The trucker laughs. “We all work.” He pauses. “What kind of work?”
Ajay unbuttons his suit, lets the chill draft of air from the night pour over his chest.
“Accha kaam.” Good work.
They drive on with this phrase in the air, ambiguous and strange.
“There’s been trouble this month,” the trucker finally says. “Gangs fighting. Lots of hijackings. Maybe it’s not safe.”
Ajay turns toward him. “For me?”
Ajay’s gun hangs in its holster inside his jacket.
The trucker averts his eyes.
For a moment Ajay has forgotten why he’s there.
He leans back, closes his eyes, shivers, basks in his power.
“Who do you work for?” the driver asks.
His voice is flat, lacking pretense.
He wants to know.
“Vicky Wadia.”
The driver’s precipitous silence says it all.
* * *
—
They stop at a dhaba deep into the night. The glow of hypnotic striplights lashed to trees. Ajay sits alone at an outdoor table in the far corner, the legs of his plastic chair bowing under his weight. Steaming pots of food and drunken nocturnal voices reverberating with drunken desires.
He sees the truck driver watching from the other table, can guess the conversation with other drivers, with dhaba workers. Discussing him, pointing out the Wadia man, the one in the nice suit, carrying the pukka gun.
Debating his intentions.
He can’t help but feel pride.
Feared, respected.
Unassailable.
He casts his eyes over the other men, truck drivers mostly. A handful of families, minding their own business. His gaze moves slowly through the dhaba. And then stops.
A dhaba boy, a worker. Big ears, a mop of black hair, painfully thin, twelve or thirteen years old. He’s working the tandoor, sweat pooling on his forehead, a grimace on his face. Ajay scans his body, all the way to his feet. The chain. One bony ankle, shackled to the base of the oven. His eyes are glazed with the reflection of the flames flickering inside the pit.
Another memory resurrected. The dhaba, the fields behind it, lined with garbage. The concrete wall that hides the toilet ditch. How could he forget? The boy leaping from the cage that held them all, running from the Tempo into the misted fields, chased by the thekedar’s assistant. The howl at the end of it. The bloodied knife. For a moment Ajay thinks he is there. That this, now, is then. The world unstable.
Is he? Is that the boy? Did they bring him back? Did he never get away?
He stands and walks slowly through the dhaba crowd, around the tables, all the way inside, knowing everyone is watching him. He passes the threshold of the kitchen, ignores the protests of the workers, and comes to a stop before the boy. The boy stops his work and looks at him, trembling like a whipped dog. A voice behind Ajay says, “Behenchod.” He turns to find a potbellied cook with a cleaver in his hand. “What are you doing?” The cook raises the cleaver dramatically, but Ajay doesn’t flinch, and another worker hurries to hiss something in his ear, pull him back. The cook lowers his cleaver and lowers his gaze and turns away, leaving Ajay alone.
The boy returns to the tandoor, and now Ajay sees he’s a stranger. Just another boy who couldn’t escape. What would be the use, he thinks, in freeing him. I have my own business to attend to.
He drifts back to his table with this thought in mind, and for the first time he thinks, I am me.
Chai is brought, along with a plate of rajma chawal slathered in desi ghee.
“From the boss,” the waiter says, indicating a well-dressed man at ease at one of the tables near the cash till. “No charge.”
* * *
—
The trucker waits patiently for Ajay to be done. When Ajay stands, he stands, and they are on their way. Before dawn the trucker says they’re approaching town. “Pull over,” Ajay says. “I’ll walk the rest of the way.”
He takes a moment to get his bearings as the truck pulls away, then he walks. He follows the sewage ditch into the slums, the unplanned colonies. He crosses a bridge made of metal sheeting to a scrappy cricket ground where goats graze. The day begins to show in the sky. He finds a group of men huddled beside a concrete building, warming themselves around a kindling fire. He shows them the sheet of paper he has. Asks where this colony can be found. They eye his clothes, his bag, his face, point out the way, but tell him, “You don’t want to go there, those people are a waste.”
He skirts the field where kids are playing cricket in the morning light. A shot goes for a four, rolls toward him, comes to a stop. The kids call out to him. They want him to throw it back to them. He finds he cannot.
2.
The colony is a wretched place. Rows of hovels of brick and wood, roofed with corrugated metal and tarp, built on dirt ground, surrounded by garbage dumps. Women cook on small fires outside their miserable homes. He stands among them, appalled. Appalled at himself for expecting anything more. But it will change now. It will all change. He walks down one of the rows, picking his way around the fires and the children and the dogs. Men and women look up at him with fear, contempt. They withdraw into themselves. He tries to smile. He tries to look out for her. It’s supposed to be a surprise. It’s not supposed to be like this.
A woman in an immaculate blue sari calls out. “What do you want?”
Ajay stops to look back at her.
He thinks about the words he’s about to say.
Like trying to fling oneself off a cliff, the body won’t obey the mind.
He must force himself.
“My mother.” The words seem frail on his lips.
There’s a hush, then muffled words, his words repeated, then a ripple of comprehension runs through the crowd.
Not entirely friendly. Not entirely welcome.
“So, you’re the one,” an old man lying on a charpoy says.
Another woman climbs to her feet, steps forward, examines him on all sides with contempt, derision. “They said you were looking for her.”
“She’s here?” is all he can manage to say.
“You have no shame.”
He looks at her in bewilderment.
“Where is she?”
“You should have stayed away.”
“Ma!” he shouts. He turns to the growing crowd. “Where is she?”
A gang of young men approach but keep their distance.
It’s the old women who show their feelings.
With hostility, one woman points toward a small, low concrete hall at the end of their row, with a crowd spilling outside.
“She’s there. But Mary doesn’t want to see you.”
“Mary? Who’s Mary? My mother’s name is Rupa,” he says.
“Not anymore.”
* * *
—
He stands on the threshold of the low hall. He has to stoop just to look in. Inside there are many chairs facing the front, where there is a platform with a lectern, behind which statues of Shiva and Krishna flank a large painting of Jesus Christ seated in the lotus position, his hands forming a mudra.