The Walls of Delhi

THE WALLS OF DELHI

The paan shop leads to the opening of a tunnel full of the creatures of the city, and the tears and spit of a fakir.

Sanjay Chaurasia’s paan cart stood less than five hundred yards from my flat; Ratanlal sold chai right next to Sanjay’s. Sanjay had come to Delhi from a small village near Pratapgarh, and Ratanlal from Sasaram. Their makeshift shops were on wheels so they could make a quick getaway in case an official 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.

‘What’s the big deal? I’ve got no problem. Say I did have a real place. I’d be paying the same money in rent anyway. Or more. Am I right? As long as a man is getting his daily bread, he can fight off the rabid dogs. When I’m right, I’m right,’ Sanjay Chaurasia said, smiling. I wondered whose life was more like the dogs’.

A few steps away was a third enterprise on wheels — the bicycle repair cart belonging to Madan Lal. And across the road from Madan Lal was Devi Deen, the shoe repairman, and just down the road from him was Santosh, a mechanic who fixed scooters, cars, and repaired flat tires. Santosh had come to Delhi four years ago, making his way from a village in Haryana, close to where Madan Lal and Devi Deen were from. All the vendors and hawkers set up camp wherever they could. As night fell, Brajinder joined them, pushing his fancy electric ice cream 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 a little whisky 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 secured 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 set of lights. Sometimes, the customers would give him a little bit of whisky by way of a tip, or a few rupees. Rajvati didn’t make a fuss, since it was a hundred times better for her husband to drink that kind of whisky, 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.

The rickshaw drivers also hung around. Most of them came from Bihar or Orissa, and stood wearily amid the bustle on the lookout for passengers. Tufail Ahmed had come from Nalanda with his sewing machine, which he plonked 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. One person 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 was tossed into the scrapheap behind the police station.

It was the same story with Natho and her husband, Mangé Ram, whose cart was right next to Rajvati and her eggs. They sold channa masala at night and chole kulche during the day: no one had seen them for a few months. Someone said that Mangé Ram came down with stomach cancer, and that Natho had drunk away the money for medicine; and, after Mangé Ram died, she took the two kids, crossed over to the other side of the Jamuna, and took up with someone else who had his own kulche cart.

That’s how it was around here, as if there was 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 you could go to inquire after they were gone. 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 going toward Karnal or Amritser and happened to glance north, you’ll have seen the round building with a dome right beside the industrial drainage: a crumbling, dark-red brick ruin, with old worn stones. 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 two single men: Rizwan, whose right leg and hand have wasted away from leprosy, and Snehi Ram, who is so old that he sleeps all day long under the neem tree growing next to the sewage runoff. Snehi Ram knows the entire Ramayana of Tulsidas and the Soor Sagar by heart, and people swoon when they hear his rendition of the Dhola Maru and other epic songs. The two men can count on food handouts from the families living in the ruins. Rizwan gets up first thing in the morning, heads toward the bypass, drinks his chai and eats his bun at Gopal Dhandhar’s, before installing himself at the bus depot until evening, begging. Rizwan’s beard is streaked with grey, his face reminds you of Balraj Sahani from Kabuliwala, and he does quite well for himself.

Others live in the ruins: 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 are always hanging around. In the evening, Saliman and Phulo go out in rickshaws looking for customers. Sometimes, Phulo also works at all-night parties.

Phulo occasionally 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 those living under the same roof.’ Gulshan, Rajvati and Phulo have the most money of those living under that particular roof. Since Phulo came from the village and began to turn tricks, their income has increased so much that they’ve been scouting out land in the neighbourhood around Loni Border where they may 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. Gulshan says that he won’t last much longer. All of the smackheads are in the same sorry state. Azad has the innocent face of a child, and is very light skinned. Tilak says Azad is the son of a rich family from Fatehpur. After his parents died, Azad’s brother and sister-in-law took over the whole family estate. Azad’s own brother-in-law was in on the deal, and got Azad hooked on smack — until it got so bad that one day he had to run away. Supposedly, he’d once been a real bookworm.

Azad and I had long talks, and he spoke quite articulately, even elegantly. I was amazed how much he knew about things like European perfumes and colognes, and their Indian counterparts, and horses, too; it seemed that he was fully knowledgeable about every topic, no matter whom he was talking to. His personality was perfect, apart from being a smackhead. But he’d been shivering these last few days, like someone with malaria or Parkinson’s, and 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 so the story goes with all of them. Azad wasn’t coming back. What about me? I am Vinayak Dattatreya! Am I any safer than them? I’ve 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.

