The Sixth Man: A Parable

The boy looks down at the scale model of the world lying shattered at his feet and thinks, there's that. 

The boy reads a newspaper report in which Mad-Eye Moody kills someone. Then it turns out he's not called Mad-Eye anymore, on account of having two perfectly-aligned non-enchanted eyes, and he's spelling his surname differently, too, and he's not killed anyone in recent memory, just given a speech.

Oh, dear, the boy thinks, I've got the wrong man. How now?

He knows the answer to that question and doesn't like it much. He decides, instead, to concentrate on a digression. The digression is this:

In the middling-to-distant past the boys and his friends watch a ludicrous movie about a ludicrous anchorman whose ticks include, among latent bigotry and other not-so-subtle-isms, a tendency to spout incredibly weird and/or inane catechisms in place of the usual tongue twister warm-ups before broadcasts.

How now, brown cow? goes one particularly memorable illogism, and the boy and his friends consider themselves indoctrinated. The phrase (and its informal shortening How now) become near-talismanic, uttered with varying degrees of gusto and wistful nostalgia over almost a decade. It comes to a point where the words themselves grate for repetition, and the group simply copies the anchorman's ludicrous facial contortions instead.

This continues until the oldest member of the gang decides to settle down. Everyone gathers at a swanky resort next to the Atlantic, eats and drinks a bit too much, and during one photo op the boy lumbers onstage to clasp the hands of the newlyweds, working his bearded jaw up-and-down in the old exaggerated fashion.

The bride lets out a high-pitched shriek and faints.

Nobody appends HNBC at the end of an email again.

The boy ponders over the meaning of everything. It's a task made unequal by the incomparable vastness of everything and the fact that the boy's attention-span has often been compared to that of a deceased goldfish.

On the bright side the sequel to the ludicrous anchorman picture is on television.

The boy watches the first fifteen minutes and realizes the only ludicrous thing about this picture is the degree of its awfulness.

Oh dear, the boy thinks, another idol claimed by the twilight. How now?

This time the answer transitions promptly and smoothly:

Better kill myself.

It is only 11 in the morning and the boy knows it's going to be a long day if the answer has already managed to register itself. He sits in front of the TV.

On one channel, not-Moody giving a speech about Mandrakes segues effortlessly into a soliloquy on farmer suicides in the Vidarbha region. What bullshit, the boy thinks. Moody taught Defense Against the Dark Arts, not Herbology. Is even Pottermania not sacrosanct?

Better kill myself.

The internet is no help, either. Most of its information is in the form of blocky white text superimposed upon a rotating roster of the same set of images.

One does not simply stop procrastinating, one reads.

Typical.

Better drink my own piss, suggests another.
Or better yet - kill myself.

 He wanders into a neighbouring story to watch a game of Russian roulette. The participants all look suitably rough, suitably dangerous, but none can help looking afraid during the cocking of the hammer, the pulling of the trigger.

What a grand way to miss the point, the boy thinks. He pockets the revolver and leaves before the sixth man can realize his misfortune.

The boy walks until he comes upon the familiar redbrick building of his school, the scrappy countenance now marred by tiling and a glass lobby that is lit 24/7 by bright halogen that must greatly reduce visibility at night.

"Rest if you must but don't you quit!" someone yells from inside the gate. 

The boy starts and then moves closer to peer in. 

He sees nobody.

"Neatness is next to Godness!" the voice continues. "You are stepping into the best years of your life! Moab is your washpot! The world is your oyster! Please affix poster-size blowup duly attested by a competent authority! Youth once lost is irrecoverable! The transit authority is not responsible for the safety of your belongings! Lefty loosey rightie tightie."

The boy wakes up and realizes he's been sobbing into his pillow.

What a frightful cliché, the boy thinks. Better kill myself.

He doesn't move until the little hand on the clock has crept beyond 4. The big hand hops disdainfully over 2, almost as if it doesn't want to cross the little hand.

The third hand just jerks wildly around the circle, making good time but generally ignored by all else.

The analogy folded in on itself, the boy thinks. Do I kill myself?

He walks to a hall where a stark black-and-white banner draped above the entrance proclaims Orientation.

The boy thinks briefly about Chitrangada Singh and Arjun Rampal, decides his preferences are still in their original configuration, is depressed enough to walk inside.

The man on the lectern is more lucid than the voice in the gateway, but makes even less sense. "School is supposed to groom you and strengthen your understanding of societal norms," he says gravely, "but it is college where you discover your specialization, where you sharpen your focus before cutting through the layer of bullshit that covers all worthwhile opportunities. It is also where you find yourself, where the next phase of your growth occurs. So get out there and find yourself!"

