But two days later Sunny returns, wandering into the village from the woods above, alone, barefoot, his clothes dirty and torn. He looks as if he had been to war, he seems not to recognize himself. He stutters here and there until Ajay catches sight of him and brings him into the café, guides him to a cushioned seat out of the way, and fetches a mug of green tea, rolls a joint for him. Sunny smokes the joint and sits like that for an hour, while Ajay serves other customers, then he calls him over and demands a beer, but before Ajay can hurry away to fetch it, Sunny says, “Ajay. Look at me.”
Sunny’s eyes are wide open, darker than usual. His breath is shallow. He is clinging to the edge of something no one else can see. It’s the first time he’s used Ajay’s name.
“Where are you from?” Sunny says.
“From here.”
“No,” Sunny says in exasperation. “No.” He taps his fist on the table. “No. You’re not from here. You’re not from here, you’re not mountain blood.” He peers into Ajay with his dark eyes. “So where are you from? Tell me.”
“Uttar Pradesh,” Ajay says in a whisper.
“Yes!” Sunny says. “Yes, you’re from UP.”
Sunny fills his chest with air and sits up.
“Where in UP?” Sunny says.
“I don’t know,” Ajay says.
Sunny stares hard into the boy. “It doesn’t matter,” he declares. “You and me, we’re from the same soil. We’re brothers.” He closes his eyes and keeps them closed, sitting upright, forces a disarming smile. “Now go get my fucking beer.”
“You take care of me,” he says, when Ajay returns.
“Yes, sir.”
“You don’t want anything in return.”
It is not framed as a question. Ajay doesn’t know what to say.
“Where’s your family?” Sunny goes on, trying to be more businesslike, taking hold of the beer.
“I don’t know.”
“Why don’t you know?”
“My father died,” Ajay says.
“And you ran away from home?”
Ajay shakes his head. “My mother sent me away.”
“And?”
“I worked in a house here, but the man died.”
Something about this image calms Sunny down. He leans back and closes his eyes for a moment, but then opens them as if the dark were too much for him.
“Do you like it here?” he asks. “Don’t you want something more?”
“Something more,” Ajay hears himself saying.
“How would you like to do something with your life? Something important?”
“Yes.”
Sunny struggles with his wallet. He tries to look inside but has trouble focusing, so he hands it to Ajay instead.
“You’ve been good to me,” he says. “You never tried to get anything from me.”
Ajay holds the wallet, unsure what he’s supposed to do. There’s no money in there anyway.
“Take out,” Sunny says, “one of the white cards.”
Ajay fishes out a business card.
“Take it,” Sunny says. “It’s yours.”
He hands back the wallet and examines the card. On the front, embossed in dark gray lettering, it says two words: SUNNY WADIA.
Ajay mouths the name.
“Give it here,” Sunny says. “Go fetch me a pen.”
Ajay hands it back and runs to fetch a pen.
“I’m leaving now,” Sunny says when Ajay returns. “If you want to work”—he takes great effort scribbling something down on the back of the card—“come to Delhi to this address. Tell the guards you want to see Tinu. Hand them this card and say Sunny Wadia sent for you.”
8.
Normal life resumes in Purple Haze, but for Ajay there’s a big, Sunny Wadia–shaped hole in his heart. Everything that was once stable is subtly changed. He has not told anyone what Sunny offered. He only has the business card as proof. He keeps the card in his worn brown wallet, gifted to him by a German guest, folding too easily like old cardboard. He takes the card out often to turn in his fingers, to smell it sometimes, that faint smell of cologne, wealth, and happiness, always fading, the card beginning to fray if he touches it too long. He knows he should keep it put away, but he can’t help looking, cherishing. It’s the last thing he looks at before he falls asleep. But can he make this kind of leap? Six weeks pass, the mountain season draws to a close. Nothing changes, no one new comes to him, no new excitement pours into his life, everything is deaf and drained of color after Sunny Wadia. He begins to think about it seriously. He daydreams about what might happen if he turns up. Working in Delhi, working for Sunny Wadia. In a shop, maybe? Selling clothes? Or in an office somewhere? Wearing smart clothes himself, a shirt and tie, being modern like Sunny. But the dream gutters there. He can’t imagine anything beyond it, how his life might really be. He puts the card back in the wallet and closes it away.
When the café closes, it’s assumed that, as usual, he’ll travel to Goa with the boys.
But the afternoon before the day they’re due to leave, just after he receives his salary and tips, he packs his sports bag and walks away. Just packs his money and clothes and his few possessions and walks down the mountainside to where the bus waits. He catches the six p.m. bus to Delhi, sits staring out the window willing the engine to start.
He thinks he won’t be able to sleep the whole way, but as soon as the bus starts moving, he’s out like a light. It has a disorienting effect. He wakes in the dark hours later, hurtling down the many folds of mountain hundreds of kilometers to the plains. I can come back, he thinks. I will just see what it’s like. But a part of him knows he’ll never return. And there’s something liberating about leaving, it’s true, about throwing so many years over his shoulder and marching forward to a majestic life.
* * *
—
When he reaches the city, deposited at the Interstate Bus Terminal, he approaches a group of loitering men who are touting for business, trying to sell rooms, to ask if they can show him where he’s going. He recites the address from memory, and they look at one another, one of them saying he’s heading that way and can take him right there. Ajay climbs in an auto with him, and three others suddenly join. They take him a short distance, then stop in a quiet alley to beat him and rob him of all his things.
He roams the streets for the next few hours in a state of shock, bleeding from the nose and several cuts to his face, grieving the loss of everything he owns. Without the Nepali boys to guide him, everything is alien and threatening, everyone a potential assailant. He walks without a compass, hoping to stumble on an answer, but he cannot solve the puzzle of the city and is afraid to ask.
He wanders into a wealthier part of town, with wide boulevards and tree-shrouded bungalows guarded by cops. He passes a pair and they hustle him on as if he were a vagrant.
After an hour he takes the chance to sit outside a chai shop beside a busy junction. A perky auto driver takes an interest in him, asking him what happened to his face. When he summons up the courage to tell him about the theft, and why he’s in the city in the first place, the driver buys him chai and bun-makhan and tells him he’ll take him where he needs to go. In this moment of hope, Ajay remembers the card. He searches his shirt—yes, it’s there! In his top pocket. He feels a burst of hope and pride and holds the card out, showing the address scrawled in slanting handwriting on the back. But the auto driver is only interested in the name on the front.
“You know who this is?” he says, whistling to himself.