‘Is that look a yes, or a no?’ he asked, smiling.
‘Are you writing this, Oleg, what’s happening tonight?’
‘Hell, yeah. Memorising it all like a time-camera. Aren’t you? It’s a pretty unusual situation, and a pretty unusual mix of people. I mean –’
‘Stay awake, Oleg. Buildings like this burn, when people burn things in Bombay. It’s not a joke. That’s why I haven’t been drinking. It’s why I haven’t had a smoke. This is the shit, and I need you to stay straight while I’m gone.’
‘Don’t worry about the lifeboat while you’re gone,’ he smiled. ‘They’ll all be here, when you swim back.’
‘You wrote that, just before, didn’t you?’
‘Chert, da. Thank you so much for this, Lin,’ he said. ‘I really appreciate it.’
‘If Karla comes back before me, keep her here.’
‘You’re insulting me,’ he said. ‘You told me that already.’
‘I mean, guard her above everything, and anyone. You get that, right?’
‘I get that,’ he grinned. ‘This just gets better and better.’
I walked back into the room dressed for battle. Didier was playing rock-paper-scissors with Diva. Charu and Pari were trying to explain the rules to Vinson, who saw too many hands to make sense of it. Randall was keeping score with polite cheating. Everyone was laughing. I walked through to the entrance hall.
‘Again, with the fucking barricade?’ Jaswant complained.
‘Open it, Jaswant.’
‘It’s a bandobast, idiot! It’ll be dawn in a couple of hours, and then you’ll be a sitting goose.’
‘A duck. A sitting duck. Open up.’
‘Don’t you realise,’ he asked patiently, ‘that every time you open the barricade, you weaken the barricade?’
‘Please, Jaswant.’
‘If my Parsi friend was here, he would’ve devised a moveable barricade for contingencies like this, but –’
‘Jaswant, open the barricade, and if you ask me for a code word when I come back, I’ll get a jeweller to write it on your kara.’
‘My fat Punjabi ass, you will,’ he said, shifting his considerable belly to his considerable chest. ‘And apology accepted.’
He eased the barricade away from the door, but as I was slipping through he stopped me.
‘If Miss Karla comes back,’ he said, ‘she’ll be safe, with me.’
‘You just became a friend, Jaswant.’
‘There’s a security fee,’ he said, as I squeezed through the gap in the door. ‘For my services as a bodyguard. I’ll just put it on your bill.’
I ran the steps in jumps, sliding along the wall, to find Dominic waiting impatiently for me in the alley underneath the hotel’s arch.
‘You took your time,’ he said, as we rode away. ‘You’re hard enough to explain as it is, Shantaram, without having to explain why I’m late on my rounds.’
‘Did you get any sleep?’ I called over his shoulder.
‘An hour. You?’
‘I had company. What’s the latest? How bad is it?’
‘Very bad,’ he said, images of the bike shooting forward and backward in streetlight windows as we passed. ‘There were fires in Dongri, Malad, and Andheri. Hundreds have lost their homes and shops. VT station is packed with refugees, finding shelter or leaving the city.’
‘Has there been any fighting?’
‘Youth leaders from Hindu and Muslim communities have rallied their people. When a fire starts in a Hindu area, Hindu students arrive in trucks. They make a cordon of witnesses, so that no violence can begin. It’s the same on the Muslim side. They don’t want it to be like the last riots in Bombay.’
‘How’s that working out?’
‘So far, the students are doing a pretty good job of keeping the peace. We should do a recruiting drive among them. We need kids like that in the police.’
‘Who’s starting the fires?’
‘When a fire takes a street in Bombay,’ he said, spitting on the road, ‘a shopping mall or apartment block takes its place.’
Profiteers sometimes used communal tension as an opportunity to burn down streets of small shops standing in the way of their profit schemes. They hired thugs, tied orange headbands on their heads when they were burning Muslim shops, and green headbands when they burned Hindu streets.
