Narcopolis

There was a Godrej padlock on the door. People came up the stairs and it was the first thing they saw. Then they saw the Customs and Excise notice tacked to the wall and understood that Rashid’s was shut indefinitely. They went elsewhere. That morning Rashid, Dimple and Bengali were in Gilass Palass, a teashop and falooda parlour near Grant Road Station. Only Bengali noticed the mirrors on the walls and ceiling, and, on smoked-glass shelving that ran the length of the premises, a collection of figurines in the likeness of swans and androgynous, possibly female angels. Rashid drank masala chai, and he held an unlit Triple Five in his hand.

‘It’s nothing,’ he said, ‘temporary, tell everybody we’ll be back very soon.’

‘How soon?’

‘Very soon.’

‘You already said that.’

‘Eat your khari biscuit.’

‘I told you something was wrong. The use.’

‘You didn’t.’

‘Noticing things, telling you. And then you forget. What’s the use?’

‘You didn’t tell me.’

‘Bilkul, I did, bhai, told you there was something wrong when that Customs and Excise came round asking for five lakhs instead of fifty thousand. He’s been taking money from you for years, same amount every time, like tax, and suddenly he adds a zero. Something was wrong.’

‘When did you tell me? You think I’d forget?’

‘Why not? You forget everything else.’

She was using the formal aap though her words were not formal at all. Bengali’s thoughts were in his face: look at this woman, until yesterday she was a prostitute in a hijra’s brothel and listen to her now, talking as if she’s Rashid’s equal. He was dismayed by her manner around his boss and by the way she said whatever came to her mind, whether respectful or not. She talks as if she is his wife and Rashid listens like a husband, he thought. But she’s more than a wife, more than both his wives put together: she’s his business partner and she’s better at it than he is. If she was in charge, we’d be rich and the competition would be mincemeat.

‘So that’s why you’re here, to remind me.’

‘And meanwhile.’

‘Meanwhile, we have a temporary shop and we keep going.’

‘Sounds like this meanwhile will be a long meanwhile. And you’ll do what?’

‘Something, I’m thinking.’

‘Bhai, the khana won’t reopen by itself.’

Rashid lit his cigarette and blew a ring and then he blew another through the first.

‘I know who’s behind it: the bhadwa. He came to see me, made an offer to buy my khana, such a low price I knew he was the one who put the C & E lock on the door.’

‘Khalid. He fixed it to put you out of business.’

‘Or take it over.’

They paid the bill and went to the new shop Rashid was renting in Arab Gully. It was in a side street off a side street. They’d settled in and set up a pipe (the place was so small there was room for only one) and Rashid was already comfortable, too comfortable, according to Dimple. She complained to Bengali that he had accepted the unacceptable. He was doing what he’d always done. He smoked the pipes she made. He drank his Black Label and chased garad. He got his meals delivered from Delhi Darbar. He didn’t seem worried by the loss of the khana, or by the fact that he’d been put out of business by a man like Khalid. Get it back, she told Rashid. Whatever it takes. Maro him if you have to, just get it back.

*