I'd like to find myself, the boy thinks. I bet I can kill that sumbitch too.

Then he realizes he has been standing in one place and looking back too long, that the Orientation happened ten years ago and it's been almost twice as long since that gateway speech was delivered to him in person, that his beard contains enough salt to throw the pepper into sharp relief, that the last of his opportunities withered and died about the time he forgot which way the screws that held him together were fastened. He also realizes that everyone has been speaking to him in clichés, that it has always been his own choice to listen, that he has knocked over a dusty globe that lay on a sill with glue drying in the network of cracks running over its surface.

The boy looks down at the scale model of the world lying shattered at his feet and thinks, there's that.

He can step anywhere on the planet now. Nobody can stop him. He pulls a cocked revolver from his pocket.

So that's what happens when the world is your oyster: 
it gets cracked open.

Then he picks up a faded blue shard, holds it to the light, tries to decipher what ocean he's holding, can't.

It's probably the Atlantic, he thinks, and best years my arse, and finally, just in case there are any faint-hearted people in the Orientation crowd, how now, brown cow?

Just in case there is an Orientation crowd.

He puts the gun to his head, closes his eyes, and steals a ride from the sixth man.

A Lonely Place To Die

A friend of mine expired yesterday.

We used to go to school together. Didn't meet too often afterwards, given I have all the social skills of a baked potato, but one of us (generally her) regularly made the effort of calling up and staying in touch, talking about the good old days and making fun of hapless idiots from Ahlcon (generally me). You know? Reminiscing. And she never forgot birthdays. And she had a killer smile.

I keep having to go back and change clauses as I write this. I still haven't gotten used to referring to her in the past sense.

Maybe I shouldn't be referring to her at all.

I mean, grief is a relatively private emotion, right?

A few of us went down to her place today. A lot of tears were shed. No direct interaction was required with her parents, and to be honest I am massively grateful for that. What do you say to somebody whose child sat in the same classroom as you for over a decade? How do you even justify your continued existence, given that the center of their universe was younger than you and is now gone?

I shouldn't be here writing this. Why am I writing this?

Because she died in a lonely place.

I don't think her absence has sunk in yet. I don't think any of us has completely registered the fact that a chunk of our formative years no longer exists except in photographs. But the prevailing undercurrent should be one of sorrow, right?

I don't feel anything but anger. More than just that. I am livid. Furious. I could rip your throat out.

That's right, your throat. This is all your fault.

It was a road accident, as a tiny sidebar in a Hindi daily read today. Girl hit by private bus near Pandav Nagar, dies on the spot. They got her name wrong.

What they completely forgot to mention was that all this occured near one of the busiest intersections in the trans-Yamuna region, during the peak morning hour, when roughly 20% of the daily traffic volume both to and from the Noida Expressway travels next to that spot.

And she didn't die on the spot. She succumbed to her injuries en route to the hospital. With her father. Who came all the way from Connaught Place to get her.

Does this make any more sense to you now?

A young girl lies bleeding on the roadside. You speed past on your bike or in your car, you say nothing as the person who is driving pretends not to notice, you tell your driver to gun the pedal in case (heaven forbid) you miss the next redlight.

You, you, you.
You worthless indolent fucks.

She was still conscious afterwards, see. Some girls who happened to be passing by stopped to help her, to call her family, but for almost twenty minutes the commuters around her were kind enough not to disturb her.

Imagine that if you can. Surrounded by rush hour traffic and yet completely on her own. The rest of Delhi could stop existing and it would not make an iota of difference to her. And this from a city which takes to the streets almost every other week in support of some cause. Because rubbernecking isn't as alarming as rape, right? Apathy is not as newsworthy as anarchy.

Give me a fucking break.You are as culpable as that bus driver was. Perhaps more, because you simply decided to look elsewhere. You voluntarily thought of something else. What were you thinking? Oh, that cannot be anyone I know?

And the worst part is, I am as culpable as you.

I couldn't have been there. I still don't know half the details - news travels slow when our media doesn't feel something is catchy enough to champion - but if this hadn't been somebody I already knew and cared about I probably would've skimmed that tiny byline the same as you did. I wouldn't be ranting and raving right now.

It's the same idea that is force-fed to us ever since we're kids, isn't it? We're told not to bother ourselves with the plight of strangers. It is best not to get involved. Or maybe it was someone else's problem.

Luckily for you, it still is. I bet you cannot imagine what her parents look like. I bet you are still reading this with a clear conscience, you burning pile of canine excrement.

When I started writing I was sure the punchline at the end was going to be a call for you to read about losing a loved one in some ill-researched local news item. But I don't think I can wish that on anyone. Anger will give way to helplessness, to acceptance, to forgetting... And an article calling for empathy (instead of the usual indignation) will be the textual equivalent of pissing into the ocean and hoping it turns yellow.

