Gurgaon.
Humanity crawls in this city.
It’s ten at night, and I am standing on a bridge over a busy intersection. Beneath me, thousands scurry to and fro—some going to work at the midnight hour, some returning home after slaving their souls for a pittance.
I look upon them and laugh.
The dust of the city enters through their noses and mouths and chokes them. Standing on top of the flyover, I take a deep breath and inhale a heady petrochemical cocktail.
I punish my lungs further by lighting up a cigarette.
Gurgaon.
The city hates me, and I hate her.
I have a sudden urge to throw myself over the bridge, but something inside me resists. It is the fear of dying all at once, temporarily winning over my daily demise—at my workplace, at my house, in my sleep, in my consciousness.
Maybe the excess alcohol has started showing its grip on me. It has been my sole companion, helping me survive the city.
I try to start my bike, but it won’t let me ride it. It shows its hatred towards me, like the city itself.
Somehow, I manage to chide it into taking me back home.
I get a nasty feeling as I enter.
I don’t wanna go inside.
The house haunts me. It belongs to this city. It won’t let me in.
Far north, the bridge is scarcely visible.
Inviting me to jump again.
I take my friend Peter Scott out of the cupboard and pour a double for myself.
There is much that I want to forget, and a lot that I want to remember again.
I quickly gulp the first peg, feeling a slight shudder as the drink slithers down my throat, leaving my taste buds tingling. I pour myself a second peg, which I plan to nurse for an hour or so. I fill the glass to the brim with ice cubes, light a cigarette and sit down in front of the TV to watch the newsreaders in their fake animation.
It is precisely ten o’clock when I hear the scream.
I’m not very fond of my nosy neighbours, but there’s something about screams that you can’t resist.
Half-conscious, half-awake, I linger towards the front door.
Nothing.
Had it been my imagination?
Had my friend Peter done me in?
I try not to think about being drunk. I convince myself that I am sane, that I have been in my senses all along.
I remember everything from the bridge to the house.
I remember the BMWs I passed on my way. I remember the curvy girls tagging along with some masked gentlemen.
They were all masked, and they were all alike.
Institutionalized.
They resembled me, except for the fact that they had female luck on their side.
I remember everything.
So I could not have been hallucinating.
There had been a scream.
And it had been a feminine one.
Then the peg in my hand calls my name.
Man! You oughtta be having me rather than your phantasmagorical hallucinations.
A warm breeze greets me as I open the door. I silently sip from my glass and look around, trying to locate where the scream came from.
The by-lane on which my small flat is located is empty.
Only the dust—the ubiquitous dust of Gurgaon—dances a macabre dance on the street.
I take a few steps outside and then attribute the sound to the drink fucking around with my head.
I have a sudden impulse to throw away the contents of my glass and watch them getting soaked up by the insatiable thirst of the ground beneath my feet.
I fight the impulse.
A chronic drunkard’s rule:
Never throw away good whisky.
I turn back, sit down and raise the volume of the TV to drown out the sounds inside my head.
It is my daily routine to fall asleep on the couch, wake up around 3 a.m., drag myself to bed, set an alarm for nine in the morning, and go to the office an hour later while plotting ways to physically hurt my boss.
Tonight, I am not given the privilege of an unbroken sleep till three.
An hour past midnight, I am awakened by a loud thumping on my door.
I try to ignore it until the thumping becomes pounding.
With a “Motherfucker” on my lips, I open the door.
Two masked men are standing there.
“Who are you and what do you want?” I ask irritably.
The masked men eye me silently.
Then they start pushing me inside the house.
“Madarchod! What is the meaning of this?”
I try to push them away, but one of them whips out a pistol.
“Search the house,” he tells his accomplice. “I am holding this bastard down.”
It takes the other guy no more than a couple of minutes to search my small place. He comes back and motions with his head that he has not found what he is looking for.
They slowly back out of my house with the gun still pointed at my head.
One of them puts a finger to his lips and draws his other arm across his neck.
I understand.
Not a word to anyone.
Or I am dead.
After they leave, I realise I am shaking like hell.
