‘Don’t be too sure,’ I said, gathering up the rolled joints. ‘Women have a psychic witchy spooky talking-to-the-dead way of knowing everything you think. So, sooner or later, you’ve gotta do it their way anyway.’
‘Of course,’ he hissed. ‘That’s how women get back at men.’
‘How’s that?’
‘By making men become women, for a while. It’s cruel, what they do, making us talk to them, Lin. It’s scary, and men have difficulty with scary. It makes them want to fight.’
‘Speaking of scary, let’s go find out how Diva’s doing.’
Diva was surrounded by young girls up past their bedtimes, asking her about everything she wore, and everything that spilled from Naveen’s pack.
Johnny and Sita had covered the earthen floor with a blue plastic sheet, and they’d covered that with patchwork quilts. There was a clay
That pot was all of Diva’s water for a day: all she had for drinking, cooking and doing the dishes. There was a kerosene pressure cooker in a corner, with two burners. A metal cabinet on high legs held two metal saucepans, some foodstuffs and a carton of milk. Another metal cabinet with three shelves was for her clothes.
A kerosene lantern rested on that cabinet. The low light seemed to hover on faces and in corners. Apart from a decorative swirl of artificial flowers, hanging from one of the bamboo support poles, there was nothing else in the hut.
The walls were made from woven reed matting, the gaps and chinks stuffed with sheets of newspaper. The roof was a bare plastic sheet, draped over the bamboo framework of the hut.
The black plastic roof was so low that I had to stoop a little. I’d spent a lot of time in the humid swelter of a hut just like hers. I knew that an unpleasantly hot day on the city’s streets became an inferno in a small hut, each breath a struggle, and sweat dripping like rain from drooping leaves.
I looked at her, the Bombay Diva, sitting on the patchwork blankets and talking with the girls.
I hadn’t lied: it did get better, when I lived in the slum, but only after it got so bad that I thought I couldn’t stand another minute of teeming crowds, constant noise, lack of water, roaming cohorts of rats, and the constant background hum of hunger and fatally wounded hope.
I couldn’t tell her that the better days only ever began after the worst day. And I couldn’t know that the worst day, for Diva, was only twenty-four hours away.
‘I brought you some supplies,’ I said, leaning over to hand her the little pile of rolled joints, and a quarter-bottle of local rum.
‘A man of taste and distinction,’ she smiled, accepting the gifts. ‘Sit down, Shantaram, and join us. The girls were just about to explain whose ass you have to kiss, just to take a shit around here.’
‘I’ll take a raincheck, Diva,’ I smiled, ‘but I’m gonna stick around for a bit with Naveen and Didier, until you sleep, so I won’t be far. Is there anything else I can get you?’
‘No, man,’ she said. ‘Not unless you can bring my dad here.’
‘That would be kinda defeating the purpose,’ I smiled again. ‘But as soon as this situation with your dad settles down, I’m sure Naveen will put you together again.’
‘I hope so,’ she said. ‘When I first looked at these skinny girls, I thought they could sell their slimming diet for millions, to my friends alone. But then I realised that they’re hungry. What the hell is going on here?’
‘Welcome to the other side.’
‘Well, if I stay here for a week, that’s more than enough time to change all that,’ Diva said.
One of the girls translated her English words into Hindi, as she spoke. The girls all applauded and cheered. Diva was triumphant.
‘You see? The revolution has already started.’
The impish rebel fire was still in her eyes, but her face couldn’t hide the fear that crouched in her heart.
She was an intelligent girl. She knew that Naveen, Didier and I wouldn’t insist on something as drastic as a week in the slum, if we didn’t fear something more drastic on the open street.
I was sure she missed the cosseting luxury of the family mansion, the only home she’d ever known. Naveen said it was always well stocked with friends, food, drink, entertainment and servants. And maybe, in part, she felt that her father had deserted her, by banishing her to Naveen’s care.
I watched her smiling that stiff, unflinching smile, and talking with the girls. She was afraid for her father, that much was clear: perhaps more than for herself. And she was alone, and in a different world: a foreign tourist in the city where she was born.
I went to the hut next door, and settled down on a well-worn blue carpet beside Didier and Naveen. They were playing poker.
‘Will you play a hand, Lin?’ Didier asked.
‘I don’t think so, Didier. I’m kind of scattered tonight. Can’t think straight enough to play in your class.’
‘Very well,’ Didier smiled good-naturedly. ‘Then I shall continue the lesson. I am teaching Naveen how to cheat with honour.’
‘Honourable cheating?’
