Vikas Swarup - Six Suspects

Mother never talks about it, but I have learnt that my father was killed in a road accident. Even though I was only six years old at the time, I still remember Father's dead body lying outside our hut, wrapped in a white sheet, and Mother breaking her bangles and bashing her head repeatedly against the wall. A week later a heavy-set man wearing white kurta pyjamas came to meet Mother with folded hands. He shed a few crocodile tears and gave Mother twenty-five thousand rupees. He also got her the job in the temple and this house. Father gave us in death what he couldn't give us in life.

'It has been a month since you quit working for the Bhusiyas. Are you going to look for another job or not?' Mother asks me the moment she returns in the evening. It has become her constant refrain. 'What is the use of all that university education if you are going to remain idle? Arrey, if you don't think of your old mother at least think of your sister Champi. How will I get her married if you refuse to earn money? God, why did you make me give birth to a wastrel?'

I smile at her. 'I was waiting to give you the good news. I have just landed a new job – operations manager at the box factory on MG Road. They will pay me ten thousand a month.'

'Ten thousand?' Mother's eyes open wide. She looks at me sternly. 'You are not pulling my leg, are you?'

'I swear on Father, I am telling the truth,' I say solemnly.

'Lord Shiva be praised… Lord Shiva be praised.' Mother looks up to the heavens and races out of the house. She will probably start distributing sweets to everyone in the temple complex.

Champi is not amused. 'How can you lie so brazenly? I pity the woman who will marry you.'

'But won't she prefer a millionaire liar to an honest pauper?' I grin.

A young woman wearing denim jeans and a printed kurti has come to interview Champi. She is rather pretty, with short hair and brown eyes. Her name is Nandita Mishra and she claims to be a documentary film-maker.

'I am doing a film on the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, and the situation twenty-five years later. I have come to get Champi Bhopali's perspective,' she tells me as she sets up her tripod. Champi quickly goes to the kitchen, scrubs her face with water, puts a flower in her hair and returns to face the video camera. She has become quite adept at giving interviews, peppering her sentences with words like 'contamination', 'conspiracy' and 'compensation'.

After the recording with Champi is over, the woman turns to me.

'Do you know any people in the Sanjay Gandhi slum?'

'Why do you ask? What work could someone like you possibly have there?'

'My next project is a film on slum life. Something along the lines of Salaam Bombay, but grittier, edgier. We see slums from afar, sitting in trains and cars, but how many of us have actually ventured into one? My documentary will seek to give viewers an authentic experience of slum life.'

'A slum is not a tourist attraction, Madam,' I scoff. 'To experience slum life, you have to be born in one.'

She looks at me sharply. 'That's quite a good line. Would you mind repeating it for the camera?'

So I, too, prepare to give an interview for the first time in my life, expounding on life in the Sanjay Gandhi slum. It is a subject

I know well. The slum has been my playground since the age of three. I have many insights into slum living – how a family of six manages to squeeze itself into an eight-by-eight-foot space. How a girl protects her modesty while bathing underneath a municipal tap in full view of hundreds of people. How a married couple makes clandestine love with furtive eyes watching their every move. How grown men sit in rows and shit like buffaloes at the edge of the railway track. How the poor breed like mosquitoes and live like dogs, while the dogs of the rich sleep on Dunlopillo mattresses in mosquito-free mansions.

I could have said all these things, but face to face with the lens of the camera I falter and become tongue-tied. Nandita Mishra tries to prompt me, but the words have suddenly dried up inside me. She gives up after a while and begins packing up her equipment.

After she has gone I brood upon my failure. Was it because of the camera in my face or the briefcase under my bed? Is it possible that because I now have wealth, I am unable to think like a slum-dweller?

Ten days have passed since I acquired that briefcase and no one has come looking for it. As per plan, inside the temple I will continue my life exactly as before. I will be frugal and abstinent. But outside, I can afford to be an entirely different person. I can start spending some of the money, enjoy the fruits of my good fortune. I decide to begin with a taxi ride.

The taxi stand is two streets down from the temple. There is a yellow-and-black taxi parked on the kerb and the driver is reading a newspaper inside the car. I knock on the window pane. 'Are you free?'

The driver, an old Sikh with an unkempt beard, unrolls the window and spits out something. 'Who needs the taxi?'

'I do.'

He looks at my dirty clothes and dusty face with unconcealed disdain. 'Oy, have you ever taken a taxi in your life? Do you know how much it costs?' he asks tartly.

'I have been riding in taxis all my life, sardarji,' I bark, surprised at the arrogance in my voice. I flash a couple of thousand-rupee notes in front of him. 'Now take me to Ansal Plaza. And make it quick.'

'Yes, Sahib.' The driver's demeanour changes immediately. 'Please get in.' He dumps the newspaper and cranks the meter.

I settle down on the back seat of a taxi for the first time in my life, cup my hands behind my head and stretch my legs. The high life has begun.

I shop with a vengeance at the upmarket mall. Everything which my heart has always desired but my wallet couldn't afford, I buy. I purchase a shirt from Marks & Spencer, a leather jacket from Benetton, jeans from Levi, sunglasses from Guess, perfume from Lacoste and shoes from Nike. I compress ten years of window-shopping into an hour of frenzied purchasing, blowing twenty thousand rupees in just these six stores. Then I go into the fancy toilets, wash my face and change, putting on my new jeans, shirt and shoes, with the leather jacket on top. I spray my body with the expensive perfume and stand in front of the full-length mirror. The man who stares back at me is a handsome stranger, tall and lean with a clean-shaven face and curly, tousled hair like actor Salim Ilyasi's. I snap my fingers at the mirror and strike a pose like Michael Jackson. Then I stuff my old clothes and shoes in a shopping bag and swagger out of the toilets in my dark glasses. A hep-looking girl in jeans and T-shirt glances at me appreciatively. Ten minutes ago she wouldn't have noticed me. It makes me realize how much garments can change a man. And I know that there is nothing intrinsically different about the rich. They just wear better clothes.

I feel like breaking into a jig and singing, 'Saala main to sahab ban gaya!' Munna Mobile has become a gentleman. And now he needs a rich lady friend.

I spend the rest of the evening in South Extension Market, watching the chic girls in their chic clothes. They alight from their expensive cars and enter expensive stores selling designer handbags and brand-name shoes. I follow a group of girls into the Reebok showroom and the guard at the entrance salutes me and holds open the door. The manager inside asks me if I would like a soft drink or a cup of tea. I laugh and chat with the sales girls. They flirt with me. The experience makes me feel all warm and happy inside. Stepping out of the centrally heated showroom, I decide to try the Deluxe Indian Restaurant next door. I have a lavish meal of butter chicken, seekh kebabs and naan bread, costing eight hundred rupees. Back again on the main street, I make a final survey of the stretch of brightly lit emporiums, their plexiglass windows full of dazzling goods. The lurid glitter of the city does not seem alien today. I, too, have become a denizen of its showy world.