After breakfast I headed for Reception.
'Where can I make a call to America from?' I asked the manager.
'You should go to a PCO, Sir,' he told me.
'What's that?'
'Public Call Office. There are plenty in the neighbourhood. Best place to make international calls. And they are open twentyfour hours.'
So I stepped into the street and found every second shop to be a PCO. There were more phone booths in Paharganj than strip clubs in Houston. I entered the booth closest to the guesthouse and dialled Mom's number. I sure was glad to hear her voice.
'Larry, when are you bringing my beautiful daughter-in-law home?' she asked, all excited. 'And don't forget to send me the wedding photos.'
I had called to tell her there wouldn't be no wedding, but suddenly I didn't have the heart to tell her the truth. 'I won't forget, Mom. Everything is fine,' I mumbled and hung up.
As soon as the market opened, I looked for a travel agent to book my return flight. Luckily, Lucky Travel and Tours was just across the road, in an office complex full of tiny shops. The owner was a friendly man who examined my ticket carefully and spent a lot of time punching keys on his computer screen. 'Sorry, Mr Page,' he shook his head, 'your ticket is of the cheapest category and there is no seat available on any flight. As you know, this is peak tourist season. The earliest I can get you a confirmed seat to Chicago is 24 November.'
'But that's a long way off,' I cried. 'I want to return right now, today if possible.'
'In that case you will have to buy a new one-way ticket. I can arrange one for you immediately. We have a special offer on Tajikistan Airways. Delhi–Dushanbe–New York will cost you just thirty thousand rupees.'
I checked my wallet. 'I've only got thirteen grand.'
'Sorry, then you will have to wait for 24 November. Till then enjoy our country.'
I stepped out of the travel agency feeling madder than a hornet. That's when I came across a nameplate which said 'Shylock Detective Agency. Specialists in matrimonials.' My eyes lit up. A PI was just the man I needed.
I knocked on the door and the sign almost fell off. I tried to tack it back and the door creaked open.
I stepped into a room which looked like it had been hit by a twister. There were cardboard boxes lying around and various things scattered on the floor – some framed pictures, file boxes, a big pile of newspapers, even a hammer and a couple of screwdrivers. The walls looked like they hadn't been painted in years and the room smelt like someone had been pissing in it.
There was a cloud of smoke in the room and for a moment I feared it was on fire. 'Come in, come in, my friend,' a voice announced.
I approached the voice. The clouds parted and I discovered an oldish-looking Indian guy in a tweed jacket and a brown cap sitting behind a wooden desk. With one hand he was busy trying to take dirt out of his ear and with the other he was smoking a pipe.
As soon as he saw me, he dumped the cotton bud, dusted his jacket and stood up. 'Welcome to the Sherlock Detective Agency. I am K. P. Gupta, the owner. What can I do for you?'
'Can you find someone for me?' I asked.
'Elementary, my dear Watson,' he said and puffed on his pipe.
'Page.'
'What?'
'The name's not Watson. It is Larry Page.'
'Oh yes, of course.' He took another puff on his pipe. 'Well, who is this person you want me to find, Mr Larry?'
'Are you moving from here?' I pointed at the stack of boxes.
'Well, this place isn't exactly Baker Street. And the idiots here don't know enough English even to write the name of my agency correctly. But don't worry, I'm not going anywhere. We are merely redecorating. Why don't you take a seat?'
I sat down on a stringy chair which looked so weak I was worried it might collapse at any minute.
'I was wondering if you could find the girl who sent me these pictures,' I said and handed him the brown folder.
He did a quick scan and frowned. 'But this is our famous actress Shabnam Saxena. Why do you need to find her?'
So I explained the whole story of my friendship with Sapna Singh and the reason for my trip to India.
'Tch-tch,' he said, shaking his head. 'This girl Sapna has really duped you, Mr Larry. What do you want me to do?'
'I want you to find her. Before returning to the States I want to meet her just once. Can you locate her for me?'
'Of course. I can even locate Osama bin Laden if the government asks me. Do you have any letters written by this girl?'
'Yes.' I took out a fat bunch of letters from my bag. 'I can give you her address, but I'm afraid I cannot show the letters to you. They are kind of private.'
