Authors: Vikas Swarup
'Sorry, then you will have to wait for 24 November. Till then
enjoy our country.'
I stepped out of the travel agency feeling madder than a
hornet. That's when I came across a nameplate which said
'Shylock Detective Agency. Specialists in matrimonials.' My eyes
lit up. A PI was just the man I needed.
I knocked on the door and the sign almost fell off. I tried to
tack it back and the door creaked open.
I stepped into a room which looked like it had been hit by a
twister. There were cardboard boxes lying around and various
things scattered on the floor – some framed pictures, file boxes, a
big pile of newspapers, even a hammer and a couple of screwdrivers.
The walls looked like they hadn't been painted in years
and the room smelt like someone had been pissing in it.
There was a cloud of smoke in the room and for a moment I
feared it was on fire. 'Come in, come in, my friend,' a voice
announced.
I approached the voice. The clouds parted and I discovered an
oldish-looking Indian guy in a tweed jacket and a brown cap sitting
behind a wooden desk. With one hand he was busy trying to take dirt
out of his ear and with the other he was smoking a pipe.
As soon as he saw me, he dumped the cotton bud, dusted his
jacket and stood up. 'Welcome to the Sherlock Detective Agency.
I am K. P. Gupta, the owner. What can I do for you?'
'Can you find someone for me?' I asked.
'Elementary, my dear Watson,' he said and puffed on his pipe.
'Page.'
'What?'
'The name's not Watson. It is Larry Page.'
'Oh yes, of course.' He took another puff on his pipe. 'Well,
who is this person you want me to find, Mr Larry?'
'Are you moving from here?' I pointed at the stack of boxes.
'Well, this place isn't exactly Baker Street. And the idiots here
don't know enough English even to write the name of my agency
correctly. But don't worry, I'm not going anywhere. We are merely
redecorating. Why don't you take a seat?'
I sat down on a stringy chair which looked so weak I was
worried it might collapse at any minute.
'I was wondering if you could find the girl who sent me these
pictures,' I said and handed him the brown folder.
He did a quick scan and frowned. 'But this is our famous
actress Shabnam Saxena. Why do you need to find her?'
So I explained the whole story of my friendship with Sapna
Singh and the reason for my trip to India.
'Tch-tch,' he said, shaking his head. 'This girl Sapna has really
duped you, Mr Larry. What do you want me to do?'
'I want you to find her. Before returning to the States I want
to meet her just once. Can you locate her for me?'
'Of course. I can even locate Osama bin Laden if the government
asks me. Do you have any letters written by this girl?'
'Yes.' I took out a fat bunch of letters from my bag. 'I can give
you her address, but I'm afraid I cannot show the letters to you.
They are kind of private.'
'And I am a private investigator.' He grinned and snatched them
from my hand. 'Hmmm,' he said as he read the first few letters. 'A
Delhi PO box has been used. Very clever. But not cleverer than me.
Mr Larry, consider your work done. Within a few days I shall have
the full details of this girl. Of course, it will cost you.'
'How much?'
'My normal rate is ten thousand rupees, but given that you are
a guest in our country, I'll give you a fifty per cent discount. So
let's say five thousand rupees. I need half in advance and half
when I finish the investigation.'
I took out my wallet and counted out 2,500 rupees.
'Good,' he nodded, and sent another cloud of smoke out of his
mouth. 'Come back on Monday 8 October.'
I returned to the guesthouse, first checking to see if that nasty
cow was around. Today she was sitting in the middle of the road
like a traffic island, with a garland of fresh marigolds draped
around her neck. Cars and scooters honked at her, cyclists cursed
her, but she sat there like a queen, chewing a plastic bag. I shook
my head in despair at this country where cows were treated like
goddesses. Back home she'd already have become steak.
Once inside the guesthouse, I headed for the TV lounge. There
was only one other guy in the room, sitting in an armchair, with a
cushion in his lap. He was fair, with brown eyes and a wispy
beard.
The TV set was tuned to CNN. The screen showed rubble in
some street and then people lying in hospital all covered in blood
and bandages.
'What happened?' I asked the guy.
'Another suicide bombing in Baghdad. Seventy people killed,'
he replied tersely. 'You are Larry Page from America, aren't you?'
'Yeah,' I nodded. 'How did you know?'
'I saw your name in the hotel register.'
'And who might you be?'
'I am Bilal Beg, from Kashmir.'
I had no idea where Kashmir was, but I nodded my head again.
'Tell me, Mr Page, why doesn't your country just quit Iraq?'
Bilal demanded suddenly.
'I dunno. Isn't it because we need to get that guy Saddam or
something?'
'But Saddam has already been hanged!'
'Oh really? Sorry, I haven't watched CNN for, like, a year.'
He looked at me as if I had stolen his wallet and walked out of
the room.
That evening I made the mistake of eating out at a roadside
restaurant. The food was mind-blowingly hot, some kind of flatbread
filled with potatoes and pickle that went to work on my
stomach straight away. As soon as I returned to the guesthouse, I
had to rush to the john.
The whole of Friday and Saturday I spent in my room, with the
worst stomach ache of my life. I felt like ten pounds of shit in a
five-pound bag. The only person who came to look me up was
Bilal. He even gave me some kind of green syrup which helped me
recover. By Sunday morning, I was raring to go out, having been
cooped up with the runs for the last two days.
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.'