Other than some filthy cows that had come inside to take shelter from the rain, only one employee was in the Slum Power office at this late hour of the day, a young woman festooned with silver piercings dangling from her eyebrows and lips, and a name tag—Maya. “My daughter is Maya, too,” I informed her. “She’s an intern here. Do you know her?” Interns come and go, she observed, she never bothered with them; for her they did not exist, Maya is illusion. She added this with an insider’s smile. And even despite the tongue ring that snagged her speech, I could tell by the lilt of her studied English that she was Israeli—post-army road-trip decompression, she confirmed when I inquired in Hebrew to soften her up, tarrying in India beyond the finding-yourself grace period to the terminal distress of her parents, both of them professors of international affairs at Tel Aviv University with a specialty in Middle Eastern and Muslim studies, lingering in Mumbai on account of her Indian boyfriend, Sunny, the night manager of a dance club in Bandra. But she knew all the full-time Slum Power employees, she conceded when I probed—so did she know a guy named Samir Khan? She boomed out a coarse snort resembling a laugh, startling me. Samir Khan? Wasn’t he that idiot Pakistani American guy who got himself killed in Yemen? Deftly she did a quick Google search on the office computer. Nakhon—taken out two years ago by an American drone strike, along with another Muslim fundoo jihad propagandist, Anwar al-Awlaki, a really big prize—Good job, says Mr. Barack Hussein Obama insincerely. Anyway, beineinu, Slum Power never hires Muslims, even though it calls itself equal opportunity multi-culti, blah-blah. So no way any Samir Khan ever worked here, that’s for sure. Besides, every other Muslim in Mumbai is Khan, and every other Khan is Samir. Sorry mama.

This namesake overdose was verified when a few days later Charlotte prevailed on me to leave my apartment where I had voluntarily confined myself to faithfully await your return, and to spend the morning at the police station viewing a lineup of Samir Khans rounded up from all over the city. Finally, Charlotte was getting up off her toned little overaged bum and swinging into action. She was panicking; her benefactions and patronage on which she so prided herself, and with which she manipulated and controlled so many of her vassals, had backfired. It was now an established fact—you were missing, gone. This was not some delusion on my part. At last she was convinced, and on some level I believe it also penetrated her thick wall of defenses that she was to blame. At first, though, I refused to leave the apartment to go to police headquarters, despite Charlotte’s litany of persuasions, agreeing only after Manika was flown up by Krishnapuri in Amma’s private jet from the ashram to Mumbai to take over watch duty from me in case you returned during my brief absence checking out the Samir Khans of Mumbai.