'And I am a private investigator.' He grinned and snatched them from my hand. 'Hmmm,' he said as he read the first few letters. 'A Delhi PO box has been used. Very clever. But not cleverer than me. Mr Larry, consider your work done. Within a few days I shall have the full details of this girl. Of course, it will cost you.'
'How much?'
'My normal rate is ten thousand rupees, but given that you are a guest in our country, I'll give you a fifty per cent discount. So let's say five thousand rupees. I need half in advance and half when I finish the investigation.'
I took out my wallet and counted out 2,500 rupees.
'Good,' he nodded, and sent another cloud of smoke out of his mouth. 'Come back on Monday 8 October.'
I returned to the guesthouse, first checking to see if that nasty cow was around. Today she was sitting in the middle of the road like a traffic island, with a garland of fresh marigolds draped around her neck. Cars and scooters honked at her, cyclists cursed her, but she sat there like a queen, chewing a plastic bag. I shook my head in despair at this country where cows were treated like goddesses. Back home she'd already have become steak.
Once inside the guesthouse, I headed for the TV lounge. There was only one other guy in the room, sitting in an armchair, with a cushion in his lap. He was fair, with brown eyes and a wispy beard.
The TV set was tuned to CNN. The screen showed rubble in some street and then people lying in hospital all covered in blood and bandages.
'What happened?' I asked the guy.
'Another suicide bombing in Baghdad. Seventy people killed,' he replied tersely. 'You are Larry Page from America, aren't you?'
'Yeah,' I nodded. 'How did you know?'
'I saw your name in the hotel register.'
'And who might you be?'
'I am Bilal Beg, from Kashmir.'
I had no idea where Kashmir was, but I nodded my head again.
'Tell me, Mr Page, why doesn't your country just quit Iraq?' Bilal demanded suddenly.
'I dunno. Isn't it because we need to get that guy Saddam or something?'
'But Saddam has already been hanged!'
'Oh really? Sorry, I haven't watched CNN for, like, a year.'
He looked at me as if I had stolen his wallet and walked out of the room.
That evening I made the mistake of eating out at a roadside restaurant. The food was mind-blowingly hot, some kind of flatbread filled with potatoes and pickle that went to work on my stomach straight away. As soon as I returned to the guesthouse, I had to rush to the john.
The whole of Friday and Saturday I spent in my room, with the worst stomach ache of my life. I felt like ten pounds of shit in a five-pound bag. The only person who came to look me up was Bilal. He even gave me some kind of green syrup which helped me recover. By Sunday morning, I was raring to go out, having been cooped up with the runs for the last two days.
The streets of Paharganj were quieter on Sunday. Even the rickshaw-wallahs who normally started plying their glorified cycles by seven a.m. seemed to be taking a break. Two of them were sleeping with their feet propped up on the handlebars. The girls were out again, busy filling their plastic bottles and buckets from the municipal tap.
Most of the shops were closed today, but the little roadside restaurants were open. One sold fried omel
ettes wrapped in two slices of bread. Another was making pretzel-shaped Indian sweets which were fried in a vast vat of boiling oil, then dumped into another pot containing a sugary syrup. People huddled around stoves which were furiously boiling tea.
For some reason, Indians preferred doing things out in the open. I saw open-air hair-cutting saloons, where barbers lathered and scraped customers in full public view, and tailoring shops, consisting of a tailor sitting on the pavement busy working his sewing machine. There were even people who cleaned your ears on the side of the road. I saw an old man in dirty clothes busy poking inside a customer's ear with a long, pointy thing. It was enough to give me an earache.
There was a man selling DVDs on a cart. I picked up some fabulous bargains from him – Spiderman 3, Batman 4 and Rocky 5 for the equivalent of fifty cents a piece!
Wandering further south, I reached a busy fruit market. Women sat on tattered burlap mats with mounds of tomatoes and onions, lemons and ladies' fingers, and tried to out-shout each other. 'Tomatoes twenty rupees a kilo! . . . Lemons five for two! . . . My potatoes are the best!' They weighed the vegetables in deformed copper scales with black iron kilogram weights and put the money under the burlap mats. Suddenly, something flicked my face. I turned around and saw that nasty cow staring at me. Before she could make her move, I began to run. Ten minutes later, I found myself near New Delhi railway station.
