Delhi Noir

Gautam under a tree by Hirsh Sawhney

Green Park

It was around 6 p.m. when he left his barsaati. Aurobindo Marg was more hellish than ever because of metro construction.

At the gurdwara he began his walk through Yusuf Sarai. He remembered navigating the neighborhood’s maze of backstreets with Lauri when she’d expressed interest in trying bhang. The memory made him wince, I imagine. Most thoughts of her filled him with a mixture of anger and dread.

Between Lahore Jewelers and some sari shops he noticed a new store dedicated exclusively to the sale of Korean plasma televisions. He’d always considered Yusuf Sarai a place where Delhi’s real middle class came to shop, the families stacked on Vespas and stuffed into second-hand Maruti 800s. That seemed to be changing, he’d lament to me later.

Crossing the road was a death-defying endeavor. According to his notes, a Blue Line bus and a Honda Accord almost ran him over. Then he spotted the beaming orange sign above the Boogie Down Resto-Bar.

No firearms permitted, unloaded or loaded, read a placard on the first floor of the hastily constructed structure. Standing beside it were some men in cheap black suits, maître d’—bouncers he called them. “May I help you?” the gang’s tallest member asked in English.

“I’d like a table,” Gautam said in Hindi.

“It’s Saturday,” replied the tall man in black. “No stags on Saturday.” Gautam’s worn kurtis and scruffy face often elicited such reactions.

Peering inside the bar, Gautam noticed that in addition to a couple of wives and an Eastern European prostitute, the place was teeming with men. West Delhi teenagers who didn’t have the breeding to hit up the five stars; middle managers from domestic corporate houses who bought their suits at Raymond; small-time bureaucrats who extracted enough chai-pani to afford an Esteem or a Ford Ikon.

Had he been somebody else, somebody practical, at this point Gautam would have launched into his dog-eared American English and gotten a table as well as some respect. But practicality wasn’t one of his strong points. “And what about all them?” he asked, in Hindi of course.

“VIP customers.” English.

“Actually, I have a reservation.” The maître d’ stared back at him. He’d probably never heard anybody use the word “arakashan” to denote a restaurant booking before. “Under G.S. Lakshman,” Gautam continued. Within minutes he was seated at a secluded table sipping a fresh lime soda.

The bar was dark, but lamps he described as “space-age” cast it in “an unsavory shade of orange.” Gautam pulled out his notebook and scribbled half-a-dozen pages about the walk he’d just taken. He mentioned the music that was playing, “Hotel California” followed by a set of film songs. Lakshman showed up thirty minutes later looking as gaudy as ever in his silk burgundy kurta and white churidar. I can’t hide the fact that I don’t care for Lakshman. But we don’t necessarily have to like our benefactors.

As the well-fed editor sauntered toward Gautam’s table, waiters bowed and men with hairy ears broke from their conversations to greet him. Lakshman was, after all, a minor celebrity in the Indian capital. The chief lieutenant at a weekly magazine we’ll call Satya — Truth — he was the one who’d engineered the sting that helped bring down the B Party government, a “fascist, hate-mongering government,” as Gautam referred to it.

“Keep sitting, keep sitting,” Lakshman said when he got to Gautam’s table. “It’s great to meet you in person, I’m a big fan of your work.”

“Well, it’s been almost two years since I’ve published anything,” said Gautam, unyielding to Lakshman’s flattery.

“So tell me,” Lakshman said, “when did you move to India?”

“I was born here.”

“But your accent,” Lakshman mused, chuckling his chuckle of self-contentment. “You couldn’t have picked that up in a call center.”

This question-and-answer period was, of course, extraneous. Lakshman already knew — or so he believed — everything there was to know about the mustached young man sitting before him.

When his mother died, Gautam went to the U.S. on a tourist visa and bought a fake Social Security number. He changed his name to Greg, worked at a Kmart, and became more American than the Americans. After enrolling in a picturesque university, he directed plays and acquired a girlfriend, a blonde from California. But this high life unraveled during Gautam-Greg’s senior year. State policemen caught him with enough pharmaceuticals to put down a herd of elephants, and he was indefinitely banned from the country.

“I spent a few years in upstate New York,” was all he told

Lakshman. He never told me about his American years either, nor did he write about them in his journals.

“My sister-in-law lives in Toronto, but I prefer it here too,” responded Lakshman. “Best of both worlds.” His south Delhi Hinglish got under Gautam’s skin.

A waiter came, and Lakshman ordered a Johnnie Walker Red Label, some burra kebabs, and mozzarella sticks. Despite Lakshman’s insistence that he have something hard, Gautam stuck with lime soda.

“Are you still into making movies, man?” Lakshman asked.

He was referring to a documentary Gautam had worked on with the BAFTA-winning American director Lauri Zeller.

Gautam didn’t like to speak about her, and Lakshman must have known this.

“Lakshmanji,” Gautam said, “I’m a teacher now. You told me you had something to say about Khem. That’s the only reason I agreed to meet you.”

“I was just getting to your friend.” Lakshman paused for a gulp of whiskey. “He was a true patriot, wasn’t he?”

“I’m no judge of patriotism, but yes, he did good work.”

Gautam’s Hindi was erudite and awkward as usual.

“You know his death was no accident. Gautam, Khem was murdered.”

“You think that’s news to me?”

“It shouldn’t be. But I do have some knowledge that might interest you.”

“That would surprise me.”

“Gautam, I know who killed him.” After making this bold declaration, Lakshman stopped speaking to suck a mutton bone clean. “You’re a Hindi poetry aficionado,” he resumed.

“You’ve obviously heard of Srirang Kumar, na?”

“Of course.” Gautam was particularly fond of one of Kumar’s poems, “The Englishman Is Like a Magpie.” He’d even written a column on it for Bibliophile. “But I don’t think you’ve called me here to discuss poetry.”

“Be patient.” Lakshman paused again, this time to wash down the meat with some more whiskey. “You must know about Kumar’s son,” he said, tongue polishing gums and teeth.

Gautam nodded. Who hadn’t heard of Ashok Kumar, industrialist, defense contractor, playboy?

“Well, it’s the younger Kumar who’s responsible for your friend’s death.” The Canadian Aluminum Corporation, explained Lakshman, had paid Kumar a huge quantity to ensure that Khem would stop getting in its way. “We have evidence: taped conversations, witnesses, bank statements. This might be one of biggest cases of political corruption since Gujarat.”

“And?”

“And we want you to write the story.”

Gautam silently twirled the ends of his mustache and then began shaking his head. “The tribals have been displaced and my friend’s already dead,” he finally stated. “I fail to see the point of such a story.”

“The point?” echoed Lakshman. Then he launched into an oration on the importance of the “fourth estate” in today’s climate. Things like, “Now, more than ever, as neo-imperialistic capitalism mingles with our corrupt bureaucracy, it’s essential that investigative journalism preserve democracy.”

“I’m sorry. I no longer work for the media, especially Indian media,” Gautam responded. He’d come to the conclusion that Delhi’s spineless editors and their delinquent paychecks weren’t worth the trouble.

“Let me finish, yaar. Satya has just signed a deal for a tie-up with the London Tribune.” This article, Lakshman clarified, would not only be a cover story in India, it would also be printed in the Tribune’s weekend magazine. “A London publication means London payment. One pound sterling per word!”

The sum Gautam had inherited from the last of his mother’s siblings would run out next year. A big paycheck would serve him well. He nevertheless continued on with his protest. “I could never be objective about Khem though.”

“Arré, don’t you see? Your insider connections make you the best man for the job.”

You could consider the day after he met with Lakshman, a Sunday, my third date with Gautam.

Ten days earlier I’d started volunteering at the school where he taught. I told the principal I was an MPhil student doing pedagogical research. Her bureaucratic indifference disappeared when I placed an envelope full of five-hundred-rupee notes on her desk. Despite Gautam’s mental turmoil during that period, I managed to get him to notice me.

We’d scheduled to meet outside of Evergreen, where college students were pushing encyclopedias on sweater-clad families who were gorging on chaat and jalebis. Gautam, standing aloof from all this, was petting an overfed stray when I tapped him on the shoulder.

“You look beautiful,” he said in Hindi.

I couldn’t say the same thing about him. The eyes burdened with purple bags of sleeplessness and ganja, they’d been a constant during our few walks and teas. There was something else though, something new. As I later discovered in his journals, his past twenty-four hours had been particularly tormented ones.

“Green really suits you,” he continued. I was wearing a cheap Sarojni Nagar kameez over a baggy salwar, trying to please him by being the chaste desi girl life had never let me be.

He told me he needed to speak about something important, and even though we were still getting to know each other, this wasn’t surprising. There was no one else in his life besides Suraj, and the elite can only relate to their servants so much.

Conversation proved difficult because a loudspeaker was blaring warnings about terrorist threats. Gautam leaned toward me and shouted over the din, “Maybe we could go back to my place?” He tried to feign casualness, but he badly wanted me to come. I hesitated before saying yes though. Too eagerly acceding to his request might not have sat so well with him.

We held hands as we strolled through the market, just another anonymous couple among the Sunday hordes. At the Asian Age offices some shoeshine boys called out to Gautam by name but didn’t beg him for money. He paused to stare as a tipsy policeman yelled at a sabziwallah for spitting paan on the street. “Kya aap janwar hai, ya inasaan? Are you animal or human?”

Gautam’s barsaati was located on top of one of the neighborhood’s original houses, built by a Jain in 1961. Besides a fourteenth-century Lodhi tomb where servants played cricket and young journalists smoked charas, this home was the oldest remaining structure on U-block.

A squat ionic column stood near the house’s front door, and its latticed stucco exterior had a tasteful but chipping coat of yellow on it. Although the boundary walls of neighboring houses were blooming with chrysanthemums that time of year, the one separating this single-story residence from the street was lined with empty discolored flower pots.

I’d never thought post-Partition Delhi houses particularly beautiful compared with the architectural marvels of Calcutta, where I grew up. But as Gautam pointed out, these ones were rather handsome, especially next to the soulless builders’ flats that were spreading across the city like a virus.

When we were about to climb to the barsaati, a scraggly figure came out of nowhere and started mumbling at us. “Hello, bhaiyya, good evening,” the man said, smiling wilily. It was Suraj. “Ah, guest, you have guest tonight,” he said in clunky English. A scarf was tied underneath his chin and over the crown of his head. I pulled my dupatta over my face to shield it from his odor, a mixture of sweat, cheap booze, and soot.

This was poverty’s stench during wintertime, a smell from my adolescence.

He switched back into Hindi. “Achha, sir, kuch... ahhh... chaye. Okhla se?” He wanted to know if another batch of charas was needed. Gautam became uncomfortable and declined.

His barsaati was in want of some modern amenities that I’d come to take for granted over the past two decades: a Western toilet, for example. But it wasn’t lacking what bohemians would call “character,” things like old-fashioned split-paneled doors with a sliding rod and hasp, the kind that have become a faux pas in the capital’s southern parts.

Gautam went to use the bathroom, and I remained in his living quarters, a sparsely furnished room whose sole decoration was a framed poster of depressed Guru Dutt playing a depressed poet in a depressing film. I stroked the orphaned puppy he’d recently rescued from Deer Park until it got overexcited and pissed on the floor.

A dozen books, both in Hindi and English, were piled atop a rickety aluminum card table. Next to these was a photograph that Gautam had clearly been pondering. It was of his dead friend, who was wearing a khadi kurta on top of some green military trousers. A defender of the tribals but not a tribal himself, this activist looked like your average small-scale landowner from the Hindi-speaking heartland: mustached, paunchy, and balding.

“He’s Khem, a dear friend of mine who passed away,” said Gautam. He’d returned from the bathroom and was fiddling with his Enbee. The old stereo was his most prized possession.

“Actually,” Gautam said with the exaggerated earnestness that was typical of him, “I called you over here to talk about Khem.” As an old Hindi record crackled, Gautam told his story.

“It all started six years ago,” he explained. He’d just written an article about Orissa, where the state government, then controlled by the B Party, had decided to hand over some bauxite-rich land to the Canadian Aluminum Corporation. But a tribal community resided on the land, and its members formed a movement to protest the B Party’s actions. Paramilitary forces, heeding B Party orders, opened fire on movement members during a demonstration.

“Five tribals were killed, two of whom were children,” he said morosely.

Lauri Zeller, a new arrival to the subcontinent, read Gautam’s article and thought the situation was ripe for a documentary. She persuaded him to return to Orissa with her, and the two spent the next year living with the tribals. “We became very, very close,” he explained. He didn’t say so, but alone in the tribal community, they became lovers.

Both forged a close relationship with Khem Thakur, one of the movement’s main organizers. Gautam believed that Lauri’s film should focus on Khem’s struggles against corruption and capitalism. Lauri had different ideas though.

She’d started teaching a group of tribal youths how to paint with watercolors. “She decided to make the film about her ‘attempt to help these children reflect on poverty and globalization through art,’” he told me, mocking the way foreign newspapers had lauded her work.

By the time Lauri had won her BAFTA for The Color of Water, she and Gautam were barely speaking. “I should’ve seen it sooner,” he lamented. “She was an egomaniac — she wanted to exploit India like every other foreigner.” He didn’t tell me Lauri’s side of the story, but I know one of the reasons she broke things off with him: he’d gotten back into pharmaceuticals.

Soon after, Khem died in a mysterious car accident. Gautam tried contacting Lauri for help, but she refused to take his calls. “Actually,” he said, his eyes moist now, “she never came back to India after becoming famous.” There was more to it than that, I knew, but Gautam wouldn’t talk about such things with me or anybody else.

