Sacred Games (36 page)

That evening, after my conversation with Bipin Bhonsle and my walk, I went to Paritosh Shah's house. His eldest daughter, first of four, was to be married in seven days. The house was sparkling already, three storeys of cascading lights, red and green and blue, blinking happily. It was a big house, finished only a year ago by him and his two brothers, and they lived in it all together, wives and cousins and countless visiting mamas and kakas, a whirling Gujarati chakkar. Dandia raas before
weddings was definitely out of style, but for all his business innovation, Paritosh Shah was a firm traditionalist. So there were excited eddies of young girls in the courtyard, swirls of heady silk. They were waiting for me to start the dancing, and once I was seated in an armchair, all the men and women fell into four circles, the children in the inner two, and the singer raised a declamatory hand and began, ‘
Radha game ke game Mira'
, and the circles whirled slowly, and then faster, and the steady clap-clap of hands echoed out the happy beat. When they brought out the sticks for dandia I stood up and asked for a pair. They laughed to see me tripping clumsily, unable to keep time inside the circles moving against each other, unable to find the clicking rhythm. I think at first this was equally the fault of the other dancers, especially the men, who were afraid to be dancing with me, stripped of their grace by my presence. They hesitated to knock their dandias against mine, they were scared of putting in too much force, they shrank from my strokes. But when they saw how I laughed at myself, and when my boys, who were leaning against the pillars, shook their heads and smiled, everyone relaxed, and the disco-dandia song tumbled on gleefully, and I found my hips loosening, and my shoulders were easy, and I was flowing, falling into step without effort, and the dandia rose and fell, a flourish here and click, another swing and click, a round face spinning to me and click, and I was dancing.

 

At home Chotta Badriya had a woman waiting for me. I was happy from the dancing, humming away and doing a step here, another one there. But she brought me down. There's nothing more depressing than a depressed randi. She was nicely plump and with a little round nose, and nineteen, but she lay there with a swollen batata-wada face, and I tried to liven her up with a few nips and pinches and squeezes, but she winced and set her jaw, so I took her by the hair and threw her out. Then I drank some milk, lay on my side wrapped around a pillow and tried for sleep, but it larked away from me and my head was full of the dandia and Paritosh Shah and the lights skidding down the side of his house and up again, and I turned to the other side, and now I thought of the men I had killed. I stood them in a row and compared them for character and strength and I decided I was better than any of them, and then I made plans to have the approaches to my house checked and tested, and to put more boys in place at the head of the lanes, just in case. It was late now, very late, and for the first time in many months, I used my hand on myself, and all the
women I had known came and slid over me and also Rati Agnihotri with her malai skin. After I was finished I turned again, back to the other side, settled down into comfort and took regular, deep breaths. But finally I threw off the covers and cursed and reached for the clock. Three forty-five. I would have drunk then, anything, a bottleful of whisky or rum, but there was nothing in the house, and I would have got the boys to bring some, but the thought of what they would think and not say made me ashamed, and I lay on my back and decided to see it through. I would get up from bed at six and have an early day. I watched the fan gleam in its flight and then suddenly I was waking up and it was bright day, and I could hear the street fully alive outside. Noon. I had slept for six hours, maybe seven, but I was tired.

 

My exhaustion deepened as the days passed, as we fought the elections. My boys went out with the Rakshaks, and we pushed their campaign into every nook, their posters harangued the voters from every surface for miles. Two of my boys, armed with pistols, with a group of Rakshaks was enough to keep the peace and let them do their work calmly, no bhangad. A reputation for ruthlessness can do wonders for peace. For us, it was easy money. Meanwhile, it was almost time for the wedding. Even before the ceremony I went to Paritosh Shah's house for the mehndi party, and I could see that he appreciated it, that I was so much a part of his joys and sorrows. Even in the midst of the thousand things he had to do, food and gifts and hotel arrangements for the groom's relatives, he noticed my wobbliness, how I was holding on to wakefulness with effort. ‘Your doshas are out of balance,' he said. ‘I'll set up an appointment for you with my Ayurvedic man.'

‘I won't put myself in that bastard's clutches,' I said. ‘It's just insomnia. It'll pass.'

‘Nothing is
just
anything. The body is speaking to you. But you won't listen.'

