Aai
Mother.
Sacred Games Sites
Book Description
- SACRED GAMES a literary novel that is also a crime novel, a detective story, and a thriller. Sartaj Singh, a seasoned and cynical Bombay police officer, is summoned by an anonymous tip one morning, by a voice which promises him an opportunity to capture the famed and very powerful Ganesh Gaitonde. Gaitonde is the boss of the G-company, a large and powerful criminal organization. Sartaj Singh finds Gaitonde, but by the time he breaks into Gaitonde’s safe house, the mafia don is dead by his own hand. As Singh investigates Gaitonde’s death and life, he becomes aware of an immense danger that threatens him and the city he lives in, and the book turns into a slow-burning thriller. Simultaneously, an alternative narrative flashes back and depicts Ganesh Gaitonde’s rise in the underworld, his ruthlessness and his sentimentality, his cunning and his grandiose sense of self. The intertwining narratives of the book trace the journeys of these two men, the policeman and the gangster, as they move toward the secrets that threaten and haunt them, and toward self-knowledge.
The Author
- Born in New Delhi, Vikram Chandra currently divides his time between Mumbai and Berkeley, California, where he teaches at the University of California. His first novel, RED EARTH AND POURING RAIN (1995), won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book and the David Higham Prize for Fiction. His next book, a collection of short stories entitled LOVE AND LONGING IN BOMBAY (1997), won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book (Eurasia region) and was a New York Times Notable Book.
Aaiyejhavnaya, Aaiyejhavnayi
Motherfucker.
Aaj ka Kanoon
"The Law of our Times."
Aaja gufaon mein aa
This is a line from a song from the 2001 Hindi film Aks: "Come, come into the cave." The next line is Aaja gunaah kar le -- "Come, commit a sin."
Badboo
Bad smell.
Daane
Literally, a daana is a grain or nodule. Bombay slang for bullets.
antra
A term from classical music for the introduction to the main body of the song. Note that this is different from the alap, which is not a part of the main body of the song. The antra may be repeated during the song itself.
aprahdi
Criminal, convict.
Arre chetti kar, dooty par jaana hai
This is a Punjabi phrase that would translate roughly into something like, “Hey, hurry up, I have to go to my duty.” The “duty” in question is the speaker’s police shift. In India, putting in a day of work is often referred to as “doing duty.”
arthi
Funeral byre on which a person is carried to the burning grounds.
ashiana
Literally, “nest.”
atman
Soul.
atta
Flour.
Avadhi
Prior to British rule, Avadh (also known as Oude) was a kingdom at the centre of what is now the modern state of Uttar Pradesh. After the British occupation, the area was subsumed into the United Provinces.
Ay
An exclamation to attract somebody’s attention, “Hey.”
baap
Father.
baap re
An exclamation, “O my father.”
