Sacred Games

by Vikram Chandra

  She used the English word duty, and Sartaj remembered Papa-ji calling out, ‘Arre chetti kar, dooty par jaana hai.’ It was strange to think of love as duty, to imagine that Ma’s salwar-kameez and red paranda had been a kind of uniform, that maybe her assiduous care of his and Papa-ji’s health and cleanliness and nutrition had not been natural, but somehow cultivated and consciously sacrificed. So this familiar figure resting next to him had led her own private life in all the homes they had shared, she had her own history of every birthday, every journey. Again Sartaj had that unsettling feeling that this woman, his own mother, Prabhjot Kaur, was also someone he did not know. It wrenched his heart, just slightly, but out of that hurt came a new affection for this stranger he had lived with all these years. She had worked very hard, without recognition, without recompense. So maybe she was more like an underpaid police-walli than she knew. He smiled, and asked, ‘Are your feet hurting?’

  ‘A little.’

  Sartaj massaged her ankles, pressed her feet. The train picked up speed, and went over a long bridge with that booming rattle which mixed exuberance and nostalgia. Whoever she was, this woman, Sartaj did not feel alone sitting at her feet, or lonely. She had been many things to him. They had been mother and son, but they were also Prabhjot Kaur and Sartaj Singh, they had been each other’s support for many years, and they were friends. Outside the window, the river rose to the horizon in a vast spill of icy silver light. Sartaj held his mother’s foot, and with the fragile weight of her bones against his hand, he thought, she is old. He allowed himself to think of her death, and he shivered suddenly, but he was not sad. Every connection came freighted with loss, every attachment with the possibility of betrayal. There was no avoiding this conundrum, no escape from it, and no profit from complaining about it. Love was duty, and duty was love.

  Sartaj caught himself thinking these philosophical thoughts, and he grinned at his own fatuousness. I must be tired, he thought. He patted Ma’s feet, then silently went up to his berth. He curled over under a clean-smelling white sheet, and a song from the afternoon came from under the rolling wheels. Was it a Kishore Kumar song, what was it? He could hear the tune, but what were the words? He pulled the sheet up to his chin and, very softly, hummed the song and tried to remember.

  Mary wanted to put mud on Sartaj’s face. ‘It’s not mud,’ she said indignantly, but that’s exactly what it looked like, mud in a small pink pot.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ Sartaj said. ‘You went downstairs and got it from under one of the plants.’ They were sitting facing each other, on his bed. This was the first time she had visited his apartment, and he had spent the afternoon tidying up and cleaning away the dust that had accumulated during his Amritsar trip. She had arrived at six-thirty, carrying a small blue backpack over her shoulder. He had teased her about how young she looked, like a stylish college student, and then they had made love. Afterwards, he told her about the journey, and told her about how grimy he had felt, despite being inside an AC compartment all the way. At which point she’d jumped off her bed and rummaged inside her backpack and come up with the jar of mud.

  ‘It is a very expensive facial treatment, Sar-taj,’ Mary said. ‘At the salon, people pay how much for it, you don’t know. Look, it has fruits and essences in it. It will rejuvenate your skin, take out all the impurities from the train, all that dust and grit. It’s like multani mitti, only better.’ She shifted forward, so that her thighs straddled his. She was wearing a sheet around her waist, and her hair fell to the curve of her bare shoulders. ‘Arre, don’t move, baba.’ She dipped two fingers in the pot, and painted the stuff over his forehead. It felt cool going on, cool and smooth. ‘Pull your hair back.’

  She worked carefully and slowly, her tongue between her teeth. He craned up, and she laughed and let him kiss her, but only for a moment, and then she pushed him back with the heel of a hand on the shoulder. He leaned back against a pillow and watched her eyes, the shaded brown of her skin. There were shallow rimples in her lips, and he examined the curve of her eyelashes. When she had finished, and nodded with satisfaction, he took the pot from her and scooped up a dab and smoothed it along the line of her cheekbone. The stuff was red and softer than ordinary mud, very even and fine-grained, and it went on easily. He painted her face, working from the top down. When he was at her neck, he leaned his head back, feeling the clay pull at his own skin already, and there was a moment of astonishment when he saw her whole, because it was Mary but not quite Mary. The red made a mask on her, so that the features were those he knew well but the face was still and opaque and unknown. ‘You don’t look like yourself,’ he said.

