yaar. I need help. Amit, will you be my friend?”

Disarmed by this straightforward appeal, I asked,

“Why, what’s the matter?” as if I’d already said “Yes”

to the question. Truth to tell, I needed a friend

myself at that time. We go to each other

from our own private compulsions. I’ve seldom

been wholly comfortable or open

with people who share my background or “interests”

and have ended up acquiring an eclectic set

of companions. “I’m on smack, yaar,” he said.

There were no outward signs. He had shaved; his trousers

were conventionally pressed; his hair combed back

and oiled. “So it’s true, what I heard. How did it

happen?” “It happened in Elphi…” We were walking;

he nodded to the stall with cigarettes and Frooti

tetrapacks beyond the BEST terminus,

and the scurrying ragpickers beside it. “Those bastards are pushers.

A friend from Elphi said, ‘Just have a drag, yaar.’”

He shook his head with a sort of pride. “That’s how

I got hooked. That bastard, if I could take my re-

re-revenge…” He looked oddly pleased with himself,

compromised only by the blip of the stammer

that would infrequently return, like a signal,

to his speech, and once made one or two girls giggle.

I entered his life; saw him join “rehab” with Dr.

Yusuf Merchant, get his father to pay

for both his habit and his rehabilitation

—his father, whom he so resembles, both of them

complaining about each other and bickering

like a married couple—try to escape to Dubai

or to hotel management or a brief job as a Blue Dart

courier; during clear intervals

reluctantly “help” his father with his small-time

but extant business, making industrial accessories.

What foolish illusion made that man

put his son in Cathedral, among the children of the Tatas,

minor ministers, consuls, film actors

and actresses (Nutan’s son; I remember her waiting

for him, thin and nervous, in slacks, after school;

Sunil Dutt’s daughter, gentle, with kohl

in her eyes)? Three sisters; the youngest got married

and moved to Prabhadevi; a tame and stable marriage

after infatuation and heartbreak with a German. The oldest,

whose sexual persuasion Suresh claimed he wasn’t sure of,

emigrated to Germany; the one in the middle

stayed single, and works for a travel agent, one

of the two rented rooms this family lives in

in Colaba, partitioned between brother and sister.

“Why doesn’t she go away?” he’d ask

irately as he shaved. He would cut himself—tiny

nicks like spattered paint, wash himself with soap.

He never applied aftershave. This boxer

was afraid of its sting. I gave him a T-shirt

that said “Oxford University” in white Gothic letters;

he wore it occasionally as he went out into the great,

unruly, smelly stream of life on the Causeway.

He took an inordinately long time getting ready.

Next to him was the oblong bathtub that was used