Now I’m just another piece of that world, no different from the rest. I don’t have the courage anymore to come home and face the way my wife and son look at me. I watch my son eat his food at dinnertime, chewing ever so slowly, and I feel as though he’s walking down a long flight of stairs, down into a darkness where I’ll never see his face again. My soul — or whatever it is you want to call it — quietly weeps. Believe me that every time I do a bit of soul searching to try and figure out what’s wrong with me and why I have such bad luck, I come face-to-face with every single rotten thing about this whole system we live in — a system surely created by some underworld gang.

One day I’ll be the one to disappear from this little corner of the neighbourhood: it’s a fact. The poor, the sick, the street corner prophets, the lowly, the unexceptional — all gone! They’ve vanished from this new Delhi of wealth and wizardry, never to return, not here, not anywhere else. Not even memories of them will remain.

They’re like the tears of an ill-fated fakir, leaving only the tiniest trace of moisture on the ground after he’s got up and gone. The damp spot on the ground from his spit and silent tears serves as protest against the injustice of his time. THE RUINED STATUES OF HISTORY AND THE GREAT COMMUTE FROM CORONATION PARK

But it seems we’ve got off track. I was talking about Sanjay’s, the neighbourhood paan shop (right near my flat), and then I got carried away to sixteenth century ruins near the bypass. But that’s what happens. Try it yourself: look closely at anyone from a forgotten corner of any neighbourhood, and you’ll slowly but surely find yourself entering a tunnel inhabited by very different characters. You’ll notice that these city creatures are lodged in unfamiliar sorts of dwellings. But don’t expect to read any news about the bad things that happen to them. Newspapers’ raison d’etre is to hide that news, to edit out everything that they suffer.

If you’re in Delhi, and you’re the kind of person who doesn’t sleep very well at night, and, at three or four in the morning, you’re up, and you leave the house to go wandering around, then you’ve surely seen the road that goes toward Raj Ghat from Kingsway Camp, now called Vijaynagar. If you head toward Nirankari Colony or Mukherjee Nagar from the crossing at Vijaynagar, you’ll find yourself in a desolate place that’s known as Coronation Park. Even though they’ve turned the place into a big, beautiful park, it’s the spot that gave the area the name of Kingsway Camp.

They say that during the time of the British, when George V or Charles came here (I don’t know which one), all the Indian kings and queens of all of the princely states set up camp right there, gathering as one in order to warmly welcome their Imperial King. They say that it was a little like the reception that Bill Clinton got when he visited. The kings and rulers of the princely states performed a crowning ceremony, or the coronation of their English King. The speech that the King of England gave has been stored in the national archives, and the copy of the speech is considered a very important document in the history of India. On top of that, the King of England had a statue of himself installed slap bang in the centre of India Gate, under a lovely canopy. After the British returned to England in 1947, that statue, along with others dating from British rule, were uprooted, collected, and relegated to Coronation Park at Kingsway Camp.

In the years after Independence, the park became a magnet for loonies, beggars, the disabled, lepers, the maimed, druggies, and other wandering, unsettled individuals. They mutilated the statues, turning them into stoves, grindstones, sledgehammers, and using them in all sorts of other creative ways. A king’s head was severed, a hand was taken, a leg removed. The torsos of the other statues lie scattered on the ground in a frightening, limbless state, surrounded by tall grass and shrubs. As soon as the sun sets, the special inhabitants of this park converge from each and every corner of Delhi, and pass the night among the felled, ruined figures.

So, as I was saying, if you’re in Delhi, and things are such that an endless nightmare loops in your head all night long, and, in a fit of restlessness and depression, you go out wandering in the middle of the night, or right before daybreak, then you’ve seen them: the mass of human beings skulking out of Coronation Park, Kingsway Camp, loping toward Raj Ghat on Mall Road. The dark of the night hasn’t fully dissipated, and dawn is still a hazy mystery, while you watch a great mass of broken, maimed, crippled, halfway-human beings, like characters from a Fellini or Antionioni film, as they quietly pass into the capital.

They’re like a group of survivors of a devastating bombing campaign from a twentieth-century war, who pick themselves out of the rubble in the city that was the scene of the carnage, and carry their wounded bodies to a place of refuge, in search of a final protector.

After the sun comes out, you see them everywhere in the capital: at the train station, at bus stands, in temples, at holy sites, at intersections, on sidewalks. These are not the slum dwellers: they form their own constituency — one that’s only got bigger since Independence.

In the corner of the neighbourhood where Sanjay’s is, sometimes you’ll also see one-eyed Rupna Mandal whose face is dotted with white spots from vitiligo selling colourful paper flowers and pinwheels. She, too, journeys from Coronation Park. Sometimes Sohna, a nine-year-old with no arms, another of the dispossessed, also comes along.

