People getting out of cars at the Radio Club are in each other’s way: thin young men in sherwanis, women in Banarasis. I turn back. I walk past the Taj and the Yacht Club and knock on the window of one of the taxis by the petrol pump. The CD player’s on and the man is staring at the taxi before him.
I don’t return to Malabar Hill; I go to the Bombay Gymkhana. The long promenade is empty. Any members here are in the bar. I wave to the one waiter. I order a chicken and vegetable clear soup. My stomach rumbles, but not with hunger; it must be the sandwich I had on the plane. I only eat soup.
*
By the time I get back, Parsi Nite is ebbing. No accordion to be heard. But people are hovering round the buffet in the dining room. Two men emerge; it takes me a second to realize who they are. Milind Somani, stocky, Savage House, essentially unchanged. The other’s more difficult to place, taller, larger, but I know him – Ali Naqvi – from his smile and light eyes.
‘Amit?’
I nod and smile at Milind. The night’s not quite ended. A woman in a shoulderless dress comes out of the door.
‘My God, it’s been years, right?’
It occurs to me that Ramu would remember them, because he remembers everyone in school.
‘Amit’s a writer,’ says Milind to Ali, who unostentatiously claims he’s aware of this.
They’re prosperous, dependable. I envy them. I’m a bit surprised they know what I do. Not because I don’t think Milind reads, but because your closest circles generally hear what you do last of all: your family, your childhood friends, your city, your country. In reverse order.
*
At night, in the sealed dark of my room, I dream of going to the Hanging Gardens.
