There is also the fact that Kurt has moved in with Rani, which means that Vincent will have to find somewhere else to live. At twenty rupees a day, he can’t afford the hotel by himself, certainly not for long. Plus, the phone had cut out before he could speak to Havoc back home to ask for money. He’d waited almost four hours in a little concrete room. But someone else had answered the phone, some bloke he didn’t recognise, and then the line had gone dead. A monkey had chewed through a cord, apparently. Worst of all, though, is the fact that he does not know what is happening with Yamini. If anything is happening with Yamini. Two days ago, it had felt like they’d really connected. But her coolness, when he ran into her this morning after dynamic meditation, had unsettled him. She had regarded him for a moment as if he were a stranger, with arrogant indifference.

‘I might see you later,’ she’d said casually, before drifting away with the departing crowd.

But they had not discussed when later would be, and he hadn’t been able to find her. Now he was in here, and it would be three days before he saw her again. A lifetime.

The blonde man is still looking at him, expectantly.

‘Komal,’ Vincent says. ‘I am Komal. I’m from Australia. I’m a social worker. I was, I mean. I’m unemployed at the moment. I’m … I’m just trying to figure this all out, you know. I guess I don’t really know what the fuck I’m doing here.’

He talks like this for five minutes, avoiding anything of consequence, he realises, even as he is saying it. He is simply filling the silence.

Then a bell rings, and they exchange roles.

‘Tell me who you are,’ Komal says, with considerable relief.

And the man tells him, or tries to, fumblingly, in his imperfect English.

‘I am Kuteer,’ he says. ‘I am twenty-four. I am sorry because my English. I am student in engineering. I am coming here one month. Sometimes I think I will stay and be forever. Sometime I think, no way, you are crazy. I don’t know what is to be done. My mother is dying at home in Denmark. She is very religious person. I want to go and be with her and also I don’t want to do that. I want to just be here, in this present moment. But always when I am meditating, I am thinking of her dying, without me.’

They do this, back and forth, for forty minutes, and then they find new partners, and begin again.