You see how this tunnel that starts from the little corner of the street that’s home to Sanjay’s paan stall leads to the Bypass ruins, from there to Kingsway Camp, and from there extends to each and every corner of the capital. Enter the tunnel, quietly make your way deeper and deeper, and you’ll soon discover that the tunnel traverses the entire length of the country; then, it continues below the ocean floor, until, finally, it circumnavigates the entire subterranean earth. This is a different kind of globalisation, one so stealthy and so secret that not a single sociologist in the whole wide world knows a thing about it. Those who do know keep quiet, stay put, and wait until tomorrow. But the important thing to remember is this: the tunnel originates mere steps from my home.

Walk outside your home and take a good look at the little crowd that hangs out at the shop or stall or cart — and who knows? You might find where the tunnel comes out. MEETING RAMNIVAS, AND THE START OF THE SECRET

It was at this little corner of the street I first met Ramnivas. He’d moved to Delhi twenty years earlier from Shahipur, a small village in Handiya district near Allahabad, along with his father, Babulla Pasiya. In the beginning, Babulla washed pots and pans in a roadside dhaba food shack on Rohatak Road, and was later promoted after learning how to cook in a tandoori oven. Five years ago, he built a makeshift house in Samaypur Badli village in northwest Delhi, 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 after last year’s election, and increasingly entertained the hope they wouldn’t get displaced.

Ramnivas Pasiya was twenty-seven, twenty-eight, max. Ramlal Sharma, the local council man, put in a good word and got him part-time work as a city sanitation worker. His area was in south Delhi, in Saket. At eight in the morning, he’d put his plastic lunch tiffin, full of roti, into his bag, and catch a DTC bus toward Daula Kuan, and then transfer to another bus that took him to Saket. Ramnivas would punch in, grab his broom and other cleaning equipment and head toward the neighbourhood he was responsible for. When he got hungry in the afternoon, he’d buy a couple of rupee’s worth of kulche, and then eat his fill along with the roti he’d brought from home. His wife, Babiya, had made the roti; they’d been married when she was seventeen. Now he was the father of two — a boy and a girl — and would have had two sons if one hadn’t died.

I first met Ramnivas by Sanjay’s. He had a good reason for frequenting the neighbourhood: he was chasing after a girl named Sushma. She was a part-time servant who washed dishes and did chores for a few neighbourhood households, commuting every day from Samaypur Badli, where Ramnivas also lived. Ramnivas 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 — if the actor Jitendra were a little poorer, a little darker, and a little skinnier, you’d have Ramnivas. Sushma had a thing for him; you could tell just by watching them walk side by side.

The secret that I’ve been wanting to tell you is connected with the tale of Ramnivas. But please, promise me this: don’t tell anyone who told you. You already know that I’m in way over my head, and if anyone found out, I’d be drowning in danger.

I saw Sushma just yesterday, and even today she came to clean a few houses in the neighbourhood. 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. I’ve already told you about this kind of life: a man who you see every day can suddenly disappear, and never be seen again, not a scrap to remember him by. Even 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 that will reveal the first hint of the secret — the secret that these days it’s vital we all know.

Two years ago, on Tuesday, 25 May, at half past seven, Ramnivas, as usual, was getting ready to go to work in Saket, forty-two kilometres from where he lives. His wife Babiya not only packed his plastic tiffin full of roti, but also placed a small metal lunchbox in his bag. In it was his favourite: spicy chole with vegetables, and aloo, too. Sushma was already waiting for him by the time Ramnivas got to the bus stop. Today, she was wearing her red polka dotted salwar, had used special face cream, and was looking lovely.

The previous Saturday, she accompanied Ramnivas for the first time on an outing to a movie at the Alpana. During intermission, they’d gone outside and snacked on some chaat-papri. In the theatre and afterwards, and on the bus going home, Ramnivas inched closer and closer to Sushma, pleading with her to say yes, while Sushma continually deflected his advances. After they’d got 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. Every morning after washing up, he’d ask Babiya for last night’s leftover roti, eating it before he left. This morning, he wasn’t hungry, but weirdly nervous, and tried to hide it from his wife. His heart sank as he left the house, thinking, as he often did, that Sushma was having serious doubts. So when he saw her at the bus stop waiting for him, Ramnivas was so overjoyed that he declared they should ride in an auto rickshaw instead of taking the bus. He insisted and insisted, but Sushma wasn’t persuaded. ‘Why throw away hard-earned 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 back seat of the rickshaw, and maybe even getting a feel — and so he was crushed at her refusal. But Sushma’s coming to the bus stop was a ‘yes’ signal to Ramnivas, and the man was beside himself. Now really and truly happy, he sensed that his life was about to turn a corner.

