Jeet Thayil - Narcopolis

‘Why are you leaving?’

‘Because I have a chance to.’

‘What if I offered you a chance?’

‘I’d think about it, but you haven’t made an offer yet.’

‘I will, you can put money on it. I’ll do it very soon.’

But he didn’t, and one morning she put her things into a taxi: Mr Lee’s tin trunks, four or five cloth-wrapped parcels, and a many-tiered make-up kit, the kind carried by Air India stewardesses. It was a little after eight in the morning on Christmas Day. Nobody was awake. Nobody saw her go except Lakshmi, who said, Bitch, whatever you do, don’t come back.

His older son, Jamal, was waiting by the door. How long had he been there? The boy had a way of appearing without making a sound, materializing from nowhere with his eyes wide and his hand extended. He was six years old and already a businessman, all he wanted from his father was cash. Depending on his mood, Rashid handed over some small amount or he didn’t. Today he was opium sick and fearful and God’s words were bubbling in his head. No, he told his son. Out, out. Jamal retreated, eyes sullen, and Rashid banged down the wooden stairs, struggling to put on his shirt, his arms and stomach so meaty that it took some mindfulness, some extra push and twist of effort. He thought: I am a fat businessman. When did this happen? Not so long ago I was a skinny criminal trying to make a name and now here I am, an entrepreneur, with cash in my pocket and the shortest commute in the world — out the door and down a flight of stairs — and none of it gives me a moment of peace in my head. How did this happen?

Shuklaji Street was a fever grid of rooms, boom-boom rooms, family rooms, god rooms, secret rooms that contracted in the daytime and expanded at night. It wasn’t much of a street. It was narrow and congested, and there was an endless stream of cars and trucks and handcarts and bicycles. But it stretched roughly from Grant Road to Bombay Central and to walk along it was to tour the city’s fleshiest parts, the long rooms of sex and nasha. In the midst of it, Rashid’s opium room was becoming a local landmark. Trained staff. Genuine Chinese opium pipes. Credit if you’re good for it. Best quality O. He was getting opium tourists who had heard about the khana from a friend on a beach somewhere in Spain, or a café in Rome, and they’d come all the way to Shuklaji Street to see for themselves. They’d smoke a pipe or two, because that was the point, and then they’d sit around for hours, drinking tea and taking pictures, collecting souvenirs to show off back home. Like the couple from Amsterdam who asked to visit his living quarters. He took them upstairs where his family lived in rooms that ran the length of the building, where his wives made big meals and his children skulked about and he was a mostly absent father and husband. The Dutch couple wanted to see everything, examine each room as if they were on a guided tour, a bonus to their opium adventure. They shook hands with his family and asked endless questions. How many children did he have? How many wives? Had he always lived in Bombay? Why was his English so good? Did his children go to school?

Then the woman asked what a typical morning was like. And he had no answer. How to tell her that he got up late and went straight down to the khana, his system stunned from six or seven hours without drugs, his head reeling with visions of hellfire and the annihilation of the godless world; that it took an hour with the pipe before things turned the right way up? And then, sometime in the late afternoon, after a bath and a meal, he’d step out on the street and say a few words to the punters. Okay? Good? Yes . One-word greetings, or not even that, a nod maybe, a smile if he felt up to it. Just to be there, taking a constitutional among the horse cabs, the black and yellow taxis, men and women yelling to be heard above the honk and bustle of Shuklaji Street: he’d watch the heads bob on their way to some cash-and-carry transaction, criminal apostles to the great god Enterprise, and it gave him a veiny jolt of pleasure to dawdle, to slow down and take it in.

*

He had the shortest commute on the street but not today. He stepped out of the building and walked quickly to the corner, ducking from the sudden glare. It was a holiday of some kind, a Hindu holiday, because the temple was full of people and he could see the priest, threaded, shirtless, his orange dhoti a flash in the sun. On the street, the punters were out in numbers, the respectable fathers and grandfathers and uncles, the solid citizens on furlough from their lives. He heard snatches of Gujarati, Malayalam, even English as they headed to the numbered rooms above the street. Uncontrollable prayer phrases rose to his lips as he walked past the temple. When he was high it was never like this, but when he was opium sick and sober — yes, then, then God was always close. He whispered, Guide thou us on the straight path, thou who are round about the infidels. Thy lightning snatches their eyes. He stepped around a small group on the sidewalk, a trio of cripples in white pyjamas and skullcaps, arguing about money, their crutches propped against the wall. They worked together every day, begging arm in arm, and now they were throwing accusations at each other. He thought: The idea of Muslims fighting each other over a few rupees, it goes against the grain of the Prophet’s word. Or it proves the truth of it. When a storm-cloud cometh out of the heaven, big with darkness and black thunder, they thrust their fingers into their ears for fear of death .

*

He turned into Foras Road and entered Timely Watch Showroom, ringing the bell on his way in, the shop empty, as it usually was. Salim was in the office in the back and he got up when he saw Rashid, came around the desk with the city’s newest fashion accessory clipped to his belt, the headphones pumping a tinny beat into his skull, some disco beat, Saturday Night Fever , what else? Salim’s models were John Travolta and Amitabh Bachchan, and he picked up most of his style and language from the two tough-guy actors, or so said Rashid’s wife. Today he was wearing light blue bell-bottoms and platform shoes, his shirt the same shade of blue as his trousers. His hair, parted on the side, fell to his shoulders in untidy bunches. Rashid went to Salim’s side of the desk, to the leather executive chair with the fancy headrest, and he pulled an envelope from his pocket and slammed it down for the pleasure of hearing that cash-money bang. And for the pleasure of seeing Salim jump to attention and take a mirror out of the desk drawer and, tenderly, a bundle of vials. Rashid had a hundred-rupee note already rolled. He spilled the contents of a vial on the mirror and snorted it before Salim had a chair pulled up to the other side of the desk. Salim was being respectful, properly so: he didn’t touch the envelope.

‘Did you get the whisky?’

‘Of course, Rashidbhai.’

‘“Of course, Rashidbhai,” so polite, like I’m your uncle. Did you get Red or Black?’

‘Black Label, your choice. Not so easy to find these days.’

He made himself comfortable in Salim’s chair, the seat tilting backwards in tiny clicks, some special mechanism that made minute adjustments for his weight and let him lean all the way back without any danger of tipping over.

‘Nice chair, yaar, you must be doing well.’

‘Doing okay, bhai. I work hard, I make money. I stop working, I’m on the street.’

Rashid knew this was the truth. There wasn’t much of a margin in Salim’s line of work, selling cocaine and black-market whisky for the Lala. He did some pocket-maar business on the side, risky work with questionable results, and he spent the day at his boss’s watch shop taking care of non-existent customers. He’d been with the Lala for less than a year and already it was showing on his face, the shadows scored like leather under his eyes. The Lala picked his boys young and put them to work when they got too old for his tastes. The old gangster liked to quote the Baburnama: ‘Women for procreation, boys for pleasure, melons for delight.’