Free Delhi Noir by Hirsh Sawhney Page B

flame from wick to wick. So little to the body, I was thinking the other day while I bathed, the soaping is so quickly done, so little to do.
    Go! I heard my Baba say. Fight, with love in your heart.
    I went to a hardware store and bought a quarter-inch brush, a small tin of enamel blue, a cheap screwdriver, and a key ring with a red disc; on the sidewalk I bought a secondhand padlock. Then I went home and parked the Bee and kissed my wife. Not now, I said, detaching myself when she sent the boys out to play. I opened the paint can and outlined eggplants and marigolds on the nose of the Bee and rose water urns and caged bulbuls on her tail. The paint was still wet as I rode over the hill again and padlocked the iron door in the curly-wurly ruin.
    Next day I tailed the pair again. They did a repeat of the hill walk and parted at the gate on the 212 route, Sidey looking more depressed than ever. I tailed him home to a Maurice Nagar flat and made some inquiries with neighbors.
    The morning after I was at the DU metro station early. This time I braved the sweet potato but asked for an extra squeeze of lime.
    Mongoose turned up in his floral jacket and ordered the same. We exchanged a wink when a Bips lookalike passed by on gel-pen refill heels. I chucked my leaf plate and ordered another.
    “And one for my friend here!” I said.
    “No, no,” he protested, but only formally. He was already chucking his leaf.
    “Something else, these babes, no?” I said, strolling him gently away. He was walking before he knew it.
    We drifted up University Road toward the gates. He seemed happy to get away from the metro, but kept looking back all the same.
    “So, Mr. Raju,” I began.
    Mongoose stopped dead in his tracks. “How do you know me?”
    “Oh,” I brushed away an airy cobweb, “we have our ways.” At the we I drew myself up to my full height, laid a long finger on my shoulder, and tapped twice where some silver might adorn my epaulettes. He remained standing so I prodded him along with little shocks of home address and house history, even a little detail about a tiny nephew who might need a polio shot. (I picked that up from two door-to-door health workers.)
    “And how is the, um,” I gestured up the Ridge, “shikar these days? Happy hunting?”
    His eyes bulged. Sideys break down more or less right away so I was at pains to let him know I knew he was just the accessory. “And your friend, the big gun?”
    He was dumb and dry-mouthed. I walked him up the slope past the tower to the curly-wurly lodge in the forest.
    “We’ve had to change the lock on your door, I’m afraid.” I produced the key ring that my older boy had painted in police blue-and-red; he had added off his own bat the sinister Delhi Police motto: With you, for You, Always. “Go on, open it.”
    He undid the padlock but lacked the strength to climb the stair.
    “Don’t you want to go and see?”
    “I believe you.”
    “All right. What can you tell us about your friend?”
    Right then the cell phone rang in his cargo pants. Mongoose jumped where he stood. It was Cobra, I could tell. The timing shook me too; the sidey simply came unhinged.
    “If it’s our friend,” I said, “tell him you’ll meet him tomorrow.”
    He obeyed. But Cobra had other plans and after hearing him out, Mongoose hung up in an ecstasy of fear.
    “What’s up?”
    He looked unseeingly at me, his finger and thumb worrying a burr on the cotton jacket.
    “Hey.” I frowned and slapped him.
    He began to whimper, edging away from me and then back as if pushed from the other side by an unnamed force. The phone slid into his pocket and he gripped the barred door like a prisoner who doesn’t realize he’s on the outside. “He’s crazy,” he wailed. “He’s mad!”
    “What’s this drama-shama?” I growled.
    He slid down the door like a bad actor and squatted there with his forehead lodged between two bars.
    “Hoy!” I booted him in the bum to no effect. I was aiming a