—
This young man is Sunny Wadia. Tall, imposing, charismatically handsome. Almond eyes, a pleasingly aquiline nose, a short beard of dense black. His hair is cropped, his chest is broad, his forearms strong. He wears a faded vintage T-shirt, aviator shades. He sits halfway between holy and profane.
* * *
—
After a few days, Sunny’s group settles on Purple Haze. They like the feel, the service, the vibe. They charm the Nepalis; they are superior and fraternal at once, joking with the boys, asking favors, commandeering the sound system to play their music. Knowing the tips that come their way, the chefs have no problem making off-menu food.
Ajay, unsettled, full of nervous excitement, studies them intensely, fascinated by their behavior, by the wealth they bring, the ease with which they carry it. He watches all the time and tries not to stare. He watches Sunny closest of all, he’s been watching him for days now. Sometimes Sunny laughs harder than anyone. Sometimes he cuts his friends down. But barring the one incident with the Spanish woman, he’s courteous to a fault with strangers. He invites people to join them, he asks questions, he offers considered opinions. At every occasion, he is the one to pay.
Ajay takes it upon himself to make sure Sunny has everything he needs. If he sees a cigarette packet opening, he’s there with a lighter. He’s there with a napkin seconds after something spills. He brings Sunny’s food first, clears his plates as soon as he’s finished, makes sure the table is spotlessly clean. This isn’t lost on the group. They’re amused. “Look at him, he’s your chela.” To take advantage of his energy, they make him do other chores. Send him out to pick up groceries, pay him to get their clothes laundered, pay him to wash their cars. Use him to score their charas. When they realize that he excels at packing a chillum, he is employed in this manner. He’s vigorous and meticulous when cleaning the pipe with gauze; he has the deft action of a shoeshine boy, the eye of a watchmaker; they laugh at him in admiration. Such attention to detail, such connoisseurship. Does he want to smoke up with them? He shakes his head with horror. No way. Good boy, they say. Soon he is going around to their rooms in the morning before he starts work and after, when he should be resting, fetching what they need. They find his eagerness extraordinary, sometimes endearing, sometimes a little pathetic. Someone comes up with a new name. Puppy. Puppy’s here.
* * *
—
Sunny is interested in land. He’s decided he wants to build around here. He wants his own villa or hotel, somewhere to escape to, to crash. Somehow word goes around. But land is hard to acquire up here. He needs a local partner, for a start. An outsider can’t just buy land alone. Only, now that his hand has been shown, now that it is known he wants something concrete from this place, attitudes change: he has become an opportunity. Self-appointed property brokers loiter, villagers who “know a place” come to talk to him. He’s offered inferior plots of land, and he knows how this works. They’ll try to bleed him for everything he’s worth. Sunny, circled by vultures, becomes annoyed by the stupidity of the world. He suspects some of his friends have talked about his interests. Ajay hears him chastise them one day as they sprawl on the cushions of the café, morning mist hanging on the mountains across the way, a little rain falling on the ancient cobbled alleyways. How else would word have gotten out? Sunny retreats moodily into himself. For several days he is sullen with everyone. He rarely leaves Purple Haze, smoking up all day, speaking to no one, plotting darkly. The fun stops when Sunny wills it. And Ajay stands and waits attentively by his side.
Then a few mornings into this grand sulk a new friend arrives to shift the mood. A tall, craggy Sikh wearing combat pants and a Superman T-shirt, a deep scar running down his forehead, splitting his nose. He comes in a souped-up Gypsy jeep, almost crashing into the café as he screeches to a halt, seventies’ rock blaring from his outrageous speakers so loudly that a crowd forms from the shops and houses and cafés to watch him sweep in. Sunny runs to embrace him. Sunny’s friends, who have been quiet, follow suit.
The man is called Jigs. “The Jig is up!” he cries.
He has come from the golf course in Chandigarh, he explains. He hit an albatross yesterday afternoon and was hoisted onto the shoulders of his brethren before they drank the clubhouse dry. At four in the morning, cruising the streets, he decided he would drive to the mountains to take the party up a notch. He’d heard Sunny was there. He went home and woke his wife, took a little speed and a little acid from his drawer, then set out from the city at five a.m., driving nonstop with a twelve-pack of beer and a pint of whisky to keep him company and a bunch of money to dish out to the cops.
He runs down to the Gypsy, strewn as it is with cans, and fetches from the glove compartment his hand-carved Italian chillum.
“Give it to him,” Sunny says, pointing at Ajay. “He packs a killer pipe.” He calls Ajay directly. “Hey,” he says, snapping his fingers, “get the gauze.”
Ajay’s heart soars.
* * *
—
Sunny and Jigs party four days straight, trance music throbbing from Jigs’s hotel room, the owner paid off handsomely. Ajay is charged with bringing beer to them, delivering charas and the occasional parcel of food. Sunny’s other friends, the ones he came with, retreat to different hotels or drive home, fleeing down the mountain, unable to take the new pace. When Ajay makes his deliveries, entering the smoke-hazed room, with the UV lights Jigs has brought along in the car now glowing, with the curtains drawn, with the floor littered with pizza boxes and trays of food and overflowing ashtrays and used gauze, all semblance of propriety and sobriety gone, he shows no emotion at all, no judgment, no reaction. He only does as he’s told.
On the fifth morning Sunny and Jigs disappear off in the Gypsy, bouncing down the road.
The village is suddenly silent. The whirlwind is over. Back in Purple Haze, back to his daily life, in the bad graces of the Nepali boys for shirking his duties there, Ajay is bereft.