Dominic wasn’t being cynical about that truth: he was defeated by it. He was thirty years old, a father of three, two girls, ten and eight, and a four-year-old boy: he was an honest, hard-working man who risked his life day and night in the uniform that he wore, and he’d stopped believing in the system that dressed him in it, and gave him a gun to defend it.
He talked bitterly, as he rode, and I’d heard it before, many times, in slums, on the streets and in small shops. It was the voice of resentment at the double unfairness of a social inequity that preys upon the poor, while telling them that it’s their karma to be deprived.
Dominic’s family had been Hindus, in his grandfather’s time. They’d converted to Christianity in the wave of conversions summoned by the elegant, ethically indelible speeches of Dr Ambedkar, India’s first law minister and a champion of the Untouchables.
The family suffered after the conversion at first, but by the time that Dominic and his wife were making their own family, they were fully integrated into the Christian community, just as many others had become Buddhists or Muslims to slip the chain of caste.
They were the same people, the same neighbours, simply going to different places to connect with the Source. But each religion resented, and sometimes violently resisted, attrition from its own faith franchise, and conversions remained a fiercely contested issue.
We made his circuit of the city, from Navy Nagar to Worli Junction, through every route possible. Trucks of chanting Hindus and Muslims passed us, their banners rippling, orange for Hindus and green for Muslims.
Politicians and the rich defied the lockdown, riding in armed escorts on the empty roads, always passing at speed as if being chased. A few people dared to risk the streets, here and there. When we saw them, they saw us, and ran away. Apart from that, the city near dawn was empty.
There weren’t any zombies, but the dogs and rats were plentiful, and hungry, without humans leaving refuse for them to eat. They took over many deserted streets, howling and squeaking for scraps.
Dominic was very careful. Indian people like dogs and rats. Indian people like just about everything. He stopped once, when there was a swarm of rats in front of us, blocking the way like sheep on a country road.
He revved the engine, flashed the high-beam headlight, and sounded the horn. The rats didn’t move.
‘Any ideas?’ Dominic asked.
‘You could fire your gun in the air to disperse them. Cops do that with people, when they stand on the road.’
‘Not an option,’ Dominic said.
A thin pariah dog approached, jittering, its thin legs jerking as it walked. The Indian street dog has been around for thousands of years, and this dog knew its way around. It stopped, and began a complicated growling, barking message.
The rats scurried, scrambled and slithered away, a thick grey pelt looking somewhere else for trash. The dog barked at us.
Get outta here, I think he said.
We rode on.
‘Nice dog,’ Dominic said over his shoulder.
‘Yeah, and I’m glad he didn’t have any friends. Thirty-five thousand people die of rabies every year in India.’
‘You really think on the dark side,’ he said, swinging the bike toward Worli Naka.
‘I think on the survival side, Dominic.’
‘You should let Jesus in your heart.’
‘Jesus is in every heart, brother.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Of course. I l
ove that guy. Who doesn’t?’
‘A lot of people don’t,’ he laughed. ‘Some people hate Jesus.’
‘No. Brilliant mind, loving heart, significant penance: Jesus was the real deal. They might know Christians they don’t like, but nobody hates Jesus.’
‘Let’s hope that nobody hates Him tonight,’ he said, glancing in alleyways as we passed them.
We reached Worli Naka, a five-way junction under bright lights, with a football field of open space around a single cop, standing on the beat.
Dominic pulled up beside him, and turned off the engine.
‘All alone, Mahan?’ he asked in Marathi.
‘Yes, sir. But, not now, sir. Because you are here your good self, sir. Who’s the white guy?’
‘He’s a translator. A volunteer.’
‘A volunteer?’
Mahan gave me the once-over, watching me carefully in case I made any funny moves, because only a crazy person would volunteer to be on the street.
‘A volunteer? Is he mad?’
‘Give me a fucking report, Mahan,’ Dominic snapped.
‘Sir! All is quiet, sir, since my shift commenced, at –’
There was a heavy double-thump, as a fully loaded truck crested a speed breaker. We turned and saw it approaching from the right.
The huge truck had a wooden tray at the back, with sides that reached chest-height on the men who were crammed into it. Orange banners were flashes of sun-coloured light as the truck passed beneath streetlamps.
The truck ran a second speed hump, and the singing men in the back bobbed up and down as the wheels bumped the hump, two waves passing through them from the first heads to the last men, jammed against the tailgate.
Ram! Ram! was the chant.
A horn sounded behind us and we turned to see another truck, approaching from the left. It was flying green banners.
Allah hu Akbar! was the chant.
We all glanced back at the orange truck, and then back to the green. It was clear that the trucks were going to pass one another pretty close to where we were standing, in the middle of the road.
‘Okay,’ Dominic said calmly, putting the motorcycle on the side-stand. ‘Hail Mary, full of grace.’
‘Narayani,’ Mahan muttered, also praying to the feminine Divine.
I stood together with the cops. We looked left and right at the approaching trucks, which were slowing down to a crawling pace.
Mahan, the cop who’d manned the wide intersection alone, had a police radio and a bamboo stick. I looked at him, and he caught my eye.
‘All is okay,’ he said. ‘Don’t take tension. Sir is there with us.’
‘And sir has us,’ I said in Marathi.
‘True!’ Mahan replied in Marathi. ‘Do you like country liquor?’
‘Nobody does,’ I laughed, and he laughed with me.
The drivers had decided to test their skill, passing one another as closely as they could. Truck-cabin helpers tilted mirrors and pulled banners upright. Others leaned over the sides, shouting instructions to the drivers, and banging the wooden panels.
The trucks, elephants on turtles, crawled turtle-slow toward one another, closer than anything but faith would tolerate. Not far from us the trucks paused and stopped beside one another, singers for singers. There were at least a hundred chanting men in the back of each truck. Their faith was frenzy. Their sweat baptised them. For a few bars, their chants enfolded and merged, the words echoing the words, and then becoming orange praising green, and green praising orange, singing one God.
I was tense, and ready for anything, but there was no anger in the trucks. The young students had no eyes but for their brothers, and devotion, and they chanted without pause.
They were on a mission. Fire brigade units had been prevented by mobs from responding to fires in Hindu and Muslim neighbourhoods. The young men in the trucks were citizen witnesses, putting their lives in harm’s way to make sure that harm didn’t stop civilian authorities from doing their jobs.
Their mission was sacred work, saving communities, and was beyond provocation. The trucks eased away from one another in frantic chanting, but without a single frown of violent intent.
As the trucks pulled away, driven on by chanting, she was there, Karla, standing alone on the far side of the intersection. She had hitched a ride on one of the trucks.
She was dressed in black jeans, a sleeveless black hot-rod shirt, and a thin red coat with a hood pulled over her black hair. Her carry bag was over her shoulder. Her ankle-strap shoes were clipped to the bag. She was barefoot.
I watched her wave the green banner truck away, and I ran.
‘I’m so glad to see you!’ she said, as I hugged her. ‘I thought it would take me forever.’
‘Take what forever?’ I asked, holding her close.
‘Finding you,’ she said, streetlights on green queens. ‘I thought you might be stuck somewhere with unsavoury types. I came to rescue you.’
‘That’s funny. I thought you were stuck somewhere with savoury types, and I came to rescue you. Kiss me.’
She kissed me, and leaned back, looking at me again.
‘Have you been practising?’
‘Everything is practice, Karla.’
‘Fuck you, Shantaram. Holding my own lines against me. Shameful.’
‘That’s not all I’d like to hold against you.’
‘I might hold you to that,’ she laughed.
‘No, really. I don’t know what your plans are, or what you’ve gotta do, but until this all settles down, please come back with me, Karla. Just, you know, so you’re sure I’m safe.’
She laughed again.
‘You’re on. Lead the way.’