He was always picking fights with his wife, Babiya. Doing the housework and looking after the kids left her with no time, and one of the kids was always getting sick. Ramnivas could only remember one time (and he wasn’t even sure of that) when he saw Rohan, his son, horsing around and having fun. Moreover, Ramnivas’ pay cheque wasn’t enough for Babiya to cover household expenses. Even though it wasn’t her fault — she bought only what they needed — Ramnivas would let loose. ‘It’s like your hands have holes in them! Look at Gopal! Four kids, parents, grandparents, and god knows who else living with him, 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 a stare whose flames licked at the inside of his head all day long. That stare made sure he watched every penny. When he got hungry, he let his stomach cry out in pain. If he felt like chai, he did what he could to get someone to shout him a cup. He rode the buses all the time without a ticket. Babiya’s burning stare, the one etched in his head, saw to it he never had fun.

That Tuesday, Ramnivas told Sushma he’d leave work early and be at Sanjay’s by two, since that’s where she’d be waiting; then they’d go home together. Sushma had 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 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, let’s see how things go,’ but had a very hard time concealing the fact that he was jumping for joy. THE BROOM, THE GYM, AND MARS STARES AT JUPITER

Ramnivas went on his way, happy, while 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 was so sick she needed to be taken to the hospital. Even though he usually gave employees a hard time about leaving early and would insist that vacation forms be filled out, for some reason he readily agreed. ‘Today’s a lucky day,’ Ramnivas thought.

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

The gym had every exercise machine imaginable: one for the waistline, another for the stomach muscles, and another for the whole body. The prosperous residents of Saket and their families went there in the mornings and evenings, spending hour after hour busy on the machines. A beauty salon and massage parlour 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 car 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 parlour. ‘Who knows what these fucking big shots do with themselves in there,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen them throw after-hours parties, boys and girls right from this neighbourhood.’ Govind did well during the late-night parties since the drinkers and partyers sent out for Pepsi and soda all night long. 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 much fun to clean up.

What a life these high-flyers 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, that she’d be waiting for him at two at Sanjay’s, and he set his mind to finishing up work.

As he was sweeping the floor of the big gym, the rope on the handle of the whisk broom that fastened the bristles together began to unravel, and he couldn’t sweep properly. Annoyed, Ramnivas banged the head 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 quick layer of plaster had been applied, 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 head 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. The strong smell of phenyl or DDT escaped. 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 five-hundreds and hundreds.

He drew his face flush with the hole, and took a good look. The hollow was pretty big, like 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’ heart raced. His fear began to rise and he kept glancing around to see if anyone was there.

There was no one, only him, completely alone. 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 hollow, hidden space filled with a 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. Here he was, face-to-face, an arm’s length away from the kind of fantasy he’d only heard about from others. But this was no dream, no fairy tale, but the real deal. He’d stumbled on it, and here it was, right before his very eyes.

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 took 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. Then he gave the floor a good sweep, cleaning up the dust and mess and plaster, and strode confidently outside where he plopped down at Govind’s. He ordered a cup of Govind’s strongest chai, and a couple of salty cakes.

‘Yesterday was fine, but today — too hot!’ Ramnivas declared. But Govind wasn’t in the mood to chat: a government jeep had pulled up, and an order for five cups of chai and salty cakes came from inside.

‘It’ll get hotter,’ was all Govind added, pouring the water into the pot. It was only half past eleven, 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 got 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 from Saket to Rohini. If any of his busy fellow passengers had had a moment to spare and had taken a good look at Ramnivas’ face, they would have instantly realised 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 unnerved him was when Sushma said, ‘Enjoying a trip in a rickshaw today, are we? Did you knock over a bank or something?’ But then she added, ‘You said you were coming at two, and it’s not even one. How did you get out so early?’

Ramnivas laughed. Maybe it was seeing Sushma, or just making it to Sanjay’s — Ramnivas relaxed, his worries slipping away. A DREAM OF AN AUTO RICKSHAW, AND A SPECIAL TREE OF PLEASURE

‘I ran as fast as I could!’ Ramnivas said, looking at Sushma with a big smile. She returned his smile, but what Ramnivas said next caught the attention of Sajay and Santosh, who suddenly looked at him, causing Ramnivas to revert to his previous state.

‘Can I buy you guys a cup of chai?’ Ramnivas asked to a startled Santosh and Sanjay.

‘What’s the special occasion? Did you get overtime?’ Santosh asked.

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, or a bidi. This day, however, Ramnivas didn’t just include Sanjay and Santosh in the round of chai, but also Devi Deen, the cobbler, and Madan, the bicycle repairman. And not just plain old chai, but the deluxe brew — strong, with cardamom.

Sushma protested, ‘why throw money down the drain like that?’ but Ramnivas didn’t listen. He hired an auto rickshaw for the rest of the day and took Sushma on a whirlwind tour of Karol Bagh, Kamla Nagar, and Deep Market. 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 Kolharpur Road in Kamla Nagar. Sushma, as if in a dream, felt indescribable bursts of 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, technicolour lover. Though his hair was unkempt, his stubble getting scraggly, and his bidi breath hard to take, whenever Ramnivas kissed Sushma in the little back seat of the rickshaw, for some unexplainable reason, she felt as if she were rolling around on a flowerbed of the prettiest blossoms in the world.