But tomorrow, if it happens to be you or I bleeding out on the roadside, I pray to God our final moments are tempered by chaos and the kindness of strangers rather than the peace and quiet that we both deserve.

Something in the Water

Who am I kidding? I knew I'd be coming back here. This two-bit city of yours. This smashed harlot. You're a local, aren't you? It's in the way you sit. The way you cradle that drink - gingerly but constantly, like somebody might try to yank it from you. Hell, it's in the way you smell. Delhi, Delhi, Delhi.

We keep coming back to her, don't we?

We come and sit in dives like this one and tell each other the city is caustic, and there's something in the water, buddy, better stick to beer.

Yes, I'll have another. Thank you.

There was this story my Grandfather used to tell me. About this place, except before the Infusion. A few thousand years before, actually.

We've all heard about the Ramayana somewhere or the other, right? Happy prince exiled, dead demons everywhere. And most of us know the misery starts when an old king accidentally kills an infirm old couple's only son.

The kid's a bloomin' saint, as it turns out, so the parents curse the king pretty nasty. And then history takes its course.
By which I mean a bunch of violent shit happens.

But coming back to this kid.
His name's Shravan Kumar, and he's the closest the epic gets to an ideal human being before clearing its throat and announcing the birth of Ram.

This Shravan Kumar, his parents are blind, see? So they quite obviously need his help getting around. At the time of this story he's carrying them around in these huge wicker baskets dangling from the ends of a wooden staff.

As the story goes, Shravan Kumar gets near the river Yamuna at the point where the modern Indraprastha stands, and takes a break to drink from the river.

This bit wasn't in the original story, but you can imagine a really young man standing next to a river, right? Add in a glade of deciduous trees stretching away behind him, the old couple perched on their twin wicker baskets under the nearest neem or peepal, taking in the crowded air of the plains, still only halfway through the transnational journey that is the chaar-dhaam pilgrimage.

Now imagine the young man looking down into the water as he drinks, seeing the muddied turmoil of alluvial silt beneath the surface, a few ripples in the reflected sky that mean nothing to him.

His own reflection, maybe, clear and sharp but somehow darker.

I'm beginning to ramble again, aren't I?

Shravan Kumar finishes drinking and turns to his parents.

"I feel tired, to be honest with you," he says. "I've been carrying you everywhere for ages. Shouldn't I get a chance to go out and explore whatever pleasures the world has to offer?"

"It's only fair," agrees his father. "Where are we right now?"

"The banks of the Yamuna." The shapes in the water jagged and angular, even though the city that will taint everything is still years and years in the future.

"We won't do too well in a forest after nightfall," the old man says. "Could you take us to the plains across the river, please? We'll ask someone for help there."

"It's the least I could do," Shravan Kumar reasons, and off they go.

Nobody speaks for a while.

"Are we on the other side yet?" The mother asks eventually.

"We crossed a while ago."

"Well, then," the father says, "Thank you, son. Leave us wherever you-"

"Of course I'm not leaving you," Shravan Kumar interjects. "It was a ghastly thought to begin with. I don't know what came over me. I'm sorry."

And onward they go through the gathering twilight, away from the place where brothers will eventually bay for each other's blood, farther and farther still from the monstrosity that will soon erupt over the darkening waters of the Yamuna.

This City we still can't let go of.

It's the darndest thing, to be honest. I come back to this story every time I've had a rough night in the city. I think of how close Shravan Kumar came to upsetting the entire course of history - what if he'd simply taken off? But he learnt that day that even the strongest and most resolute amongst us are allotted our second chances, even if we never use them.

Except a disease as virulent as the one he tasted on the water that day probably wouldn't need a second chance.

This bit wasn't in the original story, but you can imagine a young man carrying his parents across the plains, right? Add in the blackened water of the river they've just crossed, his farther silent but smiling, his mother dozing lightly.

The young man's in a hurry. They're halfway through a tour of the Chaar Dhaam, and he's just overcome a particularly messy personal crisis.

The young man being the nearest you'll get to an ideal person without having to return to the classics.

Now. Even if the young man knows there won't be a return trip - even if he knows death lies sleeping across his path, nestled in the quiver of an old king a couple of glades down the path - I don't think he'd look back at the river.

I can't possibly imagine why he'd want to.

Luckey Shirt

The boy was called Vedant. His actual name was Vedanta Desika Upadhyay with Vedanta Desika being his given name and Upadhyay his family name as was the custom. He was named after a Vaishnav saint of the same name (the same name being Vedanta Desika) and the Upadhyay meant he was descended from a long line of upper-class Brahmin teacher-priests. He was currently looking for the right clothes to wear on the occasion of making a booty call.