I quickly light a cigarette and puff away nervously, trying to calm myself.
I am on my third cigarette when I hear another knock on the door.
I think my friends have come back.
This time the thumping is small and measured, but that doesn’t necessarily mean whoever is outside doesn’t mean business.
I have a metal rod lying under my bed which I bought to hang a curtain but never really got around to using.
I grab the rod, hold it ready to strike and open the door.
A strikingly pretty girl is standing in front of me.
Long hair.
Dark skin.
A short T-shirt and denim hot pants.
She is sweating heavily and seems to be under severe duress.
“Save me,” she whispers.
And collapses into my arms.
She looks like the girl of my dreams.
She is going to prove to be a nightmare.
I wake up with a start, almost unaware of my surroundings.
It had been a bad nightmare.
One that was going to haunt me for some time.
I try to yawn, but my whole body is aching. I don’t remember when I passed out during the night.
Everything that happened was in my head.
It had to be.
I look at my watch.
11:00.
I am screwed.
I put my pants on and almost stumble over a body lying on my floor.
Damn!
It is the girl from my nightmare.
She is real.
Everything that happened inside my head was real.
Those two masked avengers.
The girl.
Everything.
But somehow I am unable to focus on the sequence of events from the night.
Panic gets the better of me.
I check the girl’s pulse.
She is alive.
All I can clearly remember is her entering my house and saying:
“Save me.”
It all feels like a script from Hitchcock’s diary.
Like some incomplete saga from the noir of Miller and Moore.
It simply cannot be real.
I shake the girl and she wakes like a corpse rising from a grave.
Her eyes are swollen. Maybe she has been sobbing all night.
Even in dire straits, she looks pretty.
And I have this stupid feeling that had she met me under different circumstances, we might have ended up making love.
But life always has the last laugh.
I curse myself for thinking about sex under such circumstances, a misery compounded by the fact that despite all my efforts, I have somehow remained a virgin.
That fact haunts me like my city.
My house.
My bike.
Thinking about my sexual state, I laugh a hollow laugh.
It is difficult to push sex completely out of my mind.
Her short T-shirt barely covers her chest, which rises and falls with every breath. It is a big distraction.
She has a flat stomach and a very cute belly button. Her legs, like the rest of her skin, are the colour of wild honey.
Then I notice scratches on them.
It looks like she has been involved in some kind of scuffle.
Perhaps she is the “thing” those masked men had been searching for.
“Do you smoke?”
I offer her my already-lit cigarette.
She nods lightly and reaches for it with trembling hands.
She fumbles.
The cigarette falls.
I can see tears forming at the corners of her eyes.
I gently place her head on my lap and hold the cigarette to her lips.
She takes a deep drag and exhales.
Her breathing becomes regular.
“Tell me,” I ask. “What happened?”
“They... they...”
“They what?”
“They... wanted to...”
She closes her eyes and begins crying.
I gently lower her head onto a pillow and drag a stool over to sit beside her.
She is in no condition to talk.
What worries me more is that the masked men might come looking for her again.
“Look, there are some people looking for you, right?”
She nods gingerly.
“They came here, and chances are they might come again. I’m going to hide you in this room.”
She sits upright with a jolt.
“What!”
“Don’t worry. You don’t need to be afraid of me. I’m going to lock the room from outside. You stay here and rest.”
It takes me a long, long time to convince her.
Eventually, I lock the room she is in and wait for my masked friends to show up again.
I keep the metal rod handy beside the door, switch on the TV and make myself another drink.
What the hell have I gotten myself into?
“Shit.”
I have just dropped the last cigarette I have on me.
Two, actually.
The other was smoked by the girl of my dreams.
Who is she?
Why did we have to meet under these circumstances?
And then I wonder whether, from all the scum this city has thrown at me, it has finally sent one gem my way.
Now comes decision time.
The nicotine in my blood is running low.
My fear of the Masked Bros. is hitting a new high.
Should I wait here until I go insane, or go downstairs and get myself some magic sticks to calm me down?
Calm, boy.
It’s just in your head.
It isn’t helping.