The station was another world. The poverty of India hit me like a hammer. I saw entire families living on pavements inside makeshift tents made of plastic sheeting. And there were some who didn't even have that. One man lay stretched out in the middle of the road, like a drunk outside a bar. Another sat on the pavement, naked as a jay bird, his body caked in mud, scratching his chest with his nails.
A haggard-looking woman approached me, wearing a green sari with a yellow blouse. She was as thin as a bar of soap after a hard day's washing and her hair looked like she had combed it with an egg beater. She held up a skinny little boy who looked like he hadn't eaten in a year, all bones and hollow eyes. The woman didn't say anything, just cupped her hands and made a motion from her stomach to her mouth. It was enough for me to take out my wallet and give her five hundred rupees.
No sooner had I done this than I was surrounded by an army of beggars. They zeroed in on me like those dead guys in Night of the Zombies. There were limbless beggars and eyeless ones, beggars who pushed themselves on skateboards and those who walked on their hands. Like the fruit vendors displaying oranges and apples, they showed me their open wounds and pus-filled sores, their mangled limbs and deformed backs, and held out tin begging bowls as crooked as their bodies. It was impossible to proceed any further. I ran back to the hotel, locked myself in my room and buried my face in the pillow.
In just three days, Delhi had broken my heart, blown my mind, and blasted my intestines.
The PI was waiting for me on Monday, dressed in exactly the same clothes, but today he'd ditched the pipe. Most of the boxes had been removed, making the room seem as empty as a church on Monday morning.
'True to my promise, I have found the girl who sent you the letters,' Mr Gupta announced as soon as I sat down.
'Who is it?' I asked eagerly.
'It will come as a surprise to you, but those letters were written by none other than Shabnam Saxena.'
'You mean that actress?'
'Exactly.'
'How do you know? Can you be sure?'
'Haven't you noticed how she uses her initials – S and S – in her fake name too?'
'I'll be dipped! It never struck me.'
'But to a trained investigator like me, the pattern was apparent immediately. Nevertheless, to be doubly sure I also compared her handwriting with the handwriting in the letters you were sent. It's a perfect match.'
'But how did you get hold of her handwriting?'
He laughed. 'We Indians are very advanced. We have built atom bombs which your CIA couldn't even find. So we have very superior databases, including the handwriting of each and every Indian who knows how to read and write. I am assuring you, Mr Larry, the author of these letters is Shabnam Saxena.'
'Then why didn't she come to meet me at the airport?'
'Now that is a more difficult question. I think it is best that you ask her yourself.'
'But—'
'I know what you are thinking. You are wondering why would a famous actress want to be friends with an ordinary American. Right?'
'Yeah. Why?'
'Because love conquers all, Mr Larry. You will understand this when I tell you Shabnam's story. She was a small-town girl with big-city ambitions. She was born and brought up in Azamgarh, a small town in north India famous for its gangsters. Her upbringing was strictly middle class. Her father was a bank clerk, her mother a primary-school teacher. She was the middle one amongst three sisters, and the prettiest. The constant refrain she heard from her parents was weeping over their misfortune to be saddled with three girls. They fretted about how to marry off their daughters. Where to get the money for their dowries from. Shabnam studied till Grade 12 in the local girls' college and then went to Lucknow University for her graduation in Philosophy honours.
'When she returned to Azamgarh after her BA she found the town sordid and dirty. Her parents wanted to get her married, but the only marriage proposals seemed to come from the local dons. A particularly violent gangster, who flitted between Azamgarh and Dubai, began making unwelcome advances. She resisted and her parents started receiving death threats. She knew if she stayed in Azamgarh her destiny would inevitably become that of a gangster's moll, at best his wife. So one dark night, she took money from her father's purse and ran away to Mumbai to try her luck in the film industry. She struggled for a bit, but eventually got a break from producer Deepak Hirani. Now she has made it, but she does not want to acknowledge her roots. Her parents have disowned her. She maintains no contact with any of her relatives. She lives all alone in a Mumbai flat. What does this tell you?'
