“Just local politics. Things are different out there.”
“I bet. They have another name for him, right? Like a mountain. What was it? Himmatgiri?”
He looked away.
“Don’t ever use that name again.”
* * *
—
This was only six weeks, but it felt like a life completely. From waking to sleeping, she was consumed by it. They met in hotel suites no more than twenty times. He brought her jewelry to wear. Clothes sometimes. She dressed slowly. Went out like that for the night, a different person. Vanished awhile. She became herself when she left him, when she went back to her world. But there was something she carried away.
Something eroding her.
* * *
—
Outside, the city was submerging, collapsing. The monsoon filled the drains and gutters. The roads spilled over with horns. They never talked about it. There were protests. Evictions. Demolitions. They never talked. She transcribed for Dean. They never talked. He talked at her from bed. From across the table. There was a necessity to this. Sunny cited the law. Almitra H. Patel v. Union of India. The court opined: Delhi should be the showpiece of the nation. Should one give a pickpocket a reward for stealing?
* * *
—
Her mother asked, “Are you seeing someone?”
“Yes,” she said.
Sitting at the breakfast table.
“Hari?”
She laughed into her cereal. “God, no.”
“What’s wrong with Hari?”
“Nothing.”
“Is it Dean?”
“It’s not Dean.”
“Will we meet him?”
“I doubt it.”
“Are you taking precautions?”
“Of course.”
4.
With all the precautions in the world, it was bound to change. This note could not sustain. The monsoon eased off. It was four a.m. on a Friday morning. They were lying in bed, half awake. He said he was leaving for Lucknow the day after, he’d be gone for work. Dinesh Singh, he said. When she was with him, she lost sense of the days. They fell asleep and when she woke it was 6:30 a.m. and he was already getting dressed.
“What happened?”
“Change of plan. These assholes are coming to Delhi tonight.”
“Who?”
“Dinesh and his behenchod father. I have to prepare.”
“How do you prepare?”
“Mostly by remembering not to talk.”
“What do you do with them? You never say.”
“It’s my father’s deal.”
“And yours?”
“What do you mean?”
“What’s going on with you, the river?”
“Don’t ask.”
“I just did.”
“My father’s looking into it.”
He was about to leave.
* * *
—
She left the hotel that morning just after 7:30 a.m.
She was driving back home to change before work when Dean called. She didn’t answer at first. She figured it could wait. But he called again seconds later, breathless. “Where are you?” Before she could answer, he said, “I need you to get down to Laxmi Camp right away.”
“Now?”
“A demolition’s happening this morning, the bulldozers are already there. The High Court sent a notice right now.”
“OK.”
“I need you to cover it. I can’t get there, I’m in Meerut.”
“Right now?”
“Yes! Right now!”
* * *
—
There had been protests over Laxmi Camp for months, court orders going back and forth, but now the bulldozers were moving in. It was true, a demolition crew had already arrived. The officer in charge announced work would start as soon as he’d finished his tea. A market had been designated on this land. Some residents on the site scrambled into action, tried to salvage their lives, dismantling their own makeshift houses piece by piece, others just made bags of belongings, leaving the structures to be destroyed. It had rained briefly overnight, but it was only hot and humid now. Many men had left for the labor mandi to find work, left their homes unguarded. They hadn’t believed the threats, or they couldn’t afford to take the time off work. She got there just as the officer was making his announcement. She was accosted by some residents of the nearby colony. One upright, white-collar gentleman with his fat Labrador wanted to go on the record. He was Ashok from the Residents Welfare Association. Age thirty-nine. Write it down. These people are a nuisance, a menace, they make the city filthy, they bring crime, they defecate in the gardens. Write it down. We built a wall, but they made a hole. They come through and use it as a path in the night. It’s high time they were out. Why should they be rewarded for squatting on public land? The world is watching, he said. Write it down. He crowded her notebook as he watched her write it down. A plump, wearied woman from the jhuggi overheard what he was saying. I’m Rekha. Write that down! We helped build your homes! We cooked your food! We guarded your homes in the night! We chased away thieves when they came! And this is what you do! His dog started barking at her. Without warning the bulldozers fired up. People started to scream, back and forth. And this is what you do to us?! Where can we go?! Who’ll work for you now?! The bulldozers drove their unerring path, crushing everything ahead. Homes of tarp and bamboo and metal sheeting and loose brick were crushed, entire livelihoods and lives summarily erased. Then a scream of a different kind ripped the air. It was so loud and sickening that everything stopped. The bulldozers cut their engines and ceased their march, police and citizens surged toward the source, the last, half-collapsed house. Ashok’s dog continued to bark. A young woman in shredded rags was pulled away from the wreckage, howling and gibbering. Men dug up the rubble in a frenzy, but it was too late. The crushed bodies of two sibling infants were pulled out, held up in the air, whitened, covered in chalk and plaster, dead. She saw it with her eyes. She heard the people begin to wail, and saw boys pelt stones at the bulldozer.