Narcopolis

Bull called Soporo at the rectory saying Ramesh was back and demanding to be let in, but this time they couldn’t do it. There were rules. A prison intake was only allowed the single slip; two, and they were within their rights to send him back to Arthur Road or Yerawada or Tihar or wherever it was he belonged, because one thing was certain, he had no place at Safer. Also, he’d been asking to see Soporo in person, not asking, demanding, as if he was in a restaurant and he wanted to complain to the manager. Bull hadn’t allowed him in and he’d gone to the abandoned yards across the street where he’d walked into one of those drainage pipes and no doubt was getting high at that very moment. Bull suggested they wait until morning, then call the authorities and let them take the guy away. We’ll see, Soporo replied, and he put down the phone. His back was acting up, had been acting up for days, and he felt like he was coming down with something, a cold maybe, and he put aside the book he was looking at and went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. He put water on to boil and cut ginger into long strips and put half a lemon into the squeezer. He poured the hot water into a big cup, dunked and removed a bag of Ceylon tea, added the ginger and lemon and took the cup with him into the living room, where he measured a teaspoon of honey from a small bottle on the dining table. He sat in his chair by the window and looked for the moon above the rooftops and though he couldn’t see it he thought he saw its reflection in a building window. He looked around the room as he took a sip of the tea. It was small and unpretentious: on the floor were books stacked against the wall, because he had never gotten around to having shelves made, and there were postcards taped to the mirror and money plants in glass bottles and plenty of light (the apartment faced east) and some air. It was a quiet place; in Father Fo’s words, ‘serene and modest’. He took another sip and winced a little: there was too much lemon. He thought, I’ll be sorry to leave here.

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