As he recounted his story, I put a hand on his arm. But he turned away from me and began to stroke the puppy, which was chewing on an old chappal by our feet. “It must have been so difficult,” I said, mustering up my most sympathetic voice.

He proceeded to tell me about G.S. Lakshman and the Satya article, and I listened patiently even though I knew more about the situation than he did. “I have an opportunity to do something for the memory of my friend, to do some good for this corrupt country,” he explained. “But I’m not one hundred percent sure I want to.”

“What are you afraid of?”

“It’s fear, you’re right,” he said. A breathy laugh of self-loathing escaped through his teeth. “You’re very wise. I knew you were the best person to speak with about this.” I gave his arm a squeeze. “Anyway,” he continued, “I’ve decided to go through with it.”

“Well, you’re a very brave man.”

He smiled sheepishly. “You smell that?” he asked.

“What?”

“It’s smoke from a chowkidar’s fire.”

“So?”

“Winter has begun.”

He turned to look at me with a smile I knew well, one that doesn’t care about borders of class or religion. Gautam was hungry for sex.

During the month that followed I continued volunteering at the school. In the afternoon we’d spend hours wrapped in shawls on the terrace, the puppy curled up by our feet. A pair of golden-backed woodpeckers was building a home in the amla tree across the street, and Gautam threw stones at the menacing parrots that were trying to chase them away. At night Suraj would bring up sabzi and rotis for us, and I’d tell stories about my invented childhood in Bihar, so many of them that they began to seem real.

Before sleep there was no actual intercourse but lots of touching. In this department, no matter how hard he tried, Gautam could never be the Indian man he wanted to be. He didn’t just stab me with his fingers like some child with a new toy. He used the palm of his hand to rub me between my legs, and I felt things I’d never felt before, not even by myself.

Lakshman told Gautam that he was now representing an important multinational media organization and had to look the part, so Gautam spent a morning in one of Green Park’s many salons. He came out looking like a cross between Hritik and George Harrison.

The depression that burdened his eyes began to fade as he flittered around the city investigating Ashok Kumar’s connection to Khem’s death. He did thorough work and met every type of person imaginable: bureaucrats, ladies who lunched, drivers, and businessmen. Lakshman provided him with a generous allowance to convince people to go on the record.

Within a week Gautam was an expert on Ashok’s life story, a story I already knew by heart. Using his father the poet-politician’s connections, Ashok became the official supplier of white goods — air conditioners, refrigerators, televisions — to the central government. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Russia turned to India for these products. India put the Reds in touch with Ashok, who supplied them with all the TVs and washing machines they needed for free, bargaining not for cash but influence. Eventually, he became the exclusive broker of oil between Russia and India.

The brat-turned-billionaire soon had more money than he knew what to do with. He had no use for Indian whores anymore. He could fly blondes in and out of Delhi for weekend sessions. He even formed his own security force and intelligence agency. Before long he became a broker not just of oil, but of nuclear submarine deals and the votes of senior MPs. He became a fixer of memorandums of understanding for bauxite mines in Orissa.

“I’m almost done with the research,” Gautam told Lakshman on the phone one day. We were sitting on the terrace, and I hummed along to a silly Geeta Dutt song playing on the Enbee. I hadn’t heard it in years.

“There are now two witnesses who can connect Ashok directly to Khem’s death,” he said. He was no longer the disaffected poet I’d met a month earlier. “And there’s this accountant who’s willing to testify that Kumar received three million USD — cash — from the Canadians. I just need a few more days, and the money trail will lead straight to the B Party. I’m thinking about a short trip to Orissa to round off the article, give it some authentic flavor.”

Lakshman firmly cautioned Gautam against this though.

The next morning we were in the middle of pleasing each other when his clunky old Nokia sounded. We were both about to come, and Gautam was irritated by the interruption. So was I.

I picked up the phone from the nightstand, recognized the number at once, and handed it to him. “Hello?” he answered.

Ashok Kumar’s voice sounded sinister due to a recent case of laryngitis. He knew exactly what we were up to all the time, and I wondered if jealousy had driven him to call at that particular moment.

Gautam wrote down Kumar’s address and then phoned G.S. Lakshman to tell him the news. “This is just what we need,” he said. “Some quotes from Kumar will give us more credibility.”

Lakshman’s response was audible from five feet away. “That chutiya bastard doesn’t deserve the right to speak!”

After putting down the phone, Gautam moved to turn on the computer. But I made him come back to bed to finish off what he’d begun.

Around 4 o’clock the same day, he hired an Indica to take him to Sultanpur. It was bitter and gray out, and I stood at the gate waving goodbye like some wife sending her husband off to war.

Gautam’s notes from this occasion are particularly vivid.

To drown out the chaos of Aurobindo Marg, he put in a CD with the words Old Hindi Songs for Lauri scribbled on it. The theme song from his favorite Guru Dutt movie played: “Yehdhuniya agar mil bhi jaaye to kya hai?” (“Even if you meet withsuccess in this world, what does it really matter anyway?”) At a traffic light adorned with advertisements for a telecom company there was a knock at the window. A little girl was selling copies of Satya. She was barefoot and dirty and held a malnourished infant in her hands. Despite all that was on his mind — or maybe because of all that was on his mind — he gave the girl a ten-rupee note but said she could keep the paper, just like an NRI or some firang.

At Qutab Minar they veered onto MG Road, passing the mangled skeletons of fashion malls, illegal buildings that the Municipal Corporation had torn down to set an example and make the metro’s construction a smoother process. “Monuments to progress’s war,” Gautam called them. After twenty minutes of furniture shops, they turned right at a sign that read Manhattan Estates and then drove another kilometer.

Two rifle-wielding sentries manned the gate that led to the Kumar farmhouse.

I was all too familiar with the sights that greeted Gautam next: the fleet of antique American cars and the guards armed with semiautomatic weapons and sunglasses; the pool and the pagoda-like temple.

Gautam waited for Kumar in a dimly lit room with hardwood floors and ceilings, a sign of great wealth in a country whose forests have all but been eradicated. One of Husain’s Mother Teresa paintings hung on the wall, and a fire crackled in the corner. Its flames flickered so perfectly that Gautam wondered if it was real until a uniformed servant poked at its logs.

“Thank you for coming,” said the raspy-voiced man when he entered the room twenty minutes later. Gautam described Ashok as short and handsome. He was wearing a casual suit without a tie and had grown a light black beard during his week-long convalescence. This was the man who’d made me.

During business trips to Calcutta, Ashok always managed to spend a few hours in bed with me. He started to linger longer and longer after our sessions and eventually decided he could use a woman like me in Delhi. I left behind my life of servicing Communist officials and Marwaris in Sonagachi all too willingly and became his pet project, living proof that social mobility actually exists in this country. You must be thinking, How can a girl from such simple origins evolve into such a creature? That’s impossible.

Well, first of all, I didn’t start out life poor; before my seventh birthday I’d worn frocks, taken piano lessons, and learned to sing Rabindrasangeet. Besides, it’s not that difficult to hold a wine glass by the stem, use toilet paper, or shout styupid idyot at servants. There are many insurmountable challenges in this world, but learning how to mourn the country’s rural-urban divide at champagne dinners isn’t one of them. All you need is money and the backing of powerful people. Ashok Kumar gave me both.

Seating himself across from Gautam, Kumar started off by trying to charm him. He praised the article Gautam had written about his father the poet. But Gautam wasn’t up for chit chat. This was, after all, the monster responsible for the death of his friend.

“Mr. Kumar, you know why I’m here,” he said. “I know you’re directly connected to the murder of Khem Thakur, and I know about your financial links with the Canadians. Would you like to make a formal response to these allegations?”

“Why would I?”

“Why did you call me here then?”

“Because I’d like to ask you not to write these half-truths about me.”

“You can’t intimidate me, Mr. Kumar.”

Breaking from the conversation, Kumar picked up a phone. He ordered some fresh-squeezed orange juice and cappuccinos. Then he said, “You’ve learned quite a bit about me, Gautam. Don’t you know I never start off a relationship with threats? I first offer incentives.”

“Mr. Kumar, I can’t be bought.”

“Gautam, I’ve learned a lot about you as well.”

“I’m sure you have.”

“I know about Lauri,” Ashok declared, his eyes surely beady now.

“What does she have to do with any of this?”

“I’ve found out about your daughter, Gautam. I know Lauri gave birth to a child.” These words must have made Gautam sweaty and speechless. He’d never spoken out loud about the daughter he’d never met. “They live in America, which I know is a problem. But I can bring you to your daughter, Gautam.”

“How’s that?” His question was barely audible, a whisper.

“Just forget about all this nonsense. I’m asking you to forget about Khem Thakur, bauxite mining, and Ashok Kumar.”

“And then what?”

“It’s very simple. Do that and you’ll have a green card.”

After his trip to Kumar’s palace, Gautam avoided me and started smoking charas with a vengeance again. He stopped sleeping and began taking walks at odd hours, mulling over what would have been an easy decision for most. Children, they say, are the only things that give life meaning. But as he detailed in his journals, choosing to be united with his daughter meant Ashok getting away with it. And Gautam wasn’t sure if fatherhood was a responsibility he even wanted. He wasn’t sure if he could face Lauri Zeller or forgive her.

We hadn’t seen each other for three days when I showed up at his barsaati one evening just before sunset. It had been a particularly biting afternoon, so I’d wrapped myself in a beige shawl. This one I didn’t have to acquire for the assignment. My father had gifted it to my mother, and it was the only thing of value she’d managed not to sell. Suraj was pumping water into the tanks and greeted me at the gate. “It’s good that you’ve come,” he said. “I’m worried about Gautam bhaiyya.”

When I walked into the barsaati, Gautam was taking a hit from his chillum. His eyes were closed and he was relishing this action, as if the pipe were his lover. He’d never smoked in front of me before and looked like a real junkie.

Upon hearing me enter, he opened his eyes but didn’t stop sucking until he’d had his fill. Then he said, “I wasn’t expecting you,” in a soft, airy voice. It was completely devoid of the poise it’d been filled with since we’d gotten close.

“What’s going on?” I asked. A small plastic bag with the words Kunal Medicos printed on it lay on the card table. Gautam must have picked up some opiates in Yusuf Sarai, where nobody needs a prescription for pills.

“I like your shawl,” was all he said back.

He took another hit from his chillum and tried to pass it to me. When I pushed his hand way, he attempted to force the thing to my lips. I’d never seen him like this before.

“Have you gone crazy?” I snapped.

“Just have a hit, try a little,” he kept on going.

When I slapped his face, the demons that had been inhabiting his eyes suddenly fled, and a look of panic replaced them.

Then, looking away from me, he drew his hand behind his ear and hurled his pipe at a spot on the wall beside the poster.

The chillum smashed into half-a-dozen pieces, and the puppy started whimpering. Gautam began crying too, and he buried his head in my bosom. I held him tightly. It was upon my urging that he slid himself into me that night.

In the morning, we remained naked under the covers despite the cold, and it was then he confessed that Lauri had given birth to his child. He also told me about Kumar’s proposition.

Gautam didn’t speak about his fear of fatherhood, he just said he was uncomfortable sacrificing the truth for his own selfish ends. “Picking Ashok Kumar over Lakshman and Satya is like picking evil over good. It should be that simple.”

My response to his dilemma should have come quickly to my lips. But I said nothing. We moved out to the terrace and stared at some local children playing hopscotch and chattering in Hindi on the street below. In front of a neighboring house some laborers were assembling a shamiana for a wedding. “Imagine if that were for us,” Gautam said, a faint, wistful smile on his face.

“Nothing could make me happier,” I told him.

When he was alone that night, Gautam called Lakshman and told him the article was off. “It’s going nowhere, and I’m tired,” he said. There was some back and forth, during which Lakshman tried to appeal to his sense of justice and democracy. But Gautam was firm in his resolve to abandon the project.

I was volunteering at the school the next morning when a student stormed through the courtyard and screamed at the principal: “Gautam sir is lying dead in the park, Gautam sir is lying dead in the park!” I ran there as fast as I could.

A crowd was staring from a safe distance: servants walking sweater-clad dogs; prickly old men holding sticks to beat away strays and poor people. I pushed through them and his body came into view. Damaged but not dead, he was sprawled beside an earth-colored Lodhi tomb he often loafed around. An enormous gulmohar tree hung over him. It wasn’t Lakshman himself who’d sent the goons with cricket bats to Gautam’s flat before dawn. His C Party colleagues had taken care of that.

The sight of his bloodied, maimed face sent a wave of anguish through me.

Two security guards, uniformed UP-wallahs, were attending to his body. A wiry one was dragging Gautam by an arm and his curly locks, and a paunchy one was using a rifle to prod him. The butt of the gun met my leg with a considerable amount of force, and I let out a howl that snapped them out of their sadistic fever.

Once I had their attention, I shouted a series of reprimands in English peppered with words like “idyot.” Had Gautam been more alert, it would have unnerved him to hear how naturally such bilious Angrezi spilled from my tongue. But in the nation’s capital, the Queen’s language is still a deadlier weapon than a Mauser.

After eyeing me up and down, the head guard decided I wasn’t a force to reckon with. “Didi,” he said, his gaze now inflected with leering. My dress code for this assignment had meant my demotion from “madam” to “sister.” “We’re going to take him to the police thana. Just listen to me and you’ll remain unharmed.”