There’s no way Sushma could have known what accounted for Ramnivas’ 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. And she was with him at that very moment. To Sushma, Ramnivas seemed wide-eyed and innocent, like a little kid. Even a few days later after she began to sleep with Ramnivas, and even after he got her pregnant and then got her an abortion at the Mittal Clinic in Naharpur, she’d remember the whirlwind trip that day in the auto rickshaw. Two years ago, on Tuesday, 23 May, Sushma and Ramnivas had entered a fantasy land — the day Ramnivas found the cash hidden in the hollow wall of the building located at A-11/DX 33, Saket.

The roots of happiness lie hidden away in money. From there, the 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. Gone was the poor, broken, sorrowful Jitendra. Now he was the gregarious, colourful, radiant Govinda, always ready to flash a smile. Life at home had also improved substantially. First, his wife, Babiya, seemed happy all the time, and cooked the most delicious food. They could afford to eat meat at least twice a week, and eggs every day. If he wanted to eat an egg, he’d go and eat an egg. 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. ‘Please, don’t be shy! Why don’t you take some more?’ she said, offering the snacks on a fine little plate. Ramnivas bought a sofa, a TV, a VCR, a double bed, a fridge, 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 in today’s world, there was no getting ahead without one. He started looking into computer courses for his children, Rohan and Urmila. He planned to send them both to the States, where they’d work for a company and make six-figure salaries every month.

Ramnivas’ relatives, who’d always steered clear of him, suddenly started showing up at his place with whole families in tow. Ramnivas, once decrepit and spiteful, now personified all the virtue and beauty the world had to offer, and Babiya wasn’t afraid to sing his praise, all the time, and right to his face. 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!

‘Take it — it’s all yours. Don’t worry about paying it back,’ he’d be heard saying as he helped someone out. To paraphrase a popular saying, even a Ramnivas can get lucky.

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. And so she didn’t worry.

Sometimes Ramnivas wouldn’t come home until well after midnight. Sometimes he’d disappear for a few days — sometimes with Sushma. But it didn’t make any difference to Babiya: the neighbourhood now held Ramnivas in high esteem. He’d go straight to Sushma’s house and had no qualms about talking to Sushma about going out to see a movie. Right in front of her mother, Bilaribai, who also washed other people’s dishes and cleaned other people’s houses.

Sushma now owned several salwar outfits, complete with matching sandals and jewellery sets. She used to go head-to-head 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 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.’ Deep inside she was sure it would go on forever, for the rest of their lives.

If people asked Ramnivas where he’d suddenly got so much money, he’d say that he’d got in on a half-million rupee pyramid scheme in Saket, or that he was playing the numbers and he 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-market 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. Ramnivas explained that in order to see the numbers, one’s heart must be pure. First you must bear no ill-will, prey on no one, cause no harm, and then you’d see: the market and lottery numbers would dance in your mind’s eye!

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 wisdom and foresight, Ramnivas did two things to lessen the impact in case the money ever disappeared. First, he bought a ten acre plot of land in Loni Border, and put it in his wife’s name. Second, he took three-hundred thousand and deposited it into various savings accounts in several banks, all under different names. One of them was a deposit of fifty thousand in Sushma’s name, who had by then decided she wanted to go on forever with Ramnivas, just the way things were. LOVE AT THE TAJ MAHAL, AN AIR-CON ROOM, EAGLE EYE, AND THE POLICE

It happened 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. It would be a fun getaway for a few days. Sushma instantly agreed. They travelled to Agra by train.

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 just 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 fleabag, 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 shower, a hot shower, and a big double plate of butter chicken.’

The taxi driver gave him a long look, which he followed with a piercing, hawklike glance at Sushma. Pleased with himself, and now mixing in mockery, he added, ‘Yes sir! On our way! And do you think I’m going to 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? Did you say butter chicken? I am going to take you somewhere they will serve you not just any old butter chicken, but whatever your heart can dream up!’

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 all the time. With the company car, every couple of weeks,’ Ramnivas added, hoping that this shrewd driver wouldn’t ask him about his big job. What would he say? Grade Four sanitation worker? Broom pusher? Janitor? But the driver didn’t follow up.

When they got to the hotel, Ramnivas took the luggage out of the trunk. The driver told him, ‘Go and see if they have any rooms. If not, we’ll try someplace else.’

Ramnivas left Sushma in the taxi 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 AC room with a deluxe double bed for fifteen hundred a night. The man sitting at the reception desk sent Ramnivas upstairs to take a look at the room, and sent a bellboy on his way to fetch the luggage.