The need for a drag increases with every passing moment.
And almost an hour later, the Masked Bros. show up.
The loud banging on the door is enough to make my balls drop off.
I know I have no choice but to open the fucking door.
I recognise both of them from my last encounter—the masks hide their faces, but not their accents or their movements.
“Motherfucker! You have no idea what you’re playing at. Surrender the girl!”
I feel like succumbing to them.
Somehow, I manage to retain my composure.
“I have no idea what you are talking about, SIR.”
I don’t know why I call them sir.
Maybe because their accents remind me of my boss, who could easily match the brutality of these guys.
And the devil is always waiting around when you want him the least.
The phone on my table starts vibrating like mad.
Both men instantly become alert.
“If you say a word, it will be the last thing you ever do.”
It is my boss.
“I have to pick it up,” I say. “Or I’ll get fired.”
“Ha ha! If you pick it up, then this gun will fire!”
The two masked idiots laugh at their silly joke.
The phone stops ringing after a minute.
The guy without the gun walks over and fingers the lock on the bedroom door.
“This room wasn’t locked when we came here last night. Open it.”
“I don’t have the key. It’s my flatmate’s room. He came back, locked it and left.”
They seem satisfied with my answer.
“Listen, you motherfucker,” the gunman says. “There is this girl we are looking for. If you have any news of her and you are not telling us, we will fucking kill you. We are giving you an hour. We will come back. Don’t try to leave the house, because we will know. We will find you and give you a very sour death.”
After some random inspection, during which they tip over my coffee table and fling the cushions off my couch, they finally prepare to leave.
As soon as they walk out of the door, I take the metal rod in my hand and hide it behind my back.
“Wait!” I yell after them. “I’ve got something to show you.”
They casually walk back towards me, expecting nothing dangerous.
“What?”
I swing the metal rod and catch one of them across the nose.
“This, you son of a bitch!”
The first one goes down while the other reaches for his gun.
I strike his hand before he can pull it out.
After that, something takes over.
I keep hitting them alternately until both are on the floor, cowering beneath the blows.
I bend down, take the gun and scream:
“Saale madarchod! You think you can come into my house and threaten me? This is my house! My fucking house!”
I don’t know what possesses me.
I keep hitting them until there is blood.
Until they stop fighting back.
Until they are unconscious.
I am still shaking at what I have done.
Something inside my head has taken over.
I am not myself anymore.
I briefly reconsider my chances of having gone insane, which seem fairly high considering the two bleeding, almost-corpse-like avengers lying outside my door.
It feels like years ago that I was sitting on this same couch watching Wayne Rooney strike terror into City’s defence, almost on the verge of passing out from an overdose of alcohol.
My mind isn’t working at all.
Or maybe it is.
I decide to call my boss back.
One ring.
Two.
Three.
Six.
Seven.
HE won’t pick up now.
The bastard only calls when he wants to harass me.
Finally:
“Hello!!”
“Hello, sir! Sir, I’m pretty sick. Might not be able to come in today. I’m going to see a doctor in some time.”
“You could have informed me earlier, mate. This isn’t how you make a name in the industry. I guess you remember the stuff that needs to go to the client today.”
HE is scornful.
There is a natural hatred in his voice.
He belongs to the same species as the masked avengers. Maybe he is even more shrewd and deadly.
He certainly wouldn’t have fallen into my trap the way these two did.
“Sir! Had I been in a condition to inform you, I surely would have. You can hear that my voice is still shaky.”
“Anyway, bring a medical certificate when you come tomorrow. And I hope you are coming tomorrow. Enough of this business.”
I have a sudden urge to take the gun and kill my boss.
But even that would probably mean I was fired.
My ass has been on fire for as long as I can remember in that office, and somehow I still live with the additional threat of being fired every day.
The problem that started with a pretty girl banging on my door has now transformed into full-fledged mob shit, with two gunmen lying bloodied and unconscious at my doorstep.
The only thing that isn’t hurting my eyes is the blood.
I have never panicked at the sight of blood, which could probably be attributed to the thousands of chickens and lambs I have seen slaughtered for my food.
