Delhi Noir Read online

  This collection is comprised of works of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors’ imaginations. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published by Akashic Books

  © 2009 Akashic Books

  Series concept by Tim McLoughlin and Johnny Temple Delhi map by Sohrab Habibion

  ePUB ISBN-13: 978-1-936-07026-8

  ISBN-13: 978-1-933354-78-1

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2008937355

  All rights reserved

  Akashic Books

  PO Box 1456

  New York, NY 10009

  [email protected]

  www.akashicbooks.com

  ALSO IN THE AKASHIC NOIR SERIES:

  Baltimore Noir, edited by Laura Lippman

  Bronx Noir, edited by S.J. Rozan

  Brooklyn Noir, edited by Tim McLoughlin

  Brooklyn Noir 2: The Classics, edited by Tim McLoughlin

  Brooklyn Noir 3: Nothing but the Truth

  edited by Tim McLoughlin & Th omas Adcock

  Chicago Noir, edited by Neal Pollack

  D.C. Noir, edited by George Pelecanos

  D.C. Noir 2: The Classics, edited by George Pelecanos

  Detroit Noir, edited by E.J. Olsen & John C. Hocking

  Dublin Noir (Ireland), edited by Ken Bruen

  Havana Noir (Cuba), edited by Achy Obejas

  Istanbul Noir (Turkey), edited by Mustafa Ziyalan & Amy Spangler

  Las Vegas Noir, edited by Jarret Keene & Todd James Pierce

  London Noir (England), edited by Cathi Unsworth

  Los Angeles Noir, edited by Denise Hamilton

  Manhattan Noir, edited by Lawrence Block

  Manhattan Noir 2: The Classics, edited by Lawrence Block

  Miami Noir, edited by Les Standiford

  New Orleans Noir, edited by Julie Smith

  Paris Noir (France), edited by Aurélien Masson

  Portland Noir, edited by Kevin Sampsell

  Queens Noir, edited by Robert Knightly

  Rome Noir (Italy), edited by Chiara Stangalino & Maxim Jakubowski

  San Francisco Noir, edited by Peter Maravelis

  San Francisco Noir 2: The Classics, edited by Peter Maravelis

  Seattle Noir, edited by Curt Colbert

  Toronto Noir (Canada), edited by Janine Armin & Nathaniel G. Moore

  Trinidad Noir, Lisa Allen-Agostini & Jeanne Mason

  Twin Cities Noir, edited by Julie Schaper & Steven Horwitz

  Wall Street Noir, edited by Peter Spiegelman

  FORTHCOMING:

  Barcelona Noir (Spain), edited by Adriana Lopez & Carmen Ospina

  Boston Noir, edited by Dennis Lehane

  Copenhagen Noir (Denmark), edited by Bo Tao Michaelis

  Haiti Noir, edited by Edwidge Danticat

  Indian Country Noir, edited by Liz Martínez & Sarah Cortez

  Lagos Noir (Nigeria), edited by Chris Abani

  Lone Star Noir, edited by Bobby Byrd & John Byrd

  Los Angeles Noir 2: The Classics, edited by Denise Hamilton

  Mexico City Noir (Mexico), edited by Paco I. Taibo II

  Moscow Noir (Russia), edited by Natalia Smirnova & Julia Goumen

  Mumbai Noir (India), edited by Altaf Tyrewala

  Orange County Noir, edited by Gary Phillips

  Phoenix Noir, edited by Patrick Millikin

  Richmond Noir, edited by Andrew Blossom,

  Brian Castleberry & Tom De Have

  In memory of Shiv Lal Sawhney

  1933–2009

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Introduction

  * * *

  PART I: WITH YOU, FOR YOU, ALWAYS

  * * *

  OMAIR AHMAD Ashram

  Yesterday Man

  RADHIKA JHA Lodhi Gardens

  How I Lost My Clothes

  IRWIN ALLAN SEALY Delhi Ridge

  Last In, First Out

  RUCHIR JOSHI Nizamuddin West

  Parking

  NALINAKSHA BHATTACHARYA R.K. Puram

  Hissing Cobras

  * * *

  PART II: YOUNGISTAN

  * * *

  MOHAN SIKKA Paharganj

  The Railway Aunty

  SIDDHARTH CHOWDHURY Delhi University,

  Hostel North Campus

  MEERA NAIR Inter State Bus Terminal

  small fry

  PALASH KRISHNA MEHROTRA Defence Colony

  Fit of Rage

  HARTOSH SINGH BAL Gyan Kunj

  Just Another Death

  * * *

  PART III: WALLED CITY, WORLD CITY

  * * *

  HIRSH SAWHNEY Green Park

  Gautam Under a Tree

  TABISH KHAIR Jantar Mantar

  The Scam

  UDAY PRAKASH Rohini

  The Walls of Delhi

  (Translated from Hindi by Jason Grunebaum)

  MANJULA PADMANABHAN Bhalswa

  Cull

  Glossary

  About the Contributors

  INTRODUCTION

  EVERYDAY ANGUISH

  Delhi, a city that’s been reborn in various locations and forms throughout its thousands of years of history, was in the midst of yet another colossal transition when I arrived here four years ago. This latest metamorphosis was being fueled by legislation that opened up India to private and foreign investors. International brands like the Wall Street Journal and Chanel were setting up shop. The city’s cruddy public transportation system was being revolutionized by an ultramodern metro. My mother’s massive Punjabi family—Partition refugees who’d happily lived in a one-bedroom Con-naught Place flat during the 1950s—were driving Hondas and Hyundais and comparing plasma television prices.

  For the first time in decades, members of the educated elite were experiencing a gleeful surge of nationalism, and they wanted to savor it. They bragged about the new malls and cinemas going up in Gurgaon, a quasi-American suburb in which civic planning plays second fiddle to corporate whims. They reveled in the number of billionaires who called their city home, as well as the rising values of the houses their parents had built. But things weren’t—and aren’t—as good as everyone wanted to believe.

  Every morning, papers abound with alarming stories: accounts of the unmitigated corruption and contract killing that make this city of more than fifteen million tick; indications of increasing divisions between rich and poor that lead servants to murder masters and foment Maoist movements in the country’s hinterland; synopses of so many rapes and sexual assaults that readers become numb to them. Yet the everyday depravity and anguish of Delhi life remains confined to news copy. Despite notable exceptions like Namita Gokhale and Arvind Adiga, authors of literature—particularly those who write in English—usually choose to ignore the capital’s stains.

  Other Indian metropolises have had writers who’ve chronicled the perils of urban existence, and some of these individuals have done so by employing the devices of crime and detective fiction. Mumbai, India’s film capital, lays claim over Vikram Chandra, who published the mammoth noir tomb Sacred Games, and Altaf Tyrewala, who wrote an impressive slim book called No God in Sight. Looking futher back, the iconic Urdu author Saadat Hasan Manto called Bombay home, even though his macabre stories were set in different locations. The legendary Bengali filmmaker Satyajit Ray also wrote detective stories, as did Bengali Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay, whose enigmatic Sherlock Holmes-esque Byomkesh Bakshi mysteries are set in Calcutta.

  What then explains the lack of noir literature—and fiction in general—set in Delhi? The answer may be simple. Good crime fiction, however seductive and pleasurable, forces readers to reckon with the inequity and crue
lty inherent to modern societies. It’s only natural that Delhi’s book-buying-and-publishing citizens would avoid such writing. Any insight into their hometown’s ugly entrails would threaten their guilt-free gilded existence and the bubble of nationalistic euphoria in which their lives are contained. They are too dependent on the power structures and social systems intrinsic to the city—embassies, government offices, and corporations; rural poverty and illegal immigration—to risk looking critically at these things.

