did not know where to aim her eyes. A woman in the company of two men should not look so uneasy. Also, he did not like the way she kept fiddling with the pallav, or end piece, of her sari. She kept pulling and pushing it up higher on her left shoulder, as if she was using the silken folds to hide something there.
It could be coincidence, of course. The three might really be traveling the same route that he was. Furthermore, neither of the two men fit the description of his client's tracker. They were of average height, and neither looked in the least bit European. Nor had Mr. Mohan said anything about a woman.
Sanjay knew he could not take any chances.
Exiting the bus at the next stop, well in advance of his intended destination, he found himself in an upper- middle-class commercial district. Drifting adverts assailed him, clamoring for him to try, buy, and not be shy about sampling the latest range of domestic products, imports, and joint-venture goods. Pushing through a loosely regulated street-storm of light and noise entreating him to acquire a new car, new furniture, new entertainment options, new hair, new body odor, and old vits recalibrated for contemporary playback devices, he worked his way through the comparatively well-dressed, well-groomed crowd of upwardly mobile service personnel, students, and technocrats who jammed the eastern sidewalk.
A single backward glance was enough to confirm his escalating fears. The somber menage a trois was still behind him, following at a discreet distance, striving assiduously to look everywhere but in his direction while not losing track of him.
He began wildly searching his immediate vicinity. Would they just continue to follow him? Or if they could catch him out alone somewhere, in a store or while waiting for transportation, would they decide their presence had been detected and choose to confront him instead? With questions, and the means to persuade him to provide the answers they sought?
He determined not to give them the opportunity. Though he found himself in a strange neighborhood, there was nothing alien about his surroundings. It mimicked its cultural and social counter parts throughout the city. Storefronts emblazoned with 'Sale!' signs offered Bata shoes, Nike sneakers, and cheap socks from China. The broad windows of kapri ki dukan-clothing stores-featured remark ably lifelike holoquins whose flashed-on garb changed every couple of minutes. Larger shops flogged every imaginable size and variety of consumer electronics from Japan, China, Europe, and Southeast Asia as well as the familiar homegrown brands. This not being a tourist area, there were few shops akin to his own.
There was the usual line outside the local Starbeans. Ignoring the frowns of those waiting he forced his way inside, claiming that he was meeting friends already arrived. Pushing through the milling, chattering crowd, he worked his way up to the counter. One of a dozen automated serving stations politely inquired if it could take his order.
He had to make it look real. After a moment's thought he replied, 'I'll have a couple of chocolate-chip vadas, please, with a chota masala chaicchino.' While he waited for the lentil doughnuts and the spicy frozen drink, he kept glancing surreptitiously in the direction of the entrance.
His heart sank when he saw the single-minded trio enter. Trying to remain inconspicuous, they approached the end of the counter nearest the door and placed orders of their own. That, at least, was a good sign. Sanjay doubted they would have bothered to do so had they believed their anonymity had been compromised.
His order arrived. So nervous was he that he had to flash his cred-card three times under the reader before it would accept the charge. Moving away from the counter, he did his best to appear nonchalant as he slowly wended his way toward the rear of the establishment. It did not concern him that every seat and stool was taken by office workers on break or students from the nearby university. He had no intention of sitting down.
The small doughnuts went down fast, the cardamom and ginger in the chaicchino tickling his palate. Beyond that, he barely noticed the food or drink. As expected, there were bathrooms in the back and lines for both. That didn't bother him, either. He no more had time to piss than he did to sit.
There was no alarm on the rear doorway. Besides complying with municipal regulations requiring a second exit, it offered another way into the coffeehouse. The fact that no one was using it told him all he needed to know about the nature of what he was likely to find out back. Shoving hard against the door, he stepped out of the upscale enterprise and into another world.
The air in the alley stank of illegally flushed washwater, uncollected trash, decomposing food, the presence of undocumented night-dwellers, rotting appliances, and the presence of monkeys, rats, mice, and snakes, all compounded by the furnace-like heat of midday. But this was an upper-class neighborhood, and so the service alley was cleaner than many all-too-public streets he had walked in poorer neighborhoods.
An automatic closer had pulled the door shut behind him. Had his pursuers noted his escape, and were they even now moving to follow him? And if they confronted him in the alley, out of sight of witnesses, would their impatience lead them to put their questions to him directly, rather than continuing to follow to see where he might lead?
Should he run left, or right? Leftwards led to a narrowing and darkening of the passage, where the upper floors of commercial buildings nearly touched and where a man could be beaten to within a heartbeat of his life without awareness of his battering impinging on the consciousness of any of the thousands of busy pedestrians swarming through the shops and on the main street beyond. Not the best option.
To his right-to his right sat two figures, indifferent to the world but not unaware of their surroundings. One was old, while his companion was older. The first had a neatly trimmed short beard that was peppered with gray and hair bound up to one side in long black semi-dreads. The senior of the pair wore his hair in long braids and boasted a gray-black beard as dense and untouched as the rusting wire fence on the Ghosh family farm back home. Ash had been used to mark their cheeks and the sun-seared arms that emerged from folds of bright carrot-colored clothing, while their foreheads bore decorative marks in gold and orange.
The men were sadhus, wandering holy ascetics, who for the most part eschewed the trappings of Earthly existence in their search for the True Path, Enlightenment, Nirvana, Realization, Kavayla, Nirguna Brahman, or however one chose to define the ultimate seeking after knowledge. Pithy aphorisms drawn from venerated Sanskrit texts floated across the three-centimeter-wide transparent flexible headband that ran across the forehead of the less ancient of the pair, a moving (in both senses of the word) testament to a lifelong commitment to the dispelling of ignorance. The ancient sayings glowed brightly for all to see, no less ethically efficacious for being solar powered.
The elder sat with his back propped up against the rear wall of the building that housed the Starbeans Sanjay had just fled. One hand helped to support the chillum, or straight pipe, that protruded from his mouth. The aromatic smoke that rose from its bowl reflected the traditional packing of tobacco and hashish, though this particular modern chillum added both chip-driven filter and concentrator to the otherwise old-fashioned pipe.
Glancing in Sanjay's direction, the younger man greeted him politely while extending a hand, palm upward, in the shopkeeper's direction. Sadhus survived on the generosity of others, exchanging good wishes and prayers for alms. Sanjay had no time to waste on the giving of either. He started past them, heading for the far end of the alley where people could be seen rushing busily back and forth on the intersecting main street. His luck was holding: the back door behind him remained closed. He could not rely on that for very long. If those following had not missed him by now, they surely would very soon.
Gnarly fingers reached out to clutch at his pants. 'Namaste, sir. Kripaya, please, can you not spare a few rupees for wise men on pilgrimage?'
Both sadhus looked too well established and too comfortable to be on a pilgrimage to anywhere but their local hash dealer, Sanjay decided quickly. But this modest indirection did not obviate their holiness. Whether in motion, standing, or seated, a holy man was ever on pilgrimage. Unable to dislodge the surprisingly strong fingers, glancing frantically back toward the door that he expected to see burst open at any minute to reveal his three restless pursuers, Sanjay fumbled in his pocket for loose paper. At fifty rupees to the
U.S. dollar, only beggars and the truly poor bothered with coins, while the well-to-do hardly ever carried cash anymore.
Finally finding a ten-rupee note, he handed it to the grateful ascetic, who promptly loosened his fingers. As Sanjay moved to go, the man looked up at him and smiled broadly. 'No special blessing for you, good sir? And if not for you, is there no one in your circle in need of prayer?'
Sanjay was about to snap that there was not, when a better response occurred to him. 'Yes, as a matter of fact, there is.' He indicated the coffeehouse's still shut back door. 'Three people, two men and a woman, are very likely to be soon coming quickly out of that doorway. Wise men such as yourselves will immediately see from their