Damn Vedant said. A booty call is a meeting that has been decided beforehand to be of a purely carnal nature. Technically Vedant wasn’t actually headed to make a booty call but he was going to meet a girl he’d befriended online in the flesh (ha ha) for the first time and he’d decided that that was close enough. He had told his parents he was going to some friend’s birthday party and they had been nice enough not to cross-question him.

He finally decided upon a passable combination of jeans and shirt that passably traversed the thin line between casual chic and desperation. He whistled the tune to Lovely Head by Goldfrapp as he made his way from his room to the front door and onward to the gates of the apartment complex where he lived. Then he hummed the chorus of Suck it and See by Arctic Monkeys as he made his way from the gates of the apartment complex to the bus stop.

He had almost climbed into the first bus he saw when he realized there was a large stain underneath his front pocket.

The shirt did not have a name but Vedant called it his Luckey Shirt (the extra e being a reference to an obscure Stephen King short story). There was nothing particularly lucky (or even luckey) about that shirt: it was simply a shirt. It was white and had red and ochre stripes alternating over it. The overall effect was vaguely like looking at a sheet of wrapping paper with buttonholes and a collar creased into the appropriate place.

Vedant called it his luckey shirt because it was associated with some of the best times he’d ever had. He had only worn it on three previous occasions – 

a long-awaited date with a pretty girl the day he went halfway across the city so they’d give him a trophy and clap at him and finally the wedding of his favourite cousin who currently had a baby on the way and a happy marriage to top it off 

– but those three probably counted amongst his greatest moments of jubilation. Even the slightest amount of rumination would have revealed an unfortunate exchange between cause and effect but analysis had never been Vedant’s strong point and the shirt had been there through thick and thin and so his luckey shirt it was.

The stain on said shirt had come from a rusted zipper on the trousers hanging adjacent to it in his closet and there was nothing anyone could do about it. Vedant spared a lingering glance for the easy ride he was abandoning and began the long trudge back home. 

He did not whistle or hum this time.

The bus would probably have sympathized with his plight and stayed there for a while longer but it wasn’t sentient and its actions dictated by the driver so there was a rough clank of gears and off it went.

The bus was called Lilawati after the mother of the driver although on paper its name was I2BN-A34V. The I2BN indicated the specifications of the engine shipped from company headquarters in Sweden. The A was a marker for which factory the bus was assembled in. The 34V stood for the lot number of this particular specimen. The Lilawati represented a strong nostalgic yearning for a better place far away from the fungible reality of here and now.

The man at the wheel gunned the throttle and the bus rumbled onwards. They passed a couple of intersections but the number plastered across its forehead was GL-23 so there were no turns required. 

Under the next metro overpass another bus marked GL-23 suddenly appeared in the rearview.

Lilawati bore the other bus no animosity but the man at the wheel did not enjoy the sensation of being overtaken. He squeezed down on the accelerator again and did not ease up until they’d crossed the 60km/h mark. 

(Sample Problem:
The accepted speed limit for public transport vehicles in the National Capital Region is 40km/h. The bus trailing Lilawati is running at 55km/h. How does she maintain her lead? 

Answer:

The only way Lilawati can maintain her lead is by keeping her speed over the incline and ignoring the crowds milling forth at whatever stop has the misfortune of being next)

As they passed Karkardooma Crossing the other driver finally conceded the point and withdrew from both the race and the narrative. The driver of Lilawati watched him fall back in the rearview mirror and felt a large kernel of triumph settle in his innards like a mango pit.

Then he saw the man on the bike racing towards him and instinctively spun the wheel hard right.

The biker’s name was Tejwardhan Parashar and he did not have a nickname because he did not have that sort of friends. Tejwardhan’s friends were the sort of people you went to if the light in the hall wasn’t working or if you needed somebody to watch your kids while you went downstairs to go through the neighbours’ mail. Tejwardhan had chosen them precisely because they were like that – and by extension like him. He had been called a crashing bore by some acquaintances but he had never been late to work so it all balanced out (or so he reasoned).

Tejwardhan did not like driving his bike even remotely close to the speed limit. He always kept it hovering near the 40km/h mark although the law said he could go all the way up to 50.

That day however Tejwardhan had been thrown by an emergency roundup at the office in order to discuss the latest round of downsizing. He winced slightly as he cut into the opposite lane at the next intersection but he reckoned in a few more minutes he’d be pulling into the community center sprinting up the stairs to his office oblivious to the world once more.

The world had other plans. 

