Narcopolis

She told only one girak that she was leaving, a pocket-maar who always smoked at her station. He’d smoke and talk, softly, so the other customers wouldn’t hear him. Rashid made jokes, calling him her new boyfriend. Then the pocket-maar came to see her at the brothel. He sold cocaine and whisky for one of the Lalas. He was tall and skinny, his thin legs and bony knees out of proportion to his big belly and chest, and he wore his hair long, down to his collar like a hippie. He gave her different amounts each time, two or three or four hundred rupees in small bills, but it was double the amount he was expected to pay and she was always happy to see him. He ordered strong beer, Cannon or Khajuraho, and he sprawled on the bed, drinking from the bottle. He gossiped about the private lives of Raj Kapoor and Nargis, Shashi Kapoor and Shabana Azmi, and his favourite topic, Amitabh Bachchan and Rekha. He kissed Dimple on the lips. She’d wipe her mouth and he’d kiss her again. He took his time, locking the door and staying so long the tai pounded on the partition, shouting, Salim. Finished. Time finished. Dimple, open up, did he die inside you or what?

One night he asked if she would look after a bag for him, a nylon Air India shoulder bag that was zipped but unlocked. He handed it over and disappeared. Inside she found bundles of hundred-rupee notes, and, rolled in a T-shirt, two pistols, large six-guns like the firearms brandished by Clint Eastwood in English movies. She put the bag into a steel Godrej almirah and carried the key on a chain she attached to the waistband of her salvaar. Salim was gone for three weeks. He came back shrunken, with new bruises on the soles of his feet and on his back. He said: Chit-chat with the police, friendly gup-shup, yaar, with the brown crows. She opened a bottle of White Flower Oil from a box that Mr Lee had given her and rubbed it into the discolorations on his skin. The oil’s cold burn helped him heal. After this Salim brought her little gifts: plastic hair clips, a key chain, a tiny handbag, a black leather diary with the phone codes of all the world’s cities and special pockets for business cards and photos. Sometimes he expected not sex but conversation. He wanted her to tell him what was in the book she was reading, and she would try to encapsulate it for him, encapsulate in a few sentences a three-hundred-page novel by a Latin American or European author. He would ask about her health, about her day, and it would irritate her. What was there to say? Her day was always the same. She worked at 007 and she worked at Rashid’s and when she was not working she taught herself to read, there was nothing more to it. His questions were useless but comforting. She wondered if this was what it meant to be married, to be a wife. You were bored and irritated and comforted, all at the same time.

‘Why are you leaving?’

‘Because I have a chance to.’

‘What if I offered you a chance?’

‘I’d think about it, but you haven’t made an offer yet.’

‘I will, you can put money on it. I’ll do it very soon.’

But he didn’t, and one morning she put her things into a taxi: Mr Lee’s tin trunks, four or five cloth-wrapped parcels, and a many-tiered make-up kit, the kind carried by Air India stewardesses. It was a little after eight in the morning on Christmas Day. Nobody was awake. Nobody saw her go except Lakshmi, who said, Bitch, whatever you do, don’t come back.

Book Three The Intoxicated

Chapter One A Walk on Shuklaji Street

His older son, Jamal, was waiting by the door. How long had he been there? The boy had a way of appearing without making a sound, materializing from nowhere with his eyes wide and his hand extended. He was six years old and already a businessman, all he wanted from his father was cash. Depending on his mood, Rashid handed over some small amount or he didn’t. Today he was opium sick and fearful and God’s words were bubbling in his head. No, he told his son. Out, out. Jamal retreated, eyes sullen, and Rashid banged down the wooden stairs, struggling to put on his shirt, his arms and stomach so meaty that it took some mindfulness, some extra push and twist of effort. He thought: I am a fat businessman. When did this happen? Not so long ago I was a skinny criminal trying to make a name and now here I am, an entrepreneur, with cash in my pocket and the shortest commute in the world — out the door and down a flight of stairs — and none of it gives me a moment of peace in my head. How did this happen?