'What?'
'That she is hungry for love. L-O-V-E. That is why she wrote to you. She wants you to be her friend.'
'But then why didn't she use her real name? She must be filthy rich. Why did she take money from me?'
'Because she wants to test you. If you knew that she is a famous actress, you too might have ended up treating her like Indians do. Men lust after her. But she wants you to love and respect her, Mr Larry.'
'Yeah,' I nodded. 'It's starting to make sense.'
'And for all you know, she might be trying to give you a message. Maybe things are not fine with her. Maybe some mafia types are after her again. Therefore she is forced to use a fake identity. She is asking you for help.'
'Well sock my jaw! You may have struck upon something. So should I try to contact her myself ?'
'Why not? Maybe that's what she is waiting for. Now tell me, do you have a mobile?'
'No. I haven't bought one so far.'
'Then do so, because as a special favour for you, I've got you Shabnam Saxena's phone number. This is her very own personal mobile number which she doesn't give to anyone.' He dropped his voice to a whisper. 'People would kill for this information.'
'Really?'
'Yes. But this is extra. It will cost you another 2,500 rupees. So if you take it, you will need to pay me a total of five thousand now.'
It took me less than a minute to decide I wanted that number. I forked out five grand from my wallet. The PI counted the notes and put them in his coat pocket.
'Write it down,' he said, reading from a piece of paper. 'It is 98333 81234. Got it? I have got this number with great difficulty. So please use it with discretion.'
'Can I try it right now from a PCO?'
'You can, but you won't get her. I've found out that Shabnam has gone to Cape Town to shoot a film. The mobile will start working only when she returns to India. You can try the number after a week or so.' He knotted his hands. 'Will that be all?'
'Yeah. Thanks for all your help.'
I got up.
'Let me wish you the very best, Mr Larry,' the PI said and shook my hand vigorously. 'Your girlfriend is every Indian's dream girl. I feel very envious of you. Very envious indeed.'
I stepped out of his office, happy as a pig in manure. For the first time, things seemed to be looking up.
I bought an expensive Nokia that very afternoon, together with a pre-paid card. Then, sitting in my room, I dialled the number with shaking fingers. The call went through, but no one picked up the phone. After a while a recorded voice told me, 'The subscriber you have dialled is presently not available. Please try again later.'
Disappointed, I hung up. The PI was right. I would have to try later. A whole week later.
I carefully put the little slip of paper with Shabnam's number in my wallet, and that's when I discovered that the wallet was almost empty. I had only got a thousand rupees and two hundred dollars left. And I had to survive another forty days in this city. So that evening I turned to Bilal in the TV lounge.
'Is there anyone here who might require the services of a forklift driver, you reckon? I need to make some quick cash.'
'You don't need to drive forklifts in India. You can do much better as an English teacher here,' he said. 'Let's find you a job.' He picked up a newspaper from the centre table and flipped through it. 'Here, this might be just the job for you.' He pointed out an advert in the 'Job Openings' section:
Wanted:Voice & Accent Trainers for a leading BPO. Job Requirement: Conduct refresher training on Phonetics, Grammar & Culture as and when needed. Complete daily tracking, including end-ofday course evaluations and trainee assessments. Qualifications: No prior experience or specialization needed. Good command of American English the only pre-requisite. Apply with resumé and references for immediate position.
The advertisement was as clear as mud to me. 'What the hell's a BPO?' I asked.
'Business Process Outsourcing. A fancy name for a call centre,' said Bilal. 'You should get the job easily. All you need to do is speak like an American.' He told me not to worry about the resumé and references, but just to go for the interview.
I spent the rest of the week waiting for the week to end. Every day I tried Shabnam's number no less than fifty times and every time I got the same recorded message. I finally lost my patience when I got the recorded message even after ten days. So I marched back to the Shylock Detective Agency and found the office locked and all boarded up. There was a printed notice fluttering on the door. It said 'Prime Office Space. For immediate rent/sale – Contact Navneet Properties 98333 45371.' I called up the number and was told that Mr Gupta had vacated his rented office and gone somewhere without any forwarding address.