When I dropped the name of some fictitious high-level official, my mamaji the High Court justice, the guards became uneasy. But what really got them was the sight of the Black-Berry I pulled from my pocket. They couldn’t have known what exactly it was or how much it cost, but even they knew it was far more expensive than the toys of the casually rich. I’d kept it concealed from Gautam all these weeks.

The guards helped him up, and I walked out of Deer Park supporting the weight of his semiconscious six-foot frame. After bringing him home, I stayed by his bedside for the next twenty hours. I only left when Ashok called me in for a meeting.

Kumar received me in his mahogany study. He was in a bathrobe and had a stoic look on his face. It was meant to communicate his disappointment in me. “Things have gotten very complicated,” was all he said. “I didn’t want it to come to this, but it’s best to just finish this now. And obviously destroy all his papers.” Those were my orders, and they weren’t unreasonable ones.

I got up to leave, but Kumar motioned for me to stay. He picked up one of the three phones before him and said, “Bahadur, I’m not to be disturbed for twenty minutes.” Then he got up and walked over to the expensive leather chair I was sitting on and untied his robe. There was nothing underneath it, just his hairy body, a gold chain, and the limp organ I was to make hard with my tongue. This was my medicine. I had to win back my place in his good books.

I took the length of him into my mouth. No matter how far I moved away from Sonagachi, this man would never let me forget about the whore I once was.

I returned to Green Park early the next morning, and as I climbed the stairs to the barsaati one final time, the dog began making noise, a series of shrill yelps, the sound of a puppy in distress. When I walked in, the thing pissed on the flats I was wearing, ethnic ones I would’ve gotten rid of anyway.

Gautam’s eyes were closed and his mustache was caked in vomit, but he was still breathing. On the floor was an empty strip of oxycodone, and next to it a brown envelope. Lakshman’s people had sent it to him during my brief absence. I thumbed through its contents, five black-and-white photographs.

In one of the pictures I was getting out of a car at the Kumar farmhouse. In another I was wearing a bikini on the beaches of Goa. But strangely, these pictures of me seemed in pristine condition, as if he’d barely glanced at them. Only one had been soiled by tears and fingerprints; it had clearly been too much for him. For me the photo confirmed how tired I’d grown of this life I was supposed to be grateful for.

The photo showed the mother of Gautam’s child. She was sitting on a bench having a conversation with my boss. I didn’t know it then, but Ashok Kumar and Lauri Zeller had known each other. He’d paid her for knowledge of Khem’s movement, and she’d used the money to help finish off her movie. I never confirmed that they’d been intimate, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

Staring at the photographs, I contemplated sparing Gautam. Images of us starting a new life together passed through my mind. That’s what would have happened in a film. But I knew he’d be more useful dead than alive.

I took out a syringe from my bag and filled it with potassium chloride. Then I jabbed him between the toes. This was the only way I’d ever killed somebody, it was painless and civilized. With all the opiates and benzodiazepines in his system, the coroner would pronounce Gautam dead from an overdose. Nobody would lament the passing of this confused orphan. After shoving Gautam’s notebooks and computer into the jute bag he’d used for sabzis, I leashed the puppy and left the barsaati with it.

When I contacted Lakshman, he was surprised to hear from me. It took some arranging, but eventually he was more than happy to print Gautam’s exposé on Kumar, which implicated my boss, the B Party, and the Canadian Aluminum Corporation in the murder of Khem Thakur.

Months after the article was published, the C Party won key state elections and handed over Orissa’s bauxite mines to more favorable industrialists. The party rewarded Lakshman for his services by securing him a position as an MD in an international media conglomerate.

Three weeks after Gautam’s article came out — in London and in Delhi — a Criminal Bureau of Investigation probe was launched. My name came up during the investigation, but I’d long since made it abroad with my Indian pie dog. Ashok Kumar was arrested and caged in Tihar for a few months, where he was allowed to bathe in milk on Sundays. He was of course freed.

In the days immediately after the article’s publication, newspapers printed gushing obituaries about its author, referring to Gautam as “one of India’s finest young minds.” Delhi’s intelligentsia lamented his tragic death over kebabs and mojitos for a few months. Then they forgot he’d ever existed.

The scam by Tabish Khair

Jantar Mantar

A little Turd sits outside the metro exit closest to Jantar Mantar and offers to polish your shoes when you leave the cool, clean interior of the underground for the smog and heat of the pucca-baked roads. You say no, having little time for Turds of that sort and because your boy-servant has already polished your shoes twice this morning, once of his own volition and once because you were not satisfied. So yes, you say no, and plunk, the little Turd has deposited a real piece of turd on your shoes. Oh, you do not see him do it, but where else does real turd come from if not from little Turds like him? See, see, saar, says the Turd, speaking Ingliss to you because he can see that you are the type, not phoren but polished. See, see, saar, he says. Ssuu durrty.

The little Turd has made a mistake. Just because you are polished does not mean that you only speak Ingliss. You slap him on the head, twice. It is a language he understands. You thrust your shoe out to him, and say in Hindi-Ingliss-Punjabi: Saaf karo, abhi saaf karo shoes, harami, and you add a few choice gaalis in Punjabi which need not be put down on paper. If you had not added those gaalis, the little Turd might have raised a racket. But he is convinced he has made a mistake. He was fooled by your patina, like those Spanish adventurers were once fooled by the shine of the copper on the Indians in America: What glittered on you was not gold. The little Turd realizes his mistake. He is a quick learner. You have convinced him in two expressive local languages: Punjabi and Slapperi.

He wipes your shoe with a rueful pout. Then as you turn to leave, he cannot resist the question. He is still intrigued. He needs to place you. Perhaps he maintains a record of his mistakes. He is a professional, just as much as you or anyone else in Delhi these days. So he asks you with a comic salaam, still in Ingliss, Vaat you do, saab, vaat job-vob, saar?

You have won this battle. You are in an expansive, forgiving mood. You decide to answer him, and mention your profession.

Repoder? Jurnaalis? he says.

Then he shakes his head, as if that word explains his mistake. Jurnaalis, he repeats. Jurnaalis. Repoder.

The street outside Jantar Mantar is a favorite haunt of journalists. Next to the nineteenth-century observatory, there are broad sidewalks, and these broad sidewalks often host impromptu protest groups. Sometimes for months. There is one occupied by victims of the Bhopal gas leak. They have been sitting there, on and off, for at least a few years, down to five or six people now, mostly ignored by journalists. A much larger group, bathed in camera flashes, belongs to the Narmada Bachao Andolan. They are an intermittent fixture on this road, and because their champions include celebrities like Arundhati Roy, they attract media flashlights once in a while.

Actually, they are the reason why that little Turd doing his supaalis-and-turd-on-shoe scam made such an error of judgment when staff reporter Arvind Sinha of the Times of India exited from the metro. Reporter Sinha has long harbored a crush on Arundhati Roy. Hence, he had dressed up with extra care this summer morning and left his Bullet motorcycle behind to avoid the blackening traffic fumes, before doing his round of the Narmada Bachao Andolan protest. Not that it is going to be noticed. The famous Roy is there, but too uninterested in her fame to give interviews, let alone be whisked away for a fawning chat in one of those three-, four-, five, and probably-more-star hotels around the corner.

So, after jotting down the day’s press declaration in his spiral notebook, and pocketing the day’s press release, Repoder Sinha heads for one of the four-star restaurants on his own. The Sangharsh Morcha had announced a press meet there, and now that Sinha is here he might as well look in, collect the releases, and, hopefully, guzzle down a cold beer or two. On the way, he notices that a new tent has come up at the corner of Jantar Mantar: It bears the obligatory banner stating, Justice Delayed Is Justice Denied, in English. There is no one under the tent — a rickety affair, broad enough to hold four or five people at most — so Repoder Sinha cannot inquire about the nature of the justice that has been delayed or denied, though it is doubtful that he would have stopped to do so anyway.

Past the revolving glass doors of the restaurant, in the air-conditioned, potted interior, Sinha spots the table reserved for the press meet by the Sangharsh Morcha. Not much of the press has met. Apart from Sinha, there are only two other reporters, one of whom is actually the editor of his own newspaper and, it is rumored, subsists on the beer and snacks offered at such meets. Handouts are handed out, appropriate noises are made over soda and lemonade — it appears that the Sangharsh Morcha has a Gandhian aversion to alcohol, which might also explain the low turnout of reporters. Just when Sinha is about to sneak away from the rather drab press meet, the room is visibly brightened by the entry of two women.

Two very different women. Sinha knows one of them: Preeti, who works for one, or probably more, of those internationally visible NGOs. The other is a sturdy blonde wearing a kurta and jeans. Preeti is wearing a kurta and jeans too, but while the blonde looks tired and sweaty, Preeti, like all women of her refined class (at least to Sinha’s working-class eyes), never looks ruffled or unkempt. Sinha has seen women like Preeti step out of forty-five-degree heat in July without a bead of sweat on their foreheads, no sign of a damp spot under their armpits. He suspects that their air-conditioned cars offer part of the answer to the riddle of their unruffled coolness, but there are moments when he feels that they are another breed, a superior subspecies that has evolved beyond bodily fluids and signs of discomfort.

Preeti spots Sinha and, ignoring the others, launches into the kind of direct speech that, Sinha suspects, is also part of the evolutionary progress of her subspecies. For God’s sake, Arvind, she says, what are you reporter-veporters doing here in this fake palace? There are two dharnas just outside, near Jantar Mantar.

Been there, Preeti, replies Sinha...

Not the Narmada one — Preeti is too radical to espouse specific causes — there is another one. From near some Tikri village in Bihar, where there has been a caste atrocity which has not been reported by you guys.

If it has not been reported, it has not happened.

Oh yeah? Ask the woman sitting there and her cute little son. They have experienced it. Father killed, uncles chased away...

Just two? A woman and a child?

Both Preeti and her foreign friend nod in affirmation.

A scam then, pronounces Sinha. Look, Preeti, these days you cannot have a caste atrocity without a couple of politicians turning up to squeeze the last drop of political mileage out of it. If it’s just a couple of people, it is a scam. Another way of begging...

Oh, you are so cynical, says the foreign woman, in a vaguely European accent.

Not cynical — reporter, staff reporter, contributes Preeti, and introduces the two. The foreign woman is a visiting journalist from Denmark called Tina. But it is spelled with an “e,” she explains: Tine.

Why don’t you check it out?

Check what out?

Your scam.

Waste of time.

Or afraid to be proved wrong?

I am not wrong.

Check it out then. They are just outside anyway.

What if I am right?

I will buy you a dinner.

Where?

In Chor Bizarre.

Deal?

Deal.

Good. Preeti, you are the witness. Let’s go.

The Press Club on Raisina Road, not that far from Jan-tar Mantar, has sometimes been nicknamed the Depressed Club. Its whitewashed colonial façade has worn thin, its floor stained by tired feet, bleak notices and cuttings on the bulletin boards in the drafty corridor, lawn outside showing only a hint of grass, tables piled with dirty plates, broken chairs, a slight smell of urine from the toilet next to the main entrance.

There, that evening, seated at a corner table, wreathed in miasma, which consists largely but not only of cigarette smoke, we can find Repoder Sinha, Preeti, and Tine. Plates of kebab and beer have been ordered — gin and lime for Preeti — and conversation is going strong. It is still hovering around the scam protest, which — on inspection — had turned out to be that rickety tent with the banner in English: Justice Delayed Is Justice Denied.

I told you it was a scam, said Sinha.

How do you know?

I recognized the boy with the woman. He runs a shoe polish scam there. Tosses rubbish on your shoes, so that you have to pay him to polish them up.

So?

So!

So, it proves that he does something for a living. They said they have been here for months, petitioning every person they possibly could. They showed you the petitions and letters that they have actually paid people to write for them.

Another way to beg.

Oh, Preeti, are your journalists always so cynical?

Only the men, Tine. Only the men.

Oh, c’mon, Preeti. Tine doesn’t know the place, but you and I know how these things happen.

I am not sure I do, Arvind.

What do you mean?

Look, that woman had a plausible story. Small village in Bihar. Land dispute. Husband killed, murdered one night on the way back from work. Police not interested in clearing the matter. Dismissing it as the kind of thing that happens to people who belong to the so-called denotified tribes. Uncles frightened into moving away. Land forcibly occupied. The woman tries to get justice, finally takes whatever she has and comes to Delhi with all her papers. Sounds plausible to me, given a plucky tribal woman, which is what she seems to be.

She is not a village woman from Bihar, and that boy is too slick. He has grown up here on the streets.

You would be surprised how quickly kids pick up habits and words.

Still, I bet you my bottom dollar — a scam.

Why don’t you go to Bihar and check it out? asks Tine suddenly.

Check it out? The woman’s village doesn’t even have a name. Near Tikri village, she says. Even if I could locate Tikri village...

Take them with you, says Preeti. We’ll come along. I’ll raise the money for it.

I’ll have to take leave, Preeti.

Take leave, Arvind.

Take leave, Arvind, will you please? Tine adds, looking soulfully at him with her speckled greenish-blue eyes.

What a waste. Okay, if you ladies insist. Let me see...

Time does not fly around Jantar Mantar. That is the magic of such places. The buildings change their billboards; the streets change their beggars, protesters, pedestrians, cars. But all change is for the same. Time simply repeats itself, again and again.

