“It will take us all night if you drive,” he says.
He parks outside a dilapidated concrete market and we go inside to buy liquor. Some twenty men are jammed together against the counter, waving tattered banknotes in the air. It is already late, the store is about to close, and more men are hastening down the steps. It’s winter, so most of them wear woollen hats. The liquor store is the only one still open: long, dirty corridors of shuttered shops stretch away in every direction.
There are used condoms discarded all around. This city has numberless people without homes, and so many more who cannot use the homes they have for sex. I’ve never been anywhere where the streets are so filled with post-coital detritus.
We emerge with a bottle each of rum and vodka, and stop outside to buy Coke. Anurag then drives us to Nehru Park, a large expanse in the diplomatic enclave which, by this time, is shut. We climb over the fence and follow the paths, which are shadowy and mysterious under the trees and the full moon overhead.
“Before I gave up eating meat,” says Anurag, “I used to buy chicken kebabs and bring them here to eat in the middle of the night. With my vodka.”
“On your own?”
“Yes. Sometimes the cops used to come and make problems. But the watchman liked me and he would keep them away.”
He leads us to his favourite bench. We lay our bottles and plastic cups out on it. It’s freezing cold, and I hug myself as I sit down.
The watchman hears us and comes out of his shack. He looks about seventy years old and walks with a stick. He is blind drunk. He’s happy to see Anurag and asks if we need an extra chair. We decline.
“I’ll come for a drink later,” says the watchman, slurring. He shuffles back to the shack. Anurag pours rum.
“I used to bring whisky and give it to him. He needs drink. He has to patrol the park all night, and if he doesn’t have a drink he gets sick. People used to beat him up but I knew someone in the police here and complained. Now it’s fine.”
The watchman emerges again, struggling with a chair, which he sets down next to us.
“I’m not so crazy about restaurants,” Anurag says. “I’m more comfortable out here. There’s a beautiful dog here who comes to see me. Black and white. I don’t know where he is tonight. Back when I used to have money, I used to come every night and feed him chicken. It used to make me feel better when I had too many problems. Family, money, girlfriend.”
Anurag doesn’t have much money anymore. He lives to a great extent off his father, who earns rent from a couple of floors of the building where they live. He used to run a small garment factory, but his business partner left and the business fell through. And he’s not interested anymore in the drudgery of running a business like that. He is not looking for a permanent job or a business to build. He wants to get very rich all in one go. So he has become one of the many young men in Delhi hustling for a share of political money.
“You have to match high-value black money holders — politicians who have say 50,000 crore rupees [$10 billion] in black money — with legitimate businesses which are authorised by the Reserve Bank of India to absorb very large amounts of cash. The big real-estate companies, the resort developers, the diamond merchants. When the deal is done, the politician transfers his money to those companies. Some is delivered to the bank, some is sunk into property. They can’t make bank deposits of more than their cash limit, which for big companies is 700 crores [$140 million] per day.
“When they receive the cash, they have six hours to count it. Then they transfer white money to the black money party. They show this money as an unsecured loan. Whenever the newspapers investigate politicians’ accounts, you’ll see they are full of unsecured loans from property companies.
“Moving that kind of cash is a big physical operation. It’s stored in warehouses and to move it you need a truck. When one of those trucks starts moving through Delhi, everyone knows about it. The police take a cut of the money and they guard it all along the route. They give the truck driver a code, which he can give to any policeman and they will let him pass. Delhi isn’t safe because there are always opposition politicians who are trying to expose this money. Mumbai is much safer. I’m not going to do this again. But this is one of those times when I can earn a lot of money in one go, and I have to try it.
“All the politicians are bringing their black money back now. There is a huge conversion of black to white. This is going to be beautiful for India because it will all be invested here and will change everything. In the next ten years, India is going to fuck everywhere. Until now we’ve been funding Swiss citizens’ old age with our money. Now it’s going to come home. Billions of dollars will flow into the country and we will reap the benefit of our corrupt politicians. You can say it’s God’s will. God is recycling this money. People talk about China, but China can never beat India because our politicians have been corrupt for years and years. Their money is building an empire that will rule the world.
“The black money business isn’t my only one. I have another business too: I’m working for a company owned by someone in the Gandhi family, who offers big loans to companies so he can bring back the money he has parked in Swiss accounts. Right now I’m working on a loan to a Gujarati businessman. Very big guy. He needs 15 lakh crores to expand his business and I’m trying to organise it for him.”
He rifles in his bag and pulls out a folder filled with letters between him and a business conglomerate in Gujarat. He hands them to me for my inspection.
“I’m meeting them soon to get the papers signed.”
I like Anurag but he is unpolished and incoherent, and I find it difficult to imagine him being admitted to the inner circle of Indian deal-making. The letters look official but I have no idea what to make of them.
“Are you sure you mean 15 lakh crores?” I ask.
“Look at these people,” he says, showing me letterheads listing business subsidiaries. Mining, infrastructure, mass media, airlines, insurance, agriculture. “See how big they are.”
“And you’re saying the Gandhis are lending this money?”
“Obviously.”
I am trying to work out in my head how much this sum is. Anurag takes out his phone but there is no space on it to type that many zeroes. We finally compute it together: $300 billion.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Anurag.”
He steps back a little from his position.
“It’s not all in one go. It’s over many years. It’s for many different projects. Power, agriculture.”
“$300 billion. Come on!”
“It’s the Gandhis! You can’t imagine how big they are. Just think: any chief minister of Uttar Pradesh will end their five-year term with 50,000 crores [$10 billion] in their pocket. And now think what the Congress must have. This is the Congress man! They have been ruling since 1947! Do you know how much Indian business belongs to them? You just don’t get it. For them this kind of money is nothing.”
“The GDP of India is only five times that.”
“Black money is much more than the GDP! This is what I was telling you. Politicians are bringing their money back into India. They want to invest in India and they need good partners. Giving big loans to companies who are building the nation and who pay 24 per cent a year for black money is the best way.”
At that moment, someone calls him. He has a conversation about providing a loan for several hundred million dollars. Anurag talks confidently about how he will bring in one of India’s leading real-estate companies to finance part of this loan. His commission will be 1.5 per cent.
It feels like a planted call. I feel I am in a fictional world of his making.