A diploma hangs on the wall behind the desk, from Syracuse University in New York, trapped inside an ornate, silverflecked frame. I can’t tell if it’s real or fake, but the subject, Civil Engineering, written in obviously overly bold italics, and the bright orange and prominent honours ribbon, makes me question. The only other wall decoration is a large framed photograph of the Golden Temple, glowing in the night like some monstrous syrup-drowned sundae. I’ve been deposited here by a lackey, who simply told me to sit and wait, but I walk through the room like I own it. There are photos of his children, three girls, and his wife, and also his mother, and a small white dog, all sitting on his desk, which is neat, everything precisely arranged. A few papers, a pen, a landline telephone, various trinkets on a shelf behind him. A window looks out onto an airshaft, opening like an entrance to an underworld. The air conditioner’s cracked housing is yellowed by age.
Mr Harbans Singh enters and greets me with a strong handshake and pulls me towards him, close enough that I smell his aftershave. He’s dressed casually, in a brown checkered sports jacket and red tracksuit pants with white stripes running down each leg. Take a look, he says, still tightly gripping my hand and pulling me against his belly, the size of which shields his crotch. He indicates the bookcase which up to now I’ve ignored. It houses rows of near identical green hardbound volumes, all different thicknesses, some sort of great books of the world series.
Pick one, he says, take it with you if you like. A quick glance across the titles shows me I know most, have read more than half. I pull one out, because it’s slim and fits easily into my pocket. He asks how I learned to read so well, and I tell him, The nuns, just that, the nuns, and elaborate only after he presses me. At the orphanage, I say, one nun in particular, the others didn’t take an interest, Sister Nirmal, who sat with me patiently, letter by letter, word by word, until I read my first book. What book was that? he says, and I glance across to the shelf and pick out the first book I see. Robinson Crusoe, I say. I’m already exhausted by his questions. Who does he think he is that he needs to know my story before he fucks me? The lying is equally dull, but telling the truth would only invite more questions, too many and too pointed. Besides, every time I say the word orphanage my tip always increases just that little bit. He pulls the copy of Crusoe from the shelf and hands it to me. Go on, he says, read for me. I turn to a page at random and there is Friday, mute and servile. I read a couple of paragraphs, confidently but at times haltingly, tripping deliberately over a few words, pretending I’m not as good a reader as I am.
When I finish, he brings his hands together in slow applause and invites me to sit. The door opens and tea and biscuits arrive, carried by the same lackey who showed me to this room. He offers me a cigarette but I decline. I want to get the business done and be out of here, and wonder why he’s not asked me yet to walk around the desk and get on my knees. The scene is already tedious and then it gets worse. He starts to talk. I hate talkers, the ones who want to tell you their life story as if it justifies sticking their dick in your mouth or yours in their ass. The story is the usual. Partition. India. Pakistan. Death and refugees. His father this, his mother that. Poverty. Children. Bootstraps. Success. Blah blah it goes on. I check out and watch a fly buzzing in circles over our heads and wonder at the hubris of men like this, stealing my time to gratify their engorged and pathetic egos.
He surprises me by cutting short the litany of family tragedy and subsequent triumph and jumps to his feet and tells me to follow him. You’re going to be working for me, he says. This is news to me. He wraps an arm tightly around my shoulders and leads me back out along the hallway. Don’t look so worried, he says, you’re with family now. He adds, Or do you want me to tell the police who the thief was who stole my sister’s purse at her own father’s funeral? He slaps me on the back, Only four hours, in the evenings, from ten to two, Monday to Friday! He’s sure I can fit that into my busy schedule.
His joviality unnerves me and there’s a hint of mockery in that last comment. It would have been much easier just to suck him off and be gone. He releases me and we enter a large, open-plan office, with maybe twenty desks and a dozen people, all seemingly on the phone, chattering away, everyone speaking English. The windows are covered in silver foil and a row of fluorescent lights hang limp from the ceiling, casting the room into deathly relief. Everything is drained of colour, barely clinging onto life. Even the file cabinets look as if they’re on the verge of collapse. It could be two in the morning or two in the afternoon. No one would know the difference.
The workers are all men, except for a single woman, in her twenties, who strides towards us as we enter. She’s dressed smartly, in a salwar kameez and chunni, which hangs loosely over her shoulders. This is him, she says not as a question and not looking at me. Mr Harbans Singh nods. He is leaving me in capable hands, he tells me, and repeats that last phrase, capable hands, as if it means something between the two of them. Before he walks away, he studies me again, the way he did at the gurdwara, evaluating me with that lip-curling look of repulsion. I have the same vision, of him fucking me from behind and bursting into tears, but I push it aside and turn to my new guide through this Karol Bagh hellscape, and ask if her name is Beatrice, Dante’s beloved guide, not through hell but through heaven. The pompous reference flies over her head, and she says, We have no names here, not our names at least. She grabs a manila envelope and tells me to follow her.
Excerpted with permission from Night in Delhi, Ranbir Sidhu, Context/Westland.
