He and Atmaram hurried towards the staircase. It was an instinctive hurry—it wasn’t as if they were going to be late for an appointment. Outside there were auto rickshaws, STD booths, cigarette shops, vegetable sellers from Bara Banki and Gorakhpur. The Gurudev down the road, an idli-dosa place right through the ’seventies and the ’eighties, had transformed into a McDonald’s. A madman—middle-aged, dusty clothes, no footwear—sometimes shared bench space with Ronald. The guards often had to chase him away. Alok remembered this man from when he was a little boy. In those days he would stand outside the suburban station reciting Shakespeare and asking for spare change. Like a chair left out in the rain and the sun, abandoned to the elements, the man’s appearance had acquired a casual fadedness, his limbs and frame a rickety, puppet-like looseness. Every once in a while a storm of boils would wreck his face, the outward manifestation of an inner turmoil. Nowadays he didn’t even bother to beg; he recited reams of garble; he was the bogeyman impatient teachers summoned when they had to funnel facts and figures down the throats of their scatterbrained wards: ‘This is what you will become if you don’t . . .’

There is a beer bar outside Vile Parle station called Namdar. It used to have round wooden tables and dingy lighting. Namdar is still a working-class bar but the interior has changed. Tables and chairs made of moulded plastic have replaced the ’seventies style furniture. There is so much light that you can see inside people’s heads.

The décor might have changed but the clientele hasn’t. Nobody hangs around here getting plastered. You come here not to lose the plot but to regain your centre, then catch the next train. Alok and Atmaram enter the bar. It’s not a straightforward decision. They dilly and they dally. Then they dilly a little bit more. Just a quick beer says Alok and Atmaram finally agrees. They have a policy: no conversation about work after hours, especially over a drink. Alok launches into a complaint: ‘My wife, she wants me to earn more. Every evening it’s the same thing: paisa vadhare kamao ne. I don’t think I am doing too badly. I spent two lakhs on my daughter’s wedding.’ Atmaram sips on his Kingfisher Strong and offers an observation: ‘However much you earn, it’ll never be enough. And never for your wife. Take that from me. You might be a Birla or a Tata but your wife will never have enough. It’s in a woman’s nature.’