Then he had to go and sit with the women, and the jewellers. There was some question of how many tolas of gold were to be used in the wide necklaces and bracelets and earrings for the dowry, how much payment for the making. I watched him step delicately down the steps to the courtyard and wondered what his body was speaking. How did one read those sheets of fat that surged and billowed on his frame? I rubbed my eyes. He had been good to me. He had never lied to me about money, he had never pretended to lay aside his self-interest, he had backed me as far as possi
ble, to the risk of his life and then a little further, and he had shown me how in this world one thing connects to the next, where business comes together with politics and bhaigiri, how one must live. In this way we had been friends. He was a good man as far as he could be, he had grown fat with hard work, and so his bulk was his virtue. That was why his fat was light on him.

The whole house was fragrant from the cooking. I was hungry, but very tired, and eating would tire me more, I knew this. But to leave without eating would be an insult, so I took a thali and touched some food, and then pushed myself to my feet, and waved up the boys, and told Paritosh Shah to take care of his guests while he tried to see me to the door, and after a little argument, finally off we went. I was looking for my shoes in the great sprawl of footwear near the front door when Dipika came to me. Dipika was Paritosh Shah's second-oldest daughter, a serious-faced, quiet one with big-big eyes. She held out a thali piled with puris, and a glass, and said, ‘But you haven't had any ras, Ganesh Bhai.' I had, but I was willing to take another puri from her, polite as she was. As I reached out she whispered, with her head still down, ‘Can I please talk to you, Ganesh Bhai?' On the edge of the thali her thumbs were white.

So I took her, thali and glass and all, outside to the car and we talked. ‘They're already talking about my marriage,' she said bitterly. ‘And my sister's not married yet.'

‘They're your parents,' I said. ‘Of course they will. And you'll be happy, it's a good thing.' I knew that she was going to college, and I thought that she must have some modern-girl fashionable objection to marriage, some idea of job and career, all got from some silly magazine, so I started lecturing her on her duty, what real life was. She shifted about restlessly, rustling her red and green ghagra and gold chunni.

‘But, Ganesh Bhai,' she said.

‘Don't do but-this-and-that,' I said. ‘Your parents are right.'

‘But, Ganesh Bhai,' she said, with a little wail to her voice, ‘I
want
to get married.'

And right then, from the small, painful furrowings on her smooth forehead, I knew this was going to be a lot more trouble than just girlish fantasies about a career. ‘What?' I said. ‘You have someone in mind?'

‘Yes.'

‘Where did you meet him? In college?'

She shook her head. ‘NN College is all girls. His sister is my friend. She goes to NN.'

‘What's his name?'

At least she still had the grace to be shy. Two tries, and a lot of blushing, and she got it out. ‘Prashant.'

‘What's the trouble? He's not Gujarati?'

‘No, Ganesh Bhai.'

‘What then? Maratha?'

A rapid shake of the head, and now she had her frantic grip on the thali again.

‘Then what?'

She had her face almost in the thali now. ‘Dalit,' she said. ‘And he's poor.'

Her problem was gigantic, as elephantine as her father. I had always found the Gujaratis to be more advanced, more tolerant than other communities, but this would strain her father's understanding. He would do business with anyone, but marriage was another matter. He had sent her to college, but not for this, not to marry some gaandu who was not only a Dalit but a poor Dalit. Maybe a very rich Dalit could have been approved, but I could hear Paritosh Shah saying it already, ‘This is the family you want to marry us into?' Her mother and aunts would be harsher, more violent in their disapproval. Young Dipika had set herself to a hard battle. ‘Why do you want to do this to your family?' I said. ‘This is not some film. Your father will have this Prashant of yours torn to pieces.'

She looked directly at me then, and her back straightened, and her neck was graceful in its anger. ‘I know it's not a film,' she said. ‘I'll die, Ganesh Bhai. If anything happens to him, I'll kill myself.'

How little the young value life, they who are so full of it. How little they have seen of death. They think it's a mere pause in a drama, and they imagine the oppressing parents beating their breasts and wailing, and lost in that pleasure they never see the fall, the finality of one's own vanishing. I said as much to Dipika, and she laughed. ‘I'm not a child,' she said, and I saw then how far she had gone with this Prashant, her young woman's splendid pride in the pleasures she had taken and given.

‘What do you want me to do, Dipika?' I said.

‘Talk to Papa. He will listen to you.' She took my hand and placed it on top of her head. ‘Since I was a girl you have been kind to me. And I know you do not think in any old-fashioned way.'

