So, what is sacred in “Sacred Games” by Vikram Chandra?

The book is mainly about Ganesh Gaitonde, a Bombay mafia don, but also about Sartaj, a police officer. Yes, it’s a cop and robber story, but laced with literary flavour, and you’re sometimes gripped by Chandra’s robust narrative with insights into life and surroundings – so much so that you feel you’re into a literary fiction, which it’s not.

It’s a compelling cross-genre novel. Though about 900 pages long, and quite hefty, I read through the entire book, skipping pages here and there. Chandra has a way with words, and uses indigenous slang effectively.

Now, who does not want to hear stories – escapades – of a don who earns huge bucks by extortion, helping politicians and promoters, murdering countless men and women, selling arms, in every conceivable way in fact, and enjoys virgins, only virgins (among then a rising Bombay heroine) in different positions, and at different places as in limousines, on boats, in exotic foreign places, in a regular flow of supply from a professional lady, Jojo, with whom he chats everyday on a specially encrypted satellite phone without seeing her yet?

You can all read these as the author’s own sexual fantasies let loose on paper.

There’s almost an entire chapter on how to increase one’s penis length. This was of course incorporated when Gaitonde had problem with his tired organ in his 'thoko' binge.

Add to it a formidable Guruji who takes in the don as his disciple, and wants to blast the city for its fresh recreation.

Towards the end of the book, it’s revealed that the thing responsible for Gaitonde’s sexual prowess was Viagra, the wonderful drug, which the virgins used to crush up and mix with the drinks they provided him before sex without his knowledge. My foot!

Chandra winds up the book with Gaitonde killing self and Jojo, Guruji disappearing, and Sartaj getting a promotion.

There was not a person or thing I found sacred in the book. Did he mean sacred crap?