Still, it wouldn’t look very nice if the snobs around my house discovered that I had lately begun dealing with gangsters.
They might even attribute my new Volkswagen Polo to “other ways”.
I think about calling the police.
Then I try to imagine how I would explain anything that has happened in the last twenty-four hours.
Being drunk and doped up wouldn’t exactly strengthen my credibility.
And how the hell would I explain the girl?
I give up the idea.
Then I decide to tie the men up.
To my great horror, I can’t find a rope.
Not even a useful length of cloth.
Nothing.
As a safety measure—and based on my amazingly dumb decision-making—I hide the gun so that when they wake up, they cannot immediately shoot me.
Unable to find a rope, I consider shutting them in the same room as the girl.
Then reality comes crashing back.
These guys are searching for her.
They might gag her.
Hurt her.
Kill her.
So I ask the girl to come out and lock the two swollen-faced, bloodied gentlemen inside my so-called flatmate’s room.
Raha — Restricted Freedom
For the first time in this maddening rush of events, Raha and I get a chance to talk without the threat and intrusion of the world around us.
Raha.
At least now I know her name.
She looks dazed and unkempt, her clothes carrying the creases of sleep.
I find my thoughts wandering again, but jerk myself back to reality.
“Hey, do you want anything to eat? Let’s see what we have... scrambled eggs and Maggi.”
She smiles in acceptance.
It isn’t much of a choice, but my roommate and I regularly survive on this stuff.
To keep the conversation going, I start asking her those interview-type questions.
I guess my institutionalization has crept into my nonexistent personal life.
She politely answers without giving me much to continue with.
Another uncomfortable silence arrives.
This time I tell myself I will not succumb to my instincts of self-destruction.
So I begin with one of my favourite one-liners.
“Don’t you hate these uncomfortable silences?”
She gives a start.
“What?”
And that does it.
I don’t have the courage to repeat my killer line.
“Nothing! I was just wondering whether you’re a veggie or a carnivore.”
She giggles.
“Carnivore sounds like an animal. I’m not an animal, though I do eat flesh.”
And the giggle again.
The word flesh tries to carry me away into a world of love and pain—the game of love and pain—but I force myself to concentrate on the Maggi steaming in the saucepan.
I keep staring alternately at the saucepan and at her.
Seconds pass.
“Is that what you call an uncomfortable silence?”
I almost have the feeling that she winks at me.
I think of God.
And after that, nothing is easy.
I don’t know who starts it, but within moments we are kissing like two lost lovers.
And it isn’t the hollow kissing I have become so fond of during the course of my desperation to bed a girl.
I am a virgin.
That notion has haunted me since I moved to Gurgaon.
There is passion in her breath, but also vengeance—vengeance against time, perhaps, for not having been particularly kind to her lately.
I feel the hair at the back of my neck rising.
Maybe it is passion.
Maybe it is my inherent fear of making love—or even of getting close enough to do it.
Within moments, I am down to the bare minimum and she is stripping herself of her clothes.
Her body glows in the dim light of my room.
She looks like a goddess, and the smell of her skin is driving me mad.
Never before have I been this close to a woman covered in that mixture of sweat and scent.
And then she is naked.
It sends a shiver through me.
I can barely look at her directly.
This is the first time for me.
I may have watched a million porn flicks and done this a thousand times in my dreams, but suddenly I cannot make the next move.
Somehow, she senses it.
Now it is her game.
Her hands move over me, exploring me.
She desires me with her body and her senses.
It feels like being awakened from a dream.
She is all over me and still somehow playful.
My fear begins to disappear.
There is haste.
There is a moment of pain.
Then finally we are together, and for a while it feels as though two souls have somehow forgotten that they are separate.
Soon her breathing changes. Her body tightens around mine, sweat like pearls gathering across her skin, and when I finally let myself go, pleasure and panic seem to arrive together.
It is pleasure like I have never known.
Agony too.
But somehow, absurdly, it feels like love.
It has finally happened.
And suddenly I am overwhelmed by the sheer joy of love and life.