Jantar-mantar, say children: abracadabra. Whoosh! Something happens. Plastic flowers turn into a dove; a rabbit is pulled out of the hat. Jantar-mantar, murmur old women in villages, and they talk in whispers because they are talking of devious doings, black magic, sorcery. Jantar-mantar, say foreign-educated doctors in the cities, and they are referring to the hocus-pocus of quacks, the vaids and hakims who still cater to the rural poor and either heal them or kill them.

But Jantar Mantar in Delhi is a sprawling observatory built in the nineteenth century. It is used to observe nothing.

It is useless. Around it rise useful buildings: offices, hotels.

Buildings that change and are always the same. About it walk useful people: reporters, politicians, businessmen, doctors, bureaucrats. People who change and are always the same.

So what surprise is there if, a month from the time we last saw him agreeing to go to Bihar, we see Repoder Sinha walking out of the same metro exit where he had encountered the Turd, the boy whom — along with his mother — Sinha and Preeti and Tine had escorted back to Bihar just a few weeks ago?

Repoder Sinha has changed and perhaps he is still the same.

In any case, he is looking around. He has been doing this almost every day since all three returned from Bihar: He looks around for the Turd, the little boy, for he knows that the Turd must have returned to Delhi. After all, scams have their fixed scenarios; tricksters their territory.

Repoder Sinha walks slowly, darting quick glances to the left and the right, thinking of that lightning trip to Bihar. He is not sure what happened there, but he will not concede this uncertainty to himself.

The woman and the boy had refused to go back to Bihar; Preeti and Tine had to convince them with assurances of safety and gifts of money. And it had been like that all the way to Gaya, by train, and then to the village of Tikri by taxi: The woman and the boy had wheedled a minor fortune out of the two women. Sinha had expected that; it confirmed his suspicions. But he had not anticipated the certainty with which the woman led them to Tikri and then two kilometres out to a small village and a plot of land which she claimed was the disputed property. That is when it all happened, and Sinha is not very certain even now about what it was.

It was late, the summer evening still steamy, the wind having dropped. Tine was pink, a few beads of sweat had appeared on Preeti’s neck. Both were conservatively clad — a reflection of their notions of rural Bihar — in cotton salwar kameezes.

The plot they stood on was rocky; it did not look worth fighting over to Sinha. The woman and her son, the Turd, were pointing out things like the palm trees that demarcated one end of the field, the huts — thatched, hunched — of their village in a far corner, and the small hillock which marked the other end of the field. A fly kept buzzing around Preeti, evading her attempts to fend it away with her anchal, which she wore draped loosely around her shoulders. Tine had discarded her anchal, displaying a rather low-cut kameez that, Sinha felt, was less conservative than most shirts and T-shirts.

As the woman rambled on — the usual lament, how the land was taken away from her, how her husband was murdered, how the police did not listen to her — suddenly, on the hillock, there stood a group of men. They appeared as if by magic — jantar-mantar, Sinha almost thought — burly, impassive men, against the reddening sky, leaning on their staffs. They could have been any group of villagers on their way back from work, attracted by the sight of a taxi and three obviously urban types, one of them a firang.

But that is not what the woman and her son, the Turd, thought. Or pretended. Sinha is not sure. For then there was a cry of fear from the boy and the woman started cursing and weeping. The boy said, Run, ma, run, they said they would kill us if we came back, run. Then both were running — in the opposite direction, toward the palm trees and the brambles and jungle behind the bleak, tall palms. Sinha shouted, but they did not stop. Preeti and Tine had not even had the time to react. When Sinha looked up at the hillock, the men who had been standing there were gone too.

They waited an hour, until it got dark, and the taxi driver insisted on going back, with or without them.

They came back the next day. They spoke to the local police, who denied that there was any land dispute or that any murder had taken place. What woman and son, the thana inspector asked. Sinha’s press card turned the police obliging and polite. The inspector took the three outsiders to the nameless village, fetid with garbage next to mud huts with holes in their thatched roofs, and shouted for some old man to come out. Come out, hey you, Dhanarwa! When the man, stubbled, limping, coughing, came out of the low hut, the inspector said to Sinha, Sir, describe the woman and her son to the man. He is the headman here. He knows everyone.

Sinha did as he was asked to do, Preeti adding a word or two of detail.

Description done, the inspector addressed the old man in a gruff tone. So, he said, do you know this woman and the boy?

The old man shook his head silently. A crow cawed and perched on the sagging roof of a hut behind them. With its daggerlike beak, it started to dismember a small rodent held in its talons.

Speak up. Has someone cut your tongue off? Speak up.

Not to me, you dolt. Tell sir and the madams here, the inspector barked.

No, huzoor, said the old man.

You do not know the woman? repeated the inspector.

No, huzoor.

Or the boy?

No, huzoor.

The inspector turned to Arvind, Preeti, and Tine, all three now sweating profusely in the hardening sunlight of the late morning. See, sir, he said, see, madam, what did I tell you? 420. The woman was a 420. A chaalu fraud. You should lodge a complaint with us. We will catch them for you.

On the way back the next day, as the train shuddered on the old tracks, Sinha had his doubts. He was familiar with such interrogations by police officers. The way they asked questions often determined the answers. And though he laughed away Tine’s offer to buy him dinner in Chor Bizarre on their return to Delhi — I lost the bet, she said — Sinha still could not settle the matter in his mind.

However, Preeti and, especially, Tine had been converted: they spent much of their waking hours on the train trip back to Delhi calculating the money they had paid out to the woman and her boy, the Turd, on the way. By the time the train reached Aligarh, they had agreed on the exact sum of 5,941 rupees.

But doubt nibbled at Sinha. All the way to Delhi. And that is why now, even weeks later, when Preeti and Tine have already turned the experience into slightly different anecdotes for friends, Repoder Arvind Sinha walks past the Jantar Mantar area, on the lookout for that little Turd. Under the tall gleaming buildings he walks, on the broad sidewalks with protest banners, past this useless observatory, always darting glances to the left and right, on he walks in this place that changes and is always the same, looking, looking, looking.

The walls of delhi by Uday Prakash

Rohini

Translated from Hindi by Jason Grunebaum

I met Ramnivas at Sanjay Chaurasia’s paan cart that stood five hundred yards from my flat in Rohini; Ratanlal sold chai right next to Sanjay’s. Sanjay had come to Delhi from a village near Pratapgarh, and Ratanlal from Sasaram.

They built their shops on wheels so they could make a quick getaway in case someone from the city came nosing around.

Cops on motorbike patrol came by all the time, but they got their weekly cut: Ratanlal paid five hundred, Sanjay seven.

The two men didn’t worry.

All the vendors and hawkers set up camp wherever they could in Rohini’s evening market. As night fell, Brajinder joined them, pushing his fancy electric cart, Kwality Ice Cream printed in rainbow letters on the plastic panels. So did Rajvati, who sold hard-boiled eggs. Her husband Gulshan was there too, with their two kids. Behind her shop, four brick walls enclosed a little vacant lot. As night wore on, people pulled up in cars asking Gulshan for some whiskey or rum.

The government liquor shops were long closed by that hour, so Gulshan would cycle off and return with a pint or a fifth he got from one of his black market connections. Some customers wanted chicken tikka with their hard-boiled eggs, which

Gulshan would fetch from Sardar Satte Singh’s food stand up at the next light. Sometimes the customers would give him a little whiskey by way of a tip, or a few rupees. Rajvati didn’t make a fuss since it was a hundred times better for him to drink that kind of whiskey, and for free, than to spend his own money on little plastic pouches of local moonshine. You could count on that kind of hooch being mixed with stuff that might make you go blind, or kill you outright.

Tufail Ahmed had come from Nalanda along with his sewing machine, which he plunked down right beside the brick enclosure. He did a little business for a short while. But since Tufail Ahmed didn’t have a fixed address, people were wary of leaving their clothes with him. So the only jobs he got were mending schoolchildren’s bookbags, or hemming workers’ uniforms, or patching up rickshaw drivers’ clothes. After a couple of weeks, he stopped showing up. Someone said that he was sick, another said he went back to Nalanda, and still others said he’d been hit by a Blue Line bus. His sewing machine got tossed into the junkyard behind the police station.

That’s how it was around here, like an unwritten law. Every day, one of these new arrivals would suddenly disappear, never to be seen again. Most of them didn’t have a permanent address where, after they were gone, you could go and inquire. Rajvati, for example, lived two miles from here, near the bypass, with her husband and two kids in sixteenth-century ruins. If you’ve ever been on the National Highway heading toward Karnal or Amritsar and happened to glance north, you’ve seen the round building with a dome right beside the industrial drainage: a crumbling, dark-red brick ruin. It’s hard to believe that humans could be living there. The famous bus named Goodwill that travels from India to Pakistan — from Delhi to Lahore — passes right by that part of the highway.

But people do live there — families, for the most part, and a few others: Rajvati’s sister Phulo; Jagraj’s wife Somali, who sells peanuts by the gate of the Azadpur veggie market; and Mushtaq, who sells hashish by the Red Fort, and his cousin Saliman, currently Mushtaq’s wife. The three women turn tricks. Somali works out of her home in the ruins. She takes care of customers brought to her by the smackheads, Tilak, Bhusan, and Azad, who always hang around. In the evening, Saliman and Phulo go out in rickshaws looking for customers.

Sometimes Phulo also works at all-night parties.

Phulo ocassionally sleeps with Azad, even though Rajvati, her sister, and Gulshan, her brother-in-law, both object. Gulshan always says, “Don’t lend money or your warm body to anyone living under this roof.” Gulshan, Rajvati, and Phulo have the most money of those living under that roof; since Phulo arrived from the village and began to turn tricks, their income has increased so much that they’ve been scouting land in the neighborhood around Loni Border, where they might build a house someday.

Azad says, “If you move away, don’t worry, I’ll still manage,” but over the last few days he’s been shivering and writhing around at night, sick. I had a strong premonition that one day I’d come visit, and Phulo or Tilak or Bhusan or Saliman would say, What can I tell you, Vinayak? I haven’t seen Azad for four days. He left in the morning and never came back. You haven’t seen him?

And Azad wouldn’t come back. What about me? Am I any safer than them? I’ve certainly fallen to a new low, with no work, squeezed on all sides, and now I spend all day long sitting at Sanjay’s paan stall, stressed out, useless, numb.

It seems we’ve gotten off track. I was talking about Sanjay’s, the neighborhood paan shop (right near my flat), and then got carried away to sixteenth-century ruins near the bypass. But Ramnivas? I first met him at this little corner paan shop. He’d moved to Delhi twenty years ago from Shahipur, a small village near Allahabad, along with his father, Babulla Pasiya. In the beginning, Babulla washed pots and pans in a roadside dhaba, and was later promoted after learning how to cook with the tandoori oven. Five years ago, he built a makeshift house in Samaypur Badli village, itself a settlement of tin shacks and huts — and just like that, his family became Delhites. Even though the settlement was illegal — city bulldozers could come and demolish everything at any time — he’d procured an official ration card and increasingly had hope they wouldn’t get displaced.

Ramnivas Pasiya was twenty-seven — twenty-eight, tops — and lacked any ambition save for a vague desire to see his life circumstances changed. Ramlal Sharma, the local councilman, put in a good word and got him part-time work as a city sanitation worker. His area, Saket, was located in south Delhi. At 8:00 a.m. he’d put his plastic lunch tiffin into his bag, catch a DTC bus toward Daula Kuan, and then transfer to another one that would take him to Saket. Ramnivas would punch in, grab his broom, and head toward the neighborhood he was responsible for. When he got hungry, he’d eat a couple rupee’s worth of chole along with the roti he brought from home. His wife Babiya made his food; they’d been married when she was seventeen. Now he was the father of two — a boy and a girl — though he would have had two sons if one hadn’t died.

As I’ve mentioned, I first met Ramnivas by Sanjay’s. He had a good reason for frequenting Rohini: He was chasing after a girl named Sushma. She was a part-time servant who did chores for a few neighborhood households, commuting every day from Samaypur Badli, where Ramnivas also lived. He had accompanied her several times, smoking cigarettes or bidis at Sanjay’s or drinking chai at Ratanlal’s while she worked.

Sushma was seventeen or eighteen, a full ten years younger than Ramnivas. He was dark-skinned and lean. Sushma had a thing for him too; you could tell just by watching them walk side by side.

I saw Sushma yesterday, and even today she came to clean a few houses in the neighborhood. Every day, she still comes, just like always.

But Ramnivas?

No one’s seen him around for a few months, and no one’s likely to see him anywhere for the foreseeable future. Even Sushma doesn’t have a clue where he is. If you went looking for him, all you’d find — at most — would be a little damp spot on a square of earth where Ramnivas had once existed; and the only thing this would prove is that on that spot some man once did exist, but no more, and never again.

I’d like to tell you, briefly, about Ramnivas — a simple account of his inexistence.

Two years ago, on Tuesday, May 25, at 7:30 a.m., Ramnivas, as usual, was getting ready to go to work in Saket, forty-two kilometers from where he lives. Sushma was already waiting for him by the time Ramnivas got to the bus stop. She was wearing her red polka-dotted salwar, had applied some special face cream, and was looking lovely.

The previous Saturday, she had accompanied Ramnivas for the first time to a movie at the Alpana. During intermission, they’d gone outside and snacked on some chaat-papri. In the theater and afterwards on the bus going home, Ramnivas inched closer and closer to Sushma, while Sushma repeatedly deflected his advances. After they’d gotten off the bus and were walking home, Ramnivas announced this before parting: If she wasn’t at the bus stop waiting for him next Tuesday, it meant she wasn’t interested, and they were through.

