Hoshiyaar turned away and picked up a jug and glass from the little table beside the bed. It took him a few tries but in the end he managed to pour himself some water without spilling it. He drank noisily. “Go down and get the manager,” he said after a while.
I went down to the manager. There was no one else around. There never was — this hotel was probably a front for some other operation.
“You have to come and see this,” I said, acting excited. “You can’t believe what she’s doing.” I took him back to the empty room next door to 5-B. He was bending over to look through the hole when Hoshiyaar came in. I thought he was going to offer him money to keep quiet but instead he simply snapped his neck. “It was either him or us,” Hoshiyaar said. I couldn’t talk — what was left to say now? Hoshiyaar was taking me somewhere I hadn’t been before, a place I didn’t want to inhabit. “Help me here,” he ordered, and I got hold of the manager’s arm and together we dragged him back to Miss India’s room.
That’s when I had my idea. “Shoot him with her gun,” I suggested. “When the cops come they’ll think they had a fight and he killed her.” I pulled cash out of the pillowcase, tore the plastic off, and scattered some bundles on the bed. The manager tried to rob her and she shot him — that was the story here. It would save the old man, I thought. Hoshiyaar put a pillow over the gun to muffle the shot but it still sounded like an explosion. I could feel myself beginning to shake. Deep inside, not anyplace where it showed.
When Hoshiyaar went to wash his hands in the bathroom, I took three bricks of cash and dropped them down the front of my pants. My shirt was many sizes too big and I figured he had been too rattled to count the money.
When he came back, Hoshiyaar reached into the pocket of his kurta, fished out a bus ticket, and gave it to me. He talked fast, panting a little. “Get out of the city. Wait for me in Shimla, check in at the Satyam Chaat stall once in a while — I’ll find you. I’ll get out of here in a few days — I’ll work as usual at the ISBT so no one gets suspicious.”
“Give me the money,” I said, pointing to the pillowcase. “You can’t be found with it.” He looked at me for a long time, his eyes hooded. I waited, testing him.
“Don’t worry about it — I’ll hide it somewhere and bring it with me to Shimla,” he replied finally.
I nodded, then swallowed. My throat felt tight, squeezed shut.
“What about him?” I asked, to change the subject, indicating the bathroom door. Poor Leather Jacket.
“I’ll take care of him,” he said.
Then he grabbed me by the arm and marched me toward a door at the other end of the room. It led to a tiny balcony.
“Leave from here so no one sees you exiting the building.”
At the door he hesitated, then went back to the bed and returned with some cash and handed it to me. It must’ve been a couple of thousand rupees.
“That should be enough till I get there.” He put out a hand and patted me on my cheek. His fingers were cold. “Don’t be afraid, son, I’ll be all right. We’ll leave Dilli — disappear forever. You and I — we can do business anywhere. I’ll phone Satyam — he’ll be waiting for you.” He pushed me through the doorway onto the balcony, then closed the thick wooden door behind me and latched it with a loud click.
Five stories below me was a gali filled with garbage. On the left side of the balcony, fat water pipes ran all the way to the ground. My heart jumped inside my chest as if it was trying to break free.
I took a deep breath and threw my flip-flops down before swinging my leg over the balcony ledge. My palms were wet and slipped on the pipe once or twice but I made it down okay.
When my feet touched the ground I collapsed and sat legs splayed out in the dirt of the alleyway for a few minutes, crying and shaking. I thought of us in Shimla, me doing what I always did, living the life Hoshiyaar planned, stepping on the stones he laid down. I stumbled to my feet and started running.
At the ISBT there were no busloads of policemen, just the usual chaos. I grabbed two plastic bags off a cart selling oranges. At another stall I wheedled a bar of soap from the owner, a Bihari guy I treated to free tea once in a while. Inside the bathroom of the waiting room I washed my face, hands, and neck, combed my hair in the mirror. I took Inspector Balwant’s note out of my pocket. On it he had printed his name and ANTITERRORISM TASK FORCE in spindly capitals. Hoshiyaar had taught me to read from the garish children’s books the vendors sold. I put the money and Inspector Balwant’s note in the bags, then walked into one of the stores near the terminal and bought some jeans, a long-sleeved white shirt, cheap dark glasses, and a pair of fake Nikes. After I put them on I looked like a new person — even Hoshiyaar would have trouble recognizing me. I threw away my shirt and shorts. Afterwards, I went into the Ritz Theatre and bought tickets for all the films and watched them one after the other, staring blankly at the screen until it was time for the bus to leave.
I looked out of the window at the busy street as the vehicle turned away from Kashmiri Gate. The monument itself was now behind grating, locked away by the government. There were a few foreigners around it, mouths and guidebooks open as they squinted up at its massive curved brick doorways. I had lived my whole life in the city yet had never gotten on a bus, never ventured beyond this little world. Now Delhi was spitting me out. As we raced over the quiet highways I couldn’t sleep. Miss India would have sat in the seat I was in, rested her cheek against the cool glass of my window. I imagined Hoshi-yaar a week from now leaving for Shimla. I would go to the Satyam Chaat stall and there he’d be waiting, smiling faintly, ready to kick-start our life together again.
Sometime in the middle of that night, the bus driver stopped on the outskirts of a small town to let passengers use the bathroom. I got off the bus, plastic bag in hand, and walked toward the blazing storefronts. There was a phone booth there and I told the operator I had never made a long-distance call and so he dialed the number on the paper in my hand. The inspector answered and I told him about the hotel and Hoshiyaar and the money he had taken and hung up before the cop could ask me a thing.
Next to the booth was a dhaba with a corrugated tin roof.
A man in an undershirt was rolling rotis and pressing them onto the walls of a tandoor. I asked him to wrap up an order of dal-roti and stood there beside the glowing drum, breathing in the scent of toasted flour.
(Years after I had made myself into another Ramu, I went into a library in a big city far from Delhi and dug through old newspapers until I found the one I wanted. There was a picture of Inspector Balwant, another of Hotel Anand Vihar.
It had been big news at the time because there was a woman involved. The couple had posed as tourists but the police had credible information that they were aiding and abetting terrorists from the northeast, one of the many separatist groups fighting for their piece of the homeland. The woman killed in the hotel room was beautiful, the writer noted. I searched hard but there was no mention of Hoshiyaar. Yet on the inside pages there was a fawning profile of Balwant as the “people’s cop” accompanied by a picture of him shaking hands with a tea boy — me. It set me trembling and I tell you I quit that library fast.)
When the man handed me my food, I asked and he told me — but I have forgotten — how many miles we were from Shimla.
The bathroom was a shed in the back of the building, set at the edge of sugarcane fields that stretched out into the distance. The moon was large and round in the sky and the little crooked trails that ran between the fields were full of light and shadow. I waited till the rest of the men had zipped up their flies and left. Then I stepped down into the dirt of the pathway in front of me and started walking without glancing back. Someone did come search for me and shouted my seat number a few times. I could see a glimmer of his shirt as he stood at the edge of the fields searching the darkness. But the cane was tall on both sides of the path and I stayed still. Finally he left and a few minutes later the bus started and drove off. After that it was just me. As for Hoshiyaar, I couldn’t give a fuck. Really.