Sacred Games (119 page)

Jojo was real to me, and distance made no difference. I was barely a mile and a half from her apartment, less if I went directly across swamp and sea. I could be there in ten minutes. I could have walked up her stairs, knocked on her door and asked her for a cup of chai. But I had no desire to go, no need to see her. She was with me, even when she was away. I could feel her inside me. She was more real to me than myself. Me, I had faded and broken into pieces. This was true. I could hardly admit this to myself, but it was true. The thing I called me, myself, it felt to me like an old brown blanket, tattered and patched and barely holding together. I, who had once been Ganesh Gaitonde, who had been glorious and whole to the entire world, I was now gone from myself. I felt like a small boy walking alone through an endless plain lit by funeral fires, afraid and lost. In this ashy haze, in which I no longer knew what was good or worth having, I clung to Jojo. She was my strength and my only pleasure, my anchor and my only friend. I listened to her, and laughed, and collected myself for my search.

‘Gaitonde,' she told me, ‘it sounds just like you're sitting at a corner in Tardeo. But you move around so much that you confuse me also, not just yourself. You should stay in one place for a while now. Even if it's this Kala Langur.'

I told her what she could do with her Kala Langur, which made her giggle, and then she told me a story about a woman who had gone to Nepal for a holiday and had been abducted by a bear which fell in love with her. ‘Really, Gaitonde, it happened. Bears take women all the time.' Which I think, in some roundabout way, was meant to be an argument for staying at home. I didn't tell her that I couldn't stay in one place, that I had no choice, that I had to travel. I just listened to her, and left the next day for Delhi. Five of my boys met me there, all the main crew from the yacht. They had flown into airports all over the country, from Sydney and Singapore and Mombasa, and had rendezvoused at two hotels in Greater Kailash. They were to be my special squad, my undercover commandos. Bunty's assistant Nikhil had come from Mumbai to head this contingent. He hadn't been exactly happy to leave behind his good money-making operations and his family in Mumbai, but I had insisted, and he had packed his bags. He knew me well enough not to argue. He was completely bald already at thirty, and he had an older man's stolid patience. He had managed the details: the boys had good cover stories, new documentation that had been dirtied for a properly aged look, and sober clothing and decent haircuts. I brought money and weapons, and we were ready to go.

We started in Chandigarh. Guru-ji had suffered his crippling motorcycle accident in Pathankot, and he had been brought to a hospital in Chandigarh, and during his recovery he had formed an attachment to the city. It was here, among these broad avenues and circles, that he had finally settled his parents, and it was here that he built his first ashram and headquarters. The ashram complex had been large to start with, but now it sprawled over a hundred acres on the outskirts of Sector 43. We got to Adarsh Nagar in the late afternoon, with the setting sun on our shoulders. The massive blue gate at the entrance was manned by white-clad sadhus, the usual mix of Indians and foreigners. Nikhil had called ahead and set up a meeting with Sadhu Anand Prasad, who was the governing head of Adarsh Nagar and the top sadhu in the national organization. The sentry sadhus made phone calls, and Nikhil chatted with them, and as we waited I got out of the car and strolled down to the barrier. The gate was actually a monument by itself, like one of those gigantic guardhouses that you see at the front of castles and fortresses, with rooms and chambers and armouries inside. Guru-ji's gatehouse was a glorious shimmering blue, it had delicate rounded turrets and pointed spires and little balconies, and despite all its bulk it sat lightly on the earth, as if it had been transported in from another era. It could have guarded the palace at Hastinapur, or stood before Ravana's golden fortress. Inside the compound, there was a thick covering of green grass, cut straight and even, and long boulevards, and widely dispersed buildings, all in blue and white. There were clipped trees, and flapping orange and red flags along the roads. The shaded archway of the gate was suffused with fragrance from neat blocks of yellow flowers that lined the steel fences.

‘Okay, bhai,' Nikhil said to me. ‘We can go in.'

We drove along, past sadhus walking purposefully in small groups. There was an infinite hush over these gardens, a quiet removed from time, so that even the gathering flocks of evening birds spoke only in mild tones. There were children strolling in the meadows, but they walked in orderly columns and bowed their heads with a namaste when an elder passed. I had seen this ashram on video, but now in life it looked a little smaller than I had imagined it. But it was perfect in its shape, it was quite balanced and square. At the other end of the campus there was another blue gate, and two more at the east and west, and exactly half-way between all of them, at the geometrical dead centre of the grounds, there rose a massive stepped pyramid of white marble, a pillar pointing at
heaven. This was the main administration building. We parked in front of it, and went through another cordon of secretary sadhus. Then we were shown into a lounge lined with low couches, and here we waited.

