It is tempting to describe the sprawling novel “Sacred Games” as a potboiler, the Indian answer to “The Godfather.” Simplistically, that description would fit, but it wouldn’t account for a story that outweighs the heft of the volume that holds it.
Vikram Chandra’s narrative is greater than a gangster story or a cinematic rendering of Indian life, or even an epic battle of good against evil. Chandra reduces humanity to its most basic common denominators, and he does it in a tale thoroughly rooted in Indian history, language and culture. The result is not at all foreign but, instead, recognizable and understandable. This is a work that can not only suck a reader in, but also turn an outlaw who should be thoroughly despicable into a heroic figure.
Hindu mobster Ganesh Gaitonde is the leader of a mob that has long controlled a wealthy business run out of Mumbai. Gaitonde no longer lives in India; he is too large a target. So it comes as a surprise when police inspector Sartaj Singh receives an anonymous tip that Gaitonde is holed up in a house on the edge of the city.
Singh and his partner, Katekar, respond to the call. “The Gaitonde they read about in police reports and in the newspapers dallied with bejeweled starlets, bankrolled politicians and bought them and sold them – his daily skim from Bombay’s various criminal dhandas (works) was said to be greater than annual corporate incomes, and his name was used to frighten the recalcitrant. … But he had been in exile for many years – on the Indonesian coast in a gilded yacht, it was rumoured – far but only a phone call away.”
The tip leads them to an unassuming white cube of a house. Gaitonde is indeed inside; he and Singh begin a conversation via a video camera mounted above the front door. Gaitonde mocks the police: They are unable to pry through the door; when they cut the power in an effort to use the heat of the day to force him out, a backup generator immediately kicks in. As the police plan the next step, Gaitonde begins to tell Singh the story of his life, how he built on his first crimes to become a powerful gangster.
The police eventually bulldoze their way into the house, and they find Gaitonde and a female companion in a concrete bunker underneath. The woman is dead, of a gunshot wound to the chest. Gaitonde is also dead, a suicide.
The mobster’s presence in Mumbai is a mystery to people far higher up than a police inspector. And the bunker in which he is found is nothing so much as a bomb shelter, recently built. Singh is not surprised to find investigators from the Central Bureau of Investigation on the case. Gaitonde’s reach extended across a good part of India. But he is paired with a woman, Anjali Mathur, from the Research and Analysis wing, a group involved in fighting “foreign enemies of the state outside of India’s borders.” It’s not an investigation that matches with Gaitonde’s known profile. Too many of the facts do not add up.
“Sacred Games” moves forward, alternating Gaitonde’s first-person description of his life with a third-person description of Singh’s police work. But the confluence of these men’s paths is much larger than character and personal history. Their conflict has grown from factors that encompass the partition of India and Pakistan, a long-standing religious hatred between Muslim and Hindu factions and a poverty-ridden society where corruption is the rule and force is the ruler.
The entwining strands reveal men who are both flawed and, to an extent, heroic. Singh wears a uniform that terrifies those he meets because the police are known to be only slightly less violent and corrupt than the criminals they pursue. His superior officer once explained the dilemma, saying, “We are good men who must be bad to keep the worst men in control. Without us, there would be nothing left, there would only be a jungle.” But within a corrupt system, Singh is a man of unusual honor, taking only small bribes and legitimately driven to serve those who have been violated by the surrounding world.
As far as Singh is from completely good, Gaitonde is from being completely bad. He has used his money to build housing and roads, employing his people and giving them homes. He is, without a doubt, ruthless and passionate in his pursuit of power. But his story reveals a man who lives and dies by an unwavering code.
The tale is enriched by a swirling cast of secondary characters, all of whom eventually have a connection to one of the two men. Mathur, Singh’s counterpart in the investigation, is the protégé of a man who once ran Gaitonde as an intelligence operative. The dead woman in the bunker is much more than the prostitute she first appears. Even Singh’s deceased father, once a member of the police force, has a bearing on the investigation. The resulting web, intricate and large, comes together in the novel’s startling, unexpected climax.
Two elements of the work demand reader patience. “Sacred Games” is firmly rooted in Indian culture and history; it will take a while for those unfamiliar to come up to speed. It’s worth the wait. Slightly more confusing is dialogue that idiomatically blends English and Hindi. A glossary at the end of the novel is helpful, but incomplete.
These are very minor complaints to lodge against a grand story that is carefully and passionately told. The final chapters, leading to the reason for Gaitonde’s death, are breathtaking, as is Chandra’s attention to the detail of character and circumstance. The work is so lovely, and so subtle, that it’s well worth the cover price. The temptation upon turning the last page will be to return to the first.
Vikram Chandra will read from and sign copies of “Sacred Games” at &;30 p.m. Feb. 2 at the Tattered Cover, 2625 East Colfax Ave.
Robin Vidimos is a freelance writer who reviews books for The Denver Post and Buzz in the ‘Burbs.
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Sacred Games
By Vikram Chandra
HarperCollins, 916 pages, $27.95
