'Good lunch?' Sartaj said.
'Absolute top first-class biryani from that new Laziz Restaurant on S.T. Road,' Kamble said. 'In a fancy clay pot, you know. We're getting very pish-posh in Kailashpada.' Kamble straightened up and leaned closer. 'Listen. You know those two gaandus who were encountered yesterday by the Flying Squad in Bhayander?'
'Gaitonde gang, yes?'
'Right. You know the Gaitonde gang and the Suleiman Isa gang have been stepping up their war again, right? So, I heard the two hits yesterday were a supari given by the S-Company. I heard that the Flying Squad boys made twenty lakhs.'
'You'd better get in the squad then.'
'Boss, what do you think I'm saving up for? I hear the going rate to get in is twenty-five lakhs.'
'Very expensive.'
'Very,' Kamble said. His face was aglow, every pore open and alight. 'But money makes it all happen, my friend, and to make money you have to spend money.'
Sartaj nodded, and Kamble sank into a register again. Sartaj had once heard it from a slumlord convicted of murder, the bitter secret of life in the metropolis: paisa phek, tamasha dekh. They had literally bumped into each other, walking round a corner in a basti in Andheri. They had recognized each other instantly, despite Sartaj's plain clothes and the slumlord's new paunch. Sartaj said, arre, Bahzad Hussain, aren't you supposed to be serving fifteen years for offing Anwar Yeda? And Bahzad Hussain laughed nervously, and said, Inspector saab, you know how it is, I got parole and now it says in my file that I'm absconding in Bahrain, paisa phek, tamasha dekh. Which was absolutely true: if you had money to throw, you could watch the spectacle the judges and magistrates trapezing blithely, the hoop-jumping politicians, the happy, red-nosed cops. Bahzad Hussain had the grace and good sense to come quietly to the station, and he was very confident, and wanted only a cup of tea and a chance to make a few phone calls. He made jokes and laughed a lot. Yes, he had thrown his money and watched the spectacle. All of this police jhanjhat was only a slight waste of time, nothing more. Paisa phek, tamasha dekh.
Kamble now had a family standing in front of him, a mother and a father and a son in blue-uniform short pants. The father was a tailor who had come back home from the shop early in the afternoon, to get some suiting material he had forgotten. On the way he had taken a short-cut and seen his son, who was supposed to be in school, playing marbles against the factory wall with some faltu street kids. The mother was doing the talking now. 'Saab, I beat him, his father shouts at him, nothing helps. The teachers have given up. He shouts back at us, my son. He thinks he's too smart. He thinks he doesn't need school. I'm tired of it, saab. You take him. You put him in jail.' She made the motion of emptying her hands, and dabbed at her eyes with the end of her blue pallu. Looking at her hands and finely muscled forearms, Sartaj was certain that she worked as a bai, that she washed dishes and clothes for the wives of executives in the Shiva Housing Colony. The son had his head down, and was scraping the side of one shoe against the other.
Sartaj crooked a finger. 'Come here.' The boy shuffled sideways. 'What's your name?'
'Sailesh.' He was about thirteen, quite wise, with a stylish floppy hairdo and flashing black eyes.
'Hello, Sailesh.'
'Hello.'
Sartaj smashed a hand down on to the table. It was very loud, and Sailesh started and backed away. Sartaj grabbed him by the collar and twisted him around the end of the desk. 'You think you're tough, Sailesh? You're so tough you're not scared of anyone, Sailesh? Let me show you what we do with tough taporis like you, Sailesh.' Sartaj walked him around the room and through a door and into the detection room, lifting him off the floor with every stride. Katekar was sitting with another constable at the end of the room, near the squatting line of chained prisoners.
'Katekar,' Sartaj called.
'Sir.'
'Which is the toughest of this lot?'
'This one, sir, thinks he's hard. Narain Swami, pickpocket.'
Sartaj shook Sailesh so that his head wobbled and snapped. 'This big man here thinks he's harder than all of us. Let him see. Give Narain Swami some dum and let the big man see.'
Katekar lifted the cringing Narain Swami and bent him over, and Swami struggled and jingled his chains, but when the first open-palmed blow landed on his back with an awful popping noise he got the idea. With the second one he howled quite creditably. After the third and fourth he was sobbing. 'Please, please, saab. No more.' After the sixth, Sailesh was weeping fat tears. He turned his face away and Sartaj forced his chin around.
'Want to see more, Sailesh? You know what we do next?' Sartaj pointed at the thick white bar that ran from one wall to the other, close to the ceiling. 'We put Swami on the ghodi. We string him up on the bar, hands and feet, and give it to him with the patta. Show him the patta, Katekar.'
But Sailesh, looking at the thick length of the strap, whispered, 'No, don't.'
'What?'
'Please don't.'
'You want to end up here, Sailesh? Like Narain Swami?'
'No.'
'What's that?'
'No, saab. Please.'
'You will, you know. If you keep going like you are.'
'I won't, saab. I won't.'
Sartaj turned him around, both hands on his shoulders, and walked him towards the door. Narain Swami was still bent over, and flashing an upside-down grin. Outside, sitting on a metal chair with a Coke bottle clutched between his knees, Sailesh listened quietly to Sartaj. He sipped his Coke and Sartaj told him how people like Narain Swami ended up, beaten up, used up, addicted, in jail and out of it, wasted and tired and finally dead. All of it from not going to school and disobeying his mother.
'I'll go,' Sailesh said.
'Promise?'
'Promise,' Sailesh said and touched his throat.
'Better keep it,' Sartaj said. 'I hate people who break promises. I'll come after you.'
Sailesh nodded, and Sartaj led him out. At the station gate, the mother hung back. She came close to Sartaj and held up her fisted hands and opened them. In the right there was the twisted end of her pallu, and in the left a neatly folded hundred rupee note. 'Saab,' she said.
'No,' Sartaj said. 'No.'
She had oiled hair and reddened eyes. She smiled, barely, and held up her hands higher, and opened them further.
'No,' Sartaj said. He turned and walked away.
* * *
Katekar drove with an easy grace that found the gaps in the traffic with balletic timing. Sartaj pushed his seat back and drowsily watched him change gears and snake the Gypsy between trucks and autos with less than inches to spare. Sartaj had long ago learned to relax. He still anticipated a crash every few minutes, but he had learned from Katekar not to care. It was all confidence. You went forward, and someone always backed off at the last moment, and it was always the other gaandu. Katekar scratched at his crotch, growled 'Eh, bhenchod,' and stared down a double-decker driver, forced him to an absolute stop. They took a left, and Sartaj grinned at the wide swagger of the turn. 'Tell me, Katekar,' Sartaj said, 'who is your favourite hero?'
'Film hero?'
'What else?'
Katekar was embarrassed. 'When I do watch movies ' He jiggled the gear stick, and wiped a spot of dust from the windscreen. 'When there is some film on television,' which was only all the time 'I like to watch Dev Anand.'
'Dev Anand? Really?'
'Yes, sir.'
'But he's my favourite also.' Sartaj liked the old black-and-white ones where Dev Anand listed across the screen at an impossible angle, unbelievably dashing and sublimely suave. In his limp perfection there was an odd comfort, a nostalgia for a simplicity that Sartaj had never known. But he had expected Katekar to be an Amitabh Bachchan extremist, or an enthusiast of the muscle boys, Sunil Shetty or Akshay Kumar, who stood huge on the posters like some new gigantic and bulging species. 'Which Dev Anand film do you like best, Katekar?'