THE TAXI CRAWLED ALONG THE ALLEYWAY, honking through a thick sludge of pedestrians. Sanjit looked out the window. The minarets of the Sufi shrine, the dargah, soaring above a plateau of low-rises, announced they were entering the Muslim quarter. One side of the street was lined with shops selling sweets, garlands, prayer rugs and trinkets. On the other side, beggars armed with bright plastic bags formed an orderly line in anticipation of food from the mosque.
“This is it,” Ali announced when they reached a blue building.
The flat, a fourth-floor walk-up, was sparse and tidy. A TV at one end mirrored a computer on a weathered desk at the other. Between the two screens were an old beige sofa, two plastic chairs and a rug that covered a small section of the cement floor.
One door led to the kitchen, and the other to the bedrooms and bathroom. Ali showed Sanjit to his room. A single bed ran the length of the wall. In the corner was a doorless cupboard, into which Sanjit unpacked the clothes they’d bought on the way back from the hospital. Ali opened the window, allowing the outside world to pour into the room. A breeze blew in wafts of meat, smoke and spices. Sanjit sniffed the air appreciatively.
“Hungry?” Ali asked.
“Starving.” Sanjit realized he hadn’t eaten anything since the previous night.
They headed straight for the kebab shop downstairs, a little hole in the wall that spilled onto the pavement. Sanjit sat on the molded plastic chair, careful to plant his feet away from the puddle where people who ate before them had washed their hands. The bright-green table wobbled when the waiter rubbed its warped surface with a smelly cloth.
The seekh kebabs arrived not a moment too soon. Sanjit tore a piece of meat, rolled it in coriander sauce and shoved it into his mouth.
“Mmm. Delicious,” he remarked. “But not as good as the ones on Mohammed Ali Road. Remember we used to go there every year after Ramadan? Although I recall someone wasn’t very good with the fast. Forget forty days. You couldn’t get through forty minutes without begging for a piece of my samosa. And then: ‘Please don’t tell Dad. He’ll kill me if he finds out.’” Sanjit chuckled.
“And what a good friend you were. Making me do your homework in exchange for scraps of food.” Ali grinned. “Talking about homework, remember the time we broke into the staff room?”
Sanjit nodded, smiling. He’d just learnt to pick locks from his cousin Navjot. It was Ali’s idea to test out the newly acquired skill after school hours.
“We struck gold with the question papers, didn’t we?” Sanjit said.
“And the look on the teachers’ faces when they saw our answer sheets? ‘How could these two idiots have done so well?’”
“Hey, how about that Playboy we found in D’Souza’s cupboard? Wrapped in brown paper like a textbook?”
Their eyes glazed over at the same time. How could they forget? Inside a musty staff room, under a pale torchlight, the mysteries of the female anatomy had been revealed to them. They gawked, mouths open as wide as their eyes, feasting on every fleshy detail of the red-haired goddess.
The waiter served baida rotis, cut into neat little squares. That disappeared quickly too, as Ali had a monster of a belly to fill and Sanjit was rediscovering his appetite.
“So what happened to you? Here one day, gone the next,” Sanjit asked, licking his fingers.
“Grandad fell sick, so Dad decided we were going to move back to Bhopal. I had no say in the matter, of course,” Ali replied.
“You could’ve said goodbye.”
“I wanted to. But it happened so suddenly.”
“So you went to college in Bhopal?”
Ali nodded. “Studied accounting. Then got a job in an import-export firm. I’ve been with them for the last eight years, based mostly in Delhi and Ahmedabad. Six months ago, they moved me to Mumbai. So here I am.”
Sanjit gestured to the beard. “When did that happen?”
“This.” Ali stroked it affectionately, as if it were a pet. “Grandad made me grow it. I was planning to shave it after he died. But then I became attached to it. Do you like it?”
“I’m not much of a beard person. A bit like Dad.”
“You should try it sometime. You save a small fortune on shaving products.”
“Also handy for storing food, I see.” Sanjit pointed to a fleck of meat trapped in a curl of hair under the chin. Ali extracted it and flicked it to one side.
“So tell me, what have you been up to all these years?” Ali said.
“I went to college, studied commerce, then worked as a salesman in a computer company.”
“Sales. Mmm. I’m not surprised. You were always a good talker.”
“Won the Best Salesman award three years in a row,” Sanjit said, not quite sure why he felt the need to boast.
“And what about the ladies?” Ali winked. “You lost your virginity in my flat, didn’t you? What was the chick’s name?”
“Sophia.”
“If only my parents knew you did it on their bed …” Ali convulsed with laughter. Sanjit smiled sheepishly when he recalled that night. The awkward kissing and shedding of clothes, fumbling with the condom, the stained sheet.
“So are you seeing someone?” Ali asked.
“I was engaged … until this morning. She wasn’t happy about breaking up,” Sanjit said, fighting a cramp of guilt. “I told her that she didn’t need to suffer with me. One day she’ll thank me.”
The sun dipped lower in the sky, withering like a dying campfire. The street sank in gloomy shadows. The world that had disappeared in a bubble of kebabs and laughter returned. The waiter in a tatty Barcelona T-shirt, arguing with a customer. A stray dog, skin stretched tight over its ribs, eagerly lapping up scraps of food on the pavement. The incessant rumble of traffic in the distance. And the bloody disease.
Sanjit’s gaze fell on Ali’s hand, resting on his belly: two fingers missing, the rest splayed and crooked.
What happened there? For a brief moment, Sanjit considered voicing the question. Then decided against it. Tragedy came with a right to privacy. He understood this better than anyone.
The conversation resumed after a spell of ponderous silence, more memories uncorking more laughter.
“Remember the trip to film city—we had the autograph competition?”
“Remember Santosh’s mum? What big tits.”
“Remember trying our first cigarette? Charminar filterless? Wasn’t it awful … Glad we didn’t keep it up.”
“Remember our first drink? Rum from the army canteen?”
That morning, Sanjit had set out on his motorcycle, determined to sever ties with the past. He was now realizing how foolish that was. Because for him, at this point, happiness was only found by looking back, not ahead.