When Ilyas finally arrived it was eight. Angad scrutinized him for signs of a prison stint but could not tell. He had shaved and looked like he had been eating well. A blue denim shirt hung loose over his brown terrycot trousers. As soon as Ilyas saw Angad, he broke through the circle of people who had surrounded him on his arrival and walked across. They hugged, then Ilyas drew back, his hands resting on Angad’s shoulders. ‘Good to see you, boss,’ he said. Angad smiled and said, ‘Ilyas bhai, my good friend,’ and then fell silent. ‘So, how was the trip to the village?’ asked Angad. ‘Not too bad,’ replied Ilyas, ‘not too bad at all.’ They never had much to say to each other. Still, Angad always felt happy to see Ilyas and today was no different. Somehow the shyness, the awkwardness, the lack of conversation didn’t seem to affect their friendship much.

‘I hope you’re staying back for a while today,’ said Ilyas, his eyes doing a 360-degree scan, acknowledging greetings, taking in the changes that had crept in while he was away.

Angad checked the time. Light from a naked 100-watt electric bulb streamed out of a tiny window in Nasir bhai’s smoking den and bounced off the steel strap of his Titan watch, split into a hundred tiny bullets. ‘Let’s take it as it comes,’ said Angad, ‘but I should leave before it gets too late.’

The time was half past ten. A cold wind cut through Okhla Basti, chilling its sparsely clad residents to the bone. Angad, Ilyas, Mullaji, Nasir bhai and a few others sat around a bonfire, talking.

The slum had seen a fire recently. Nobody died but most people had lost whatever little they owned—an aluminium pan, a tin trunk, meagre savings stashed away in an empty Hajmola bottle. Someone said they would all be packed off to Narela soon.

A balding, oily faced man asked Angad to drink a spoon of ghee dissolved in water when he went back home. ‘That’ll keep your lungs going for years,’ he advised with the confidence of a veteran. Mullaji bragged about his various businesses and the excellent condition of his body after forty-eight years and seven daughters, as if he had given birth to them himself. Dheeraj, one of Nasir bhai’s junior employees, spoke of someone in his village who got so addicted to the chillum that he just sat stoned on his bed all the time. ‘He was a landed man,’ said Dheeraj, ‘but everything is gone now and he doesn’t care.’

It was 25 January. Usually Nasir bhai kept the den open till late. He would go back to his wife and children, not being much of a smoker himself, leaving Ilyas with the responsibility of shutting the place around midnight.