—
“By the way,” Dean wrote in an email four days later. “This happy story might cheer your heart.” His words were laced with irony. He sent her the link to a Times article. It was a color feature: “Picking Up the Pieces: A Family Makes Sense of Loss.” The parents of the dead kids had been tracked to their native village, not far from Kanpur. There they were, Devi and Rajkumar, sad but hopeful, putting the past behind them. Devi was pregnant again. Rajkumar had used the Wadia Foundation compensation money to buy agricultural land. They had built a pukka house. Some good had emerged from the tragedy, the writer noted. Rajkumar hoped that one day his son would study in Delhi and speak English and live in a big man’s house. He said Delhi was for modern people, progress was necessary, and God was looking over them now.
“Mystery solved,” she replied.
* * *
—
Her regular beat continued. She was grateful for the uncomplicated monotony of these small stories. She avoided the southeast of the city if she could. She avoided late nights out driving alone. Even when she made peace with her car, driving home at night after dark made her nervous. She thought someone was following her. She began to imagine it was Ajay. He was following her everywhere. He would protect her. It made her feel better. The comfort never lasted. Her mind raced with the old questions.
In her dreams sometimes she saw the glare of headlights and felt Ajay’s violence. She drummed up the courage to drive out one morning to the resettlement colony and found it was surrounded by a chain-link fence with warnings saying: PRIVATE PROPERTY.
* * *
—
Winter descended on Delhi. Woolens were removed from cupboards and steel trunks. Crisp, chill mornings of mist rose with the pale disk of sun, with boundless blue skies after. Lodhi Garden was full of walkers, vigorous, marching with purpose, while on the streets, the homeless lit fires in metal cans, squatting on the side of the road. There was a trip to Old Delhi for morning nihari. Diwali approached with its strings of golden light. Delhi burst into a frenzy of shopping and eating. Dean no longer confided in her. Sunny was not there. She spent it with her parents, lighting dias in the house, making a small puja, watching the kids in the park across the road with their sparklers, going up onto the roof terrace and viewing the fireworks over the city. The next morning a pall of smoke hung over the rooftops. The temperatures plummeted, the cold stole into the houses and squatted and refused to leave. She began to think about escape. Her heart was bereft and raging, a squall under the surface. She looked into taking the TEFL course at the British Council. Teach English in Japan. A friend had done it and never returned.
* * *
—
Christmas. Decorations with Santas in Connaught Place. Paeans to consumption. Paying lip service to religion. She went with her parents to St. James’s Church for Midnight Mass. A secular family tradition—they went every year. The three of them in the pews, not quite understanding what was going on. She closed her eyes and said a prayer. She thought she saw Ajay in the congregation, sitting a little ahead, praying too. But when it came time for Communion, she saw it was just another man.
* * *
—
The desolation of January. The city choked by smog. The temperatures dipping toward zero some nights. Her first story of the new year: the lack of adequate shelter for the homeless, an organized blanket mafia. A mafia for everything. She took the TEFL course after work. She had given up on Sunny. And given up on herself. She knew it was too late. She wouldn’t go to Dean. She could only plan to leave and never come back.
4.
On the morning of the last day of January 2004 she asked Dean to lunch at China Fare. She wanted to tell him her news: she was going to hand in her notice that afternoon. He agreed to see her, he might be a little late, he had a busy morning on the cards. She idled at her desk and saw his office locked. She went to Khan Market early and browsed the shops, everyone wrapped in sweaters and shawls. She wasn’t sure if she was going to confess. She didn’t know what she’d say until she was face-to-face, until he gave some clue from his end. All she knew was she was done. She took a table in China Fare at one and waited for him. Ate spring rolls and drank green tea.
* * *
—
When he came in she knew something was very wrong. He sat down at the table and held the edge with his fingers as if it were a cliff. He wouldn’t even look up at her. He seemed only to care about breathing. He knows, she thought. But what? What does he know? It didn’t matter. She was leaving. He lifted his hands from the table, rubbed his eyes under his wire-rimmed glasses, then removed the glasses entirely, placed them on the table, and covered his whole face with his hands. Finally he looked up and his eyes were shining and faraway.
“I just quit,” he said.
Of all the things she’d expected him to say, this was not it.
“Seriously?”
“Or maybe I was fired.” He frowned. “I don’t know.” He was talking to himself. “Maybe I jumped before I was pushed.”
“Dean . . .”
He looked up. “Let’s go get a beer.”
* * *
—
They went to Chonas. He started to talk. “You know how I started investigating Bunty Wadia? I dug up so much dirt you wouldn’t believe. I shortchanged him when I called him one of Ram Singh’s mob. Turns out the tail was wagging the dog. Ram Singh pretty much works for him.”
His voice turned contemplative. “Seems like almost everyone works for him.” She waited for him to go on. “I had a mentor,” he eventually said. “An old editor at one of the papers here. I’m not going to say his name. Respected. A straight shooter. All the way down the line. I’ve only known him in person awhile, but I corresponded with him and read his byline when he was younger and he taught me how to be a journalist, a reporter, and it wouldn’t be a stretch to say he taught me how to be a man. At least in my head. What’s that saying? ‘If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him’?”
“Dean. You’re rambling.”
“I finished my exposé last week. It’s huge. And it’s completely fucking meaningless.”
“Why?”
“The night I finished, this mentor of mine gave me a call. Ten p.m. He invited me to have breakfast with him the next morning at Yellow Brick Road. Nothing strange about that, right? Just a coincidence with the timing. I was buzzing with the story, the way you get when you’ve landed something big, something that’ll make waves. So I was excited to meet him. But I didn’t tell him anything about it on the phone.”