capabilities of India’s private sector – “world-class beaters,” in Puri’s words.
The Metro had brought about something of a social revolution as well. Unlike on India’s trains, there was only one class of travel available. Passengers drawn from every religion and caste were forced to rub shoulders and treat one another with a certain cordiality – a phenomenon unthinkable in Delhi until relatively recently and one that remained a rarity in much of rural India.
Still, Puri rarely used the Metro. The truth was he didn’t enjoy traveling in what could often be cramped conditions. Nor did the anonymity it imposed appeal to him.
“Equality is all very well,” he had told his friend Dr. Subhrojit Ghosh at the Gym recently when they had been reflecting upon an appeal by the chief minister for the middle classes to use public transport. “But let other people enjoy. I myself will keep my car and driver.”
He had only opted for the underground this evening because he knew his Ambassador would be too wide for the narrow lanes of the slum where the magician lived.
His plan was to get off at Shadipur, where Tubelight would be waiting for him; from there they would continue their journey in the operative’s auto rickshaw.
The Metro journey required one change at Rajiv Chowk, where a digital display correctly predicted the arrival of the next train.
En route, Puri found that he was able to use his mobile phone. He called a number programmed into his speed dial.
A woman’s drowsy voice answered.
“I woke you?” asked Puri.
“I was just getting up.”
“I’ll see you tonight?”
“What time?”
“Should be nine, ten at the latest.”
The detective hung up and then called home.
Monika, one of the maidservants, answered. ‘Madam’ was out, she explained.
Puri tried Rumpi’s mobile next.
She sounded distracted and was coy about where she was and what she was doing. He could hear Mummy’s voice in the background.
“What are you two up to?” he asked.
“This and that, Chubby.”
“More shopping, is it?”
There was a slight pause. “Yes, you caught us at it. We’re picking up a few things for the twins.”
“Well I would be reaching late. Tomorrow I would be going to Haridwar at crack of dawn, also,” explained the detective.
This was code for, “I expect to be fed when I get home,” and Rumpi knew it.
“Don’t worry, Chubby,” she said. “There’ll be plenty of food.”
The contrast between the sedate Metro and the feverish world above left Puri wondering if he had not imagined the underground journey.
It was not uncommon for him to experience such a sense of dislocation when working in Delhi these days. The India of beggars and farmer suicides and the one of cafes selling frothy Italian coffee were like parallel dimensions. As he slipped back and forth between them, he often found himself pondering the ancient Indian axiom that this world is but maya, an illusion, a collective dream.
Riding in the back of Tubelight’s auto rickshaw as it bumped, shuddered and zigzagged along the turbulent byways of Shadipur quickly snapped the detective out of his reverie, however.
The slum, one of Delhi’s largest, was inhabited almost entirely by street entertainers: puppeteers, snake charmers, bear handlers, acrobats, musicians, troupes of actors who performed plays with social messages, the odd storyteller and jadoo wallahs. But the view through the scratched, convex windscreen was depressingly familiar: a sooty ghetto of ramshackle brick houses smothered in cow dung patties. Plastic sheeting, chunks of concrete and twisted scrap metal were draped over roofs. Canvas tents were pitched amidst heaps of garbage, where filthy, half-clad children defecated and played.
Eyes – curious, anxious, searching, cloudy with cataracts – stared out from doorways; slit windows; smoke- filled, pencil-thin alleyways. Puri caught glimpses of dark-skinned women with half-veiled faces cooking chappatis over open fires. Families crouched on charpoys eating from shared bowls with their hands. Young men stood out in the open in their underpants, washing themselves.
Like any jungle, it was infested with animals. Mangy mutts ran snarling alongside the auto rickshaw; chickens and ducks clucked and squawked as they scurried out of the way of the oncoming vehicle; monkeys hanging from electrical cables illegally tapping the power grid screeched overhead at the intruders on their territory.
Tubelight pulled up outside a narrow, ramshackle house.
“This is the place,” he said in Hindi, looking around nervously. “I’ll have to wait outside.” He added quickly: “To keep an eye on my auto.” And then: “Someone might steal it.”
“I am to face the jadoo wallah alone, is it?” mused Puri in English. “Let us hope he does not turn me into a frog.”
“Let’s hope, Boss.”
“But he said he is willing to talk to me, is it?”
“I told him you wanted to see some magic and were willing to pay. The rest is up to you.”
Puri knocked on the door. A young boy answered, looked the detective up and down and motioned him inside. They crossed a small, drab room and stepped out into a courtyard. From there, they mounted a flight of concrete stairs that curled around the outside of the house like a python.
Akbar the Great, descendant of courtly magicians, was sitting on a charpoy on the roof. His eyes were those of an anxious man, one who had lived his life by his wits and expected trouble around every corner. Still, he greeted his visitor with a respectful salaam and his right hand placed over his heart.
“Please forgive the conditions in which we must welcome such an honored guest,” he said in a lyrical Urdu rarely heard in Delhi these days. Akbar the Great’s wrinkled face was surmounted by an impeccably clean topi. His white beard reached his chest. “Once we entertained Mughal emperors. Babur, Humayan, Aurangzeb – all loved our magic. In those bygone days, they rewarded us with precious stones – rubies from Badakhshan, diamonds from Golkonda. But now we are reduced to performing on the streets for a few rupees, constantly harassed and beaten by the police. Earlier today we were outside the Red Fort and they chased us away and hit us with their lathis.”
“There is no need to apologize on my account, Baba,” said the detective, who knew only too well that India’s Muslims, the largest minority in the world, were amongst its most marginalized. He sat down on a chair facing the magician. “It is an honor to meet you. I am told that you are the greatest magician in all of India.”
Akbar the Great acknowledged this praise with an assuming nod.
“I’m known from one part of India to the next!” he declared with a flourish of his worn hands. “There is not a village or town where I have not performed. Ask anyone and they will have heard of Akbar the Great – he who can pull thorns from his tongue, swallow steel balls whole and bring the dead back to life!” His patter sounded well rehearsed; he delivered it as he might to an audience on the street. “But nowadays people are not interested in magic. They all want to stay at home and watch TV, an invention of the evil one, Shaitan!”
The boy who had answered the front door, one of Akbar the Great’s great-grandsons as it turned out, served tea in chipped cups as the Muslim call to prayer sounded over the slum. Beyond the roof’s precipitous edge lay the jutting, irregular rooftops of Shadipur – homemade TV aerials, laundry lines and plastic water tanks superimposed against the setting sun.
“I was told you have come to see me perform,” said Akbar the Great, as they began to sip their tea. “My fee is five hundred rupees.”
“Forgive me, Baba, but I did not come here to see your show,” said Puri.
“Oh?”
“I am seeking information. And for this I am willing to pay one thousand.” Puri took the money from his wallet.
