.’

  ‘What?’

  She gestured up, up towards the heavens. ‘Sita is a good woman.’

  This Sita had bright blue eyes, and a happy, beaming countenance. I smiled back at her. ‘Sita was the best woman.’ One of the sadhus waved at me then. It was my turn. ‘Bye,’ I said to Sita.

  ‘Namaste,’ she said, with an elegant folding of the hands and a deep bow. ‘It is always nice to meet someone from home.’

  I stood up, and fought off a sudden dizziness. I was tired, yes, too much travel in a short time. I stood by the green door to the private room, flanked by two sadhus, both firangis with bushy brown beards. They were both completely calm, quite silent. Then the door opened, and I was in.

  Guru-ji was seated on a gadda near the fireplace, and his hair was a silver halo. The chairs and couches – it must have been a meeting room – had been moved to the sides, leaving the open space that he liked. He watched me come to him. I knelt in front of him, and touched my forehead to the ground, clutched at his feet. He put his right hand on my head, and said, ‘Jite raho, beta.’ He took me by the shoulders and raised me up.

  I kept quiet. I should have said something, in gratitude for his blessing, but I held myself back.

  ‘What is your name, beta?’

  I hadn’t planned this silence on my part, I had no intention of testing Guru-ji. But suddenly, I wanted him to know me. Not one other man or woman had seen through the disguise of my new face. But Guru-ji knew my soul, he knew even the small, hard, cinder-like fragment at the centre, which I had never shown to anyone. He knew the softness and yearning which lay under that black surface. He was waiting now, expectant.

  ‘Are you dumb?’ he said. ‘Can you not speak?’

  A smile came slipping across my face. I was being very silly, but the fact that he thought me mute amused me greatly. I knelt there, smiling.

  ‘Ganesh?’ he said.

  I was amazed. I had wanted him to recognize me, but I hadn’t expected him to. It was merely a wish, from the deepest core of who I was. There are many longings that float close to the surface of our skin, and I had achieved many of these: power, money, women. But there are needs so deep that they are not named, not even to oneself. They operate like subterranean flows of molten liquid, on which the continents move. They burst up sometimes with the fury of volcanoes, and then vanish, gone to the underground again. This is the true underworld, where desire boils eternally. I had wanted, like a child, to be named and known. And Guru-ji had done it.

  ‘How?’ I said. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Do you really think you can hide from me?’ He patted my cheek, then hugged me close.

  ‘Guru-ji.’ I was laughing. In one touch, I was rescued from my exhaustion, my anger, my fear. This is why I came to him, across the world and alone. I held his hands. ‘Guru-ji, I know seeing me is…’

  He shook his head. ‘Not here.’

  So he called up one of his sadhus, told him that I was a bhakt named Arjun Kerkar, that I had a very personal problem that would require a long consultation. His staff seemed used to this. Guru-ji climbed into his wheelchair in one powerful movement, and I followed him down into the garage. There was a flight of seven stairs down from the elevator lobby to the floor of the garage, and he took it easily in his wheelchair. The fat black wheels made little whirring and clicking noises, and the wheelchair danced down the stairs, perfectly balanced.

  ‘Excellent, Guru-ji,’ I said.

  ‘Latest model, Arjun,’ he said to me, with a flash of teeth over his shoulder. ‘Everything is computerized. I can balance on two wheels. Look.’

  And he did, whirling slowly on his two wheels. I clapped. There was a special van waiting in the garage, with a ramp to let the wheelchair in, and we skimmed off to the house where Guru-ji was staying, a devotee’s mansion just outside the city. Everything was efficiently organized, and the sadhus spoke to each other on little walkie-talkies, and there were no delays or wasted motion. In fifteen minutes we were in Guru-ji’s suite, which had been set up exactly the way he liked it, with fresh flowers in every room, and fruits on the table, and his CDs of sitar music and devotional chants by the bed. I took my shoes off, and found a comfortable chair in a little anteroom. I waited. Guru-ji took a bath, dictated some essential letters to his aides and then dismissed them. He called me in, and I found him seated on his bed in the centre of the room, wearing a white silk kurta and a dhoti.

  ‘Come,’ he said, pointing to a chair by the bed. ‘Sit. Tell me, when did you do this to your face? Why?’

  So I told him. Of course he agreed with the security concerns I had, but he also said that I had f
elt the urge to renew myself because of the coming change. ‘A new world needs a new man. And you have renewed yourself. You felt the need to do so, you listened to the calling of the times, Arjun. I think that is the correct new name for the new you. I shall call you “Arjun” from now. You shall be Arjun who fooled me.’

  ‘Only for ten seconds, Guru-ji. You are the only one who recognized me.’

  ‘It’s a good face, Arjun. Nobody will know it. Now tell me why you wanted to meet.’

  He followed me closely, as I told him about the recent disaster. I told him that of course no operation is ever completely foolproof, that I had insulated myself from the arms smuggling with several levels of delegation through the company, and used semi-independent groups. And we had fed the UP police some arrests, low-level men that we thought would satisfy them, cool them down. But they had more information than we thought they did, and they had pursued further investigations, and I had been finally implicated. My thought was that some of this relentless zeal was being funded and informed from Dubai and Karachi, by Suleiman Isa and his fellows. They were using their people in the police to prosecute a new campaign in their war against us. And so the police – both UP and Maharashtra – were pushing us hard.

  ‘Yes,’ said Guru-ji. ‘Yes, Arjun.’ In the face of all these calamities, he was still as a statue in a temple. ‘Do they know about me?’

  ‘You – no, no, Guru-ji. Never. You have been kept completely out of the operation, your name has never ever been mentioned. Nobody in my company knows about you, even. I have maintained full security. I have come only by myself on this trip, no boys, no cover. There is no threat to you from my side, I have made sure of that. But I think we must pull back on the arms movements. It is too hot right now.’