When Sushma arrived along with the luggage, she looked a little worried. ‘Wow!’ 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, and the bellboy, too, that gives me a weird feeling,’ Sushma added hesitantly.

After the bellboy had finished with their luggage, showed them that the pitcher of drinking water was filled up, and left, Ramnivas said to Sushma, ‘Just enjoy yourself, and don’t worry.

We’ve still got some stashed away, so why fret?’ Then, lovingly, he added, ‘Come over 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 ten that night. It had already been a long day of sightseeing at the Taj, with all sorts of poses for the camera, then buying trinkets on the road, on top of which Sushma bought a set of Firozabadi bangles that had made her ever so happy.

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 at Kamla Nagar. 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 inspector’s square face housed cunning little eyes that kept on blinking. His hair had been turned jet black with unspeakable quantities of dye, and at first glance he appeared to be a sleazy, shrewd, thick-skinned man who liked to play by his own rules, and never ruled anything out.

‘She lives next door. She’s my sister-in-law,’ Ramnivas said. He was a terrible liar. Between his fear and putting on airs, everything came out sounding feeble and wrong.

‘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 under-age.’ He turned to Sushma, ‘How old are you?’

She was scared. ‘Seventeen,’ she said. For some odd reason she felt like something impossible was happening, and that she and Ramnivas would both perish because of it.

‘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. That’s a three-seven-five, three-seven-six, easy.’ 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 the money? Or knock someone off?’

Ramnivas had a good buzz going, and 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 down to the station. Go on, get dressed. Is she coming like this? With her see-through everything?’ the Inspector said plainly.

‘What’s the rush? The station goes wherever you go, inspector. The inspector’s here, and so is the station. Why hurry? We can work things out right here,’ Ramnivas suggested with a little laugh.

He was surprised at himself. Where had this been hiding, and hiding for so long? 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 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. On top of this debacle, Ramnivas was now becoming angry. ‘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 single malt with your underage sister-in-law? And then let me guess: The two of you were singing holy bhajans and clapping your hands? I can just see it. But now that you mention it, go get a bottle of Royal Challenge and order a big plate of chicken and some stuff to go with it. Actually, don’t move.’ The inspector sat down on the bed and said, ‘I’ll order from here.’ He pressed the intercom button at the head of the bed 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 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, and 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 chicken, the naan, and the pulao. After the vomiting subsided, he clung to Sushma, but everything was a blur, so he went straight to bed. He crashed face first, and in an instant a sound issued from his nose that seemed to come from the snout of a horse that had galloped from half-a-world away.

In the morning, Sushma told Ramnivas that after he got drunk he’d told the police about cash hidden behind a wall somewhere in Saket. Ramnivas instantly sobered up. He’d been so careful about keeping his secret! So much so that 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, not feeling so well, and then canceled their trip to Jaipur. Ramnivas decided to take the next train back to Delhi. BUDDHA JAYANTI PARK, A SUZUKI ESTEEM WITH NO LICENCE PLATES, AND THE FINAL BIDI

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,’ an inspector said from the jeep. He was identified by the name embroidered above his breast pocket as D. K. Tyagi. Ramnivas got into the Gypsy. As they left Samaypur Badli, he saw the bus stop where he used to catch the bus toward Dhaula Kuan, and where Sushma was waiting for him today.

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

When the sky got overcast like that, and there was a trace of drizzle in the heavy air, Ramnivas used to say, ‘It seems like the weather’s whistling.’ And when the weather was like that, he’d take Sushma out for an excursion in an auto rickshaw and feed her all the snacks and junk food in the world. But that day something was on his mind, eating him from the inside. In half an hour he’d done nothing but smoke one cigarette after the other, and was biting his nails, clearly nervous.

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, ‘Vinayakji, I’ve got 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 won’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: not Sanjay, not Ratan Lal, not Devi Deen, not Santosh, and not Madan.

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 Rupna Mandal, the one-eyed girl who sells paper flowers and pinwheels, whose face is blanketed with white spots from vitiligo, or 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 taking excursions in auto rickshaws with Santosh, the motor scooter mechanic. I saw the two of them munching on chat and papri in front of the Sheela Cinema last week.

That’s how life goes on.

And if you happen to travel to that little settlement by the sewage runoff in Samaypur Badli 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 not home. He’s out of town. If you ask when he’ll be back, Babiya will reply, ‘How should I know?’ and walk back inside.

In the New Delhi Municipal Office in Saket, where Ramnivas used to work, go and ask Chopri sahib or some other worker about a man by the name of Ramnivas, and they’ll tell you, ‘How are we supposed to remember the names of the hundreds of daily wage workers who come through here every day?’