I feel like the character from Milan Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.
I want to shout:
“I’m Bobby Fischer! I’m Bobby Fischer!”
Like a grandmaster who has finally made the right moves at exactly the right time.
We lie there in each other’s arms, exhausted as though someone has made us run through a desert for hours.
She still looks like an angel.
For that brief moment, I can almost believe all the love in her heart is meant just for me.
We cuddle closer.
And then a burning smell creeps into the room.
The Maggi.
In our passionate spell of love, we have forgotten the fucking Maggi on the stove.
“This,” I announce dramatically while lighting another cigarette, “is what I call making the best Maggi of my life.”
I offer her the cigarette.
We share it in silence while the burnt Maggi stares accusingly at us.
We are hungry anyway, so we decide to finish it.
None of the plates is clean, so we eat straight from the pan. I place it on the coffee table with two forks.
As she eats, I can visibly see some strength returning to her.
After finishing, she lets out a long sigh and reclines on the bean bag.
“And now I think you deserve to know what I’m doing in your house in this state.”
“On the contrary, I’m quite used to half-naked girls turning up in the middle of the night while being chased by strange gun-toting gangsters.”
She laughs.
“I’m sorry... for bringing this load of trouble upon you.”
Then she grows serious.
“I don’t know where to start.”
“Start by telling me who those two madarchods locked in that room are. And why they were chasing you.”
“They are... they are just guards. I mean, the problem is much bigger than who they are. The person who is after me is very, very dangerous.”
Oh, great.
Just what I needed.
“So who is after you? And fucking why?”
“Have you heard of K. P. Yadav?”
My head reels.
K. P. Yadav is the biggest gangster-politician in Gurgaon. Notorious. There are loads of murder cases and God knows what else hanging over his head, but he remains untouched because of his political stronghold over the region.
“Is K. P. Yadav after you?”
“No.”
She looks at me.
“He is my father.”
The revelation is followed by a stretch of silence that slowly dies into the sound of wind hitting the windowpanes and surrendering.
I am stunned.
This is D-Day.
The moment of truth.
The realization spreads through me like a forest fire.
I have fucked the most dangerous girl in town.
“Why didn’t you tell me before? Damn! I am screwed. You’re K. P. Yadav’s daughter! He’s fucking going to kill me. He’ll call it an honour killing and no one will ever know I existed. Damn, he might even kill my family. He might kill everyone connected to me. He might even kill you because I made love to you. Fuck! No... what am I thinking?”
I am almost sobbing now.
Shrieking.
“So you ran away from home and he’s searching for you?”
“No. I ran away from rehab. My father sent those two sidekicks to abduct me and take me back home. I hated it there. They used to torture me. I was on the verge of breaking down. I would have killed myself if I hadn’t found this opportunity to escape.”
She looks directly into my eyes.
“You’ll keep me safe, won’t you?”
The innocence in her voice and the anguish in her eyes leave me without an answer.
If I keep her here, it will surely be curtains for me.
But somehow, I cannot let her go.
Two mobsters locked inside a room and a naked girl in my bed suddenly seem insignificant compared with this revelation.
I am completely confounded.
And then she kisses me.
It is more passionate than our love making.
Maybe she knows that the kiss is the only answer she can give me.
Maybe she knows that after telling me her father’s name, there are no sensible words left in the room.
K. P. Yadav.
The name sits between us like another person.
I gently push her away.
“Raha, listen to me. You cannot stay here.”
She looks at me without blinking.
“I have money.”
That is a lie.
“I mean, not a lot of money. But enough. I can arrange more. You can go somewhere. Bombay. Bangalore. Goa. Fuck, go to Chennai. Nobody voluntarily goes to Chennai; he’ll never find you there.”
She doesn’t laugh.
Bad sign.
“We can get you a ticket. Change your number. Don’t call anyone. Not your friends. Not your family. Not even me. I’ll give you my ATM card. I get my salary next week. Take whatever is there.”
She keeps looking at me.
“Raha, say something.”
“He will find me.”
“No, he won’t.”
“He will.”
“How?”
She smiles.
