Foreign Body

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge several Indian doctors who were exceptionally hospitable to me on my visit to India, particularly Dr. Gagan Gautam, who took an entire day out of his busy schedule to show me both private and public Indian hospitals. There was also Dr. Ajit Saxena, who not only showed me his private hospital but also invited me into his home to meet his family and enjoy a wonderful, home-cooked Indian dinner. And finally there was Dr. Sudhaku Krishnamurth, who introduced me to the two previously named individuals.

At the same time as acknowledging these physicians I would like to absolve them of any responsibility for the story line, descriptions, or slight exaggerations in Foreign Body, for which I take full responsibility. For example, upon reading the manuscript, Dr. Gautam commented, “I haven’t seen people riding on the roof of a bus in Delhi. Hanging from them, yes . . . but not on the roof.” After some thought I realized he was correct. When I saw the phenomenon, it was indeed outside the city limits.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge the country of India itself. During my visit I found it to be an overwhelmingly fascinating mixture of contrasts: rich yet poor, serenely beautiful but insidious, modern yet medieval. It is a country living in three centuries all at once, with a fascinating history I knew little about, and populated by creative, intelligent, beautiful, and hospitable people. In short, it is a country I can’t wait to revisit.

This book is dedicated to Samarth Gautam,

in hopes that his generation

and the previous will live in respectful harmony.

Have a great life, little guy!

If one thinks of oneself as free, one is free,

and if one thinks of oneself as bound, one is bound.

Here this saying is true, “Thinking makes it so.”

—Ashtavakra Gita, 1:11, translated by John Richards

Prologue

OCTOBER 15, 2007

MONDAY, 7:00 P.M.

DELHI, INDIA

Only those long-term residents of Delhi who were extraordinarily sensitive to the vicissitudes of the city’s traffic patterns could tell that rush hour had peaked and was now on the downward slope. The cacophony of horns, sirens, and screeches seemed undiminished to the tortured, untrained ear. The crush appeared unabated. There were gaudily painted trucks; buses with as many riders clinging precariously to the outside and on the roof as were inside; autos, ranging from hulking Mercedes to diminutive Marutis; throngs of black-and-yellow taxis; auto rickshaws; various motorcycles and scooters, many carrying entire families; and swarms of black, aged bicycles. Thousands of pedestrians wove in and out of the stop-and-go traffic, while hordes of dirty children dressed in rags thrust soiled hands into open windows in search of a few coins. Cows, dogs, and packs of wild monkeys wandered through the streets. Over all hung a smothering blanket of dust, smog, and general haze.

For Basant Chandra, it was a typically frustrating evening commute in the city that he had lived in for his entire forty-seven years. With a population of more than fourteen million, traffic had to be tolerated, and Basant, like everyone else, had learned to cope. On this particular night he was even more tolerant than usual since he was relaxed and content from having stopped for a visit with his favorite call girl, Kaumudi.

In general, Basant was a lazy, angry, and violent man who felt cheated in this life. Growing up in an upper- caste Kshatriya family, he felt his parents had married him down with a Vaishya woman, despite his father’s obtaining a management position at the in-laws’ pharmaceutical firm as part of the union, while he was afforded a particularly well-paying sales manager position in place of his previous job selling Tata-brand trucks. The final blow to Basant’s self-esteem came with his children, five girls, aged twenty-two, sixteen, twelve, nine, and six. There had been one boy, but his wife had miscarried at five months, for which Basant openly blamed her. In his mind, she’d done it on purpose by overworking as a harried medical doctor, practicing internal medicine at a public hospital. He could remember the day as if it were yesterday. He could have killed her.

With such thoughts in mind, Basant pounded his steering wheel in frustration as he glided into the reserved parking slot in front of his parents’ house, where he and his family lived. It was a soiled three-story concrete structure that had been painted white at some indeterminate time in the past. The roof was flat and the window frames metal. On the first floor was a small office where his wife, Meeta, occasionally saw her few private patients. The rest of the first floor housed his aging parents. Basant and his family occupied the second floor, and his younger brother, Tapasbrati, and his family were on the third.

As Basant was critically eyeing his house, which was hardly the style that he expected to be living in at this stage of his life, he became aware of a car pulling up behind him, blocking him in. Gazing in the rearview mirror, he had to squint against the car’s headlights. All he could make out through the hazy glare was a Mercedes emblem.

“What the hell?” Basant spat. No one was supposed to park behind him.

He opened his door and climbed from the car with full intention of walking back and giving the Mercedes’s driver a piece of his mind. But he didn’t have to. The driver and his two passengers had already alighted and were approaching ominously.

“Basant Chandra?” the passenger in the lead questioned. He wasn’t a big man, but he conveyed an indisputable aura of malevolent authority with his dark complexion, spiked hair, a bad-boy black leather motorcycle jacket over a tight white T-shirt, exposing a powerful, athletic body. Almost as intimidating was the driver. He was