Ajay seeing nothing.
And soon Ajay is sent out to meet someone in a lay-by at night, to sit and wait an hour for this man. A young and friendly Nigerian man. He buys coke from him for Gautam Rathore. Sunny makes a point of this, makes sure Ajay knows it.
“It’s not for me.”
* * *
—
Without warning, in November, Ajay and Sunny fly out to Gorakhpur the next week. Sunny in first class, Ajay in economy. Ajay, who used to gaze at the sky in awe of planes, now sleeps before takeoff. When they land, the hostess touches him on the shoulder, he comes to with a frown, he can smell the tang of sweat in the stale air as the passengers stand up and grab their luggage while the plane taxis on the runway. The sky is dull and full of haze. Winter is sweeping down from the mountains to the north.
It is only now that Sunny tells Ajay they are here to meet his uncle, Vikram “Vicky” Wadia, a man about whom Ajay has heard a great deal, but only in whispers. “Vicky-ji is causing problems again.” “Vicky-ji is handling things in UP.” “Vicky-ji and Bunty-ji are having tension these days.”
Ajay retrieves Sunny’s bags from the carousel. They are greeted in the arrivals hall by a pack of goondas and an armed police escort. Ajay can see the apprehension in his master. He tries not to reflect it. He stands tall, drawing strength from his gun concealed in its holster. But Vicky’s men are the real deal: rough-hewn, menacing, weighed down with gold. They smirk at Ajay, with his safari suit, his slick hair. They cut him off from Sunny, lead him to a separate car. What would Eli say? All his training leaves him. He mutely obeys.
They drive for three hours through this land of sugarcane and dusty, ramshackle towns, Ajay staring out the window with an unerring sense of déjà vu, a memory he cannot or dare not place.
Finally, in the middle of nowhere, they turn left off the road, through a set of iron gates below a crumbling concrete arch in the middle of precisely nowhere, drive along a wide track of dirt, past parked trucks and workers’ tents, the sugarcane tall on either side, until they come upon a rusty, muscular island of industry, a sugar mill, in whose shadow they park.
The guards stream out of the cars, wordless, their weapons clicking and clanking. Throats are hawked, paan is spit red into the dirt where it thickens and dies. Ajay is held loosely by the bicep, as if he might bolt. He feels unnaturally oppressed, sickened. The sun dips behind the clouds, making a halo. One of Vicky’s men casually urinates to the side.
He watches the lead car, waiting for Sunny to emerge. As the seconds tick by he steps toward it, but the hand grips him tight.
“Chutiya, don’t move.”
More men appear from the mill, all carrying AK-47s.
A sense of ceremony.
The roiling air before the storm.
Soon enough Vicky Wadia emerges. From where Ajay can’t say. He seems to come midstride, fully formed, a giant of a man bathed in wilderness, wearing black kurta pajamas, his long black hair parted at the middle, tucked behind his ears, a red and yellow tilak slashing down his forehead, his flashing eyes lined with kohl, a thick, virile mustache bursting above his lip. He strides toward Sunny as if he’d been picking up speed his whole life. Ajay watches helpless, frozen. The sun comes out again and glints off the many golden rings on Vicky’s fingers. They reach out, as if to grasp and smother and kill. But Vicky only embraces his nephew, pulls him close, cradles the back of his head as Sunny’s arms hang limply by his side. Vicky steps back, examines him from this side, from that. Next, looks toward Ajay.
“The boy is yours?” The hand on the bicep is released, the goons clear a path. “A pretty doll,” he says dismissively, “dressed up well.” He beckons Ajay forward. He finds himself stepping into no-man’s-land. He leers at Ajay. “Such an innocent face. Does he do what he’s told?” Sunny doesn’t speak. Then Ajay is forgotten. “Come, boy,” Vicky says, clasping Sunny by the back of the neck, “tell me the news from home.”
Vicky leads him toward a small bungalow beside the mill, and like that, they’re gone.
Ajay stands alone below the fast-moving clouds with the men and their guns as they loiter in the dust. The line of tension between these men slackens as Vicky’s presence recedes. Some shift and lean against their vehicles or move to sit in plastic chairs, others recline on rope beds under a canopy of tarp. Ajay feels naked, sick. Suddenly he has to get away. Feigning detachment, he turns and wanders away, heads down the long dirt drive. He waits for a voice telling him to stop, but nothing comes. So he walks, and with every step, a weight is lifted from his chest. He counts to one hundred before he turns to look back.
The men are smaller, not so threatening now. A small breeze kicks up. He unbuttons the top of his suit, rubs the grime from the back of his neck.
One hundred more paces.
The men receding into nothingness.
He takes time now to look, to smell.
To look at the sugarcane each side of the dirt drive, the birds flitting about in the sky. To smell the rich scent of earth.
He takes time to feel.
Something is stirring. The wind runs through the sugarcane. And it occurs to him, he knows this place. He knows it. He’s been here before.
How? He searches his mind, finds deep black wells he cannot draw from, sees long, dark gullies he refuses to enter. He walks on a little more, goose bumps on his skin. Some wild impulse tells him to lean down and remove his shoes and socks.
He obeys. He obeys and his bare feet press into the earth. His feet have grown pale, soft. Was it so long ago he walked barefoot through the pine needles of the Himalayan forests, chary of leopards? And before that . . . before that . . . another kind of needle runs through his heart.
How far has he come?
He presses his toes deeper. He grinds them down, pushing dirt underneath the pedicured nails. A little way down the dirt track, the tents of the migrant workers stand humble, precarious. He is drawn toward their blue tarpaulin, forgetting his shoes and socks. Soon he’s looking into this cluster of habitation, these jumbled, makeshift homes, observing the women scrubbing metal plates using sand and small stones, cooking a vat of rice over kindling fires. He sees the naked children with their malnourished bellies chasing chickens, chasing puppies, playing with tires and sticks. He’s standing a few feet from the edge of this camp, staring at them as some look back. The eyes of the children, blank and expressionless, the eyes of the women, fearful. Suspicious, the eyes of the men. From the corner of his eye, he detects something below him: a large cockroach scurrying through the dirt. And with vicious intent, with such surprising violence in his heart, he stamps on it. He crushes it with the ball of his foot.
And in the instant of death, it all comes back to him.
His father’s burning body.