"Okay, Mr. Lindsay, I will be telling you everything. Karla-she is a famous businessman in Bombay. Very long she is here. I think five years maybe. She has one small house, not far. Everybody knows the Karla."
"Where is she from?"
"I think, German, or something like that."
"But she sounded American."
"Yes, is sounding, but she is from German, or like to the German.
And now, anyway, is almost very Indian. You want to eat your foods now?"
"Yeah, just a minute."
The group of young friends called out their goodbyes to others near the paan stand, and walked off into the mill and swirl of the crowd. Karla joined them, walking away with her head held high in that curiously straight-backed, almost defiant posture. I watched her until she was swallowed by the people-tide of the crowds, but she never looked back.
"Do you know a place called Leopold's?" I asked Prabaker as he joined me, and we started to walk once more.
"Oh, yes! Wonderful and lovely place it is, Leopold's Beer Bar.
Full of the most wonderful, lovely peoples, the very, very fine and lovely people. All kind of foreigners you can find there, all making good business. Sexy business, and drugs business, and money business, and black-market business, and naughty pictures, and smuggler business, and passport business, and-"
"Okay, Prabaker, I get it."
"You want to go there?" "No. Maybe later." I stopped walking, and Prabaker stopped beside me. "Listen, what do your friends call you? I mean, what's your name for short, instead of Prabaker?"
"Oh, yes, short name I am having also. My short name is Prabu."
"Prabu... I like it."
"It's meaning the Son of Light, or like to that. Is good name, yes?"
"Is good name, yes."
"And your good name, Mr. Lindsay, it is really not so good, if you don't mind I'm telling your face. I don't like it this long and kind of a squeaky name, for Indian people speaking."
"Oh, you don't?"
"Sorry to say it, no. I don't. Not at all. Not a bit. Not even a teensy or a weensy-"
"Well," I smiled, "I'm afraid there's not a lot I can do about it."
"I'm thinking that a short name-Lin-is much better," he suggested. "If you're not having objections, I will call you Lin."
It was as good a name as any, and no more or less false than the dozen others I'd assumed since the escape. In fact, in recent months I'd found myself reacting with a quirky fatalism to the new names I was forced to adopt, in one place or another, and to the new names that others gave me. Lin. It was a diminutive I never could've invented for myself. But it sounded right, which is to say that I heard the voodoo echo of something ordained, fated: a name that instantly belonged to me, as surely as the lost, secret name with which I was born, and under which I'd been sentenced to twenty years in prison.
I peered down into Prabaker's round face and his large, dark, mischievous eyes, and I nodded, smiled, and accepted the name. I couldn't know, then, that the little Bombay street guide had given me a name thousands of people, from Colaba to Kandahar, from Kinshasa to Berlin, would come to know me by. Fate needs accomplices, and the stones in destiny's walls are mortared with small and heedless complicities such as those. I look back, now, and I know that the naming moment, which seemed so insignificant then, which seemed to demand no more than an arbitrary and superstitious yes or no, was in fact a pivotal moment in my life.
The role I played under that name, and the character I became-
Linbaba-was more real, and true to my nature, than anyone or anything that I ever was before it. "Yes, okay, Lin will do."
"Very good! I am too happy that you like it, this name. And like my name is meaning Son of Light in Hindi language, your name, Lin, has it also a very fine and so lucky meaning."
"Yeah? What does Lin mean in Hindi?"
"It's meaning _Penis!" he explained, with a delight that he expected me to share.
"Oh, great. That's just... great."
"Yes very great, very lucky. It is not exactly meaning this, but it is sounding like ling, or lingam, and that is meaning penis."
"Come off it, man," I protested, beginning to walk once more.
"How can I go around calling myself Mr. Penis? Are you kidding me? I can see it now-Oh, hello, pleased to meet you, my name is Penis. No way. Forget it. I think we'll stick to Lindsay."
"No! No! Lin, really I'm telling you, this is a fine name, a very power name, a very lucky, a too lucky name! The people will love this name, when they hear it. Come, I will show you. I want to leave it this bottle of whisky you gave to me, leave it with my friend, Mr. Sanjay. Here, just here in this shop. Just you see how he likes it your name."
A few more paces along the busy street brought us to a small shop with a hand-painted sign over the open door:
