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 omelettes 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.'