Not the smile of the girl who burnt Maggi while making love to a stranger.
It is the tired smile of somebody who has already tried every solution I am inventing.
“You think cities are big,” she says. “They are only big for people like you.”
“People like me?”
“People nobody is looking for.”
That hurts.
Maybe because it is true.
I light another cigarette.
“So what the fuck are you saying?”
“I’m saying I’m as good as dead wherever I go.”
She pauses.
“And now probably you are too.”
I look towards the closed bedroom door.
Two unconscious representatives of my newly acquired death sentence are lying inside.
My apartment suddenly looks very small.
“So that’s it?”
“What?”
“We sit here and wait for your father to kill us?”
“I didn’t ask you to save me.”
“Yes, you fucking did. Those were literally the first words you said to me.”
For the first time since mentioning her father, she laughs.
A tiny laugh.
But it is there.
“Okay,” she says. “I did.”
“Good. Then allow me to do my job.”
“And what exactly is your job?”
I think about it.
“My official job or this one?”
“Either.”
“I’m fairly useless at both.”
She laughs again.
And somehow, in a room containing two gangsters, one stolen gun, burnt Maggi, an empty bottle of Peter Scott and the daughter of the most dangerous man in Gurgaon, I feel strangely peaceful.
Maybe insanity does not announce itself.
Maybe it just arrives as peace.
We talk for hours.
Really talk.
Not the interview questions I had been asking her earlier. Not where she studied, what music she liked, or whether she was a carnivore.
She tells me about her father.
People call him Yadav Saab.
Men twice his age bend slightly when speaking to him. Policemen return his calls. Builders visit their house at night. Politicians visit through another gate.
There are always men outside.
Outside their house.
Outside her school.
Outside restaurants.
Outside her bedroom whenever her father decides she has become “difficult”.
She has tried running before.
Once.
They found her.
She doesn’t tell me what happened afterwards.
She doesn’t need to.
“Restricted freedom,” I say.
“What?”
“Raha. Your name means freedom, doesn’t it?”
She nods.
“Restricted Freedom. That’s you.”
She stares at me.
“And what are you?”
I take a drag.
“Unrestricted captivity.”
She smiles.
I don’t.
Because I have accidentally told the truth.
For years I have blamed Gurgaon.
My office.
My boss.
My flat.
My bike.
My loneliness.
The fucking dust.
I have every freedom in the world and have somehow constructed a prison out of all of it.
She has lived inside a prison constructed by somebody else.
Perhaps that is why we met.
Two prisoners.
Only the architects are different.
By evening, I have constructed the most pathetic escape plan in the history of mankind.
Some cash.
My ATM card.
A change of clothes.
And one important condition.
Once she leaves, she never contacts me again.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“How will I know you’re okay?”
“You won’t.”
“How will you know I’m okay?”
“I won’t.”
She stares at me.
“That’s stupid.”
“No. That’s the only intelligent thing I have done since you knocked on my door.”
Slowly, a thought begins forming.
Not exactly a plan.
More like an understanding.
The reason Yadav can find Raha is that Raha always leaves something behind.
A friend.
A telephone.
A destination.
A person who knows something.
This time there will be none.
Except me.
Nobody else has seen her here.
Nobody else knows what she has told me.
Nobody else will know what I am about to do.
The road from Raha to the rest of the world ends inside my head.
And suddenly that frightens me less than it should.
I give her everything I can.
Not enough to buy a new life.
But perhaps enough to buy distance.
She looks at the money and then at me.
“What will you do?”
“Get more.”
“With what?”
“My remarkable corporate career.”
“You hate your job.”
“I hate poverty more.”
She smiles.
Then she becomes serious.
“You should come.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
Because men know my face.
Because Yadav will look for me.
Because two disappearing people make a trail while one disappearing girl might eventually become a ghost.
But mostly because somebody has to remain behind.
I don’t tell her that.
Instead, I say:
“Because somebody has to go to the office tomorrow.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“Yes.”
She kisses me.
And this time we do not make love.
There are moments when nakedness would only make things less intimate.
We simply lie there.