‘Come and meet Dominic. He’s a friend, and he’s been helping me.’
‘Where’s your bike?’
‘It’s a total lockdown,’ I said. ‘I’m double-up with Dominic. It’s the only way I could get around and keep looking for you.’
‘Are you really riding behind that traffic cop?’
She looked across the empty field of light at Mahan and Dominic.
‘He’s also our taxi home,’ I said, ‘if you don’t mind riding three-up.’
‘Long as I’m in the middle,’ she said, taking my arm.
‘How’d you hitch a ride on the truck?’
She stopped us in the deserted intersection before we reached Dominic. She grabbed the collars of my vest, and pulled me into another kiss.
When I came out of it she was a step away, and I was still leaning like there was a reason. The cops were whistling, singing and dancing.
I scooted back to them, and introduced her.
‘A pleasure, Miss Karla,’ Dominic said. ‘We have searched in places very high for you, and very low.’
Discreet, in India, means not interrupting you to tell you something indiscreet.
‘How nice, Dominic,’ Karla sultried. ‘I’d like to hear your report on those low places, whenever you’re not saving the city.’
We rode three-up. Karla had her back against my chest. She clung to me, her arms clutching at my vest to hold on, pulling us close. She put her head back on my chest, and closed her eyes. I would’ve felt better about it, if she didn’t have her legs around Dominic, and her feet on the tank of his motorcycle.
We passed through checkpoints as if charmed. Dominic only used one mantra to swerve around the police barricades. Don’t ask, he said in Marathi, as he passed through roadblocks with me on the back and Karla’s legs decorating the front.
None of the cops asked. None of them even blinked. You gotta like cops, a wise con once said to me. They think like us, act like us, and fight like us. They’re outlaws who sold out to rich people, but the outlaw is still in there.
Dominic dropped us at the lane behind the hotel.
br /> ‘Thanks, Dominic,’ Karla said, placing her hand over her heart. ‘Nice ride.’
I gave him all the cash I had in my pocket. It was mostly US dollars, but there was an emergency mix of other stuff I’d carried for contingencies. It was about twenty thousand dollars. That sum passed through my hands every other day, but it was a lot of money to a man who lived on fifty dollars a month. It was enough to buy a one-room house, which was his dream, because the cop saving the city during the lockdown, like too many of them, lived in threadbare barracks.
‘This is too much,’ he frowned, and I realised that I’d insulted him.
‘It’s all I’ve got in my pockets, Dominic,’ I said, pressing him to take it. ‘If I had more, I’d give it to you. I’m so happy, man. I owe you on this. Call me, if you ever need me, okay?’
‘Thanks, Lin,’ he said, stuffing the money into his shirt, his eyes wondering how fast he could rush home, after his duty rounds, to tell his wife.
He rode away, and Karla started into the arched lane, but I stopped her.
‘Whoa,’ I said, holding her elbow. ‘Madame Zhou has a habit of popping out of these shadows.’
Karla glanced at the new day, painting muddy grey horizons around the buildings.
‘I don’t think she comes out in daylight,’ Karla said, striding ahead. ‘It’s good for her skin.’
We climbed the stairs to the blocked door on our floor.
‘What’s the password?’ Jaswant called out.
‘Ridiculousness,’ I shouted back.
‘What are you, fucking psychic, man?’ he replied, with no sign of the barricade moving. ‘How can you know that?’
‘Open the door, Jaswant. I’ve got an infected girl, here.’
‘Infected?’
‘Shift . . . the barricade . . . and open . . . the door!’
‘Baba, you have absolutely no sense of play,’ he said, shoving the artwork barricade aside.
He opened the door a crack, and Karla slipped through.
‘You don’t look infected at all, Miss Karla,’ Jaswant gushed. ‘You look radiant.’
‘Thank you, Jaswant,’ Karla said. ‘Did you stock up, for this catastrophe, by any chance?’
‘You know us Sikhs, ma’am,’ Jaswant said, twirling the threads of his beard.