Narcopolis

‘I know you’re a garaduli. Isn’t that the important thing?’ He laughed loudly at his own joke. Then he said, ‘You switched from chandu to garad when you moved to Bandra, you talk English when you’re high and you’re a Nasrani. Now tell me why you don’t trust Muslims. We are all smokers here, nashe ki aulad, there’s nothing to fear.’

‘It’s not that you’re not to be trusted.’

‘Then?’

‘Then why not talk about it, the thing we don’t talk about? Is that what you mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘My religion is no way of knowing me.’

‘Mine is a way of knowing me. When I pray I feel I’m doing something clean.’

‘But why pray so the whole neighbourhood hears your prayers? Why use microphones? And drums and music in the middle of the night.’

Just then the Mandrax man said, ‘There’s a town in Kerala, like, the main road has a temple, a mosque and a church, all using loudspeakers, loudest street in the world.’

Rashid said, ‘The city has changed, people wear their religion on their faces. As a Muslim I feel unwanted in many places, you should feel it too.’

‘I feel it. Who doesn’t?’

‘As a Nasrani, you should feel it as much as me. Okay, all Muslims cannot be trusted but what about the Hindus?’

Rumi said, ‘What about the Hindus, Rashidbhai?’

‘Arre, you, with the hammer in your briefcase, you’re just waiting for another war.’

‘Hammer?’

‘Choothiya, the whole street knows about your hammer.’

‘It’s a precaution.’

‘Must be, there are no nails here.’

Some of the men sitting against the wall laughed, but Jamal, Rashid’s son, did not smile. He was in his teens then and he was serious and self-absorbed.

‘Tell me why you have the name of a great Muslim poet if you are a Hindu?’

‘It’s a nickname.’

‘Rumi is a mighty name for a mighty shai’ir.’

‘Rumi is a Muslim name?’

‘Jalal al-Din Rumi. Bhadwas who never read a book will recite a ghazal by him as if they wrote it themselves.’

Right then, a pimp said, ‘“Everybody’s dying, even he, even she. / Knowing this, how can you not feel pity?”’

Rashid rolled his eyes and took a pull of the pipe and a suck at the joint.

‘There used to be thirty-six chandu khanas on Shuklaji Street,’ he said, ‘now mine is the last one, perhaps the last one in the whole city. If you stand on the balcony and look out some nights, you’ll think it’s the last chandu khana on earth. And it too will soon be gone. What else will be gone? The words we said and the people we knew, and you and me, all of us will be sucked away like smoke in the wind. Do you know what will come in our place? New business, and if you want to do new business you’ll have to pray to the same god as your client.’ He licked his finger and wet the joint’s burning tip. ‘Nasrani,’ he said, ‘are you listening?’

Before I could reply the hijra in the stained sari reappeared and it was our turn. Rumi and I jumped up and went inside.

*

The hijra led us behind a partition to a back room where the Nigerian sat at a desk. A plastic jug of water stood on a side table, with a saucer of used tea bags and a collection of small bottles. There were several brands of laxatives and a bottle of cough syrup. On a room-service tray were a dozen or so latex eggs, washed, but large enough that I wondered how he’d managed to put them in his ass. He wore a fresh skullcap and a striped business shirt and his shoes had a deep shine. There was a prayer bruise on his forehead and behind gold-rimmed spectacles his eyes were clear. He introduced himself as Pepsi and apologized for the delay. It was difficult to shit knowing a crowd of people was waiting, he said. Then he cut two uneven lines of dirty white powder on the cover of a movie magazine. He handed Rumi a hundred-rupee note rolled very tight. The twin lines ran diagonally across the famous mouth and vertiginous cleavage of the actress on the magazine’s cover. Rumi bent over the currency note and snorted up a line and closed his eyes and put his fingers in his ears. I broke my line in two, one for each nostril. The powder hit the back of my nose with a hard chemical burn, and, in an instant, my knees dissolved in the anhydride rush that disconnects neurons from nerve endings, obliterates bone and tissue, and removes anxiety by removing all possibility of pain. I thought: If pain is the thing shared by all living creatures, then I’m no longer human or animal or vegetal; I am unplugged from the tick of metabolism; I am mineral.

*