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 hold on a minute. I’m about to give you the final facts about him. That’s why I’ve used this story as a cover, so you can find the secret behind.

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 opened the June 27 2001 edition to page three, where they stick the local news, you’d see a tiny photograph two columns wide on the right side of the page. Below the photo, in twenty point boldface, the headline of the capsule news item reads: Robbers Killed In Encounter, and below that, in sixteen point font, 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 Jayanti Park, the police stopped a Suzuki Esteem that bore no licence plates, and was travelling on Ridge Road from Dhaula Kuan to Rajendra Nagar and Karol Bagh. Instead of stopping, the people inside the car opened fire. The police returned fire, and two of the criminals were killed on the spot, while three others successfully fled in the dark of night. One of the dead was Kuldip aka Kulla, a notorious criminal from Jalandhar. The other dead man could not be identified. Police Assistant Superintendent Sabarwal said that two point three million rupees were recovered from the trunk of the car, most of which were counterfeit five-hundred-rupee bills. It was the biggest police haul in many years. The Assistant Superintendent 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 front and back doors are open. One of the men is lying face down next to the front tire, and he’s wearing a Sikh pagri on his head. And the dead man lying right beside the back door seems to be staring up at the sky. Look closer — use a magnifying glass if you have one, or, better yet, enlarge the photo.

The dead man lying face up in the street next to the back door of the car, mouth open, pants coming undone and shirt unbuttoned, chest riddled with bullet holes from the police, is none other than Ramnivas — the criminal who, to this day, remains unidentified. And he will never be identified, since no one would recognise him any longer. THE REVEALING OF THE SECRET, A CROWBAR, A TROWEL, AND AULIYA’S SHRINE

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

According to Govind, who sells chai on the street corner in front of A-11/DX33, Saket, that night at ten, a police Gypsy came with three plain-clothes cops and two regular ones. They went into the gym, kicked out all the girls and boys who were exercising, and then, later, themselves left. About an hour later, as Govind was closing his stall, the Esteem pulled up. It didn’t have any licence 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 things from the building and loading them into the back seat and boot of the vehicle. An undercover Ambassador car with concealed sirens pulled up right around the corner, where Khanna Travels and Couriers shop is, and followed the Esteem when it began to pull away.

Govind’s shop was closed — he was getting ready to go home — when the greenish Esteem without licence plates pulled up right next to him. Ramnivas rolled down the window and asked for a bidi. Govind had an open, half-smoked pack of Ganesh brand bidis in his shirt pocket, and gave him what he had.

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

If you’re at Dhaula Kuan crossing and instead of taking Ring Road, take the next left, Ridge Road, you’ll run into Buddha Jayanti Park. It’s right off Ridge Road, and that’s where the photo was taken.

According to what Ramnivas told me about the hollow wall in the gym at Saket, it must have been pretty large. Conservatively, I figured, it had to have enclosed an area of about twelve by four feet. Ramnivas had said the space was crammed full of one hundred and five-hundred-rupee bills. Based on that, I did the maths. What I came up with 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 some foreign company that supplied sophisticated 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 broom head against the wall. He figured out the wall was hollow, put his hands inside, and was suddenly face-to-face with money hidden from the eyes of the Central Bureau and from the tax man. It was unaccounted money, untraceable money — dirty money.

Astrologer Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay set up shop to the right of Sanjay’s, and just a few steps away from Madan’s. He spread out his square of cloth on the sidewalk. I approached him and told him the whole story, changing what needed to be changed to remain discreet. The astrologer-ji told me this: If Jupiter, in the third house, aligns with Mars, while in the sixth house, Mars first aligns with Venus, then Jupiter, and then, by luck, it’s the fourth or ninth lunar day of the waning moon, and a moonless night, and Delphinus is visible, then Kuvera, the god of wealth, will stir the senses of a man, and what this all adds up to is that there’s a great likelihood of stumbling on some buried treasure, or major wealth.

Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay, originally from Baliya but now living next to the Naharpur sewage runoff in a rented tin shack, warned me. All planets and constellations were conspiring against me in the most dreaded alignment; Saturn was rising and casting a dark seven-and-a-half year shadow over my life, and I would soon face the full wrath of the government.

I think that Kuvera must have been in the right position last year, on Tuesday, 23 May, that made the change in Ramnivas’ luck possible. Think about it: a simple whisk broom sweeps up the trash. The twine holding the bristles together gets loose, and the bristles need to be righted, so he beats the broom against what looks like a normal wall. And he finds a huge cache of cash. How? Think about it: for a few months he entered a fantasy land, getting everything his heart desired. He was able to give his wife, Babiya, and two kids, Rohan and Urmila whatever they wanted to eat and whatever clothes they wanted to wear. And he was able to take his teenage mistress to the other side of a shimmering, technicolour rainbow, where they got to see the Taj Mahal and have their pictures taken in several different poses.