Now it was Tuesday. His heart sank as he left the house, thinking as he often did that Sushma was having serious doubts. When he saw her at the bus stop waiting for him, Ramnivas was so overjoyed that he declared they should ride in an autorickshaw instead of taking the bus. He insisted and insisted, but Sushma wasn’t persuaded. “Why throw away money? Let’s just take the bus like we always do.” Ramnivas had fixed on the idea of sitting very close to her in the little backseat of the rickshaw and maybe even copping a feel — and was therefore dismayed at her refusal. But Sushma’s coming to the bus stop was a yes signal to Ramnivas, and the man was now beside himself. He sensed that his life was about to turn a corner, and soon he would be free from the shackles of home.

He was always picking fights with his wife Babiya. Even though Ramnivas’s paycheck wasn’t enough for Babiya to cover household expenses, he’d let loose. “It’s like your hands have holes in them! Look at Gopal! Four kids, parents, grandparents, and God knows who else to support, makes less than I do, and still gets by! And you? Night and day, bitch and moan.” She’d remain silent but glare at him with flames that licked at the inside of his head all day long.

That Tuesday, as they parted ways — Ramnivas to Saket, Sushma getting off the bus in Rohini — he told her he’d leave work early for Rohini and be at Sanjay’s by 2:00, where she should be waiting; then they’d return to Samaypur Badli together. Sushma said that she didn’t like waiting for him at Sanjay’s (Santosh, the scooter mechanic, was always trying to flirt with her; and Sanjay, too, was always cracking dirty jokes), but in the end, she agreed. And then, for the very first time, Sushma, very slowly and very deliberately, instructed Ramnivas to absolutely bring her some of those chili pakoras, the ones he’d been going on and on about that they sell by the Anupam Cinema. When Sushma made her request, Ramnivas could swear he heard a note of intimacy in her voice, even a hint of possessiveness, and it made him feel very good indeed. He said casually, “I’ll see what I can do,” but had a very hard time concealing the fact that he was jumping for joy.

Ramnivas went on his way, happy, singing that song from Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. After punching in, he told his boss, Chopri sahib, that he needed to leave work early to go home because his wife had to be taken to the hospital. Even though Chopri sahib usually gave employees a hard time about leaving early, for some reason he readily agreed.

That day, Ramnivas was sweeping the floor of a fitness club in a building that housed various businesses. Cleaning the gym wasn’t technically his responsibility since it wasn’t a government building, but Chopri sahib had instructed him to work on it, explaining to Ramnivas that rich people and their kids went there every day to lose weight.

The gym had every exercise machine imaginable. The prosperous residents of Saket and their families spent hours on them. A beauty salon and massage parlor occupied the first floor. Middle-aged men of means would go for a massage and, occasionally, take some of the massage girls back to their cars and drive away. Ramnivas had seen policemen and politicians frequent the place.

Govind’s chai stall was right outside, and he told Ramnivas that a girl named Sunila earned five thousand for accompanying gentlemen outside the massage parlor. “Who knows what these fucking big shots do with themselves in there,” Govind said. “I’ve seen them throw these wild after-hours parties, boys and girls right from this neighborhood.” Indeed, while cleaning the bathrooms, Ramnivas sometimes stumbled on the kind of nasty stuff that suggested that someone had had a good time, and it wasn’t so fun to clean up.

What a life these high-rollers have, Ramnivas thought to himself. They eat so much they can’t lose weight. And look at me! One kid dies from eating fish caught from the sewer, and the other is just hanging on thanks to the medicine. Then he remembered Sushma. His envy faded away and he set his mind to his work.

As he was sweeping the floor of the gym, the rope at the handle of the whisk broom that fastened the bristles together began to unravel. He was almost done, working on the cramped corridor between the bathroom and storeroom where hardly anyone went. But now he couldn’t finish his work properly. Annoyed, Ramnivas banged the butt of the broom against the wall to try and right the bristles. What was that? Sensing something strange, he again banged it against the wall. This time he was sure. Instead of the hard thud of a thick wall, he heard something like an echo. It was hollow, a fast layer of plaster had been applied to it. But what could be behind it? Ramnivas wondered. A table and chairs and a couple of burlap sacks stood between him and the wall. Ramnivas moved them to make space. Then he hammered the butt of the broom into the wall, hard.

It was just as he suspected: A few cracks began to show in the plaster, which soon crumbled away, exposing the inside. Ramnivas peeked in through the hole he’d opened, and his breath stopped short. He went numb. Holy cow! The wall was filled with cash, stacks and stacks of hundreds and five-hundreds.

He drew his face flush with the hole and took a good look.

The hollow was pretty big, a long tunnel carved out on the inside of the wall. Nothing but stacks of cash as far as he could see, all the way on either side until the light failed and the money was lost in the dark. Ramnivas’s heart raced. He kept glancing around to see if anyone was there.

There was no one, only him. Before him stood the wall in the big gym, at A-11/DX 33, Saket, against which he’d banged his broom and opened up a hidden cache of bills.

“Dirty money... dirty money... dirty, dirty, dirty!” came the words, like a voice whispering into his ear. His hair stood on end.

Ramnivas didn’t move for a few minutes, trying to figure out what to do. Finally, he grabbed his bag from the table in the corner and, peering around to make sure there wasn’t anyone watching, took two stacks of five-hundred-rupee bills and stuffed them in his bag. Then he grabbed one of the burlap sacks and placed it in front of the wall to cover up the hole along with the table and chairs. He hoped no one would suspect anything in this forgotten corner of the gym.

It was only 11:30, and Ramnivas still had the better part of his cleaning rounds to finish. Instead, he went right to the office, hung up his broom, and said that he had received a phone call alerting him that his wife had taken a turn for the worse. He needed to go home right away.

Each stack of cash contained ten thousand rupees, meaning that Ramnivas had twenty thousand. He’d never seen this much cash in his life and was so scared that he rolled up his little bag and shoved it down his pants for the bus trip. If any of his fellow passengers had taken a good look at him, they would have instantly realized this was a man in a state of high anxiety.

Ramnivas took a rickshaw from the bus stop to Sanjay’s. He found Sushma joking around with the scooter mechanic, Santosh. This upset Ramnivas, but what really unnerved him was when Sushma said, “Enjoying a rickshaw ride today? Did you knock over a bank or something?” But then she added, “You said you were coming at 2:00, and it’s not even 1:00. How did you get out so early?”

Ramnivas laughed; maybe it was seeing Sushma. He relaxed, his worries slipping away.

“I ran as fast as I could!” Ramnivas said, looking at Sushma and chuckling. She too began to laugh. “Can I buy you guys a cup of chai?” Ramnivas then asked, turning to Sanjay and Santosh.

“What’s the special occasion? Did you get overtime?” Santosh replied, taken aback.

Sushma was also startled, since Ramnivas was known for being such a penny pincher. She never liked the way he’d come around Sanjay’s and try every trick in the book to convince someone to buy him a cup of chai. This day, however, Ramnivas didn’t just include Sanjay and Santosh in the round of chai, but also Devi Deen and Madan. And not just plain old chai, but the deluxe stuff — strong, with cardamom.

Sushma protested — why throw money down the drain like that? — but Ramnivas didn’t listen. He hired an autorick-shaw for the rest of the day and took Sushma on a whirlwind tour of the city. He fed her chaat-papri, splurged on bottles of Pepsi, bought her a handbag in Karol Bagh, and a five-hundred-rupee salwar outfit with matching chunni from Kolhapur Road in Kamala Nagar. Sushma felt indescribable happiness each time she touched, or even looked at, Ramnivas. The sad and worried little Ramnivas of yesterday (on many occasions Sushma had thought, Enough is enough) had suddenly blossomed into an uncannily happy, Technicolor lover. Though his hair was unkempt, his stubble getting scraggly, and his bidi breath hard to take, whenever Ramnivas kissed Sushma in the little backseat of the rickshaw, for some unexplainable reason, she felt as if she were rolling around on a bed of flowers.

There’s no way Sushma could have known what accounted for Ramnivas’s surprising turnaround. She knew this much:

She’d done well by showing up at the bus stand that Tuesday morning, after having spent the whole night thinking, Do I show up? Do I not show up? It turned out she’d made the right decision. There is someone out there in the world who loves me!

Sushma thought, overflowing with joy. Even after Ramnivas had gotten her pregnant and then paid for her abortion at the Mittal Clinic in Naharpur, she’d remember the whirlwind trip that day two years before in the autorickshaw.

The roots of happiness lie hidden in money. From there, a tree of pleasure can grow, and flourish, and bear the fruit of joy. Maybe the best qualities of men, too, lie locked inside a bundle of cash — this is how Ramnivas began to think. He was a new man: Everything had changed. Life at home had also improved substantially. First, his wife Babiya seemed content all the time, and now cooked the most delicious food.

They could afford to eat meat at least twice a week and eggs every day. The kids asked for ice cream, and the kids got ice cream. If a guest came knocking, Babiya would bring out the good stuff: Haldiram’s namkeen snacks and Britannia biscuits.

Ramnivas bought a sofa, a TV, a VCR, a double bed, a fridge, and a foreign-made CD player from Palika Baazar, and announced that it was only a matter of time before he bought a computer for the kids. He said everyone knew that there was no getting ahead without one. He planned to get them computer courses and then send them both to the States, where they’d make six-figure salaries.

Ramnivas’s relatives, who’d always steered clear of him, suddenly started showing up at his place with whole families in tow. His stock within his own caste community was on the rise, and he was often approached for advice about matrimonial alliances between families. He got all sorts of letters and wedding invitations. If he felt like it, he’d go. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t. But when he did — what a welcome he got!

Meanwhile, Ramnivas had begun drinking every day, and his liaisons with Sushma also became a daily occurrence. By then, Babiya knew all about the affair but had decided to keep her mouth shut. She knew enough about the kind of man Ramnivas was to feel confident he’d never leave her or the kids.

Sometimes Ramnivas wouldn’t come home until well after midnight. Sometimes he’d disappear for a few days — sometimes with Sushma, who now owned several salwar out-fits, complete with matching sandals and jewelry sets. She used to go toe-to-toe with Ramnivas no matter how small the squabble, but now, fearing he might get angry, Sushma silently put up with more and more. On several occasions her mother cautioned, “How long will this last? You have to stand up for yourself and tell him that what’s yours is yours. And he is yours, honey. People are beginning to talk.” But Sushma would reply, “I’m no homewrecker, Amma. He has kids, don’t forget. Let it go for as long as it goes.” And she was sure it would go on for the rest of their lives.

If people asked Ramnivas where he’d gotten so much money, he’d say he’d invested in a half-million-rupee pyramid scheme in Saket, or that he was playing the numbers and kept hitting. Or that he’d won the lottery. Or — and this he reserved for only a few — that he’d met a great holy man near the mosque who whispered a very special mantra in his ear that caused future stock-share figures to flash before his eyes.

In turn, Ramnivas whispered the same mantra into the ears of several people, all of whom failed to see the numbers flash before their eyes.

Whenever Ramnivas felt like it, he’d go and fill up his bag with a few stacks of cash from the wall in Saket. It was amazing that no one had stopped him or arrested him, and no one had moved the stacks of rupees around. Spending the money as he pleased for so long with no one stopping him had turned Ramnivas into a carefree man, and so his daring grew. And yet he was still beset with worry that one day the rightful owner of the money might show up and take it away. So with foresight, he bought a ten-acre plot of land in Loni Border and put it in his wife’s name. He took three-hundred thousand and deposited it into various savings accounts in several banks — all under different names.

Things began to crumble about eight months ago.

Ramnivas made big plans to take Sushma on a trip to Jaipur and Agra, where, of course, they’d have their photo taken in front of the Taj Mahal.

They found a taxi driver the moment they stepped out of the train station. Ramnivas instructed him to take them to a hotel. “What’s your price range?” the taxi driver asked, sizing him up.

Ramnivas could tell that the driver thought he was an average joe, or worse, some schmuck. “It doesn’t matter so long as the hotel’s top-notch,” Ramnivas said firmly. “Don’t take me to some cut-rate flophouse.”

The driver appeared to be around forty-five; he had a cunning look on his face and dark eyes as alert as a bird of prey. He smiled, asking sardonically, “Well, there’s a nice three-star hotel right nearby. Whaddya think?” The man must have been expecting Ramnivas to lose his cool at the mere mention of a three-star hotel, but Ramnivas was unfazed.

“Three-star, five-star, six-star — it’s all the same to me. Just step on it. I really need a hot shower and a big double plate of butter chicken.”

The driver gave him a long look, which he followed with a piercing, hawklike glance at Sushma. Pleased with himself, and mixing in mockery, he added, “Yes sir! On our way! And do you think I’m gonna let you settle for a plain old hot shower? I’ll see to it you have a whole big full tub of hot water! And butter chicken? You’ll get triple butter chicken!”

Ramnivas laughed at this and said, “That’s more like it! Now step on it.”

The taxi driver then asked, “So where are you from, sir?”

“Me? I’m a Delhite. What, did you think I was from U.P. or M.P. or Pee Pee or someplace like that?” Ramnivas quipped, smiling at Sushma as if he’d just won the war. “I come to Agra every couple of weeks with the company car,” he added, hoping that this shrewd driver wouldn’t ask him about his big job. What would he say? Grade four sanitation worker? Broom pusher? Fortunately, the driver didn’t follow up.