  She nodded. ‘We have to let it dry now,’ she said. ‘Fifteen-twenty minutes.’

  So they sat, with her hands on his chest, and him holding her around the waist. He watched the red change colour, become lighter, and seams appear in it. It was like looking at an ancient stone statue, except there were her eyes at the centre, bright and glowing. It was disquieting somehow, this abstraction of Mary into something else, something impersonal, so he glanced away, over her shoulder. The door to his cupboard was open, and on the outside of it was the long mirror he had nailed up long ago, to check his style before he set out each day. He could see himself and Mary in it now, silhouetted and symmetrical, and part of his own face, the red cheeks under the loose flow of hair. There was a stranger there, a man equally unknown. He breathed, and he turned back to Mary, very calm, and held her very close.

  Their breathing swirled in the silence and was louder than the streets outside the window, and the cries of birds fell faintly into their respirations. Mary had told him the treatment would rejuvenate his skin, but quite apart from the tightening of his skin, the mud seemed to be working its effects deeper. He was here with Mary, and he was not afraid of either the happiness or the heartbreak that lay ahead. He was newly alive, as if he had been freed of something. He did not understand why this should be so, but he was satisfied with not understanding completely. To be alive was enough.

  ‘It’s dry,’ Mary said. ‘Let’s take it off.’

  He led her into the bathroom by the hand, and took the sheet from her and tucked it behind the towels. She twisted at the knobs on the wall, and a jet of water frilled out across the narrow room. She laughed, turning to him, and her smile cracked through the clay. He laughed too, for no good reason. They washed it off each other’s faces, and the mud ran down their bodies and they were covered with a glaze of it, and Sartaj saw Mary – the Mary he knew something of – emerge from the layer of red, and he wanted to touch every part of her, and he did.

  A party of Municipal men were working on a hole in the road. They weren’t actually working, they were standing around the hole looking at it, and apparently waiting for something to happen. Meanwhile, a vast funnel of traffic pressed up against the bottleneck. Sartaj was somewhere towards the front, on his motorcycle. He was hemmed in by a BEST bus and two autos, and there was nowhere for anyone to go, so they all waited companionably. The bus was crammed full of office-goers, and the autos were taking college students to their classes. Young boys were working the stalled traffic, selling magazines and water and gaudy Chinese statues of a laughing man with his hands above his head. A pair of maimed beggars went from car to car, tapping their stumps on the windscreens. There were two radios playing somewhere close, mixing channels. Sartaj drank it all in, incredulous that he had missed all this while he had been away, and that he was glad to be back. Even this particular stench of exhaust and burning and heated tar, even this was delectable. I must be mad, he thought. And he remembered Katekar, who had been crazy in the same way, who had complained endlessly but had confessed to yearning for the city when he went to his in-laws’ village. ‘Once the air of this place touches you,’ Katekar had said, ‘you are useless for anywhere else.’ And he had twirled his finger at his forehead, and laughed, his shoulders shaking.

  The bus moved, and Sartaj swerved ahead, risking a meeting with tonnes of metal, and then he wa
s past the Municipal men and through the gap. He sped ahead. A curve festooned with bright new film posters brought him near a beach, and the sea lay flat and brown. There was new construction near the Kailashpada naka, a hulking steel scaffold thrust itself out of the ground. The labourers had built their red and blue tents in its shadow, and naked babies crawled over the piles of gravel. Sartaj slowed for a pair of rangy white dogs which crossed the road full of purpose, looking exactly as if they had an important meeting in five minutes. A breeze blew against Sartaj’s chest, and he was happy.

