“Yes.”
“Two-wheeler, four-wheeler?”
“Everything, sir.”
“Trucks and buses?”
“No, sir.”
“So not everything.”
“No, sir. I can drive a tractor, sir.”
“You grew up in the mountains.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Doing what?”
“I worked on a farm. I made ghee.”
“You made ghee? Very good.”
“Then a café.”
“You were in Goa also?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you didn’t sell drugs?”
“No, sir.”
“You must have seen all kinds of wrong things?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Crazy people.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You know all the different things people do.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you’re discreet.”
“Sir?”
“Careful. Quiet.”
“Yes.”
“You can keep secrets?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re loyal?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know who Sunny Wadia is?”
“Sir, he’s a big man.”
“He’s the son of a big man. Everything you see here is because of his father, Bunty Wadia. We all owe our happiness to him. He’s a great man. You may answer to Sunny now, but we all answer to Bunty-ji. Bunty-ji is God. Remember that.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have you been to school?”
“I left when I was eight.”
“But you’re smart?”
“I can read and write. I can understand English. Also some Hebrew, German, Japanese, sir.”
“Married?”
“No, sir.”
“No children?”
He shakes his head shyly.
“How old are you?”
“Sir, I don’t know. Eighteen? Nineteen?”
“OK then, let’s give you a birthday. Let’s say . . . January first, 1982?”
“Sir, OK.”
“You like girls?”
Ajay doesn’t know what to say.
“One day soon you’ll be working alongside girls. If you touch them, we won’t spare you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“If you want girls, go to GB Road.”
Ajay doesn’t know where that is.
“If you fuck with the women here, we cut off your balls.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And if you’re caught stealing, we cut off your hand.”
“Yes, sir.”
Mr. Dutta lights a cigarette.
“Good. Where’s your native place?”
“UP.”
“Your family is there?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why?”
“I left when I was small.”
“You don’t go back?”
“No. My father died.”
“So no holidays for Diwali. You’re not going to take three days’ leave and come back three weeks later?”
“No, sir.”
“Good. Do you have a PAN card? A bank account?”
“No, sir.”
“Money?”
“Everything was stolen.”
“What do you mean?”
“Yesterday, when I arrived in Delhi.”
“That’s what happened to your face?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How much did you lose?”
Ajay lowers his head.
“Thirty-two thousand, sir.”
Mr. Dutta whistles and shakes his head, makes a note, closes his book, and stares at the cover a moment. “Chalo. Go to Elite Saloon in the market for a haircut and shave. You won’t have to pay. Then we’ll have a doctor look at your face. We’ll open a bank account and start you on five thousand a month. You’ll get a phone. Keep it with you at all times, keep it charged. And here”—he opens a drawer and counts out five one-hundred rupee notes—“this is your advance.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“The rest is up to Sunny, you’ll report to him. He’s your boss now. Do what he says and you’ll be fine.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And smile. You’re a Wadia man now. No one will ever steal from you again.”
* * *
—
He has a haircut and a shave in the market and when he returns a doctor tends to the cuts on his face, cleans his wounds, and hands him one painkiller and one antibiotic. He is shown around the servants’ areas below ground, shown where he is and isn’t to go, then in the afternoon he is sent up to Sunny. He still cannot comprehend the dimensions of this house; this house is like nothing he’s ever seen. A uniformed boy leads him back through corridors he thinks he knows, and when he reaches the ground floor through a small flight of stairs the surroundings abruptly change, the functional tiles and white lighting give way to rugs and ornate furniture, to paintings on the walls, to fantastic displays of wealth. They travel up a central flight of shallow marble stairs, with each floor leading off through several heavy wooden doors into different apartments, some he can see as servants pass in and out. On the third floor they turn into one of these doors and enter another maze of passageways, softly lit, decorated with statues of gods and soothing sacred music, speckled white marble underfoot. At the end of one corridor there’s an elevator. They enter, he and the silent, uniformed boy, and travel to the fifth floor. As soon as the elevator opens they are met by a red-leather-padded door and a stairway falling down to the right. The boy rings the bell on the door and a chubby young man with laconic eyes opens up to let them in.
A burst of light and air. Sunny’s apartment is the penthouse. Ajay enters a vast main room full of plush sofas and low tables full of hardback books, a raised level on the far-right side with more sofas and a giant TV; bright, garish paintings on the wall; odd sculptures and lamps dotted around; trays of fresh fruit beautifully cut; and past the raised section a small, cramped-looking kitchen incongruous with the rest. On the left there’s another section with a dining table and eight chairs, and beyond it a bank of glass doors leading to what looks like a pool, through which floods warm afternoon light. It seems to Ajay that this place exists in a universe of its own, detached from the working bowels of the vast mansion, the muted and austere opulence of the other upper floors. Yes, after the crushing authority of the building, after the windowless weight of his own dorm room, this apartment feels like paradise.
He stands dumbly, inhaling it all. Then he hears the voice he has yearned for for so long, coming from a door to the rear of the apartment.
“Arvind?” it shouts.
“Yes, sir?”
“Who’s here?”
“Sir,” the chubby servant replies, “the new boy is here.”
“What new boy?”
“Sir, the one from the mountains.”
There’s a few seconds of silence.
“Send him in.”
“Go,” Arvind whispers.
Ajay heads toward Sunny’s voice, pauses on the threshold.
“Get in here!”
When he enters, he’s hit by the icy blast of the AC. The room is windowless, sparsely furnished. Marble floors, cream-painted walls, a large low bed in which Sunny sits topless, rolling a joint.
“Sir,” Ajay says.
Sunny looks up and studies Ajay dispassionately. “What happened to your face?”
“Sir . . .” Ajay fumbles.