Narcopolis

Late in the night, I went to the door and manhandled it open. I watched my shadow in a yellow rectangle of light as it slid past the fields into the early dawn. When the train stopped at Kurla, it was raining and I was ragged with sleeplessness. I broke a rule and accepted the first ride to come my way. On the highway, the driver left the motor running to buy a mouthful of tobacco and white paste. He said, Okay, which way do you want to go, the highway or the inner road? It’s completely up to you. I understood that it was a way of testing my knowledge of the city. Depending on which route I chose he’d know if I was a first-timer (and he could cheat me a lot) or an old Bombay hand (and he could only cheat me a little). It was early but the streets were full of people. The walkers were out, in their ugly new shoes and branded tracksuits. Men in green overalls swept the street and there was a garbage truck nearby, and it occurred to me that in all the years I’d lived in Bombay this was the first time I’d seen a garbage truck or city workers in overalls. A trio of Jain nuns crossed a bridge on foot, single-file, in white robes and head-coverings. They carried staffs and small white bundles. With what belongings were the bundles filled? Their slippers and masks were made of thin white cotton and were no protection against the pollution, which was fierce. But it wasn’t for protection against the world that the nuns wore their masks; it was to protect the world from their own small mistakes. When I arrived at my address, the rickshahwallah’s meter was double and a half what it should have been. The meter was covered in black plastic that was hard to see through and impossible to remove. I paid and picked up my bags and stepped into the city. I was soaked through in minutes. Dom, I said, welcome, welcome to Bombay.

*

I suppose it was a homecoming. I found a place to rent and moved in a few weeks later, when the worst of the monsoons had passed, though it continued to rain every day. It was around the corner from the Bandra building in which I’d lived almost a decade earlier. The apartment was the smallest I’d ever seen. It came with a washing machine and no fridge, cooking spices and no dining table. The saucepan was extra small; it held two cups of water, no more. The stovetop had two burners. There was a collapsible couch, a bookcase, a steel Godrej almirah, an armchair, a kitchenette, a bathroom, all squeezed into three hundred square feet of space. In a week I was hooked up and settled and it was as if I had never left. The city had changed, but it was still a conglomeration of slums on which high-rises had been built. There were new highways but all they did was speed you from one jam to the next. Everything was noise and frenzy, a constant beat, like house music without the release. One night I took a rickshah home. Stuck in a jam on Hill Road, I watched a man work the traffic. He was splayed on all fours, his hunchback exaggerated for effect. The spot was a crossroads fronted by bars and restaurants, with shopping arcades on two sides and a hospital. It was incredibly busy, a long snarl of stop and go, and the hunchback worked it calmly, juggling simultaneous bits of information: make of vehicle, type of passenger, access route between scooter and rickshah, availability of traffic island. He crawled to the window of a new car and I saw his mouth move. Then he held out his hand and a child’s fingers appeared holding a note. He took the money and hump-walked away, but instead of trying one of the other cars he came to my rickshah. When I shook my head, the man smiled. Yaar, long time, he said in Hindi. Remember me from Rashid’s? I remembered: on the street they called him Spiderman.

‘Shankar, are you okay?’

‘Very okay, boss. I got married, bought a house.’ He looked surprised. Then he said, ‘I gave up garad.’

The lights had changed but the driver made no move to start his rickshah, he seemed fascinated by the Spiderman. Around us, Bandra honked and stalled. From a rickshah, the city was all exhaust, face-level and toxic. Shankar asked if I was going to see Rashid. I hadn’t thought about it, but all of a sudden the question, so casually spoken, seemed very important. Say hello to him from me, Shankar said. I can’t do it in person. I go down there, I may not come back. You know how it is.

Chapter Two The Citizen