She reached for her bedside drawer, pulled out his Zippo. Lit a cigarette.
* * *
—
She spent the rest of that evening writing up the real voxpop interviews she’d conducted and the fake ones she hadn’t. Fake names, fake quotes.
She wrote up Sunny’s last.
Vijay, 23. She added a later line, when Sunny spoke in his own voice.
“Adapt or die?” her editor called out from his desk the next day. “This fellow really said that?”
“He did,” Neda replied.
“My God,” he said. “This city gets harder by the day.”
2.
She waited for some message from Sunny all week, some sign. She wondered if she should reach out herself, apologize. For what? Sorry I insulted your family. The more she thought about it, the more it seemed like a bad date. But still she was drawn to him. She thought about him all the time. On the other hand, she was always on the cusp of starting a dialogue with Dean. Saying: Listen, this thing happened, I think you should know. In her head she handed over the tape and he listened in his office, she sitting beside him, watching his face. Would he be proud of her?
“Good work,” Dean said, in the bad version in her head. “Get close to him. Discover his plans.”
In truth Dean might say, “That joker? Don’t waste your time.”
One day she asked Dean about the demolitions. (Another thing she’d been thinking of. Why hadn’t she mentioned the demolitions to Sunny? Why hadn’t she articulated a vision of the city where land isn’t just waiting to be commodified?)
“They’re awful, I know.”
“But?”
“Playing devil’s advocate . . .”
“Go on.”
“The Yamuna Pushta. Isn’t that land better used for, I don’t know, the city?”
“It is being used for the city. People are living there.”
“But I mean, the city as a whole. Like London or Paris. Everyone’s drawn to the rivers there. They’re the heart of the city. Here we turn our backs to them.”
She realized she was parroting Sunny’s words.
He gave her a long, piteous look.
“India is not Europe,” he said. “The Yamuna is not the Thames.”
* * *
—
About two weeks had passed when her editor tapped her on the shoulder.
“Neda, what are your evening plans?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“Here.” He handed her a press release. “Sridhar can’t make it. You go.”
She looked at the sheet of glossy paper: “Dinesh Singh Kumar, President, RDP Youth Wing, invites you to attend the inauguration of the Uttar Pradesh Tourism Initiative: Toward the World Class.”
“Toward the World Class,” she repeated.
“The usual nonsense. So don’t waste your time. In and out, write a few hundred words, file it, get your free drinks if you’re lucky.”
* * *
—
Dinesh Singh, son of Ram Singh. What were the chances of that? What were the chances Sunny would be there? Lurking in the background. If their fathers were in league, surely so were the sons, despite Sunny’s protests.
She’d seen a lot of Dinesh in the papers recently, he was on a solid PR drive, trying to burnish the progressive credentials of his avowedly unprogressive father’s government and not doing an entirely bad job of it. His image was a break from the usual entitled and frankly dumb politician’s son. He’d studied history and politics in Canada, he’d imbibed the lessons of statesmanship, he was as urbane and chic (in a rural, son-of-the-soil, professorial, wire-rimmed sort of way) as his father was a hands-in-the-dirt political thug. He talked a good game, he wanted to build on his father’s decisive victory and modernize the state. Naturally he had his eye on the chief ministership. But for now his mission was to promote tourism in UP. Tourism beyond the Taj Mahal. Tourism Toward the World Class.
Neda went to Dean before leaving. She showed him the press release.
“Toward the world class,” he said distractedly. “That’s cute.”
“Do you have any questions? I’m taking requests.”
He handed back the sheet. “Ask him how many hotels in the state are owned by politicians affiliated with his father, and of those hotels, how many are actively engaged in illegal activities such as prostitution and human trafficking.”
“I get that on tape?”
“I’ll buy you dinner.”
* * *
—
The press conference was in one of the banquet halls of the Park Hyatt. They served drinks: there was a decent bar—four uniformed staff standing behind a long banquet table at one side of the room. It had been draped in a white linen tablecloth, there were prepoured glasses of red and white wine, along with orange juice and cola, then bottles of gin, whisky, and vodka under the watchful eye of the bartenders, along with ice buckets, bottles of mixers, the works.