Date a girl who steals.
Run into her in some shady alleyway on Sunday morning in Daryaganj, weighed down by a dishearteningly light wallet and a lowered faith in your bargaining; watch her smile disarmingly and return said wallet.
Saw you checkin' out Vintage earlier today, she will declaim.
Sure, sure. Bastard runs a tight ship. Pardon my French, you will add as an afterthought.
Your best friend (Donnie for the purpose of this discussion) will shrug and discard the roach he was trying to re-light. The girl will nod her greeting to him, return to you.
Why you got the blues, boy? She will inquire, the birds racing between cables overhead like a feathered flurry of electricity.
Ain't got the means for my trip, girl. And it lies around me in crates and bundles that smell like pinewood.
Ask and ye shall receive, she will say, and toss you the three overpriced books from the Vintage stall you'd been especially reluctant to leave behind. You'll stare at her in wonderment.
You actually went and bought these?
Um. Not exactly, she will glance at something behind your left shoulder.
You will turn and see two beat constables striding towards you, followed closely by the hardass who runs the aforementioned Vintage stall.
Shit, Donnie will remark. Shitshitshitshit.
He will toss his matchbox and take off in the opposite direction.
The girl, meanwhile, will have somehow managed to flag down an auto.
She will conclude negotiations and turn to you.
You coming or what?
And you should say Yes.
For the sake of that little voice in your head that's always telling you to take chances, skip work, vault out of a back window halfway through some lecture.
The voice that grows a little more tired everyday.
Say Yes.
And leave your valuables at home.
*
Date a girl who steals.
Let her walk you through the sordid part of town, the underbelly that festers in its own stultifying monotony. Skip over cracks. Don't pass under that ladder.
Don't panic if she takes shortcuts, comes to narrower and narrower alleyways, to little rows of shanties in some blank expanse that doesn't have its own name.
Don't panic if there seems to be trouble looming.
Because at the end there will always be a spectacle, some well-oiled hustle from a practiced confidence trickster, and you know that's not the sort of music you hear too often.
Afterwards she will allow you to go Dutch on a meal at the Ashok. She will pay with cash from the wallet of some middle-aged gentleman who should've known better.
She will let you take her hand on the way out, but then she'll look at the heavy lump that falls from your sleeve and groan quite audibly.
What's the matter, you will say, watching her walk and heft the thing around.
It's another pepper pot, she will say. I've got five already. Whatever becomes of all the salt shakers?
Other worlds, other times, you will say.
She will smile and return your wallet again.
*
Date a girl who steals.
Take her home and show her a cloudy moonrise from atop the reservoir.
Your friend (Donnie for ease of remembrance) will lose his Bic lighter, but that's okay. Smoking is injurious to his health, anyway.
Watch a 3D movie with her the next morning. Try to keep a straight face as other patrons begin to get up and make for the EXIT gates, gobsmacked at having lost their stereoscopic goggles halfway through the first half.
Be alone with her when there's roughly half an hour of film to go. Let her sidle up to you as a man rips off his shirt and becomes green and then takes off to fight what looks like an extremely irate city block.
Don't slow down on me, boy, she will say as she finds the key to your flat you'd left in your inner jeans pocket for her.
Quite an interesting movie, you will express.
I've already seen it, she will opine. They save the world at the end.
So I gathered.
Normal conversation will cease for the moment.
You have a spare key, don't you? She will ask later.
I think so.
Stashed somewhere safe? She will hope as she hails an auto outside the theater.
Well, yeah.
Are you absolutely sure? She will not make space for you in the auto.
You will notice with trepidation that her smile is back.
Um, miss?
Be there in thirty, or I ain't opening the door, she will offer in parting.
You will grin at the late afternoon sun, the cracks in the sky like claw marks from this angle (which, you will admit to yourself, is sorta cool).
This is going to be the best day ever, you will predict.
And your prediction will ring true, provided you hadn't decided to wear your grandfather's watch.
*
Date a girl who steals.
Take her to your room, the next time she's over. Push aside the cardboard carton filled with electronic junk.
Show her the cabinet with all your notebooks - the wondrous ideas you are saving away for when you are a little older and wiser and better equipped to write them out, in full.
Ain't never shown anybody that before, you will say without looking at her.
In reply she will hold out a No.12 Camel paintbrush.
That's all I'm taking today, she will offer solemnly. And she'll be true to her word.
If you don't count the sudden disappearance of your favourite bedsheet later that night.
*
Date a girl who steals.
Hold her close even as things spiral out of control. Not out of love - what do you understand of it, anyway? - but because you want to see how it turns out.
Take her to an open-air concert, and let her lead you to three hundred movies you wouldn't have seen on your own because it isn't half as interesting.
Play dumb when Sharmajee's dog vanishes.
Go to art exhibitions. Attend plays and recitals. Hold her tight on a cool evening in the vicinity of some monument, silence blessed and wondrous around you even as your friend (Donnie in the uncertain light) circles the grassy lawns looking for his Metro card.
Drink a cup of freshly-ground with her even as Sharmajee's son wanders around looking for his imported coffeemaker.
Let her take you to her place. The home could fit any of a half-dozen archetypes (joint family, nuclear unit, single parent, caring adoptive family, resentful adoptive family, raised by wolves) but that's not important, it's just a facade that we'll admire from a distance and leave be. She's the girl who steals, remember? She does not want to be held down anywhere. She is a creature of impulse. And you've fled down enough alleyways with her to know that her overriding impulse is to grab and run.
Wander through the museum display of coveted trophies and innocuous odds and ends that is her room. Let her lead your palm over the nearest universal remote, the buttons faint and whispery on your skin, her hand uncharacteristically clammy.
We're almost at the end, she will tell you.
Is that so?
Won't be long, now.
Well, then, let's make it a long goodbye, shall we?
Remember to shut the door.
Come home the following morning to find Sharmajee in shambles. He has just returned from reporting his son missing to find his entire house gone. Reports pour in of similar incidents up and down the block.
Some wiseass at Times Now will look at the pockmarked aerial pictures and dub it a Smallpox Outbreak. Ignore him.
Call up your girl.
*
Date a girl who steals.
Take her to dinner, one last time, because she deserves that.
You both do.
It's been real, she will say, not really looking at you, not really looking anywhere.
So it has, you will agree.
It's been damn fine, at times, worth holding onto, but-
Always a but in there somewhere.
-well, you know it's also been pretty fucked up. Pardon my French, she will smile momentarily.
So will you.
No grudges, you will say. You will hold out one hand to her.
Glad to hear that, she will reply, and place a fancy salt shaker from the Ashok squarely on your palm.
She will let you catch up with her near the pier, the green sludge of the Yamuna pulsating to some unheard music, the cracks in the sky barely visible in the feeble moonlight.
Don't go, you will say.
She will acknowledge that with a nod. And then she will get on some old wooden boat anyway.
Other worlds, she will say. Other times.
And you will watch her disappear down the pier, making for the other edge of the pulsating green heartbeat, to the fetid depths of Jamna-paar that you haven't plumbed in ages.
Your best friend (Donnie for convenience of recollection) will stride back to the scene, proudly pumping the first joint he has ever rolled.
Your heart will eventually grow back, he will counsel. Hell of a last haul, though.
Donnie, you dumb motherfucker. She took my notebooks.
And that is how it turns out.
And that is how it turns out.
