* * *
Smita looks at her watch. It shows the time as one-thirty am. 'Are you sure you want to carry on?'
I ask.
'Do we have a choice?' she replies. 'They will file formal charges against you by tomorrow.' She presses the 'Play' button again.
* * *
We are in yet another commercial break. Prem Kumar taps his desk. 'You know what, Mr Thomas, your luck has finally run out. I am ready to bet you that you cannot answer the next question. So prepare to use one of your Lifeboats.'
The signature tune begins.
Prem Kumar turns to me. 'We now move on to question number five for fifty thousand rupees.
This one pertains to the world of diplomacy. When a government declares a foreign diplomat persona non grata, what does it mean? Is it a) that the diplomat is to be honoured, b) that the diplomat's tenure should be extended, c) that the diplomat is grateful or d) that the diplomat is not acceptable? Have you understood the question, Mr Thomas?'
'Yes,' I reply.
'OK. Then let's have your reply. Remember, both Lifeboats are still available to you. You can get A Friendly Tip, or you can ask me for Half and Half and I will remove two wrong answers, leaving you with just two choices. What do you say?'
'I say D.'
'Excuse me?'
'I said D. The diplomat is not acceptable.'
'Is that a guess? Remember, you stand to lose the ten thousand rupees you've already won if you give the wrong answer. So if you want, you can quit right now.'
'I know the answer. It is D.'
There are gasps from the audience.
'Are you absolutely, one hundred per cent sure?'
'Yes.'
There is a crescendo of drums. The correct answer flashes.
'Absolutely, one hundred per cent correct! You have just won fifty thousand rupees!' declares Prem Kumar. The audience stands up and cheers. Prem Kumar wipes the sweat from his brow. 'I must say, this is remarkable,' he says out aloud. 'Tonight Mr Thomas really seems to be The Man Who Knows!'
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'Khallas. Finished,' I say, speaking in monosyllables. 'No more whisky. Bar closed now. Go home.'
'Noooo. Plizz don't say that. Ged me one m-more peeeg. Lasht one,' the customer pleads and holds out his empty glass. I look at my watch. It is twelve forty-five am. Technically, the bar does not close till one. With a grimace I pick up the bottle of Black Dog rum. 'Hundred rupees, please,' I demand. The man takes a crumpled note from his shirt pocket and I pour a carefully measured peg into his glass.
'Thang you, b-b-b-artender,' he says, takes a swig of the rum and crashes down on the table, shattering his glass on the floor, spilling the bottle of soda and overturning the bowl of mint chutney. Within seconds he will be fast asleep. Now I not only have to clear up the big mess he has created, but also call a taxi, help him to his feet and somehow send him home. And though I was smart enough to charge him for the drinks in advance, I can forget about getting any tip from this customer.
Perhaps I myself am to blame for getting into this situation. The customer was displaying all the tell-tale signs of crashing out any minute. But I thought he could stomach one last peg. As usual, I was wrong.
Even after two months at Jimmy's Bar and Restaurant, I am unable to assess accurately a drinker's capacity. I have, though, evolved a rough classification system for drunkards. Top of my list are the horses. These can hold as many as eight pegs without slurring their speech. Then come the asses, who start braying and babbling after just two or three, or become maudlin and sentimental and begin crying. Then come the dogs. The more they drink, the more they want to get into an argument or a fight. Some of them also get frisky with Rosie. Below them are the bears, who drink and then drift off to sleep. And at the bottom are the pigs. They are the ones who vomit after their last peg. This classification is not watertight. I have seen customers who start like horses but end up like pigs. And dogs who turn into bears. Mercifully, this customer has ended up a bear rather than a pig.
I get rid of the last drunkard and look at the clock on the wall. It is one-ten am. Ever since Rosie and her dad pushed off to Goa for a holiday, I have been returning to my cubby-hole of a house in Dharavi after midnight almost every night. This is partly my fault. If I had not told the manager that I knew how to mix drinks and measure whisky by the peg, that I could tell the difference between a Campari with Soda and a Bloody Mary, I wouldn't have been asked to officiate as the bartender in Alfred's absence.
Jimmy's Bar and Restaurant in Colaba has fading prints on the walls, mirrors behind the bar, sturdy wooden furniture, and the best menu in South Mumbai. Because the food is so good and the prices so cheap, it attracts customers from all walks of life. On any given day you can find a top-level executive nursing his drink at the bar next to a lowly factory worker. The manager insists that we strike up conversations with customers at the bar, because people drink more when they have company. Rosie's dad, the doddery bartender Alfred D'Souza, is adept at chatting up patrons. He knows most of the regulars by name and sits with them for hours, listening to their tales of woe and adding steadily to their liquor bill. Rosie herself is becoming quite an expert bar girl. She sits at the bar wearing a low-cut blouse and a tight skirt, occasionally bends down to display some cleavage and entices the customers into ordering expensive imported whisky instead of the cheap Indian brands. Sometimes, though, her antics land her in trouble with boorish customers who fancy her as a cheap lay. I then have to act as informal bouncer.
Mr Alfred D'Souza thinks there is something brewing between Rosie and me and watches me like a hawk whenever she is around. He is completely mistaken. Rosie is a sweet girl. She is short and bosomy. The way she tilts her head at me and occasionally winks, I feel she might be trying to give me a signal. But my brain is now incapable of receiving it. It is overloaded with memories of just one person: Nita. The doctors in Agra have said it will take at least four months for Nita to recover from her injuries. And I know Shyam will never allow me to meet her. That is why I have returned to Mumbai: to exorcise the ghosts of Agra, both of the living and of the dead. But I cannot escape my own history in this city. Memories of the past waylay me at every intersection. Shantaram, the failed astronomer, mocks me in the streets. Neelima Kumari, the actress, calls out to me on the local train. And Salim, my friend, looks down at me from every billboard. But I have taken a conscious decision not to meet Salim. I do not want him to get sucked up in the vortex of my crazy life and my crazy plans.
* * *
I live in a corner of Mumbai called Dharavi, in a cramped hundred-square-foot shack which has no natural light or ventilation, with a corrugated metal sheet serving as the roof over my head. It vibrates violently whenever a train passes overhead. There is no running water and no sanitation.
This is all I can afford. But I am not alone in Dharavi. There are a million people like me, packed in a two-hundredhectare triangle of swampy urban wasteland, where we live like animals and die like insects. Destitute migrants from all over the country jostle with each other for their own handful of sky in Asia's biggest slum. There are daily squabbles – over inches of space, over a bucket of water – which at times turn deadly. Dharavi's residents come from the dusty backwaters of Bihar and UP and Tamil Nadu and Gujarat. They came to Mumbai, the city of gold, with dreams in their hearts of striking it rich and living upper-middle-class lives. But that gold turned to lead a long time ago, leaving behind rusted hearts and gangrenous minds. Like my own.
Dharavi is not a place for the squeamish. Delhi's Juvenile Home diminished us, but Dharavi's grim landscape of urban squalor deadens and debases us. Its open drains teem with mosquitoes.