When they got to the hotel, the driver told him, “Go and see if they have any rooms. If not, we’ll try someplace else.”

Ramnivas left Sushma and went inside. When he got to the reception desk and heard the rate, he wondered if they should find a cheaper place to stay. But he soon signed on the dotted line for an air-conditioned room with a deluxe double bed for fifteen hundred a night. The man at the reception desk sent a bellboy to fetch the luggage.

When Sushma arrived upstairs, she looked a little worried. “Gosh!” she exclaimed. “What kind of a place is this, anyway? Everything’s so shiny and polished, like glass. I feel like I shouldn’t touch anything. What if it gets dirty? There’s something about all this stuff that gives me a weird feeling.”

“Just enjoy yourself. We’ve still got plenty socked away, so why fret?” Then, lovingly, he added, “Come here and give me a big smooch. And crack open that bottle in my bag while you’re at it.”

The knock on the door came at half past 10 that night. It had already been a long day of sightseeing at the Taj.

Ramnivas wondered who it could be so late. He opened the door to find two policemen. One was an inspector, and the other, the inspector’s sidekick.

“You’ve got a girl in there?” the inspector asked in a scolding voice.

“Yes,” Ramnivas replied. The inspector and his sidekick came in. The name V.N. Bharadwaj was engraved on a little brass tag pinned to his uniform. The way he was looking at Sushma! A fury began to build in Ramnivas, but he was too scared to say anything. Sushma was wearing her pink nightie, and you could see right through to the black bra he’d bought for her. And beneath that was her fine, fair skin.

“Something tells me she’s not your wife,” the inspector declared. “So where’d you pick her up?” The man’s square face housed cunning little eyes that kept blinking. His hair had been turned jet-black with unspeakable quantities of dye.

“She lives next door. She’s my sister-in-law,” Ramnivas said; he was a terrible liar.

“So, you’ve been having a little party!” the inspector continued, glancing at the fifth of Diplomat on the table. Then he gave Sushma the hard once-over. “She ran away. You helped her. You brought her here. My guess is she’s underage.” He turned to Sushma. “How old are you?”

She was scared. “Seventeen,” she said.

“I’m taking you down to the station — both of you. We’ll find out from the medical reports exactly how much fun you’ve been having.” He pulled up a chair and sat down. “So where’d the money come from? A three-star hotel? AC? My guess is this isn’t your usual style. Did you steal it? Or knock someone off?”

Ramnivas had a good buzz going, and he should have been able to pluck up his courage; but Sushma telling the truth about her age had unwittingly thrown him to the wolves. He felt as if he was walking right into their trap. He thought quickly, and a smile took shape on his face. “C’mon, inspector, just give the word. Another bottle?”

“That I can order from the hotel. As for you two — I’m taking you to the station. Get dressed. Is she coming like this? With her see-through everything?”

“What’s the rush? The station goes wherever you go, inspector. The inspector’s here, so we can work things out right now,” Ramnivas suggested with a little laugh.

He was surprised at himself. Where had this been hiding? He took a quick look at the sidekick, who was standing by the bed, to see if he could get him to go along. It looked like a yes, Ramnivas thought: The sidekick was busy staring at Sushma, but seemed to give a little nod when his eyes met Ramnivas’s. “Aw, they’re just kids, Bharadwaj sahib,” he said. “They come to see the Taj. Let ’em have their little party. You and me can have some fun with her too. Whaddya say, pal?”

Ramnivas didn’t like what the sidekick was hinting at.

“Wait just a minute,” he said. “Look, Bharadwaj sahib, as far as some food and drink go, just say the word and I’ll have it sent up in no time. But you’ve got to believe me that she’s really my sister-in-law. I swear!”

The inspector began to laugh. “Uh-huh. You need an AC hotel room in order to polish off a fifth of the good stuff with your underage sister-in-law? And then let me guess: The two of you were singing hymns and clapping your hands? But now that you mention it, go get a bottle of Royal Challenge and order a plate of chicken. Actually, don’t move.” The inspector sat down on the bed. He pressed the intercom button at the head of it that got him to the reception desk, placed the order, and then stretched out on the mattress. He loosened his belt buckle and regarded Sushma, who was sitting at the foot of the bed looking as if she wanted to crawl under a rock. “And you — go sit in the chair in the corner and face the wall. Don’t make me crazy. I lose it a little when I drink, and then the two of you’ll go crying to your mothers about big bad Bharadwaj.

I just can’t help it, like when I see those pretty Western girls that come here on vacation.” He had a big laugh.

They killed the bottle in just over an hour. First, Ramnivas finished off his own fifth, and then he joined the police in a few more shots from theirs — by the end, he was completely drunk. The inspector and his sidekick left the hotel room sometime after midnight. They settled on five hundred to let the matter slide; later, the sidekick shook him down for an extra hundred. By the time they’d gone, Ramnivas was utterly spent, so drunk he was queasy and started getting the spins. Sushma helped him into the bathroom and poured cold water over his head, but Ramnivas lay down right there on the bathroom floor and began to retch. Out came all the butter Schicken, the naan, and the pulao. After the vomiting subsided he clung to Sushma, but everything was a blur, so he went straight to bed.

In the morning, Sushma told Ramnivas that after he’d gotten drunk he told the police about some cash hidden behind a wall somewhere in Saket. Ramnivas instantly sobered up. He’d been so careful about keeping his secret! He hadn’t even hinted about it to Sushma or his wife. In the end, a little booze had turned the sweet smell of success into a putrid pile of shit.

He made a few excuses to Sushma about something coming up back home and canceled their trip to Jaipur, then decided to take the next train back to Delhi.

Just as he’d feared, a police Gypsy idled in front of his house, waiting for him the next morning. “The assistant superintendent wants to talk to you,” a policeman said. Ramnivas got into the Gypsy.

This was some eight months ago — I think it was a Tuesday, and there was a light cloud cover. It seemed it might start to drizzle at any time. That day, I saw a very nervous Ramnivas at Sanjay’s; he was waiting for Sushma.

I ordered two cups of deluxe chai from Ratan Lal, and got my first inkling of how desperate Ramnivas was when I saw him down the piping-hot tea in one gulp, burning his mouth and everything else.

It was early afternoon, and Ramnivas, eyes full of pleading, looked at me and said, “I’ve gotten into a big mess. Way in over my head. Help me find a way out — please! I won’t forget it for the rest of my life.”

I asked him to tell me all about it, and he did; and now I’ve told you everything he told me. When he finished — just as I was about to see if I could find some way to help — Sushma showed up.

“Meet me here tomorrow morning. I’ve got to go,” Ramnivas said, and the two of them jumped in a rickshaw. I watched them ride away until I couldn’t see them any longer. That was the last time I saw Ramnivas.

He hasn’t come back to this little corner of the street.

He’ll never come back. If you ask anyone about him, no one will say a word.

And if you keep going from this corner to the sixteenth-century ruins at the bypass, and ask Saliman, Somali, Bhusan, Tilak, or Rizvan about Ramnivas, you’ll get the same blank stare. Ask Rajvati and her husband Gulshan, who sell hard-boiled eggs at night — they’ll all give you the brush-off.

Even the fair and graceful Sushma, who comes every day from Samaypur Badli to clean people’s homes, will walk right past you at a brisk pace without so much as a word. That’s how bad it is. Nowadays, she’s been seen with Santosh munching on chat and papri in front of the Sheela Cinema.

And if you happen to travel to that little settlement by the sewage runoff and manage to ask for the address of the tiny hut that Ramnivas had converted into a real house, and, once there, ask his wife Babiya or his sickly son Rohan or his daughter Urmila, Where is Ramnivas? you’ll face a stare as blank and cold as stone. They’ll say, He’s out of town. If you ask when he’ll be back, Babiya will reply, “How should I know?”

No one in all of Delhi has any idea about Ramnivas — that much is clear. He simply doesn’t exist anywhere — no trace is left. But I’m about to give you the final facts about him.

If you read any of the Hindi or English newspapers that come out in Delhi — say, Indian News Express, Times of Metro India, or Shatabdi Sanchar Times — and open the June 27, 2001 edition to page three, you’ll see a tiny photograph on the right side of the page. Below the photo, the headline of the capsule news item read, Robbers Killed in Encounter, and below that, the subheader: Police Recover Big Money from Car.

The three-line capsule was written by the local crime reporter, according to whom, the night before, near Buddha Jay-anti Park, the police tried to stop a Suzuki Esteem that bore no license plate and was traveling on Ridge Road from Dhaula Kuan. Instead of stopping, the people inside the car opened fire. The police returned fire. Two of the criminals were killed on the spot, while three others fled. One of the dead was Kuldip, a.k.a. Kulla, a notorious criminal from Jalandhar. The other body could not be identified. Police Assistant Superintendent Sabarwal said that 2.3 million rupees were recovered from the trunk of the car, most of which were counterfeit five-hundred-rupee bills. He stressed the importance of information provided by the Agra police in netting the loot.

If you were to examine the photo printed above this news item, you’d notice that the car is parked right in front of Buddha Jayanti Park. The dead man lying faceup in the street next to its back door, mouth open, pants coming undone and shirt unbuttoned, chest riddled with bullet holes, is none other than Ramnivas — the “criminal” who, to this day, remains un-identified.

Now, listen to what happened that day, a few hours before the encounter.

According to Govind, who sells chai in front of A-11/DX33, Saket, that night at 10, a police Gypsy came with three plainclothes cops. They went into the gym, kicked everyone out, and then themselves left. An hour later, as Govind was closing his stall, the Esteem pulled up. It didn’t have any license plates, and a Sikh, not too tall, not too short, got out.

Ramnivas stepped out of the backseat right after him.

They went inside and stayed for about an hour and a half.

They kept carrying stuff from the building and loading it into the trunk of the vehicle. An undercover Ambassador car pulled up right around the corner, and followed the Esteem when it began to pull away.

Govind said Ramnivas looked incredibly stressed, his eyes glazed over like a corpse’s. He’d tried to say something to Ramnivas, but the Esteem was gone in a flash — the Sikh was driving.

According to what Ramnivas told me about the space behind the wall in the gym at Saket, it must have been pretty large. Conservatively, I figured it had to have been an area of about twelve by four feet. Ramnivas said the space was crammed full of hundred-and five-hundred-rupee bills. Based on that, I did the math. What I came up was that there was easily anywhere from a hundred to a hundred-and-fifty million rupees in there.

Do you remember the case where the Central Bureau raided a cabinet minister’s house, along with a few of his other properties? The investigation was launched by the government that had just come into power, and the cabinet minister under investigation had been part of the previous government. The minister was charged with taking something like a billion rupees in kickbacks from a foreign company that supplied high-tech equipment. The man did a little time, and was later released. He then joined the very same government that had earlier begun the investigation. It’s clear that Ramnivas, guided by auspicious astrological alignments, or just dumb luck, had discovered a problem with his broom; and in order to solve it, he began banging the butt against the wall.

He figured out the wall was hollow, got his hands inside, and was suddenly face-to-face with money hidden from the eyes of the Central Bureau and the tax man. It was unaccounted money, untraceable money — dirty money.

You already know that only a few lakhs of rupees were recovered from the trunk after Kuldip, a.k.a. Kulla, and Ramnivas were killed on Ridge Road that night — and a large part of that cash was counterfeit too. This, when we know that there was some one hundred-and-fifty million rupees taken out of that wall. What happened?

Kulla, a career criminal, had so many cases pending in court that the police could use him as they pleased. He worked as an informant, reporting to the police station each and every day. He spied for them, pimped for them, and provided false testimony as needed. But they say that a few days before that fatal episode, he got into a fight with the station superintendent, who accused Kulla of playing both sides and being on the take from another party. He’s become more trouble than he’s worth. Let’s make the problem disappear. So the police killed two birds with one stone, disposing of Kulla in a manufactured encounter and getting their hands on the cash. A police captain plotted the whole thing with a couple of trusted underlings: low risk, high payoff. The cops split the spoils among themselves, and they didn’t forget their friends in Agra. And the officer behind the plot received a medal and promotion for his good deed that day.

It doesn’t matter how many weeks or months or years I’ve got left in this sorry life before I also disappear — but I, too, would like to enter into a world of my dreams, just as Ramnivas did.

So that’s why every night at midnight, when all of Delhi is asleep, I put on some black clothes, sneak out of the house, and spend the rest of the night scraping out the walls of Delhi. Treasures beyond anyone’s wildest dreams are hidden in the countless hollows in Delhi’s countless walls. I’m sure it’s there.

My only regret is that I’ve wasted the last decades of my life before starting out with my pick and trowel.

So if you read this story, go and buy a little pickax and get yourself to Delhi right away. It’s not far at all, and it’s the only way left to make it big. The other ways you read about in the papers and see on TV are rumors and lies, nothing more.

Cull by Manjula Padmanabhan

Bhalswa

The slender black police transport sprang into the sky above headquarters, then shuddered to a halt in midair. Dome, mission-commander of the two-man team inside the vehicle, frowned as he punched the com-link on his helmet. A vacant hiss greeted him.

“Transmission failure?” he wondered out loud. “I’m raising clean air.”

Mission coordinates from the dispatchers were normally fed simultaneously into the commander’s helmet and to the transport vehicle’s self-guiding system.

But today, silence.

Dome stabbed at the com-link button repeatedly.

Blank.

“Oh, come on, come on,” muttered Hem, copilot. “We’re losing time...”