That may be the case. But the astrologer-ji was quick to add that if the manna was, in fact, dark and dirty from the stain of sin, the result would be disastrous. What do I believe? I believe that somewhere around midnight on 26 June 2001, the sin, or vice, or bad karma attached to that money caught up with Ramnivas once and for all, bringing him and his dreams to a violent end.

And you ask me: so what’s the big secret you want to tell me? Why use this story as a cover, and hide the secret behind it?

You already know that only a few lakhs of rupees were recovered from the trunk after Kuldip aka Kulla and Ramnivas were killed on Ridge Road that night — and a large part of that cash was counterfeit too. And yet, we know that there was at some point three billion rupees taken out of that wall.

The police officer who supervised ‘Operation Ramnivas’ is a respected and powerful cop who owns a few homes and has one of those farm houses outside Delhi perfect for all-night parties. And when he throws one, he invites politicians, high-ranking cops, journalists, top intellectuals, and a few senior literary figures. They drink until they fall down on the floor. I’m sure you’ve seen their photos in all the local Delhi papers. These people are no longer like you or me — they’ve helped turn each other into name brands. If you read any poetry or stories coming out these days, you know what I mean when I say that you can smell the stench of liquor coming from the words they write. And underneath their sentences lies a pile of chicken and goat bones, and the skeletons of the innocent ones. If you poke the head of your broom into contemporary literature, you’ll find a hollow wall stuffed full of money — impure, dirty money.

I’ve been in Delhi for some twenty-five years, and I’m scared. I suspect that Ramnivas told the cops that he’d told me the secret about the hollow wall in Saket, and you know how much danger that puts me in.

It doesn’t matter how many days I’ve got left in this sorry life before I also disappear — but I, too, would also like to enter into a world of my dreams, just like 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 with a pick in one hand, trowel in the other, 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, and I’m sure all of it is unmarked. My only regret is that I’ve wasted the last twenty-five years of my life. Even if I’d only taken twenty-five days to see what’s inside the walls of Delhi, I’d be a billionaire by now, and I’d be able to live my life with a little respect.

So if you read this story, go and pick up a little pickaxe and trowel and get yourself to Delhi right away. It’s the only way left to make it big. If you would rather live by hard work, the straight-and-narrow, following your dreams, using your talent, believing in yourself, keeping faith — if that’s how you want to lead your life, you’ll die of hunger, and the cops will never leave you alone. You probably don’t know about that judge in Maharashtra who declared that the Indian police and the criminals and goons of the land are one big lawful family.

In the meantime, I’ll settle down with the beggars, the lepers, the smackheads, the transients, and the other forgotten ones, I’ll stretch out, and sleep among the dismembered statues of the old English rulers that lie scattered in Coronation Park. I’m broken in the same places, with my bad back and bone tuberculosis. Whenever I have free time, I go to the shrine of Hazarat Nizzamuddin, just past the Delhi Zoo, and sit for hours on the marble floor of the dargah, repeating the words that the sufi saint, Auliya — Hazarat Nizzumaddin — once spoke to the then ruler of Delhi, Ghayasuddin Tughluq. Delhi is still far away. Tughluq summoned Auliya to explain why the sufi saint was visited by more people than was Tughluq’s court. Delhi is still far away. Auliya declined the summons, just as he had with all the other kings he’d seen come and go. Delhi is still far away. Tughluq left on a military campaign in the south to let Auliya think it over. Delhi is still far away. Auliya’s followers warned him to leave Delhi; Tughluq had threatened to behead Auliya if he disobeyed the summons. Delhi is still far away. The night before returning to Delhi, Tughluq and his men set up camp just outside the city. Delhi is still far away. That’s the night Auliya uttered the sentence I keep on repeating. After he spoke it, Tughluq, drinking and carousing, died right at the Delhi border when the tent he was in collapsed. That place is now known as Tughluqabad.

Amir Khusaro’s tomb is also at Auliya’s shrine — the man who wrote the first lines of poetry in what we now call Hindi — and who, in his own lifetime saw eleven kings, their courts, and their hangers-on, all come and go. If you go and look at the guest book that Sayid Nizami keeps at the shrine, you’ll see my name.

Believe me when I say that I am praying not only for me, but for the well-being of all of you, and for that of my dear country. Have faith that my prayers will reach all the way to Auliya’s ears.

So long as the police or other powers-that-be in this city don’t frame me for something, I’ll use my pickaxe and trowel to find the wealth hidden in Delhi’s countless walled hollows.

And if you want to get lucky, come to Delhi right away — it’s not far at all. Forget about being a millionaire; coming to Delhi is the only way left to scrape by.

The other ways you read about in the papers, and see on TV, are rumours and lies, nothing more.