  He coasted easily through the gates of the police station, and parked in front of the zonal headquarters. From where he was sitting, he could see through the reception area to the gallery that led to the senior inspector’s office and the detection room. Kamble was sitting at the desk directly in front of the main door, bent over and writing something in a register. A man and a woman sat across from him, leaning towards each other, their shoulders huddled. A constable led a shackled prisoner past. The scrape of a jhadoo against stone came from the balcony above, slowly repeating itself. Majid Khan called out to an inspector, and the booming curl of his friendly abuse made Sartaj grin.

  Sartaj got off the bike. He put his shoes up on the pedal, one by one, and buffed them with a spare handkerchief until they shone. Then he ran a finger around his waistline, along the belt. He patted his cheeks, and ran a forefinger and thumb along his moustache. He was sure it was magnificent. He was ready. He went in and began another day.

  A SELECTIVE GLOSSARY

  FOR SACRED GAMES

  A full glossary is available for download at

  www.VikramChandra.com.

  Note: Some of the words below can be used in more than one language; for example, ‘Ma’ (‘Mother’) is used in Hindi, Punjabi and many other north Indian languages.

  Aai Mother.

  aaiyejhavnaya, aaiyejhavnayi Motherfucker.

  Aaj ka Kanoon ‘The Law of our Times’.

  aaja gufaon mein aa This is a line from a song from the 2001 Hindi film Aks: ‘Come, come into the cave’. The next line is Aaja gunaah kar le—‘Come, commit a sin’.

  aane wala pal Part of a line from a song from the Hindi film Gol Maal (‘Fraud’, 1979): ‘The coming moment…’ The full line is ‘The coming moment will also pass…’

  aatya Aunt—father’s sister.

  ACP Assistant Commissioner of Police.

  Adhyapika-ji A very formal way of addressing a teacher: ‘Respected teacher’.

  adrak Ginger.

  agarbatties Incense sticks.

  akha Full, absolute.

  akhara Regiment.

  almirah Cupboard.

  Ambabai A goddess especially popular in Maharashtra.

  anda Egg.

  angadia Traditional Indian courier. Angadia companies are often used by diamond merchants, who send their shipments with trusted angadias. Like many traditional Indian services, the angadia system operates solely on trust.

  angula Literally, a finger. Here, a measure of length.

  antra A term from classical music for the introduction to the main body of the song. The antra may be repeated during the song itself.

  appam A flat, pancake-like dish made from fermented rice. Native to Kerala.

  apradhi Criminal, convict.

  apsaras Heavenly nymphs, often the cause of the downfall of ascetic yogis and masters.

  Arre chetti kar, dooty par jaana hai This is a Punjabi phrase that would translate roughly into something like, ‘Hey, hurry up, I have to go to my duty’. The ‘duty’ in question is the speaker’s police shift. In India, putting in a day of work is often referred to as ‘doing duty’.

  arthi Funeral byre on which a person is carried to the burning grounds.

  ashiana Literally, ‘nest’.

  atta Flour.

  Avadhi Prior to British rule, Avadh (also known as Oude) was a kingdom at the centre of what is now the modern state of Uttar Pradesh. After the British occupation, the area was subsumed into the United Provinces.

  Ay An exclamation to attract somebody’s attention, ‘Hey’.

  Baap, baap re Father. Or an exclamation, ‘O my father’.

  baba An affectionate way to address somebody. (Note that the same word can be used, depending on context, to mean ‘young child’ or ‘old man’.)

  bachcha Child.

  badboo Bad smell.

  badmash A shady character, a bad man.

  badshah Emperor.

  bai A respectful title for women, but in Bombay it is often used to refer to maid servants, as in ‘the bai who sweeps the house’.

  baithak Sitting room.

  baja Musical instrument.

  bajao ‘To play’, and often, ‘to thump’, as with a drum. So ‘bajao’ is used in the context of music, and it can often be used in the context of violence or sex. To ‘bajao’ somebody (or something) can mean to hit them, or to have vigorous sex with them. It has a similar connotation as ‘to bang’ in American slang.

