He led me to a doorway blackened by mildew and soot from the two-stroke engines’ exhaust, trash fires, and rain. And, yes, it smelled. I got why Indians removed their shoes when entering the house.

We climbed two flights of darkened stairs, lit only sporadically by buzzing fluorescent tubes. Red-orange streaks marked the walls and steps every few feet. Ranjit told me it was paan-stained spit.

“You’ll see it everywhere, unfortunately. I enjoy paan after a meal from time to time,” he said. “But I don’t spit it on walls.”

“What are we doing here?” I asked again as we reached the second landing. There Ranjit stepped through an open door and I followed.

Ten or twelve men sat on benches against the filthy, crumbling wall. Several were chewing paan. They stared at me from their hollow eyes as if I’d just emerged from a spaceship. It was hot and muggy in the dim room—more tube lighting. A ceiling fan twirled above their heads; the men’s faces shone with perspiration, from their foreheads to their five-day beards. Three of them were sharing a pint bottle of some cheap hooch.

“Is that the drink you were offering me earlier?” I asked Ranjit under my breath.

“Yes. And don’t worry about keeping your voice down. These fellows won’t understand you. Not with your mushy American pronunciation. Does it come from chewing gum all the time?”

“Funny guy,” I said. “Okay, I’ve seen enough squalor for one night. Let’s get out of here.”

“Not yet. The show’s about to begin.”

As if on cue, a bruiser of a man entered the room from a door beyond the benches. He was wearing a caricature of a gangster’s suit—Western dress—with a brown tie knotted around his neck. His clothes, stretching over his ample belly, were rumpled and probably stained. Impossible to tell, given the dark fabric in the dim light. He surveyed the room, eyes pausing on me for a short moment, until Ranjit gave him a subtle head wag, probably to indicate that I was okay.

Satisfied the house was full and ready for the show, the man turned back to the door he’d come through and snapped his fingers. Five small women in gaudy and rather shabby saris entered the room without any attempts to simper or flirt with the men on the benches. Their garb was similar to what the prostitutes were wearing in the doorways in the street below. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have taken these sad-looking ladies for charwomen.