Her head on my chest.
My fingers in her hair.
For the first time in years, I wish time would stop.
Usually, I have only wished it would move faster.
She leaves before dawn.
I watch her walk away from the window.
She never turns around.
I am glad.
Had she turned around, perhaps I would have followed her.
I stand there long after she disappears.
Then I go inside.
I remove every trace of her that I can find.
Not because I am brave.
Because I am terrified.
There is a difference.
Brave men expect to survive their courage.
Terrified men merely do what fear demands.
By sunrise, there is nothing in my flat that can tell anybody where Raha has gone.
There is only me.
And I know nothing.
That is the sentence I begin practising.
I know nothing.
I say it while brushing my teeth.
“I know nothing.”
While making coffee.
“I know nothing.”
While smoking.
“I know nothing.”
Eventually, I start laughing.
Maybe this is what madness looks like after all.
They come that evening.
Not two this time.
Many.
Nobody wears a mask.
There is no reason anymore.
The door opens before I can reach it.
And then I see him.
K. P. Yadav.
I had imagined somebody enormous.
He isn’t.
Power always looks larger from a distance.
He looks like somebody’s father.
That somehow makes him more frightening.
He sits on my couch without asking.
The same couch where I have passed out every night for months.
The same couch from which I have watched football.
The same couch beside which Raha slept.
He looks around the room.
Then at me.
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
He nods to one of the men.
The first blow surprises me more than it hurts.
“Where is my daughter?”
“I don’t know.”
The second hurts more.
The third considerably more.
After that, I stop counting.
Pain is strange.
For years I have been frightened of it.
Emotional pain.
Physical pain.
Professional pain.
The pain of rejection.
The pain of loneliness.
The pain of waking up.
The pain of going to the office.
I have spent an extraordinary amount of my life arranging things so that pain remains slightly outside the door.
Now it is everywhere.
And somehow it isn’t frightening anymore.
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know.”
A kick.
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
Another.
“You helped her.”
“I don’t know.”
“You fucked my daughter.”
That one makes me smile.
Wrong response.
Something crashes into my face.
The room disappears for a few seconds.
When it returns, Yadav is standing over me.
“Where is Raha?”
I look at him.
And suddenly I understand the beauty of the situation.
He needs me alive.
I need myself dead.
For the first time since meeting him, I have the advantage.
Not because I am stronger.
Not because I am cleverer.
Because there is something he desperately wants from me, and it exists nowhere except inside my head.
Every blow intended to bring him closer to Raha is actually taking her further away.
That thought makes the pain almost bearable.
Almost.
Hours may pass.
Or minutes.
Time has stopped being useful.
At some point I can no longer stand.
At some point I can no longer sit.
They keep asking.
I keep disappointing them.
Sometimes I scream.
Sometimes I beg them to stop.
I am not going to pretend I die bravely.
I am not brave.
I cry.
I curse.
I call them motherfuckers.
Once, I think I call for my mother.
And several times I almost tell them something simply so that the pain will stop.
But then there is a problem.
There is nothing to tell.
That is the brilliance of it.
I genuinely don’t know where Raha is anymore.
She left.
After that she belonged to the world.
Not to Yadav.
Not even to me.
Especially not to me.
She is Raha.
Freedom.
Eventually Yadav understands.
Not where she is.
He understands that I really cannot give her back to him.
His questions become fewer.
The blows become harder.
He is no longer interrogating me.
He is punishing me.
Strangely, that makes me happy.
Interrogation means hope.
Punishment means he has none left.
Raha is safe.
Or at least as safe as anyone can ever be.
I laugh.
Yadav stares at me.
“What are you laughing at?”
I want to explain.
But breathing is becoming difficult, and explaining has always been one of my weaker professional competencies.
So I simply say:
“Nothing.”
He hits me himself.
The room slowly begins losing its edges.
The men become shadows.
Yadav becomes a voice.
The ceiling moves farther away.
And then, strangely, Raha is sitting beside me.
Not the Raha who knocked on my door.
Not frightened.
Not sweating.
Not bruised.
She looks beautiful.
