"No problem this shirt," Prabaker frowned, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, and smearing the blood-red fluid deeper into my shirtfront with vigorously ineffective rubbing. "No problem your boots also. I will wipe him just like this, see? I must ask it now, do you like the swimming?" "Swimming?" I asked, swallowing the little paan mixture that was still in my mouth.
"Oh, yes. Swimming. I will take you to Chowpatty beach, so nice beach it is, and there you can practise chewing and spitting and chewing and more spitting the paan, but without so many of all your clothes only, for a good saving on your laundry."
"Listen, about that-going around the city-you work as a guide, right?"
"Oh, yes. Very best Bombay guide, and guiding all India also."
"How much do you charge per day?"
He glanced at me, his cheeks appled in the impish grin I was learning to recognise as the clever under-side of his broad and gentle smile.
"I charge hundred rupees all day," he said.
"Okay..."
"And tourists buy it the lunch."
"Sure."
"And taxi also, tourists pay."
"Of course."
"And Bombay bus tickets, all they pay."
"Yeah."
"And chai, if we drink it on a hot afternoon, for refreshing our good selves."
"U-huh-"
"And sexy girls, if we go there, on a cool night, if we are feeling a big needy swelling in our-"
"Yeah, okay, okay. Listen, I'll pay you for the whole week. I want you to show me Bombay, teach me a bit about the city. If it works out okay, there'll be a bonus for you at the end of the week. How does that sound?"
The smile sparked his eyes, but his voice was surprisingly sombre as he replied.
"This is your good decision, Linbaba. Your very good decision."
"Well," I laughed, "we'll see. And I want you to teach me some Hindi words, okay?"
"Oh, yes! I can teach everything! Ha means yes, and nahin means no, and pani means water, and khanna means foods, and-"
"Okay, okay, we don't have to learn it all at once. Is this the restaurant? Good, I'm starved." I was about to enter the dark and unprepossessing restaurant when he stopped me, his expression suddenly grave. He frowned, and swallowed hard, as if he was unsure how to begin.
"Before we are eating this good foods," he said, at last, "before we... before we make any business also, something there is, I must tell it to you."
His manner was so dejected that I felt a twinge of apprehension.
"Well, now I am telling... that tola charras, the one I was selling to you in hotel..."
"Yes?"
"Well... that was the business price. The really price-the friendship price-is only fifty rupees for one tola Afghani charras." He lifted his arms, and then let them slap down at his thighs. "I charged it fifty rupees too much."
"I see," I answered quietly. The matter was so trivial, from my point of view, that I was tempted to laugh out loud. It was obviously important to him, however, and I suspected that he wasn't often moved to make such admissions. In fact, as he told me much later, Prabaker had just then decided to like me, and for him that meant he was bound to a scrupulous and literal honesty in everything he said or did. It was at once his most endearing and most irritating quality, that he always told me the whole of the truth.
"So... what do you want to do about it?"
"My suggestion," he said seriously, "we smoke it that business price charras very fast, until finish that one, then I will buy new one for us. After from now, it will be everything friendship prices, for you and for me also. This is a no problem policy, isn't it?"
I laughed, and he laughed with me. I threw my arm around his shoulder and led him into the steamy, ambrosial activity of the busy restaurant.
"Lin, I think I am your very good friend," Prabaker decided, grinning happily. "We are the lucky fellows, isn't it?"
"Maybe it is," I replied. "Maybe it is."
Hours later, I lay back in a comfortable darkness, under the sound-strobe of a ceaselessly revolving ceiling fan. I was tired, but I couldn't sleep. Beneath my windows the street that had writhed and toiled in daylight was silent, subdued by a night- sultriness, moist with stars. Astounding and puzzling images from the city tumbled and turned in my mind like leaves on a wave of wind, and my blood so thrilled with hope and possibility that I couldn't suppress a smile, lying there in the dark. No-one, in the world I'd left behind me, knew where I was. No-one, in the new world of Bombay, knew who I was. In that moment, in those shadows, I was almost safe.
I thought of Prabaker, and his promise to return early in the morning to begin my tours of the city. Will he come? I wondered.
Or will I see him somewhere later in the day, walking with another newly arrived tourist? I decided, with the faint, impersonal callousness of the lonely, that if he were as good as his word, and turned up in the morning, I would begin to like him.
