Hoshiyaar nodded with obsequious vigor and she turned, heading for the exit. Her boyfriend stared after her, perhaps surprised at her abrupt capitulation, threw an awkward smile at Hoshiyaar, and trotted off after her. She stalked past me behind my pillar and I got a whiff of her perfume, a scent of jasmine. A memory teased at the edges of my mind then drifted away, leaving only a feeling of warmth and softness. My throat began to ache.
“Tomorrow morning,” Hoshiyaar called after her, winking at me. He jerked his head approvingly at her backside. I swear I would have laid my life down for a piece of that world-class ass.
Walking back, Hoshiyaar thumped my shoulder. “At that price I’m willing to arrange delivery on the moon!” he laughed.
“You’re getting balls, chotey!” I grinned back. Until tonight I’d never interfered in the bargaining.
“Give me a little extra cut then—” I said, getting the words out before I lost my nerve.
“We’ll see,” was all Hoshiyaar replied. Still, it had been a good night.
When we got back to the waiting room, Hoshiyaar lay down again. “Get lost! I’ll see you in a few hours.”
“Chacha, why are you delivering at the hotel?”
Hoshiyaar shrugged. “That bitch was talking a bit too much. I just want to scare her a little — have some fun.”
Don’t ask me how but I knew he was lying. I stayed put, staring down at him.
He turned his back. “Okay, okay. This place is crawling with sisterfucking cops — that Inspector Balwant is always sniffing around so it’s safer to go to the hotel,” he proffered.
But I wasn’t convinced. He was definitely up to something.
“Chacha, I’m coming to the hotel with you,” I said. He pulled the blanket over his head and didn’t respond.
The sky was lightening all around me as I walked away from Hoshiyaar. The terminal was slowly stirring to life. I could hear the deep roar of cars on Mahatma Gandhi Road, all those people rushing to beat the early-morning traffic. Passengers were streaming in through the main gate, many of whom would want tea.
I went into a PCO booth and made a local call. Outside the sweepers began their futile cleaning, scraping their stiff brooms through the trash. Farther away, the earliest buses started up with a rumble.
Sethi’s food stall was already busy when I wandered over to pick up my tea caddy, my stomach gurgling at the hot smell of chole baturas frying.
A few hours later, at 8:30 a.m., Inspector Balwant turned up and parked his ample backside on the bench in front of Sethi’s. I had come back for a refill and was waiting for the cook to pour the boiling tea into my metal caddy.
The inspector was an extra-large man with a hairy paunch that flashed through the buttons on his khaki uniform. He was the seniormost of the policemen that swarmed all over ISBT. He liked to make surprise visits to the terminal and, although he never bothered me, it was obvious he didn’t like Hoshiyaar.
“A holy warrior meditating on money,” he had characterized Hoshiyaar last week. “Who knows if he is even really a Sikh or just pretending to be one? Though his look is a smart move, sant aur shaitan — saint and devil at the same time. Must be good for business, eh?”
I had never seen Hoshiyaar enter a gurdwara in the years I’d known him, but I didn’t give a damn. Anyway, I knew that the inspector was telling me that he knew what Hoshiyaar and I were up to — the cop wasn’t looking for answers. So I’d said nothing, just made myself scarce.
Still, Hoshiyaar and every other tout at ISBT knew Inspector Balwant was after bigger fish and couldn’t be bothered with our petty scrounging.
There was someone new with the cop today, a clean-shaven young man with glasses.
“Chole batura for my journalist friend here!” shouted the inspector. As if there was any other food choice. The cook rushed to comply, fishing the fried bread out of the huge kadai and artistically arranging raw onion rings and lemon slices on the plates.
“No, no, how can I? I already ate, sir...” the journalist demurred, but he wolfed the food down anyway, nodding with his mouth full, while the inspector held forth.
“As you can see, sir, this is the shithole of the world.” He waved his hand in a circle. A family passed the stall — a man and wife with bundles on their heads, two ragged children dragging after them. The man touched his hand to his head in a salaam as they moved past the inspector. “Ten thousand people rushing about every day — and my bosses expect me to find one or two criminals.” He shifted on the seat and his stomach jiggled on his thighs like an oversized baby.
“But sir, you caught Abdul Kadeer just recently. Then what about those fellows from the Tyagi gang your team stopped on the Chirag Delhi flyover?” A few months ago the inspector had walked up to a bearded man climbing into a bus near Jahanpanah forest and had drawn his gun on him. That’s where men go to fuck other men, and who knows what that guy was really up to, but the next day it was all over TV that Balwant had caught some most-wanted terrorist type.
“Aah! Yes — you remember that? Very good memory. Yes, sometimes God is with me.” The inspector looked pleased at the journalist’s chamchagiri. Recently the government had designated Balwant to some big-shot post in the antiterrorism task force. The papers had immediately dubbed him the Don of Delhi. Maybe the journalist was here because he was hoping the inspector would fall over a terrorist or two right then and there in front of his camera.
“Get going, fucker,” Sethi, who had appeared from nowhere, snarled at me. The inspector looked up from his plate.
As I picked up my full caddy and left I could feel his eyes following me.
The ISBT was roaring around me when I plunged back into the crowds. Dust rose in thick clouds and diesel fumes were everywhere. The place smelled of fried food — and nervousness. Everyone here was anxious to be gone, to be somewhere else. At least the ones who had somewhere else to go. As I passed, a flower seller I knew brandished her jasmine garlands in my face, teasing. Around me vendors shouted, babies cried, autorickshaws honked.
My mother had been a flower seller, Hoshiyaar said. I couldn’t recall her face, though sometimes if I concentrated her smell came back to me. She’d been killed in a hit-and-run accident near our slum. I was five years old and would have been doomed to begging in the streets if Hoshiyaar hadn’t taken me home, found me work at the stall, given me a life. He reminded me of his magnanimity often. On most days I believed him.
When my caddy was empty I went back to the stall. Inspector Balwant was still there declaiming to the journalist.
I had been out among the crowds five times already and I was tired. All I had eaten since last night was a slightly brown banana one of the vendors had given me. I slid to the ground and sat on my haunches.
The cook plunked another full caddy in front of me and I picked it up. Sethi would leave to check on his other business in an hour. I could go to Miss India’s hotel then. Without waiting for Hoshiyaar.
“Oy, chotey! Naam kya hai tera? Come here,” the inspector called out, waving his hand at me.
“Ji! Abhi aaya.” I went around to the bench, stood in front of him. “I’m Ramu,” I said. He knew my name. He’d asked me twice before. The inspector heaved himself to his feet. The journalist stood up too, and then at a word from the inspector walked off in the direction of the white Maruti Gypsy parked a short distance away.
“There’s something I want to ask you, Ramu — so don’t go anywhere,” he said. I wondered what he wanted with me — I was small fry, insignificant.