In Dome’s three years of airborne service he had never yet been dispatched without directions. Finally — a couple of squawks in his earphone and— “What?” Dome swung around to face Hem. “Can you believe this? They’re asking for a visual search!”

Hem groaned, though he took the precaution of covering his mouthpiece with his hand. Profanity, even to the extent of rude noises, was strictly forbidden amongst uniformed officers. “We’ll never find the sucker.”

“Apparently the call came over some sort of outdated radio device—” Dome listened to the dispatcher’s voice squeaking in his ears, trying to make sense of what he heard “—reception garbled... just the name: Golden Acres.” He glanced toward Hem. “Ever heard of it?”

The copilot shook his head, scowling. “Nah,” he grunted.

Directly beneath them was the gigantic administrative complex known as the Hub. It served as the absolute nerve center of Dilli Continuum, glittering capital city of the economic behemoth of Greater India that sprawled across the whole of South Asia. The six-lane avenue called Rajpath that had once stretched from the presidential palace in the west to the national stadium in the east had been replaced by a long straight block of buildings four stories high. It was crossed by a matching block at its midpoint. From the air, the combined blocks of the Hub looked like a colossal plus-sign.

Nothing now remained of the old white-walled bungalows of the past, the hexagonal roundabouts, the graceful tree-lined avenues. The presidential palace along with all historical monuments, including ancient forts and tombs, had been dismantled and rebuilt in vast underground museums.

The Hub bristled with dish antennae and the long whiplike lances of directional audio-scopes. Flat green lawns provided a boundary between the structure and its parking vaults. A battalion of employees moved in and out of the place in four daily shifts, ensuring that it remained awake and operational twenty-four hours a day, year in, year out. The strictly linear grid of streets that contained and defined the city originated from this central location.

“It’ll take forever,” snarled Hem. “Do we even know what to look for?” Pilots were encouraged to compete for the fastest response times. Weekly and monthly bonuses were awarded on the basis of nanosecond differences in their scores.

“An area of desolation is what we need to find,” said Dome, repeating what he’d heard over his earphones. Now he pulled down his helmet visor, reading information off its glow-screen. “No solid structures. No roads. No landmarks... Wait... incoming images... hmmm. Dense smoke haze. Can’t see much through that. Okay, they’re saying to head north and east — the caller will send up a flare five minutes from now.”

Precious minutes spilled from Hem’s time-cache as the transport hummed high above the taut regularity of the city’s streets below. In every direction beneath them the rigid graph that originated at the Hub had wholly replaced the tangled web of the old city’s narrow streets. Avenues met at precise right angles and at every intersection artificial cherry trees in permanent full bloom had taken the place of dusty neems and soaring silk cottons of the past. Surface vehicles were regulated by magnetic strips embedded in the road surface. From the air the neat rows of residential buildings looked like identical wooden blocks, color-coded by locality.

“It’s some kind of dump,” said Dome, listening to the dispatcher. “The world’s largest — two thousand acres — occupied by squatters...”

It was difficult to make sense of the information. How come he’d never heard of it? How could such a vast area have gone unregulated and unreported to the extent that its coordinates weren’t available to dispatchers? What was the meaning of such obscurity?

Four minutes passed before the transport was hovering above a cloud of pollution that blanketed the area like a thick gray lid. The machinelike regularity of the city’s streets had ended abruptly at what looked like a wall or a moat, zigzagging at sharp angles. Beyond it was the fog.

“It’s been used as a dump since the mid — twentieth century,” said Dome. “Used to be on the northern-most boundary of the city... along some kind of ancient highway — G.T. Road, they used to call it, stands for Grand Trunk — and a bog or a lake called Bhalswa...”

While the modern Continuum had developed southwards, the northern dump had become a lawless, cancerous wasteland. Its residents were declared illegal squatters but were too numerous to be moved out by force. Rather than risk the disapproval of their international business partners, the government had chosen the alternative of maintaining the dump as a ZZ: a Zero Zone. They suppressed all information going in or coming out of the area while leaving the inhabitants severely isloated. In an operational sense, the sector did not exist.

“That’s the flare,” said Hem, pointing toward a flash of pink light that fountained up above the murk.

“Yes,” said Dome, “set me down there.”

He, like Hem, wore full-body protective armor. It was designed to protect the wearer against all foreseeable threats, mechanical or chemical. Hem positioned the transport above the locator flare as the mission commander descended from the transport on a steel cable attached to his suit.

The air had the consistency of thin gruel, stirred by the gale from the transport’s whirring rotor. Dome wondered, as the murk enfolded him, if his helmet’s air filter would be overwhelmed. It was equipped to process and neutralize gas attacks but not such dense concentrations of airborne particulate. He was trained to suppress all emotions and reactions, yet his nerves were twitching and a bead of sweat trickled down his forehead. He hated to acknowledge these signs of weakness, minor though they were.

Then his feet touched down and he went into a defensive crouch, automatically scanning and processing information.

On the ground, a taser.

Beside it, a body.

The taser’s handgrip glowed cherry-red in the heat scanner Dome wore as a monocle clipped to his visor, over his left eye. The red glow meant that the weapon had been handled very recently. Yet its muzzle appeared blue and cold in the heat scanner: Whatever the cause of death, it hadn’t come from this small weapon.

Visibility was low. Air unbreathable. Operational area flat, open, a circular clearing forty feet in diameter and — Ah.

There was someone else present. A man.

Dome straightened up, his movements slow and deliberate. Civilians were known to be nervous in the presence of the tall crisis-response officers in their gleaming body suits.

From the man’s string-vest, loose khaki shorts, and bare feet, Dome guessed that he was a resident of the Acres. Dress codes elsewhere in the city were as strict and formal as the building regulations, with low tolerance for bare skin. The man was short, wide, and wiry, his black hair close-cropped and his eyes set deep beneath a jutting brow. He was clearly unarmed and did not appear to be offering any threat.

He stared expressionlessly at Dome for a few seconds before shifting his gaze downwards, toward the body.

The space the two men were standing in was bounded by compacted mesas of garbage that rose steeply, perhaps three stories high. Every visible surface was the same mottled silvery-gray freckled with cerulean blue: thirty years’ worth of plastic bags, fused and solidified. Blue was the only color that did not fade. From the open area, pathways radiated between the mounds in five directions. Languid streamers of lime-green vapor seeped continuously from the ground, gradually merging into the mauve haze overhead.

The body looked flat and curiously two-dimensional, like something out of a police training demo, a corpse-icon painted onto the floor. It lay at 2 o’clock to the north pathway, its right arm angled over its head, left leg bent outward. The whole body was a uniform cola-brown in color, glittering slightly.

The shifting vapors made it difficult for Dome to see details. For instance, there appeared to be no obvious variations to suggest clothing, skin, or hair. Dome frowned and turned off the heat scanner to look again, but could not make sense of what he saw. From his belt he now unclipped the slender telescoping lance known in police circles as a “whisker.” Its tip was sensitive enough to provide chemical analyses of anything it was poked into. He pointed it toward the inert body, not yet touching it.

Dome tightened the focusing ring on his monocle. With the heat scanner turned off, he now saw that the figure was covered in a layer of some substance from head to foot. Still not making sense of what lay before him, the police agent extended the tip of his whisker toward the corpse’s right calf and tapped it.

Immediately, the glittering mantle that covered the body parted and drew back, as if alive.

It was alive.

Dome’s arm jerked back reflexively, the whisker twanging upwards.

The other man’s lips stretched wide, exposing his crooked teeth in a sly grin.

“Roaches,” he smirked. Clearly, he was amused to witness the agent’s discomfort. “The insects found him before anyone else.” He spoke in a mixture of dialects built upon a base of Hindi and Punjabi, instead of the mandatory Hinglish of urban dwellers across the nation.

Dome clenched his teeth and swallowed hard as a wave of nausea caught him unawares. A glimpse of raw red flesh had winked on and off for the instant that the blanket of insect bodies had parted. Not only was vomiting into a face mask physically dangerous to its wearer, but to show weakness in the presence of a mere civilian could result in the loss of one month’s pay: Police agents had to maintain their dignity under all circumstances.

“And it’s been here how long?” he asked finally, when he had control over his voice again. “The body, I mean.”

“Early morning,” said the other man. “Or anyway, that’s when it was noticed.”

Dome nodded, just as his body armor registered a movement behind him — He had no time to react.

Two, maybe three bodies hurled themselves at him, pinning him down. There were a couple of sharp grunts from the attackers as the suit attempted to repel them with shocks. But they wouldn’t be shaken off. Then, as quickly as it had started, the assault was over and Dome was soaring up and away, suspended from his umbilical cable, returning to the transport overhead.

He struggled briefly against the blackout that inevitably attended the conflict of pressures his body was subjected to as it rose. Then the void overtook him and he knew no more.

Three hours had passed since Dome and Hem had returned to the station. A detailed debriefing had been ordered.

“It was planned,” Dome insisted. “It must have been. I didn’t see any of the others — never got a chance. And the witness gave no indication whatsoever.”

He had already described the corpse. Obviously, it had just been a pretext to get him in place. In retrospect, the presence of only one resident in that open space, the relative silence in that teeming, congested colony, the staged presentation of the body — all of these had been transparent indications that a trap had been set up.

But for what?

Dome claimed that his attackers had made no effort to cut the cable that connected him to his transport. They had merely pinned him down for a few moments and then withdrawn. “They weren’t really trying. I can’t be sure but my impression was that they let me go — they fell away as soon as the copter began pulling up.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense.”

He’d returned to consciousness once Hem had reined him into the cockpit and secured him in his seat. Meanwhile, back at the station, a full alert had been sounded. Dome was rushed into quarantine and given a thorough physical examination during which he was anesthetized. Then he was coated in a thin layer of antibiotics and brought to a secure room for the debriefing, sealed into a clear plastic recovery bubble with its own air supply. He was told it was for his own protection.

Two bureau chiefs were present now, along with a dozen officers of Dome’s rank. Hem, however, was absent. There were two other men in the room, both civilians. They wore the pale linen suits of high-ranking government officials. The fact that they were not introduced made it clear that they belonged to one of the ultra-secret services. The kind that the media were not authorized to make direct reference to without fear of losing their licenses.

One of these men spoke now.

He was the taller of the two, sleek with the confidence that comes with absolute power. His skin was brownish-purple and cratered with old acne scars from youth. Anyone else would have had the unsightly texture surgically smoothed away, but this man had chosen to keep it, along with the iron-gray of his hair. He was a realist. A pragmatist who had no use for outward frills and no obligation to maintain an attractive exterior. He wore wrap-around shades, impenetrably black, over his eyes.

“Are you aware,” said this man, his head turned toward Dome, “that there have been precedents?” His voice was soft, without weight, and his lips barely moved. He may well have been a physical mouthpiece for someone else, someone speaking through him via a remote mic. “This is not the first episode of its kind.”

“Oh?” That was Police Chief Mana. A tall woman built like a tank on two legs, hair pulled back in a wispy ponytail. She spoke in a rasping bark. “We are aware of only two previous incidents — accidents is what we called them.”

“Officially, yes, they were accidents,” said the linen suit, turning his head toward the chief. Dome saw that his throat moved as he spoke. Apparently the voice was his own. “But I am authorized to tell you now that they were controlled experiments. And not the only ones. There were others. None were successful — if by success we mean that our operative survived with his skin intact. In another sense, they were wholly successful. They confirmed our suspicions that the sector known as Golden Acres has ceased to be a mere eyesore and embarrassment to the capital city of our glorious nation, the premier world power of our time, and has become, instead, a threat.”

There was a silence.

The meeting had been convened in a room with scenic windows.

Dome was seated a little apart from the others, in his recovery bubble, close to the window. From the corner of his eye he could see the picture-perfect vista of the city, its avenues stretching away to infinity, its rigidly linear buildings, its silently speeding vehicles. For security reasons, the Hub was taller than any structures in its vicinity.

He’d been working here ever since he earned his body armor at the age of twenty-two. He was lean and handsome, his black hair cut short, a neatly trimmed mustache over his top lip, his nose straight, his eyes clear. He was four years away from being eligible for marriage, but the Police Bureau had already cleared his application for a spouse and all the benefits that came with one: two-bedroom apartment, private transportation, paid holidays. The woman, a fellow officer suitable to his rank and physical dimensions, would be chosen for him by his seniors. As was normal with all salaried personnel in the country, it was the employer’s prerogative to choose mates for their dependents. Until then, young adults lived with their parents, under conditions of strict celibacy that included medication to suppress unseemly desires.

Premier world power. The words strolled luxuriously through Dome’s head, like an emperor touring his estates.

Dome felt the familiar rich thrill lapping through his consciousness. It was grand, it was heady, to belong to a nation of such consequence. World power! Yes, that’s what we are! he thought. A glory to behold, the envy of all other nations!

The reference to “controlled experiments” barely penetrated the light haze that enveloped his senses.

Instead, he allowed himself to be mesmerized by the view from the window. Blinding white clouds drifted lazily against the dizzy blue vault. He could see the darting profiles of police transports as they sped across the city’s skies. He wondered how soon it would be before he would be released to duty once more. He wondered if the faint flush of heat he felt at his temples was a reaction to the antibiotics coursing through his system. There was a faint nausea too and the first stirrings of a headache. He registered these impressions with surprise but no actual alarm.

The silence in the room deepened in some way.

With a guilty start, Dome returned his attention to the others around him. He had the oddest impression that his distraction had been noticed, even though no one was looking directly at him. In fact, they seemed to be avoiding his gaze in some subtle way, as if peering around him rather than at him. He told himself he was imagining things.

