She peered a little closer into the ink. She was sitting in her old Maruti, pulling hard on a cigarette. “You’re fucking kidding.”
Shy, nerdish Hari was transformed the way everyone in the city seemed to be transforming these days. Everyone but her. She texted him on his old number thinking that would be gone too, but he replied right away, the same guy he ever was, excited and courteous, more than willing to meet, he’d even buy her dinner tonight (which was new), but only after they’d gone to pick up smoke. “It’ll only take five minutes,” he promised her as she climbed into the passenger seat of his Esteem outside her work. “This dude owes me big-time.”
That was almost two hours ago.
Now here they were on the roof. She, Hari, a bunch of random stoner dudes.
As the bone-dry heat of the First Delhi Summer receded to a deep astral blue.
She was so blasted now, she closed her eyes and their voices all merged into one.
And there he was again.
Sunny.
The name.
“Yo, did you hear about Sunny’s party? He flew in five thousand dollars’ worth of caviar from Iran.”
“No, man. It was Wagyu beef from Japan. On a private jet. Twenty thousand dollars’ worth. It’s insane.”
“Were you there?”
“How much do you get for twenty thousand dollars? Is that one whole cow?”
“Were you there?”
“They airlifted a cow?”
“Ha-ha, shut up, man.”
“Strapped beneath the jet, roasted on the way.”
“Ha-ha-ha-ha.”
“Picture it, a cow in a jetpack.”
“Man, were you there?”
“Don’t say that cow shit too loud, bro. Mr. Gupta will hear.”
She contemplated their faces.
Who were these guys?
“I heard they flew up to Leh once on a private chopper, landed at a monastery, and put on a rave. The monks were still inside. They had all these oxygen masks and everything.”
“Bullshit. You don’t need oxygen masks.”
“It was probably nitrous oxide!”
“You know he was brought up in Dubai.”
“He was not.”
“His mother’s a famous actress.”
“Ha-ha.”
“Guess which one?”
“Your mom.”
“No, shut up. Look at his eyes, you know her.”
“I know your mom.”
“Ooooh.”
“He keeps a tiger in his bathroom.”
“You don’t even know what he looks like.”
“Ha! That’s too good. What are you smoking, man?”
“Same thing as you, asshole.”
The chillum went round, staining the gauze, burning the night.
When it reached Neda, she sat up and said, “But who is he?”
* * *
—
“Dude,” a voice said, “I thought she was a journo.”
She took a Classic Mild from her bag, reached for the matches in the middle of the circle.
“She does real news,” Hari said. “Crime and shit.”
“Not fairy tales and myths.” She placed the cigarette slowly in her mouth. Lit the match and watched it burn against the heat of the sky.
“I don’t read the news,” another sniffed. “The real news isn’t there.”
She laughed. “Amen to that.” Then she lit the cigarette, leaned into the beanbag behind, flicked the match into the air, watching the glowing tip of the cigarette and the sky above, the kites circling on the thermals, the planes always landing in the distance, the rhythmic bells of a nearby temple, the many mosques’ call to prayer strung across the coming night sky. She loved her city.
“It’s not her fault,” she could hear Hari saying. “Some chutiya’s got her working every hour. I never see her anymore.”
“What chutiya?”
“Some Dean.”
“Who’s Dean?”
“Her boss.”
“He’s not my boss,” she heard herself say.
“Sorry,” Hari said sarcastically, “her mentor.”
“You mean she’s fucking him?”
“Dude, she’s not fucking him.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m not fucking him,” she said.
“Is he a gora?”
“Nah, he’s from Bombay. A Bandra boy.”
With her eyes closed tight she let it all wash over her.
“I’m not fucking him,” she said. “I’m not fucking anyone.” Then she added, “At least not today.”
Why did she do that?
Because it sounded cool. She always liked men to think she was cool.
* * *
—
She had almost fucked him, hadn’t she? At least thought about it. He was a catch, Dean R. Saldanha. That good, upright Bombay Catholic boy, Mount Mary born and bred: “You throw a stone from my childhood window, you’ll hit a pig, a priest, or a Pereira.” He’d been shipped off to New York at age thirteen to live with his aunt in Queens, to wind up at Columbia Journalism School, to cut a long story short, to return to Bombay as a hotshot young reporter, a little too eager. In his zeal he exposed a land corruption scandal in his old community, in the heart of the archdiocese. His father didn’t take kindly to that. “Why don’t you report on something real?” he’d said. That was when Dean knew it was time to leave.
He came to Delhi. The Post hired him in October 2001. He found himself vanishing inside the spaces of Delhi as the world reeled from 9/11, obsessed with land, what he referred to as “the dynamic instability of marginal urban life.” He talked like this. He spoke of the tensions between the middle classes and the urban poor, of the evictions and demolitions of the slum settlements, which were happening all around them in plain sight. He spoke disparagingly of the neoliberal “discourse de jour,” that of the “world-class city.” He wanted to paint this shifting, unstable city in words, wanted to immortalize the daily struggles of its citizens. He had his own office, played classic rock on his earphones. A tobacco fug swamped the air. He dressed like a poet in the middle of a basketball game, tall and lanky with frizzy brown hair. In no time he got the names and numbers of all the right cops and goons and crooks. He ate and drank in the dives and the canteens. He developed contacts from the lowly beat constable all the way up the ranks to the mighty DGP. And he could write like a dream. He wasn’t so old either, twenty-seven to her twenty-two. Of course they were going to fuck one day, right? Except it didn’t take long for her to get bored.
* * *
—
“Don’t listen to those assholes,” Hari said.
They’d left the stoners behind. They were walking down the inner staircase of the building, past all the many doors decorated with gods, leading into God-fearing middle-class homes.
“I don’t really know them,” he said.
“It’s all right.”
“Besides,” he went on, “they don’t know what they’re talking about.”
They walked past an open door. Inside the room the ceiling fans were on so fast they sounded like they’d take the roof off. A soap opera was blaring on TV, crackling and distorted, turned up too high over the fans’ noise. Somewhere, someone was frying onions.
“I’m pretty blazed,” she said, “and hungry. What time is it?”
“Nine.”
“Kebab?”
“Let’s get some Coke first.”
* * *