  Bakr’id A Muslim festival that commemorates the faith and sacrifice of Hazrat Ibrahim (Abraham), who was asked by Allah to sacrifice his son. The day is marked by the sacrifice of animals. Outside the subcontinent, the festival is known as Id-ul-Zuha or Id-ul-Azha.

  Bali, Sugreev Characters from the Ramayana. They are both monkeys, and are brothers. Bali has usurped the monkey kingdom from Sugreev and kidnapped Sugreev’s wife. Rama befriends Sugreev and ambushes Bali and kills him. Sugreev, as ruler of the monkeys, then becomes an ally of Rama’s in the great war against Ravana.

  ban A very large vessel or pot, made out of metal, to store and heat water.

  bandh Literally, ‘closed’. A closing down of a city or locality, a strike. Often called by a political party, and sometimes enforced with violence.

  bandhgalla Literally, ‘closed neck’. Used for any jacket or coat that has a round, closed collar, such as the Nehru jacket.

  bandobast Practical arrangements, logistics.

  bania Trader, shopkeeper.

  banian Undershirt.

  bar-balas Bar-girls, women who work in bars.

  bas Enough, stop.

  Bas khwab itna sa hai These are lines from a song from the Hindi film Yes, Boss (1997):

  Bas khwab itna sa hai

  Bas itna sa khwab hai…

  shaan se rahoon sada…

  Bas itna sa khwab hai…

  Haseenayein bhi dil hon khotin,

  dil ka ye kamal khile…

  Sone ka mahal mile,

  barasne lagein heere moti

  Which translate as:

  I have only this little dream

  That I forever live forever in luxury

  That beautiful women lose their hearts

  May this dream of mine flower.

  That I gain a palace of gold,

  That pearls and diamonds fall from the sky.

  basta Schoolbag.

  basti Literally ‘settlement’ or ‘town’. The term is often used for low-income areas or slums.

  Bataa re. Kaad rela. ‘Tell me. Spill it’.

  batasha Drops of candied sugar.

  batata-wada A fried snack made from potatoes and chickpea flour.

  besan Chickpea flour.

  bevda A drunk.

  Bhabhi A respectful term for one’s brother’s wife.

  bhadwaya, bhadwa Pimp.

  bhadwi Feminine form of ‘bhadwa’, pimp. Therefore, ‘Madam’.

  Bhai Literally, ‘brother’. In Bombay it also means ‘gangster’, meaning a member of an organized crime ‘company’. ‘Bhai’ is roughly equivalent to the American ‘made guy’. A Bhai is what a tapori wants to become.

  bhaigiri The act of acting like a bhai.

  bhajan A devotional song.

  bhajiyas A fried snack.

  bhakri A flat, round, unleavened bread that has traditionally been eaten by farmers.

  bhakt Devotee, follower.

  bhang A derivative of cannabis, made from the leaf and flower of the
female plant. Can be smoked, or is used in drinks.

  bhangad Problems, a mess, a mix-up.

  bhangi Sweeper.

  bhangra An energetic and lively dance native to Punjab, and also the music that accompanies this dance. Bhangra music has been modernized and crossbred with many influences, and is now popular as dance music in clubs around the world.

  bhashan Lecture.

  bhat Rice.

  Bhavani A goddess. She is the fierce aspect of Shakti or Devi, but she is also the giver of life, and ‘Karunaswaroopini’, the very form of mercy.

  bheja Brain.

  bhelpuri A spicy snack typical of Bombay. Bhelpuri is often sold from carts on streets and beaches.

  bhenchod Sister-fucker.

  bhenji A respectful way of addressing one’s older sister: ‘Respected Sister’.

  bhidu Buddy, pal.

  bhindi Okra. Lady’s Finger.

  bhondu Fool.

  bhoot Ghost.

  Bhumro bhumro A line from a song from the Hindi film Mission Kashmir (2000): ‘Bumblebee, o bumblebee…’