What she meant was that in my company there were Brahmins and Marathas and Muslims and Dalits and OBCs, all working together, with
out difference or suspicion. We had OBCs who were controllers, and Brahmins who were foot-soldiers, and nobody gave it a thought. Muslims and Hindus were yaars who put their lives in each other's palms every day, every night. But this was not special to my company, it was true of many others. We who were bhais were truly brothers, we lived outside the law and were bound to each other. We were desperate men, and therefore free. But a company was a company, and marriage – especially in a joint family like hers – was something else. But how to tell this child, who now held my hand in both of hers, how?

‘Go inside,' I said. ‘Do nothing. Say nothing to anyone, not one person. Let me think about this.'

She was now dripping tears down her chin. I wiped her face with her pallu, and set her on her way with her wobbly thali. And I told Chotta Badriya that we were going to drive out to Film City.

‘Now, bhai?' he said.

‘No, next week, chutiya,' I said. ‘Get in the car.' He was a funny boy, that one, built like a truck, not scared of swords, willing to play with flying bullets, but scared of Film City in the dark because someone had told him that leopards came down from the wooded hills at night. He sat next to the driver with his arm draped over the back of the seat and his fingers drumming nervously. Finally I clamped down his hand gently, and said, ‘Okay, okay, stop shaking so much. You can stay in the car.'

He waggled his head delightedly. ‘Yes, bhai. I'll watch the car.'

Every man in the car burst out laughing. I slapped the back of his head. ‘Bhadve, you guard it fiercely, okay? Make sure the mosquitoes don't steal it, okay? And if a big cockroach comes, you blow him to pieces with your gullel, okay?'

We laughed all the way to Film City. We slowed a bit for the guards at the gate, and then swept up the rising road, through the sudden darkness and quiet of the bushy slopes. It was already dusk, so the road was clear. There were the clustering shadows under the leaves, the flashing jigsaw of branches, and then suddenly in the clear there was a looming castle, high-turreted and fluttering with flags in the coming moonlight. It was made of wood and canvas, of course, but in this light it was absolutely real. We went past an entire Goan town square, capped by a high church holding up its crucifix, and also a fishing dock with boats asleep against each other in a leaning row. Here, in Film City, they made dreams of perfect love, they choreographed the songs that Dipika and her boyfriend no doubt sang to each other. The road curved sharply, and the engine
whined, and we went up and up, to the helipad. The moon was low and close, hanging just above the lip of the high hills, and the valleys were cut sharply into silver and black, and a breeze slid up my neck. This was the deep quiet I craved, away from the city, that I came for again and again. I stepped to the edge of the helipad and the boys let me go, they stood in a distant arc and left me alone. I sat at the edge of the plateau, and looked for a leopard in the dappled patterning below. Come on, leopard, I said. Save me from this problem. I had promised the girl I would help, but how? She was a clever one, asking first and drawing me to her side. Otherwise, if her father had found out first, and asked me, without a thought I would have had her tattered Dalit boyfriend picked up and dropped off a cliff. Just like that. But now what? The daughter had asked for mercy, and I was Ganesh Gaitonde. But the father was my friend.

I sat until the moon had receded into the heights of the sky, and the leopard didn't come, and no easy answers. There was no solving this problem by killing anyone, and no amount of money would buy peace. There was love between the father and daughter, and so they would hate each other all the more, and wound each other, cutting nerves no assassin could ever reach. I got up and walked back through the boys, who sat in a dozing line. They staggered up and came after me, to the car. Chotta Badriya was fast asleep, his face against the window glass, lips plumped up and cheek flattened. I tapped the glass at his nose, and he came awake, groping under his shirt until he saw me. In that first waking clutch at the world, he had been afraid. I recognized the panic. We were all afraid. To walk out of the house, into a city street, into the air which hummed with the bullets of the next moment, to do this we cast aside fear, dropped it and pushed it into the deepest valley where the moon never shone. But the fear still moved, lived and fed, like an animal in the night. Chotta Badriya liked girls, very young ones. He even liked smallish women of older years who had no mausambis, who were flat before and behind and wore pigtails for him and sat on his lap and talked of dolls and held their heads to the side and giggled. He chodoed them sometimes, but I think only because the other boys would have laughed at him otherwise. For himself, he would have been happy just to hold them, to play at a dream of play, and so live a childhood which was free of the future. Now he was clearing his throat mightily and rolling down the window to spit.