It was Nikhil who finally said what we were all thinking. ‘Bhai,' he said, ‘there's a lot of cash here. Maybe we're in the wrong game.'

‘It's never too late,' I said. ‘You want to start a religion?'

‘Let's do it.' He scratched at his golis. ‘You be head godman. I'll manage the finances.'

‘Meaning I do all the work and you get the largest cut, you greedy maderchod. At least come up with the rules for this new faith. What is our philosophy?'

The chutiya didn't have any trouble coming up with a creed. He sprawled back on his sofa, folded his hands over his comfortable little belly and put his feet on a table. ‘There's only one rule. You gain grace by giving Bhai money. The more you give, the more karma you get rid of. Give everything you've got, and you are granted moksha.'

The boys all grunted and rattled with laughter, and I smiled too. But it hurt me in my heart, this smooth cynicism, this easy sneer. Guru-ji had no doubt made a lot of money, but I didn't believe that money alone was his objective. I knew this. I didn't pretend to understand how his mind worked, but I knew there was a plan beyond the cash, that there was a further coherence behind the faultless order of the ashram. I just didn't know how to read the meaning of this mantra, I couldn't speak this tongue, I couldn't grasp what this square with its circles inside was trying to tell me.

As I grappled with these conundrums of religion and aesthetics, Anand Prasad's secretary summoned us into his office. I let Nikhil go ahead, and came in last behind the others. Nikhil did the talking, he was supposed to be the head of an NRI association interested in donating money to Guru-ji's charities. As I listened, I was struck by how comely this Sadhu Anand Prasad was. His skin was a polished chocolate, agleam against the white robes he wore, and although he must have been at least fifty, his long dark hair fell over an unwrinkled forehead. He had a slight southern accent, and in all my life I had never seen such a handsome Tamil. His secretary was a very tall Dutchman, blond and sharp-featured enough to be an actor. The secretary stood behind Anand Prasad's chair, and together – in that airy office full of silk-covered furniture – they were like an advertisement for Guru-ji's methods. They were beautiful.

Nikhil was pushing for a meeting with Guru-ji. He told Anand Prasad
that his organization had millions to give, that our members were Indian businessmen and computer programmers and doctors spread out all over the world, and that they were eager to contribute. But they were followers of Guru-ji, and to give to him they must necessarily meet him. If not in person, then why not a video conference? Or at least a phone call to start with.

‘I'm very sorry,' Anand Prasad said. ‘But Guru-ji is in retreat. Even before he left, he gave strict instructions. He is not to be disturbed, not even for emergencies. In fact, I can't even get in touch with him. I don't know where he is, or how to communicate with him.'

‘He calls you, then?' Nikhil said.

Anand Prasad's shrug was as elegant as a dance. ‘No, no,' he said. ‘He has really gone.' He made a magician's gesture with both his hands. ‘You could say he has vanished. He will only come back when he wants to.'

‘He won't even come back for a million dollars?' Nikhil said. ‘Even for poor children? And starving women?'

He was trying hard, but I could see that it was useless. Anand Prasad didn't know, and what he did know he wasn't going to tell. ‘Forget it,' I told Nikhil. ‘This maderchod is a flunky. He doesn't know anything.'

Anand Prasad was shocked. He was full of his holiness and his exquisite good looks, and nobody had ever spoken to him like that. ‘What?' he said. ‘Who are you?' he said.

I took two steps up to his desk. Next to an elaborate pen-holder and three phones, there was a golden model of an altar in the shape of an eagle, the size of two hands across. I picked it up. It was quite wonderfully detailed, down to the bricks and the samagri inside the altar, ready for burning. And it felt profoundly weighty in my hand, it fitted into my palm with an impressive density. The smoke of sacrifice was in my nostrils, that fragrance that signals both life and death. I was suffocated by yearning, I was drowning in it. Where was Guru-ji? Why wouldn't he speak to me? What had I done wrong?

‘What is this?' I said. ‘Gold?'

‘You listen,' he said.

He puffed up from his chair now, very righteous and indignant. I took another step, and in that motion I swung the altar and cracked his forehead. ‘No,' I said. ‘You listen.' The metal rang like a bell, and a sprinkle of blood appeared on the clear glass of the window. ‘It's hard,' I said with satisfaction. ‘It's not gold.' Anand Prasad was jerking about on the floor next to his chair, his robe up around his hips. I straddled the bastard, took
hold of his shoulder and raised him up, and went to work with the altar. I found a calm in the hitting, a concentration that came into me like a wash of clear water. The blows came out of me in an even rhythm, with my breathing, as if I were meditating. I was lost in the relief of it, nights of fear and anger all gone into this satisfaction. Then the altar was covered with blood, and Anand Prasad was dead.