Too late he saw the parrot green behemoth bearing down on him he jerked the handle to the right but everything had slowed down now. The bike skidded to horizontal and then pinballed between the barriers on either side of the road.

What happened next was too horrific to describe but the prime-time news would try its best.

The first responder however was a representative of the local news called Shitikanth Parasher (no relation to the biker). Shitikanth had precisely the sort of friends who were good with nicknames but in his case they hadn't needed much effort. He had gone through school acquiring an ever-expanding knowledge of vernacular slang for fecal matter and a near-homicidal rage at the smart alecks who substituted simulations of flatulence for actual humour.

Even so his fondest wish at the moment was to give a brief and unobtrusive account and get off the scene before somebody from the old days saw him on live television and decided to congratulate him with a phonecall consisting exclusively of fart jokes.

T-this is Shitikanth Parasher of Delhi Now he began and was instantly aware of the misstep. Then he began to move towards the bus as he spoke and there was a literal misstep as he stumbled over something belonging to Tejwardhan Parashar (no relation to the reporter).

Don't panic Shitikanth told himself. Then he saw his cameraman's eyes widen and realized he'd said it out loud and into the microphone. 

This day couldn't get any worse he thought through clenched teeth. He glanced back at the object he'd stumbled over.

There followed a decisive moment of the sort that can transform an entire news career - the iconic sort of moment that surpasses context and rises to the level of self-sufficient tableau.

Is that some guy's foot? Shitikanth Parasher said with an expression that you have probably seen already if you are on familiar terms with the internet. 

Then he went down in local news history as the first reporter to regurgitate his lunch on live television. 

Vedant saw the video on his smartphone near the end of what was otherwise a wasted day.

The girl he'd gone to meet had not turned up at all and tried to lecture him about the real life applications of sarcasm when he called her. He'd hung up confused and disappointed.

The video on the other hand was promising. In fact Vedant was still chuckling when he finally got home. 

No dinner he said to his mom by way of greeting. No dinner he repeated to his father who was watching a different report of the same incident on television

Then he shut the door and turned on the light and came face-to-face with the man in his room.

The man in the room was sitting in Vedant's chair although he must've been roughly a hundred miles tall. He had white hair. He wore black clothes. His hands were the colour of moldy bread.

Finally said the man in the room. I thought you'd never come back.

Who? Vedant asked the man in the room who wasn't really a man and wasn't really in the room. What?

There's been a bit of a problem the man in the room said. And I have been sitting here all afternoon and all evening trying to figure it out. Care to help me out a little?

I don't understand Vedant explained. Part of his mind was telling him he should scream but he seemed to have forgotten how.

You were supposed to be on that bus the man in the room said. That's pretty easy to grasp isn't it? You were supposed to get on that bus. And you were supposed to go down with that bus.

I had to change my shirt.

Ah yes. The man in the room held up Vedant's shirt. Your luckey shirt. He stressed the 'e' rather sharply.

Vedant said nothing.

This isn't a game the man said. And you certainly don't get to cheat.

He brought the shirt near his face and sniffed. For a second or two that's all he really did - sniff - but then something changed. The man's nostrils flared wide. The shirt lost first the red stripes then the ochre ones and finally the crisp white backdrop.

When the man dropped it back on the bed the shirt was a diseased and tattered yellow. There was a slight hiss from the spot where it made contact.

I've got your scent the man grinned. We will settle this soon.

Vedant didn't say anything.

The man in the room got off the chair walked right up to the boy stood in front of him.

Soon he repeated 

breathing the word out into the boy's face 

turning his complexion the same yellow as the shirt 

his hair grey and then snowy white. 

The man's grin never faltered.

Don't try any funnier business he said in parting. We know where you live.

Then he opened the nearest drawer stepped into it and was gone.

Vedant continued to stand next to the light switch continued to stare at the exact same spot continued to say nothing.

And that is exactly how his mother found him five minutes later.

Baby Steps

Sharmajee wakes up with a dull pit of foreboding in the base of his stomach. Something is not right with the world, Sharmajee thinks. But what?

Maybe the newspaper will help.

The newspaper tells Sharmajee that another girl was raped in Noida last night. That's not it, Sharmajee thinks. This went down in Sector - 106. I live in 44. Besides, it was probably the girl's fault anyway.

He turns the page.
Charred body of woman found in Zafrabad, reads the next headline.
Don't these women have anything better to do? And where the fuck is Zafrabad anyway? Sharmajee is getting impatient. He flips through the rest of the paper, finds yet more of the same, puts it aside.

Maybe the television will be of more help.

Sure enough, there's a rerun of last night's debate on Times Now. Sharmajee sat through the whole thing live but he sits through the salient points once again. Chetan Bhagat cracks one at Asaram's expense. Arnab laughs. Sharmajee laughs. Everybody laughs.