  Thankfully, there are writers who are willing to see Delhi as it is, and this anthology contains stories by fourteen of them. Delhi Noir’s contributors are diverse: They are Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs; Punjabis, Biharis, Bengalis, and Ker-alites; men and women; gay and straight. Many reside in the capital, but others have addresses in Uttarakhand or the U.S. Some have published critically acclaimed books, and a few are still working on their first manuscripts. What they have in common is the inclination to write delectable literature that doesn’t shy away from the city’s uncomfortable underside. Their fiction isn’t politically correct and refuses to pander to popular perceptions about India or its capital, perceptions that conform with the agendas of governments, glossy magazines, and multinational corporations.

  I’ve borrowed three popular slogans that are tattooed across the city to divide these fourteen stories into sections. The title of the first section—With You, for You, Always—is the well-known motto of the Delhi Police. These stories range from humorous to perverted, but all scrutinize the presence (or lack thereof) of the cops who man the front lines of the capital’s law-and-order system. Newcomer Omair Ahmad’s detective story forces readers to come to terms with the fact that the Congress-led government was complicit with the massacre of innocent Sikhs in the wake of Prime Minister In-dira Gandhi’s assassination. Irwin Allan Sealy’s tale about a vigilante autorickshaw driver who avenges sexual assault on the Ridge is defined by the wry, rhythmic prose that garnered him a place on the Booker Prize shortlist in 1998. Author and civil servant Nalinaksha Bhattacharya invites us into the life of a police officer who extorts sex from the wives of low-level central government employees. His is a sardonic, hard-hitting parody of the Indian television serials that are voraciously consumed by all rungs of society—those who live in brothels, mountain villages, and the extravagant farmhouses of Delhi.

  The second section’s title—Youngistan (land of the youth)—is a spoof of a Pepsi advertising campaign that attempts to appeal to India’s 200,000,000 young people aged between fifteen and twenty-four. Unlike the folks in the ad, however, lives in these stories don’t get easier by drinking a cola or encountering megastar Shah Rukh Khan. In Delhi-raised New York resident Mohan Sikka’s “Railway Aunty, an orphaned college student stumbles into a prostitution ring that lurks beneath Paharganj’s veneer of civil servants and backpackers. Bihar-born Delhi resident Siddharth Chowd-hury bewitches readers with his raunchy, violent musing on life in a university dormitory. His prose alters the DNA of the English language, and is the literary version of good jazz.

  Walled City, World City, the slogan heading the final section, stems from a Times of India campaign that encourages Delhi citizens to forget the city’s painful past, its riots and pogroms. This bullish advertisement makes a simple comparison between Delhi’s history—Mughal rule, colonialism—and its current aspirations—superpowerdom, cosmopolitanism. But Tabish Khair, author, academic, and a former Times of India reporter, reminds us that border crossings aren’t just comfortable flights on 747s. They also define the lives of countless young farmers and laborers who’ve abandoned rural India for the capital to cook, clean, and shine shoes. Veteran Uday Prakash scrutinizes the promise of social mobility in the “new India” and exhibits the vitality and universality of Hindi-language writing. Closing out this volume, the always provocative playwright, author, and illustrator Manjula Padmanabhan trans-ports readers to a nightmarish futuristic vision of Delhi as a “world city.”

  These fourteen stories span the length and breadth of Delhi, from familiar spots like Jantar Mantar and Lodhi Gardens to more off-the-beaten-path neighborhoods like Gyan Kunj and Rohini. Together they give you an alternative map to the city, one that doesn’t shy away from its strident flaws and yet also sheds light on beauty in overlooked corners and conversations.

  Delhi readers will be well acquainted with this volume’s Blue Line buses and Mughal tombs, and also with most of its contributors. But this is the first time they will see original works of fiction by such a varied, talented group of authors in a single book. Non-Indian readers will be unfamiliar with many of the names in this book, which will hopefully offer them a rare taste of a different type of Indian writing: literature that fascinates simply beacuse it’s well written—not exotic. For these readers, we have provided a glossary of the Hindi, Urdu, and Punjabi words used in Delhi Noir. It will hopefully make the richness of Indian language and culture accessible to an international audience without compromising the quality and flow of these stories.

