Tags:
Journalism of Courage
BOMBAY IS IMPORTANT in the book,8221; Vikram Chandra said a few months ago, 8220;but this is not a Bombay book.8221; At 900 pages and many intertwined narratives, Sacred Games is too vast in its scope and intuitiveness to be slotted to a certain city. But given the run-ning inspirations in the novel, it will be difficult not to bookshelf it with the recent Bombay books. Or to ask, must the Bombay book8212;with Shantaram and Maximum City two riveting ad-ditions8212; be so bulky?
Sacred Games plucks one of the most enig-matic characters from Chandra8217;s 1997 collec-tion, Love and Longing in Bombay, and makes him so much more of a mystery. Sartaj Singh is a Sikh police inspector on the Mumbai police force. In a narrative that more or less moves along two strands, we hear his back story and learn about his present assignments and we also get a fascinating account of an under- world don, Ganesh Gaitonde.
But Chandra resists making great sociological and political points in this novel, which really catches the expanding role of the underworld that is so much a part of a society8217;s life. If Bombay8217;s fingerprints can be felt all over this book, it is because Chandra is most devout in locking the many parts of his story with his abiding inspiration: Hindi cinema.
Mumbai8212;especially the underworld8212;has greatly influenced depictions on the big screen and its people have, in turn, modeled themselves on those depictions. For instance, take this passage from Gaitonde8217;s recollec-tions: 8220;8216;If it happens in a film, it won8217;t happen in life,8217; Jojo had said to me. When I8217;d told her about my fear of radiation and bombs and buildings being swept down by a roaring wind, she8217;d said, 8216;It8217;s too filmi.8217; But I knew better, I knew more. I had seen scenes from my own life in two dozen films, sometimes exaggerated and sometimes reduced, but still true. I was filmi, and I was real.8221;
This notion that they are made by cinema and also influence cinema imbues Chandra8217;s people with an exaggerated sense of purpose. They view every moment as being part of a grand narrative, each one8217;s mind8217;s eye watches reality projected on a giant screen.
But what of the cops? Sartaj, son of an upright police officer himself, knows that to be ef-fective, he must operate by the rules of a new matrix. The enemy is often in the detail, and the game must be improvised at every stage. The end often justifies the means. As the 8220;bad guys8221; acquire a larger than life prominence, the 8220;good guys8221; get past neat theories of morality.
To get the job done, they must play a dimly lit match: 8220;Sartaj knew now that he wasn8217;t going to be the hero of any film, even the film of his own life8230; But this was Sartaj8217;s life, stretching for-ward and inescapable. There was nowhere to go but here, to this daily trial, to this untidy mess of a nation. Still, there was work.8221; In the games being played out in Chandra8217;s urban chessboard, there is just the one conso-lation: To have gotten through yet another day.
Much fun will be had by readers striving to put real-life inspirations to Chandra8217;s cast of characters. But those clues are misleading. They indicate a grounding in reality. But Vikram Chandra8217;s novel has a futuristic drift. It takes the present and flights off to extreme co-ordinates. And that8217;s always been the recipe for a great thriller.