A harried-looking activist with frazzled hair tries to talk about the AFSPA but is shouted down once again. Good call, Sharmajee thinks. If the armed forces aren't sacrosanct, well, what is?

The pit of foreboding doesn't go away, however.

Sharmajee wanders outside and runs into his next door neighbour, Vermajee.
Vermajee is in the midst of an animated conversation with his tenants.

Sharmajee tries to slink by without catching Vermajee's eye - the latter took in a couple of young men last year, ideal lodgers until they turned out to be-
Sharmajee shudders and cannot complete the thought.

Then he catches sight of all the luggage the young men seem to be hefting out and decides to stay for a bit, after all.

"What's the matter?"
"They brought back 377," Vermajee offers by way of explanation. "Don't want any more trouble."
"That ought to show those busybody NGOwallahs," Sharmajee concurs. Then, turning to the young men, "Why don't you settle down with some nice girls like everyone else? You need psychiatric help!"

The young men are wise enough not to react. A small phalanx of upstanding citizens is starting to gather downstairs, and they will have to cut straight through the crowd to reach the gate.
There is no one willing to side with them this time.

Sharmajee makes sure the luggage is all gone before he turns back to Vermajee.
"Glad that's over and done with," Sharmajee says. "I mean, if our morality is not sacrosanct, well, what is?"

Vermajee says nothing. That's another wholly acceptable way of being an upstanding citizen.

Sharmajee goes home with the pit of foreboding in his stomach considerably smaller.
All is not right with the world yet, but

Baby steps, Sharmajee thinks. Baby steps.

Date a Girl Who Steals

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.

Bharat's Corollary

So there's this really amusing trick my friend Bharat pulls sometimes, an ice-breaker worth trying if you ever get invited to stuck at a party where there's no intoxicants to partake in nothing better to do.

Here's how it works.

1.) Go up to a random person.
2.) Wait for a lull in the conversation.
3.) Lean in slightly and whisper: Is duniya mein do bade chutiye. Pehla X (with X preferably being a person in absentia). Doosra kaun?
4.) The target should get slightly shifty-eyed and bluster out the name of person Y (also in absentia, in all probability).

At this point it will suffice to shake your head slowly and change the topic; but if you lack faith in your audience's intelligence (like my friend Bharat sometimes does) you can get the desired result by saying Nahi. Tu! with the exclamation mark emphasized by a poke in the chest.

Then you change the topic.

*

The Delhi Metro. Crowded basement level of Rajiv Chowk.
Half of the city's population gathered to catch a Sunday evening shuttle to Jahangirpuri ("What's so friggin' special about Jahangirpuri at 5:45 on a Sunday evening?").
The other half hell-bent on going towards Huda City Centre with you ("What's so friggin' special about" etc).

You're accompanying a friend who happens to be female and kinda skeptical about riding twelve stations in close proximity to a few dozen of Delhi's finest sons, but that's not the kicker.
You have a heavy bag to attend to, but that's not it, either.

The thing is, your friend happens to be mad at you.
And as anyone who's ever accompanied an irate female onto the Delhi metro will tell you - there's only one direction a story like that can take, and it's not up.

Farthest thing from it, to be honest.

*

The train rolls in, your standard 6-coach Bombardier.

Your friend enters the first coach unscathed - the first car in the moving direction is comparatively free of the ladies it is reserved for, and you're thankful for small mercies as you simultaneously tread on two guys' toes while a third tries his best to get to fifth base with you.

"Wrong team, buddy," you mutter to him as you cut through the other people between you and the first compartment. He probably doesn't get it.
What he does get, however, is the heavy bag you were attending to (remember?) - right across the testicular region. The bag refuses to travel next to you, and every swing manages to club somebody in either the gut or the shin.

Then you're at the rubber accordion between the first and second compartments.
And the look on your friend's face suggests playtime is over.

*

The next fifteen minutes are excruciating, to say the least.

Like all the best arguments, the original bone of contention has been buried somewhere in the folds of history, roughly between Nirman Vihar and Lakshmi Nagar by your estimate - it will lie there, humming to itself and getting fossilized until some offhand remark in some other argument brings it back to the fore.

ding
Next station.. is. Central Secretariat.

"What exactly are you mad about?" you ask, giving your equivalent of a disarming smile.
"I'm not mad," your friend insists, and the look on her face wipes out any hope of a speedy resolution like brown rings on a glass table.
"Say, I brought you chocolate!" you exclaim, clutching at straws. You don't think she could look at you any more hatefully.
Like all the best friends, she is full of surprises.
"I don't want your chocolate.. And I'm not mad," she repeats. "I just think you should stop needlessly exerting yourself on my account."

ding
Udyog Bhawan. Station.

"Isn't it weird how they pause randomly in the middle of the announcements?"
"It is. You know what else is weird?"
"What?"
"That you're still talking to me. Didn't I tell you to shut up?"
"Heh."

The guy standing next to you on the divider turns to his respective female counterpart.
"Well," he declaims loudly. "At least I'm not a stalker."
She finds that funny, for some reason. You label the guy Mismatched Polo Shirt in your head and dismiss the girl as too easily appeased.
Where's the challenge in that?

ding
Race Course. Station. Mind the gap.

"You know what I think?"
"Didn't I tell you to stop-"
"Yeah, yeah. Listen. Remember Bharat?"
"What about him?"
"He pulls this trick, sometimes."
"On whom?"
"Well. Me, for the most part."
"Does it get you to shut up?"
"Um. Yeah, but that's not the point."
"No, seriously. What's the trick?"
"Would you listen?! Okay, I didn't mean to raise my voice, but- excuse me?"

She turns away.
"Friendly spat," you tell Polo amicably, but he leans away and is suddenly absorbed by his female companion, who gives you a dirty glare.

The guy standing opposite you keeps his mouth shut, sharing an earphone with his respective female companion.
Is the whole world whipped? You wonder, suddenly missing the guy who almost got to fifth with you.

Nothing like a little ol' fashioned chemistry.

ding
Jor Bagh. Station.

Polo attempting to convince the girl to help with his laundry. Laundry almost certainly a euphemism, given the sort of glances they keep passing each other and everyone else present.

Earphone leaning comfortably on the divider, hand brushing against that of the woman next to him. Smiles on both faces.
Song playing on his phone possibly some old favourite.

Bharat's Rule n. an old adage which states that in any random congregation of three people with sufficiently similar backgrounds, two will probably be chutiyas.

An inexpertly-wrapped piece of dark chocolate melting slowly in your pocket.

ding
INA. Station.

"Did you hear that? Emphasis on random letters," you say to your friend.
"Still not talking to you," your friend says to you.
"But it wasn't all that bad!" Polo says to his friend.
"You're this close to doing your laundry alone. By hand," Polo's friend says to him.
"All right, son, let's go," a policeman with a unibrow says to you.

Well, they did it. They've finally outlawed beards, you think dazedly, but then you see two other policemen putting Polo and Earphone through the same motions.
Both of them clean-shaven and looking considerably more wholesome than you.

You follow the policeman, still in a daze, and then you're off the train.
This particular phase of your journey is over.

*

"Why exactly were we hauled off?" Polo asks hotly.
"Is it a crime to share music?" Earphone demands to know.
"We're getting kinda late," you mumble, but nobody cares to listen.

"Baat ye hai, sir, ki camera mein aapki tasveer aa gayi hai. Aap bolo toh control room chal ke dikha dein," Unibrow says all of this in a drab monotone.
"Photo of what?"
"It was just an earphone!"
"Aap connector pe travel kar rahe they," Unibrow gives a triumphant smile, as if he's just managed to eff the ineffable once and for all.

"What's happening here?"
"I'm not sure," you say to your friend. "Didn't I tell you to stay on the train?"
"And miss all the fun? Dude! I'm kidding!"

But you stride on after the phalanx marching towards the escalator. You jab a brutal elbow at the next train, the expression on your face suggesting you might never see each other again, but your friend merely rolls her eyes and follows you.

*

The control room contains a thin policeman with a squint, a man sitting before a bank of monitors in the trademark yellow shirt and red tie of Metro officials, and your new best friend Unibrow.

They play a round of Good Cop-Bad Cop-Clueless Desk Jockey for your benefit.

-Rules are rules, son.
-Aapko pehle se dhyaan rakhna chahiye tha.
-There's footage proving conclusively that
-You wouldn't be here unless the situation was
-Camera jhooth toh bolega nahi
-I can bring it up on the monitors if you
-it's highly disappointing
-Roz hazaron log wahi galtiyan karte hain
-very sophisticated technology
-look like decent kids
-Phir ek jaise bahaane banatey hain
-easy to keep track of such things
-Regrettable, but there you go
-Ham bewakoof hain kya yahaan par?
-Two fifty rupees fine

"Per head," they finish in unison.

You wouldn't believe a friend telling you a story like this. But it's actually happening. Right now.
Your hand creeps gingerly towards the pocket where you keep your cash.

*

Earphone takes his chance.
"It's my first day in the City," he announces proudly. "I wasn't aware that we're not supposed to travel at the front. It's an honest mistake, but I'm sure you'll understand. I'm a guest to your City."
He stands there, waiting for the Delhi Tourism jingle to strike up somewhere in the background.