Clean hair.
Bare feet.
That ridiculous smile.
“You look terrible,” she says.
“You should see the other guy.”
“There is no other guy.”
“Then I look terrible.”
She smiles.
I know she isn’t there.
That doesn’t make her any less real.
“Where are you?” I ask.
“You tell me.”
“I don’t know.”
“Good.”
I smile.
The greatest answer of my life.
I don’t know.
“Are you safe?”
She doesn’t answer.
Instead, she reaches for the cigarette between my fingers.
There isn’t actually a cigarette between my fingers.
But she takes it anyway.
“You smoke too much,” she says.
“You’re beginning to sound like my doctor.”
“And you drink too much.”
“You’re beginning to sound like everybody.”
She laughs.
God, I have missed that laugh.
Has it been hours?
Days?
Years?
“Did you make it?” I ask.
She looks at me.
And somehow I know.
Maybe I don’t know.
Maybe dying men are allowed one lie.
But somewhere beyond this room, beyond Gurgaon, beyond K. P. Yadav and his men, I can see her walking.
Not running.
Walking.
Nobody following.
Nobody waiting outside.
Nobody asking permission on her behalf.
Raha.
“Don’t you hate these uncomfortable silences?” I ask.
“What?”
I laugh.
She still doesn’t get it.
Even in my hallucinations my jokes fail.
Some things survive death.
“You know,” I tell her, “I used to stand on that bridge.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I know everything. I’m in your head, idiot.”
Fair point.
“I wanted to jump.”
“I know.”
“I thought dying would make me free.”
“And?”
I look around.
Yadav is somewhere in the room.
His men too.
Perhaps they are still hitting me.
My body has stopped reporting the details.
“And I was wrong.”
She moves closer.
“What is freedom then?”
I think about Gurgaon.
The office.
My boss.
Peter Scott.
My bike refusing to start.
The dust.
The bridge.
The house that hated me.
The girl who appeared at my door and asked me to save her.
All my life I have imagined freedom as the absence of attachment.
No responsibility.
No expectations.
Nobody who could hurt me.
Nobody I could lose.
What an idiot.
Maybe freedom isn’t having nothing left to lose.
Maybe freedom is finally choosing what is worth losing everything for.
“You,” I say.
“That’s a terrible answer.”
“I know.”
“You barely know me.”
“I know.”
“We burnt Maggi.”
“That was mostly your fault.”
“We fucked once.”
“I remember.”
“You were terrible.”
“Now I know you’re not real.”
She laughs.
And suddenly I am back on the bridge.
Ten at night.
Thousands of people crawling beneath me.
Dust entering their noses.
Cars screaming.
Gurgaon choking on itself.
I am standing on the edge again.
Except this time I don’t want to jump.
That is the funny part.
I want desperately to live.
I want another cigarette.
Another Manchester United match.
Another drink.
Another stupid appraisal.
Another burnt Maggi.
I want to know where Raha is.
I want to know what she will look like at thirty.
Forty.
Whether she will still smoke.
Whether she will remember the idiot from Gurgaon whose house she entered one night.
I want all of it.
Life.
The filthy, frustrating, disappointing fucking thing.
And precisely because I finally want it, I understand that I can let it go.
Not because death is freedom.
I had been wrong about that too.
Life is freedom.
And somewhere out there, Raha still has hers.
That is enough.
The bridge disappears.
So does Gurgaon.
Raha is still sitting beside me.
“Will I see you again?” I ask.
“No.”
At least my hallucinations are honest.
“Will you remember me?”
She smiles.
“That depends.”
“On?”
“Whether you finally learn how to make Maggi.”
I laugh.
Or perhaps I only imagine that I do.
Somewhere very far away, I hear Yadav asking me one final time:
“Where is my daughter?”
I look at Raha.
She stands.
Behind her there is no road.
No railway station.
No airport.
No city.
Nothing I can betray.
Nothing anybody can follow.
She begins walking away.
For once, I don’t follow.
And for once, nobody follows her either.
I close my eyes.
“I don’t know.”
And then I finally understand her name.
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