I let go of him, and his skull clunked softly on the marble. The boys were watching me, wide-eyed. Nikhil had his ghoda pointed at the Dutchman, who was crouched in a corner. ‘No,' I said. ‘No bullets. This is a message. Do it like this one.' I let the altar drop.

The Dutchman had time to scream only once before they were on him. I opened a door, and inside there was a sparkling toilet, a full-fledged executive bathroom. These upper-echelon sadhus didn't begrudge themselves any of the benefits, no, they surely didn't. I clicked on the light, and saw myself in the mirror: blazing eyes, blood on the face. I washed, and in the other room the Dutchman died in a flurry of thumps and moans. When I came out, the boys were straightening themselves up.

‘Better wipe down that thing, bhai,' Nikhil said, his chest heaving. ‘Fingerprints.'

The altar had hair stuck to it, and little pieces of flesh. ‘Bring it,' I said. ‘We'll get rid of it.'

When the boys were cleaned up, we left. We walked out, cool and easy and slow, and went down to the car and got in and drove at an even pace to the gate. We waved at the sadhus and we were away.

We had our exit route already laid out. At our safe house we had a change of clothes and a black Sumo waiting. I had trained the boys well. In less than fifteen minutes we had the rooms swept clean and the Sumo loaded. We wiped down the Maruti Zen that we had driven to the ashram, and then we left. We went south, towards Delhi. We passed columns of passenger buses and laden trucks, and for a while we drove behind a marriage party. I felt very calm now, in this twilight. Now Guru-ji would have to talk to me. I had done something very wrong, and he would have to punish me. He would have to call me to scold me. I would of course apologize, but I would tell him why, and he would understand. He would forgive me.

We had left behind the industrial estates and the shops and the dhabas, and now the fields of sarson and wheat stretched to the blackening horizon. The electricity posts rushed up, raising and lowering their cables over our heads. When I was a child, travelling on a rattling bus from
Digadh to Nashik, I used to imagine these posts calling out to me as I left them behind, as they swept behind me into the past. But in those long-ago days I had never seen so many prosperous farms, these pucca houses with the TV dishes and antennae reaching towards the sky. Everything had changed.

But nothing had changed. I observed this truth all over the country. Over the next many weeks I travelled with Nikhil and the boys, and we did a zigzag bharat-darshan. We went to Guru-ji's ashrams, his offices and his places of business. We followed clues, rumours, hunches and whim. So we went from Chandigarh to Delhi to Ajmer, from Nagpur to Bhilai to Siliguri. Then back to Jaisalmer, and then to Jammu and Bhopal and Digboi. Then we stopped for a week in Cochin, so Nikhil could dose himself with antibiotics to ward off a watery flu that had him groaning at the toilet every half-hour. We rented a tourist bungalow near the waterfront and watched the Chinese fishing nets rise and fall out of the water. Meanwhile Nikhil struggled, and the doctor prescribed test after test. After eleven of these tests, I told the bastard that I was on to his cut-practice. ‘What is cut-practice, saar?' he said in his Malyali accent.

‘Maybe you call it something else down here,' I told him, ‘but it's the same thirty per cent cut you get from the laboratory. I'll bet you a lakh on that. You want thirty per cent? I'll give you thirty per cent.' And I showed him the back of my hand. After that he became quiet and compliant as a whipped randi, he gave his capsules and bowed his head and went away. I couldn't resist showing the bastard his place, but it was bad tradecraft. We needed to keep a low profile, I knew this. But the gaandu had annoyed me. He wore jeans, and drove a Capri, and kept talking about how he was dispensing the ‘latest-latest' medicines, but he conducted business just like any village doctor giving water injections to illiterate shepherds. It was the same all over India – we met farmers who carried mobile phones and murdered their daughters and sons for marrying out of caste, we bought bottles of mineral water from scabby, bare-footed chokras whose arms were covered with ringworm. Nikhil had been complaining bitterly every night about the scratchy phone connections he got when he tried to have his laptop dial in and collect e-mail, and finally in Coimbatore an unearthed power plug roasted his sleek Sony Vaio and killed it quite dead. And now he was shitting twelve times a day, and he said he was very afraid he was going to keep huggoing until he died on this bhenchod white throne in this maderchod Malyali city in this harami cesspool of a country.