Another man stepped in from the side and hit me with a short right hand that snapped my head back sharply. Two more quick punches crunched into my mouth and nose. I stumbled back, and felt one leg go out from under me. Falling, I saw Prabaker hurl himself at the four men with his arms wide, trying to hold them back from me. I roused myself, and rallied enough to make a charge. My left hook and overhand right elbow, the best hard punches in any street fight, were lucky, and both made tough contact. Beside me, Prabaker went down once, leapt to his feet, and collected a wild haymaker that sent him dazed and sprawling.
I tried to stand near him and protect him with my legs, but I tripped and fell clumsily. Kicks and punches rained, and I covered up, hearing a quiet voice in my head that said,
The men held me down while one of them went through my pockets with practised thoroughness. Drunk and damaged, I was only dimly aware of the dark shapes looming over me. Then I heard another voice, Prabaker's voice, and I understood some of the words in his pleading, and his defiant abuse of them. He castigated the men for shaming their own country and their own people by beating and robbing a foreigner, a visitor to their country who'd done them no harm. It was a wild speech that called them cowards and invoked Mahatma Gandhi, Buddha, the god Krishna, Mother Theresa, and the Bollywood film star Amitabh Bachchan in the same sentence. It had an effect. The leader of the group came to squat near me. I tried through my drunken haze to stand and fight again, but the others pushed me down and held me on the ground. I know this... I know this...
The man leaned over to look into my eyes. His face was hard, impassive, and very much like my own. He opened my torn shirt and shoved something inside. It was my passport and my watch.
They stood, gave Prabaker a last scowl of incomprehensible hatred, and then climbed into the car. Doors slammed as the car sped away, scattering us with dust and small stones.
Prabaker's wretchedness, when he was sure that I wasn't badly hurt, and he found time to wail and whine, was inconsolable. He blamed himself, loudly and often, for leading us to the remote bar and for allowing us to drink too much. He said with perfect honesty that he would happily take my bruises on his body, if it were possible. His pride in himself, as Bombay's best street guide, was a tattered banner. And his passionate, unqualified love for his country, Bharat Mataji, Mother India, suffered blows more grievous than any the body might endure.
"There's only one good thing for doing, Lin," he concluded, as I washed my face at a hand-basin in the huge white-tiled bathroom of our hotel. "When we get back to Bombay, you must be sending a telegram to your family and your friends for more monies, and you must go to your New Zealand embassy for making a complain of emergencies."
I dried my face, and leaned on the basin to look into the mirror.
The injuries weren't bad. A black eye was forming. My nose was swollen, but not broken. Both lips were cut and thickened, and there were some sweeping grazes on my cheeks and jaw, where kicks had scraped away the skin. It could've been a lot worse, and I knew it. I'd grown up in a tough neighbourhood, where working- class gangs preyed on one another and were merciless to loners, like me, who refused to join any of them. And then there was the prison. No beatings I'd ever suffered were as savage as those inflicted by the uniformed men who were paid to keep the peace, the prison guards. That was what the voice, my own voice, had recalled... I know this... That was the memory: being held down by three or four officers in the punishment unit while two or three others worked me over with fists, batons, and boots. It's always worse getting a beating from them, of course, because they're supposed to be the good guys. You understand and accept it when the bad guys work you over. But when the good guys use handcuffs to chain you to a wall, and then take turns to stomp and kick you, it's the whole system, it's the whole world, that's breaking your bones. And then there was the screaming. The other men, the other prisoners, screaming. Every night.
I looked into my own eyes in the mirror, and thought about Prabaker's suggestion. It was impossible to contact the New Zealand embassy-or any embassy. I couldn't contact family or friends because the police would be watching them, and waiting for a connection to be made. There was no-one. No help. No money.
The thieves had taken every cent I had in the world. The irony of it wasn't lost on me: the escaped armed robber, robbed of everything he owned. What was it Karla had said, before I'd left for the village? Don't drink any alcohol on the trip...
"There's no money in New Zealand, Prabu," I told him as we walked back to our hotel room. "There's no family who can help, no friends, and no help at the embassy."
"No money?"
"None."
