Omair Ahmad - Delhi Noir

Suddenly, as if God had heard my silent complaint, all the cars froze like they were waiting for me to choose which one I would get into. Then I realized that the traffic light had changed. The drivers had their faces turned forward like robots. Lost in their own private worlds, they never even saw me, not even when the light changed.

I was getting a little desperate when a brand-new Lexus pulled up right beside me and inside it I noticed one of my ex-she-bosses, the nicest one. “Sharmilaa, Sharmeelaa,” I called happily, feeling my luck kick in.

She was listening to Indian classical music, the window rolled down. Her famous Bengali lips were pursed as if she were about to kiss someone. She was frowning slightly, the way she always did when she was worried. Probably her husband, I thought. The man was a serious handicap and I’d told her to ditch him many a time.

“Sharmila,” I called again, approaching the window.

She heard me before she saw me and her head began to turn. I can never forget that moment. Me, rushing to the passenger side of the car full of hope, her face as she got a glimpse of me. She leaned over and quickly locked the door. I grabbed the handle and tried to open it.

“Sharmila, it’s me,” I said urgently, tapping on the window a little harder than I’d meant to, “don’t be scared. I have been robbed. You must take me home.”

She wouldn’t answer, struggling with her window instead. I rushed around the front of the car to her side and bent down so she could see my face. “Sharmila, don’t be a fool. Someone robbed me of my clothes. It’s me. You know me.”

She refused to look at me.

“Sharmila, don’t be stupid now. I don’t have time. You have to take me home. I have a report to hand in,” I said impatiently.

She didn’t budge. Just stared angrily at the car in front of her.

“I don’t know you,” she said at last through tightly pinched lips, “why are you embarrassing me like this? If... if you don’t get away from my car I’ll call the police.” Her face took on the stubborn expression I knew well.

“Sharmila,” I cried, stepping away from the car, “don’t do this, you’ll regret it later. Where’s your heart?”

She looked me full in the face then. And the truth struck me like a bolt of lightning. For that’s when I realized that in fact we were no longer people but animated passport photographs. If our bodies were allowed to assert themselves at all, they could only do so under the cover of night — and their needs were quickly dispensed with. But now that my body had been unveiled in broad daylight, my head had become invisible. I had ceased to be me. I was just a body, not a person with rights or brains.

I saw this clearly then, as I stepped back onto the pavement and watched Sharmila drive away. Strangely, what upset me the most is that she hadn’t been in the least curious about my body. After all, we’d worked together for years. I’d fantasized about making love to her any number of times — even though she had a distinctly pear-shaped behind. And she must have done the same. And yet, when I was there in front of her, she didn’t even sneak a peek. I sat down on the pavement, my knees clamped together. I must be really ugly, I thought sadly.

My pride in tatters and along with it my self-confidence, I wondered what to do. Who could I go to next? I had friends, or at least acquaintances, right there in Nizamuddin, two hundred yards away. At this time they would all be rushing their kids to school or getting ready for work, drinking that last cup of badly made masala tea, shouting at their wives to release a little of their pre-work tension. I bet if I just waited where I was, at least a half-dozen familiar faces would show up. But after Sharmila, this thought made me shudder.

I sat down on the edge of the pavement, making myself as small as I could, and watched the cars go by. It was rush hour. No place for a human on the road, especially a naked one. A traffic cop had arrived, creating more confusion than there had been before. But unlike the drivers of the cars who simply ignored me, he must have felt proprietorial about the crossroads and shouted, “Hey, what are you doing? You can’t sit like that. You’re troubling the traffic.”

Troubling the traffic? How could I have been troubling the traffic? He was the one troubling the traffic. Since his arrival the traffic jam had quadrupled in length. I’d have explained that to him if he’d given me half a chance. Instead he called the other cops, the ones who wore khaki uniforms and sat around in white Maruti Gypsies that had the words With You, for You, Always painted in red on them.

There were three of them inside, all in khaki, two in front including the driver and one in the back.

“So you are the one troubling the traffic?” the policeman on the passenger side shouted out of the window.

I smiled at him. “No, officer. I am just sitting here thinking about what to do.” I smiled again. It wasn’t worth antagonizing an enforcer of the law — especially when you were naked and had needle pricks dotting your arms.

“He’s thinking of what he’s going to do,” the policeman on the passenger seat said, turning to the others. “What do you think he should do?”

There was a short silence.

The man in the back, who was writing something down in his book, said, “He should come with us.”

The policeman in the passenger seat leaned out of the car and said, “Hey, you’re a lucky guy. My boss likes you. You can come with us. We’ll help you think.”

I didn’t like the look in the man’s eyes. “No. I have to go home,” I said. “I have important things to do, a report to hand in. Thank you for your offer though,” I added.

The policeman didn’t smile. “And how are you planning to get home? Is it nearby?”

“No,” I answered fatally, “I live in NOIDA.”

Suddenly the man in the back who wasn’t wearing a uniform leaned forward. “Get him in,” he ordered.

The passenger door opened and the khaki uniform got out. Did they have extra uniforms in the police station? I wondered.

I was forced to sit between the silent driver and the one in the passenger seat, my knee jammed against the gearshift.

“I have a car too,” I said as the jeep started. “Why don’t you let me go home and I’ll come back to visit you in it? I really have to hand in my report or I’ll lose a lot of money.”

The fat one who seemed to do all the talking shook his head gravely. “We can’t let you do that,” he said. “You’ll catch a cold. And you’ll be a traffic problem. There could be accidents. Let rush hour pass and we’ll take you home.”

I looked out of the front of the jeep. It was nice being so high above the ground. The early November mist still hadn’t cleared. “That’s okay. I’m quite used to the cold, in fact I like it. I went to boarding school in the mountains; in the mornings we exercised in shorts. God, it was cold, but I liked it.”

No one said anything. Behind me, the man was writing away, his pen making a scratch scratch sound. The driver changed gears noisily, jamming the gear shift into my knee even harder.

“You’ll like the station too. We’ll give you food and clothes and take you home later,” the policeman said, laughing. “Isn’t that right, sir?”

The man in the back didn’t reply, but his pen went on scratching.

Food and clothes sounded good to me, so I gave in. We drove to the police station and came to a jerky halt under the porch. There was bougainvillea growing up the side of it and over the top, a riot of purple and white like a fancy lady’s hat. I studied the building critically while the fat guy went around the back and opened the door for his superior. It was a nice piece of colonial architecture. Two women in khaki saris came outside and, seeing me, covered their eyes, giggled, and ran back in. Suddenly I longed for a really stiff drink.