  Hirsh Sawhney

  Delhi, India

  May 2009

  PART I

  WITH YOU, FOR YOU, ALWAYS

  YESTERDAY MAN

  BY OMAIR AHMAD

  Ashram

  The call, when it came, was unexpected, but then most calls in her life had been. She’d been looking up a number in her cell phone when it suddenly started blinking and vibrating. Her thumb punched the answer button before she had time to process things, and the thin, tinny voice said, “Suhasini? Suhasini?”

  The little screen showed Sunny’s name, but she didn’t really feel like raising the phone to her ear. Even in the afternoon it was too early in the day for Sunny. Irritated, more at herself than anything else, she punched the speakerphone button and cut the caller’s desperate “Hello?” with her own voice. “Tell me, Sunny, you need money?”

  For a moment there was no answer, and she thought he’d hung up on her. Sunny had never hesitated to say anything but a hurried “Yes” when asked if he needed money. It was what made him such a good snitch.

  But his voice came through again, hesitant now. “Suhasini?”

  “Yes, baba, Suhasini,” she said, speaking to him as if he were a small child. “Damnit, you’re calling me, you should know who you’ve dialed. Or are you stoned again?” He might have been one of her more reliable informants, but this didn’t mean she liked him.

  “Listen, Suhasini, Triloki gave me something for you.”

  “So?” She thought it was odd that Triloki would give

  Sunny anything for her. Triloki knew where her office was if he needed to send anything. He’d been her senior partner, after all, until she’d found him blackmailing one of their clients.

  They hadn’t been in touch for the last two years despite the fact that the private investigator community in Delhi was such a small one. Her annoyance with Sunny became one pitch higher. Sunny had always been a resource for Suhas-ini. She was the one who had found him stealing the drugs from the hospital and decided that he was better use as an informant than in jail. It was bad form to tap somebody else’s snitch. It made the informants uncomfortable and more nervous than they already were. But Triloki had always taken liberties; she liked to think it was his way of flirting with her. Maybe she had been eager for that, for him to cross boundaries, to be more than just business partners, which was why the betrayal had hurt so badly.

  “He said to get it to you quick. Gave it to me yesterday.

  Said it had to do with Arjun Singh.”

  “The politician?”

  “No, no, the collector—you know, old things, what do you call them, un-teek things …”

  Un-teek? she thought, until the sounds rearranged themselves. Antique. Arjun Singh, the antique collector. She’d heard of him.

  “The one who lives near Nizamuddin?” she asked.

  “Closer to Ashram, in a haveli near Hotel Rajdoot.”

  “Yeah, yeah, near the railway station, not the dargah. Why don’
t you bring it over and stop pissing yourself?”

  She’d been pushing him since the mention of Triloki’s name, but even she knew when she’d gone too far. This wasn’t her usual style. Detective work, like all good intelligence, relied on confidence building. You didn’t build much with rudeness and insults.

  “Busy, I’m busy. You want it, you come yourself.” His voice was brusque, the whine gone from it in his attempt at manliness.

  “Right, right,” she tried to be soft, but it was too late now, and after some useless information that was a waste of her time, he hung up. She would catch him for lunch, and maybe he would speak after being fed. It was only much later that she realized that he hadn’t asked for money for the information, or even hinted at it.

  Had she realized this immediately, it might have saved her from something, but then again, maybe not.

  Arjun Singh rang right afterwards, almost as if they’d coordinated it.

  “Hello?”

  “May I speak with Ms. Das?” the voice on the other side said. The language was impeccable, intonation precise. She could hear money, great amounts of it, in that voice. Old money. This was a voice nurtured by wealth and generations of connections.

  “Speaking,” she said, trying to clear the crudeness that had come from speaking with Sunny from her own voice.

  “Ms. Das, I hear you are the best detective in Delhi,” the voice said.

  “The agencies are always the best,” she found herself saying. “They have the resources. And Jaidev Triloki has a good reputation.” The last bit surprised her as it came out, and she wondered why she was still defending the man’s reputation.