The man in the linen suit continued now, in his weightless voice, as if he had not paused to ensure that Dome was listening. “Clearly, it is a threat that we can no longer tolerate. Five years have passed since we cut their water and power supply. The area continues to be used as a dumping ground for every kind of waste — toxic, nontoxic, wet, dry, what have you. They have no sanitation facilities, no access to any medical supplies, no health-related technology. No supplies in the form of fresh food, no manufactured goods. Their air is unbreathable. They live ten to a cubicle, each cubicle the size of an aircraft toilet.” He paused for maximum effect. “Yet they thrive.” On the final word, his voice swung down like an axe, exposing the heart of his passion.

That repulsive vitality!

The man’s nostrils expanded, and he exposed his teeth in disgust. “The time is long overdue,” he whispered, “for that zone of filth and human degradation to be extinguished.

Snuffed out. Erased.” He turned his head slowly, taking in his audience one at a time, yet excluding Dome. If his voice had been soft before, now it was little more than a purr. “We all know the realities: We cannot use military force without attracting the attention of the world’s moral matrons. But the residents of the Acres have steadfastly refused to submit of their own accord. In such a situation, I think you will all agree, we have few choices...” He paused once more. “Yes? May I assume agreement?”

Dome’s forehead puckered in confusion. He glanced around the room and saw, to his surprise, that heads were nodding. Whatever the linen suit was talking about, the other members of the audience seemed to be in on the secret. Now the hairs on the back of his neck stiffened. His heart began to thump within his chest. What were the others nodding over?

He could not remember hearing of any resolution. Had something been discussed in his absence? Had some crucial decision been made?

No one was meeting his eye.

The unnamed man’s head was swiveling around now, toward Dome. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, young man. You have every reason to look bewildered. That is because you do not realize that what began as a routine operation has ended very differently. Even as you sit there, believing that you are the same young officer who leapt into his transport to respond to a distress call this morning, the truth is, you have been damaged beyond repair by the encounter. What may have appeared to be a long and fruitful life ahead of you has today, in the space of a few brief minutes, been reduced to a week, maybe two.”

Dome stammered, “Sir— I— what...?”

“It is the latest strategy of the denizens of Golden Acres.

They use various pretexts to lure government agents to their environment, then jab them with microfine needles filled with infected blood and send them back. No doubt they have found ways of harvesting the hospital wastes that are dumped on their land. No doubt they find painkillers and hypodermic syringes along with all the rest. It is swiftly done, perhaps using a mild anesthetic, so that the victim is not even aware of what has happened to him. But we have seen the results and, I assure you, what I say is true. While you were unconscious during your physical exam, I was able to reveal to your colleagues the site of the puncture wound, deep within the crease of your right armpit. The infection will be fatal and incurable, a cocktail of TB, hepatitis, and SARS, plus a speeding agent which causes the germs to go to work at twice their natural speed.”

He paused, like a college lecturer who knows when to give his students time to absorb a nodal point in their instruction.

“I have informed your colleagues that only one course of action is available to you, and of course we will offer you a couple of hours to adjust your mind to these new realities. It boils down to this: We will send you back in there, loaded with contagions that we have prepared for just this purpose. Whereas the technology of the squatter community has not progressed beyond the primitive skin-puncture delivery systems of the mosquito, ours spreads through a modified rhinovirus via skin contact and then to the mucus membranes. Death follows in forty-eight hours as the lungs clog up with fluids. When the contagion spreads amongst the residents, they’ll have no option but to come streaming out of there like rats from a burning warehouse. We’ll have specially prepared containment hangars ready for them. Their bodies will be disposed of safely, with no risk of further contamination. It should take about a fortnight. From the very start, we shall announce the outbreak of an epidemic of catastrophic proportions and declare to the world that for the sake of the entire human species we will have no option but to raze and sterilize the entire area...”

Bureau Chief Mana raised her hand. “Excuse me, sir, but how will you defend this action in the eyes of the international community? Whatever justification you offer, however catastrophic the disease, human beings cannot be destroyed like poultry at the time of the avian flu epidemic! This action will be defined as a planned genocide, with severe economic sanctions to follow—”

“We shall refer to it as culling,” said the man, cutting in swiftly, before Mana could build up steam. “You are familiar with the term, no doubt? It belongs to the era of big game hunting, when licenses were issued for thinning out herds of animals whose populations were rising too steeply in game sanctuaries. But we shall redefine the word to mean, Removing a percentage of the human population so that the species as a whole might survive. It is a useful word. We hope to make it very popular.”

He turned back to Dome.

“You realize, I am sure, that you will be a martyr to our nation’s greater glory. Not that your role can ever be acknowledged: This entire operation, including your trip this morning to the Acres, has already been erased from the record. Even as we speak your copilot is having the memory of his flight flushed from his brain. You cannot have any contact with your parents before you vanish from their lives forever, apparently in a tragic encounter with enemy agents. However, your service record tells me that you are a model citizen, for which reason I do not doubt that in your final moments, you will find tremendous satisfaction in the knowledge that your name will be honored and that your family will benefit to the tune of...” He mentioned a very handsome sum.

The interior of Dome’s head had filled with a loud buzzing sound, but aside from that he felt very little. The initial shock he had experienced upon hearing the news had dissipated. He felt detached, as if he were listening to a recitation about someone else’s life, a stranger on the evening news, the synopsis of a tri-vid.

The man continued: “Of course, in case this option does not appeal to you, there is one other we can offer. You can choose to be extinguished immediately and painlessly.” He paused once more. “After which your body will replace the one you saw this morning.” He smiled mirthlessly.

When Dome woke again, he found that he had been sealed within a heavy sack. He was lying on his side. Naked. He could see nothing at all. He wondered whether he’d gone blind. He felt utterly limp; disinclined to engage with the hectic activity he could sense taking place around him, outside the bag.

He was being pulled this way and that, then hands were reaching around the bag, patting it down in order to determine his position within it. Many voices were speaking all at once, some giving instructions, some passing comments, some complaining. The complainers were louder, perhaps because they were not actively engaged in pulling.

“Leave it — leave it! Whatever’s in there, it can only be more trouble for us—”

“No. We take all the rest of their garbage. This is just another part of it—”

“How do we know it’s a living being? Maybe it’s just one of their new machines—”

“Maybe it’s a monster, come to eat all of us alive...”

In amongst all the hubbub and the tugging, some hands located Dome’s head and began to reposition him so that he was in a roughly seated position, on the ground.

“Knife — knife — who has a knife? We’ll have to cut the bag open.”

Children took up the cry, calling in piping voices, “Knife — knife — someone bring a knife...”

Inside the bag, Dome was experiencing the unfamiliar sensation of being drenched in sweat. He could not remember the last time he had ever felt so unbearably hot. And the air! Even through the sack he could taste its rasping texture.

Thick. Sulfurous. Gritty.

He used his hands to push the heavy material, a mixture of leather and plastic, away from his face. “Here!” he called.

His throat felt as if it had been scrubbed with sandpaper, producing only a shadowy whisper of sound. “I have a knife!”

His whisker had been left to him, looped around his wrist.

Releasing the slender, razor-sharp tip of the instrument, he sliced through the skin of his confining sack and wiggled his head through the resulting slit. Then he collapsed on his side, gasping painfully. The light from half-a-dozen hissing gas lanterns blinded him.

Arms and hands reached out to hold him up once more.

Tumblers of water were pushed toward his mouth. All around him were the faces of strangers, thrust toward him, their skin glistening with sweat, their eyes agog with a combination of concern and curiosity. He could smell their breath, their sweat, their unwashed clothes.

“Don’t—” gasped Dome, his voice hoarse, “Don’t get close to me. Mustn’t... mustn’t touch me... Stay back!”

But they misunderstood him.

“See! He’s afraid of us — us! What a chickenheart — what a dickhead...”

The language they used was similar to what the man beside the morning’s corpse had spoken, an amalgamation of many tongues. Dome could understand some words better than others. There were even a few Hinglish phrases woven in amongst the medley.

Raucous gusts of laughter rippled through the gathered crowd as they ridiculed him for his fears, and pitied him too. Here he was, abandoned to their care, a naked stranger and — trying to push them away! The glasses of water were shoved ever more insistently toward his mouth. Hands were reaching to pull away the bag in which he had come, to free him completely from its grip, even as another cry went out for cloth, a plastic sheet, anything to cover the stranger’s nakedness.

A fit of violent coughing convulsed him. His joints felt spongy with weakness.

“Please!” he rasped. “It’s not safe — not safe for you.”

But his voice lacked power and no one could hear him. Even as his senses swam, bodies were pushing all around him, holding him up, shifting him to a different location. There was nothing he could do. The deadly virus was already slithering into new hosts, fresh from his skin. Bitter tears joined the sweat pouring down his cheeks. The linen suit’s cruel scheme was working like precision electronics.

Some hours later, the young ex-agent had been reestablished in the hut of a man who introduced himself as Shankh. He seemed to be the same person who had been standing beside the morning’s corpse, but the difference in his behavior made it hard to be sure. He was no longer reserved and self-effacing, but welcoming and friendly.

Inside the hut were Shankh’s wife and two other women who may have been cowives or sisters, it was hard to tell.

Dome was lying on gunnysacks spread out on the floor, which was clean and dry. The dwelling was perhaps six feet square and a little less than that in height. The only source of illumination was a gas lantern. The women were crouched in the far corner, talking between themselves, while Shankh was turned toward Dome. There were at least three infants inside the hut and a couple of chickens, pecking here and there on the floor.

Blocking the entrance were the head and forequarters of a huge portly animal that had settled itself down right there.

“What is that creature?” Dome asked.

Shankh replied, smiling at the ignorance of the visitor, “A pig. Have you never seen one? We know that you eat them from the pictures on the tins of food products that you city people throw away.”

A pile of old newspapers sealed within plastic bags formed a bolster for Dome to lean against. He was wearing borrowed clothes, a string vest and a thin cotton lungi. Still practically naked by his standards, yet he didn’t have the energy to care.

His head was spinning with fever and his speech was reduced to a bare trickle of sound.

“Never mind pigs. Listen to me, Shankh,” he whispered.

“Please... there’s something terrible I must tell you... even though it’s too late.”

Shankh’s smile didn’t waver as he listened.

When Dome was finished — it did not take long — the other man said, “Bas? That’s all you’ve brought for us — one more disease?” He threw his head back and laughed. “Never mind! We’ll accept it graciously; after all, you know what they say about beggars...”

Dome’s heart contracted with sadness. “You don’t understand. This is something worse than anything that has yet existed — it’s been designed to destroy you—”

“But we refuse to be afraid,” interrupted Shankh. “And you know why?” He waggled his finger in the air. “Because whatever’s thrown at us, we grab it, recycle it, and return it with interest. So they have cooked up a new disease in their medical factories? Good. Wonderful. We will circulate it through the living factories of all our hundred thousand bodies, and some of us will die, and some of us will live, and those who survive will repackage that same disease and send it back out to your friends in the city, so that they can enjoy it too.” He laughed once more and patted Dome’s hand. “So stop worrying! Cheer up. Let’s eat.”

The women brought food on tin plates. Later someone brought a herbal infusion that would help Dome with his breathing. Later still, in the darkness of that steamy night, a young woman joined him on his gunny bed and showed him a definition of hospitality that he had never known before.

The remaining two days of Dome’s life were spent peacefully and comfortably, given the circumstances. With the desperate thirst of one who is about to leave this world forever, he wanted to understand how the residents of Golden Acres had survived, what gave them the incentive to keep fighting.

According to Shankh, it was simply a question of perspective. “From the bottom of the pit, all roads lead up,” he explained, smiling. “So in one sense, this is an extremely positive place to be. Rich people throw away things at such a rate that for us, living in the dump, we only have to wait long enough before whatever we want comes sailing out of the sky — for free! Cars, food, books, furniture, machinery, medicine, bottles, toys — you wouldn’t believe how much gets thrown away. And very often in its original packing. So we’re not complaining. We take what we need, repackage the rest, and send it back out.”

A week after Dome died, a new product began to appear on the shelves of fashionable stores in the city. Small black tins of pickled beetroot, straight from Russia, according to rumors.

The labels looked like burnished gold and each tin was secured within its own individual membrane of cling film. A flattened medallion of red sealing wax provided a guarantee that the contents were authentic and had not been tampered with in transit.

It proved to be very popular and the entire stock sold out even before the first case of a terrifying new strain of flu was reported in the Continuum.

Among the first hundred people to fall ill was the man in the linen suit.

He, more than anyone else, should have known exactly how soon he would succumb to the mysterious fever that had already felled dozens of victims. He had no family and all his staff had deserted him the moment he began to manifest the telltale symptoms. As he lay in his silk pajamas, alone in bed, writhing with joint pains and gasping for breath, his attention was caught by something on his bedside table. It was a little black tin that he’d bought at great expense a few days earlier.

“Tasty stuff,” he wheezed to himself, as he fished for the last few morsels with a silver pickle fork. “Might as well finish it.” With streaming eyes, he squinted at the gilded label, embossed in running script with the product’s name: D’Ohm’s Pickled Beetroot.

“D’Ohm’s...” he said aloud. “Doesn’t sound very Russian!”

It reminded him of something.

Someone.

If only he could remember who! He sensed a gigantic truth swirling in the ether, just out of reach of his understanding.

But a spasm of coughing shook him just then.

A day later, he was dead.