The contrast between the familiar and the exceptional was everywhere around me. A bullock cart was drawn up beside a modern sports car at a traffic signal. A man squatted to relieve himself behind the discreet shelter of a satellite dish. An electric forklift truck was being used to unload goods from an ancient wooden cart with wooden wheels. The impression was of a plodding, indefatigable, and distant past that had crashed intact, through barriers of time, into its own future. I liked it.
‘We’re almost there,’ my companion declared. ‘City centre’s just a few blocks. It’s not really what you’d call the downtown area. It’s just the tourist beat where most of the cheap hotels are. The last stop. It’s called Colaba.’
The two young men took their passports and travellers’ cheques from their pockets and pushed them down the fronts of their trousers. The shorter man even removed his watch, and it, too, joined the currency, passport, and other valuables in the marsupial pouch of his underpants. He caught my eye, and smiled.
‘Hey’ he grinned. ‘Can’t be too careful!’
I stood and bumped my way to the front. When the bus stopped I was the first to take the steps, but a crowd of people on the footpath prevented me from moving down to the street. They were touts-street operatives for the various hoteliers, drug dealers, and other businessmen of the city-and they shouted at us in broken English with offers of cheap hotel rooms and bargains to be had. First among them in the doorway was a small man with a large, almost perfectly round head. He was dressed in a denim shirt and blue cotton trousers. He shouted for silence from his companions, and then turned to me with the widest and most radiant smile I’d ever seen.
‘Good mornings, great sirs!’ he greeted us. ‘Welcome in Bombay! You are wanting it cheap and excellent hotels, isn’t it?’
He stared straight into my eyes, that enormous smile not wavering. There was something in the disk of his smile-a kind of mischievous exuberance, more honest and more excited than mere happiness-that pierced me to the heart. It was the work of a second, the eye contact between us. It was just long enough for me to decide to trust him-the little man with the big smile. I didn’t know it then, but it was one of the best decisions of my life.
A number of the passengers, filing off the bus, began beating and swatting at the swarm of touts. The two young Canadians made their way through the crowd unmolested, smiling broadly and equally at the bustling touts and the agitated tourists. Watching them dodge and weave through the crowd, I noticed for the first time how fit and healthy and handsome they were. I decided there and then to accept their offer to share the cost of a room. In their company, the crime of my escape from prison, the crime of my existence in the world, was invisible and inconceivable.
The little guide grabbed my sleeve to lead me away from the fractious group, and toward the back of the bus. The conductor climbed to the roof with simian agility, and flung my backpack and travel bag into my arms. Other bags began tumbling to the pavement in an ominous cadenza of creaks and crashes. As the passengers ran to stop the hard rain of their valuables, the guide led me away again, to a quiet spot a few metres from the bus.
‘My name is Prabaker,’ he stated, in his musically accented English. ‘What is your good name?’
‘My good name is Lindsay,’ I lied, using the name from my false passport.
‘I am Bombay guide. Very excellent first number Bombay guide, I am. All Bombay I know it very well. You want to see everything. I know exactly where is it you will find the most of everything. I can show you even
The two young travellers joined us, pursued by a persistent band of ragged touts and guides. Prabaker shouted at his unruly colleagues, and they retreated a few paces, staring hungrily at our collection of bags and packs.
‘What I want to see right now,’ I said, ‘is a clean, cheap hotel room.’
‘Certainly, sir!’ Prabaker beamed. ‘I can take you to a cheap hotel, and a
‘Okay, lead on, Prabaker. Let’s take a look.’
‘Hey, wait a minute,’ the taller of the two young men interjected. Are you gonna pay this guy? I mean, I know the way to the hotels. No offence to you, buddy-I’m sure you’re a good guide and all-but we don’t need you.’
I looked at Prabaker. His large, dark brown eyes were studying my face with open amusement. I’ve never known a man who had less hostility in him than Prabaker Kharre: he was incapable of raising his voice or his hand in anger, and I sensed something of that even then, in the first minutes with him.
‘Do I
