The next day, very early in the morning, Widad and I take a rickshaw to Khandari, one of the more affluent neighborhoods in Agra. We get off a little way before we reach Baarish’s mansion. All the houses in this neighborhood are sprawling havelis, each of them a little more palatial than the last. We peek through the guarded gates for glimpses of them.

Humans, to whom we are currently invisible, work at these havelis, maintaining the gardens and cleaning the insides. The middle worlders living here walk among the so-called elite in the human society, pretending to be just like them, defined by the amount of money and assets they have. A person’s worth in this society is calculated by how much they have and not who they are inside.

These middle worlders, just like their human counterparts, export chefs from expensive culinary schools, have foreign cars chauffeured by soft-spoken and well-educated drivers; they wear clothes specially designed for their bodies. The rest of the world may be struggling to make ends meet, but these 1 percent show their worth by the amount of food they discard daily.

There is beauty in this world, of course there is, if you have time to see it and the money to afford it. Most of us, whether human or middle worlder, don’t. Most of us are machines, programmed to wake up and work, to live facsimiles of lives, and to what purpose? Why are we the background scenery, the extras, for those chosen few who have taken this world, and us, hostage? Where our breaths, pain, and sweat fuel their lives and we, fools that we are, don’t even realize it.

Anarchy sometimes appeals to me.

It doesn’t take us long to reach Baarish’s mansion; it is, unsurprisingly, the biggest estate on the street. The tall fence and the guarded gates show that he takes his security seriously. He probably makes a new enemy every time he breathes. We linger at the gates until a milkman shows up and they open to admit him. Thankfully, the guards and the milkman are both human and thus unable to see us as we slip in. Widad looks nervous and I squeeze her hand. She gives me a tremulous smile.

We walk up the long driveway, taking our time to admire the roses blooming in the garden. Gardeners, dressed in white dhotis and kurtas, are busily pruning the rosebushes. Sprinklers are whirring around the gardens, giving the morning dew a helping hand. The vista is ridiculously peaceful. Who would say that a monster resides within the four walls of this house? Since when have monsters started liking roses?