On a normal day, Angad did not hang around the slum for this long. Today was unusual—Ilyas was expected back from his village after a three-month vacation. No one was sure whether he had gone on holiday or business. Often the thought crossed Angad’s mind that Ilyas was behind bars and the ‘gone to his village’ bit was just a story concocted to satisfy his curiosity.

Ilyas was the only person Angad was kind of close to in the slum. He spoke to the others, listened patiently to their tales of tragedy and bravado; in fact, one could say Angad was reasonably popular in Okhla Basti, but it was with Ilyas he felt some kind of affinity. They had met—as most relationships in Okhla Basti began—over a chillum at Nasir bhai’s. Though not new to the slum—he had been living there for the last ten years—Illyas was new to the ganja trade. He had spent the better part of the decade selling vegetables at the wholesale market attached to the slum. That gave him status and prestige in a basti where the predominant occupations were rickshaw-pulling and refuse collection. In the narrow strip of land between Nasir bhai’s shop and the vegetable mandi, families gathered in groups, painstakingly sorting out the garbage the city had vomited. Glass was separated from plastic, rubber from metal, dirty syringes from bloodstained cotton wool.

Ilyas, who was getting jaded selling cauliflower, had been brought in by the enterprising and eagle-eyed Nasir bhai as a replacement for Tinku, his right-hand man. Tinku had a fondness for fishnet singlets and imitation gold necklaces. Thin as a stick, he liked talking big. He would tamper with the measuring scale and get into scraps with customers, thereby attracting unnecessary attention to Nasir bhai’s shop. Once, on an impulse—an impulse Angad regretted later—he had taken Tinku home with him, and then out for dinner. Later, he had found some cash missing from his cupboard; he was convinced Tinku had stolen the money. It so happened that Nasir bhai decided to sack Tinku at around the same time Angad had taken him home. He disappeared from the slum that very night after threatening to burn down the entire basti. As Mullaji, who was witness to the entire incident, recalled later, ‘The rage in the boy’s eyes was enough; he would have required neither kerosene nor matchstick.’