Defence Colony is a posh Delhi neighbourhood, but in the afternoons it has the air of a small, well-planned town. The roads are narrow and quiet. Guards nap in their plastic chairs, their bottoms squeezed in at odd angles. Mongrel dogs give chase to each other or join the guards in their siesta. A dirty open drain divides the neighbourhood in two halves. Cows graze peacefully on the grass on both sides of the nala. Abandoned bulls forage in overflowing garbage dumps. And cycle rickshaws weave in and out of the lanes, obediently slowing down and pulling to the side in order to give way to passing SUVs.

When I arrived here four months ago in May, it was very hot. I would stay in my room all day long. When the landlady, Mrs Bindra, asked what I did, I told her I was an online journalist. Delhi is a big city. People do all kinds of things. My landlady didn’t ask me any more questions.

In the evenings I would go to the C-Block market and walk around in circles. Sometimes, I would hire a cycle rickshaw and ask to be peddled around the various blocks of the neighbourhood. That’s how I met Sadiq. It didn’t take me long to befriend him. He was a Bihari migrant to Delhi. He hired his rickshaw from a rich man who owned an entire fleet. He was also a smackhead.

Every other day he’d take a bus to Connaught Place and come back with small, innocuous-looking paper pellets. The pudiyas contained the deadly brown powder. He would do it all the time, in all sorts of places. Sadiq had a friend who lived in the Jungpura slums near the railway tracks. He’d go there often. I’d go along, not for the smack but for the ganja which his smack-buddy also dealt in.

When no one was looking, I’d get Sadiq to come up to my room. He always expressed amazement at the fact I lived on my own. ‘Don’t you get lonely, all by yourself? I just wouldn’t be able to handle it.’ Sadiq lived in a one-room tenement in Kotla, a poor neighbourhood just around the corner from Def Col. His four children, wife and younger brother all slept in the same room. He wouldn’t have been able to afford even that. His younger brother had been lucky to get a job in an electrical repairs shop. When he rented the room he had felt obligated to ask his elder brother if he and his family wanted to move in.

I am sitting in my room with Sadiq and Chottu. Chottu is the newest member of our two-person gang. Now we are a trio.