In the meantime, you wince.

Your entire argument revolved around a refusal to admit that travelling on the connectors was an offense - there have never been any announcements to the effect, no noticeboards warning against such a heinous crime - and now your friend has gone and pleaded guilty for something that is not against any known rules. Your argument sinks without a trace.
It was a flimsy argument, but it was also the only one you had.

Polo steps up to bat. You know his track record is poor - fifteen minutes of travelling with him have all but proven his propensity to spout utter garbage ("Allo, pot? Ees kettle calling- you black!") - but you hope against hope that he'll see sense and not say something that will screw things up even more.

"We were travelling on the connector, yes," Polo begins confidently. Earphone nods his approval - you tell 'em, buddy - "But it's not like we were in the women's compartment! I mean, I'm not a stalker! I didn't molest a woman! Neither did I try to grope anyone in the crowd-although, let me tell you, it would've been easy, the way we were packed at Rajiv Chowk."

You take a step back, away from the guy, your body language literally yelling that you have nothing to do with him - but the damage is done.

"Kya bola bhai tuney abhi?" Unibrow is talking to Polo but it's your beard he is eyeing up.
"Kuch galat thode bola, sir! I'm from a respectable family!"
"But how could you even think such a thing?" Squint appears shocked to the core of his existence.
The Controller merely shrugs, lets out a regretful tsk, and passes the challan booklet to Squint.

You stand at the back, hand in pocket, watching both Polo and Earphone pass thousand-rupee notes and exclaim that someone will hear about this.

*

"Next," Squint says, and you walk miserably up to him.
"There are no notices anywhere about this," you begin. "How can you-"
"Yeah, yeah, I know." he doesn't really look you in the eye. "This money isn't going in our pockets, you know. It will be passed forward to the PMO. You can lodge a PLI, wait an year or two, and maybe get it back later. As of now it is a national resource. Pass it forward!"

You consider your national resources.

"I have just a hundred and fifty on me," you say. "What now?"
"Now? Now? Now you call home and ask someone to come pay for you."
"That's not feasible," you say. Unibrow chuckles appreciatively.
"Kahaan se ho?"
"Karkardooma," you say. "Blue line."
"Ho kahaan se?"
"Faizabad." you shift uncomfortably. "Look. I am not calling anyone from either place to cover for me."
Squint laughs at that.
"What about your lady friend?"
"My cousin," you say it sharply enough, but they've seen enough roadside Romeos to not believe you.
"Yeah. Her. Call her here."

"Wait!" the hand cowering in the pocket finds something usable. "I have my metro card!"
"Return it, then," Both Squint and the Controller look disappointed. Unibrow continues to leer. "Let's hope you get a hundred for it."

You walk from the Control Room to the Customer Service Center, your new best friend coming halfway with you and watching the rest of your progress closely.

The card yields 115 bucks and a receipt.

Your female friend catches your gaze from the other side of the security check, raising her eyebrows, wanting to know if she should come out.

You do the brutal elbow jab again.
She rolls her eyes, yes, but there's also a hint of a smile at one corner of her mouth.

You don't smile back - not just yet - but you're grateful nonetheless.

Your friend in the Unibrow treats your return to a smile as well. But it doesn't have the same impact anymore.
Not even slightly.

*

ding
Green Park. Station.

Your friend begins to laugh.
You stare at her but say nothing.

You've gotten on the third compartment.
The second one was emptier but neither of you felt up to it.

"What?" You ask after her chuckles subside.
"Nothing," she smiles. "It was funny, is all."
"Of course it was, you sadist."
"Oh, it was harsh on you. I'm not denying that." She gives you a brief hug. "But-you know-it was also ridiculous. Don't you feel a bit like laughing, too? Just a little bit?"
"Not yet," you say. Her face falls slightly. But then you hug her back, equally briefly. "But I probably will. You know, on the way back."
"I think I would like that chocolate now."

*

Later, on the long ride back towards Rajiv Chowk, you realize how ridiculous it all was. And you laugh.

A cursory patting-down reveals the fifteen bucks left from your brief encounter with the Law.
The tenner you'll need for the bus fare back home. But the five rupee coin you hold up, over your head.
The year 2002 glints in the light.

"I think I'll keep you," you tell the coin, "as a reminder. You know? Maybe interesting things can happen to me, after all."

Then you think of Polo and Earphone again, and the two cops and the controller, and the chuckles don't subside fully until after you're home.

*

Bharat's Corollary n. an update on an old adage. It states that in a group of three people, if a person previously established as a chutiya attempts to sort out his act, the others shall be more than happy to compensate.