Delhi Noir

by Hirsh Sawhney

Bureau Chief Mana raised her hand. “Excuse me, sir, but how will you defend this action in the eyes of the international community? Whatever justification you offer, however catastrophic the disease, human beings cannot be destroyed like poultry at the time of the avian flu epidemic! This action will be defined as a planned genocide, with severe economic sanctions to follow—”

  “We shall refer to it as culling,” said the man, cutting in swiftly, before Mana could build up steam. “You are familiar with the term, no doubt? It belongs to the era of big game hunting, when licenses were issued for thinning out herds of animals whose populations were rising too steeply in game sanctuaries. But we shall redefine the word to mean, Removing a percentage of the human population so that the species as a whole might survive. It is a useful word. We hope to make it very popular.”

  He turned back to Dome.

  “You realize, I am sure, that you will be a martyr to our nation’s greater glory. Not that your role can ever be acknowledged: This entire operation, including your trip this morning to the Acres, has already been erased from the record. Even as we speak your copilot is having the memory of his flight flushed from his brain. You cannot have any contact with your parents before you vanish from their lives forever, apparently in a tragic encounter with enemy agents. However, your service record tells me that you are a model citizen, for which reason I do not doubt that in your final moments, you will find tremendous satisfaction in the knowledge that your name will be honored and that your family will benefit to the tune of …” He mentioned a very handsome sum.

  The interior of Dome’s head had filled with a loud buzzing sound, but aside from that he felt very little. The initial shock he had experienced upon hearing the news had dissipated. He felt detached, as if he were listening to a recitation about someone else’s life, a stranger on the evening news, the synopsis of a tri-vid.

  The man continued: “Of course, in case this option does not appeal to you, there is one other we can offer. You can choose to be extinguished immediately and painlessly.” He paused once more. “After which your body will replace the one you saw this morning.” He smiled mirthlessly.

  When Dome woke again, he found that he had been sealed within a heavy sack. He was lying on his side. Naked. He could see nothing at all. He wondered whether he’d gone blind. He felt utterly limp; disinclined to engage with the hectic activity he could sense taking place around him, outside the bag.

  He was being pulled this way and that, then hands were reaching around the bag, patting it down in order to determine his position within it. Many voices were speaking all at once, some giving instructions, some passing comments, some complaining. The complainers were louder, perhaps because they were not actively engaged in pulling.

  “Leave it—leave it! Whatever’s in there, it can only be more trouble for us—”

  “No. We take all the rest of their garbage. This is just another part of it—”

  “How do we know it’s a living being? Maybe it’s just one of their new machines—”

  “Maybe it’s a monster, come to eat all of us alive …”

  In amongst all the hubbub and the tugging, some hands located Dome’s head and began to reposition him so that he was in a roughly seated position, on the ground.

  “Knife—knife—who has a knife? We’ll have to cut the bag open.”

  Children took up the cry, calling in piping voices, “Knife—knife—someone bring a knife …”

  Inside the bag, Dome was experiencing the unfamiliar sensation of being drenched in sweat. He could not remember the last time he had ever felt so unbearably hot. And the air! Even through the sack he could taste its rasping texture.

  Thick. Sulfurous. Gritty.

  He used his hands to push the heavy material, a mixture of leather and plastic, away from his face. “Here!” he called.

  His throat felt as if it had been scrubbed with sandpaper, producing only a shadowy whisper of sound. “I have a knife!”

  His whisker had been left to him, looped around his wrist.

  Releasing the slender, razor-sharp tip of the instrument, he sliced through the skin of his confining sack and wiggled his head through the resulting slit. Then he collapsed on his side, gasping painfully. The light from half-a-dozen hissing gas lanterns blinded him.

  Arms and hands reached out to hold him up once more.

  Tumblers of water were pushed toward his mouth. All around him were the faces of strangers, thrust toward him, their skin glistening with sweat, their eyes agog with a combination of concern and curiosity. He could smell their breath, their sweat, their unwashed clothes.

  “Don’t—” gasped Dome, his voice hoarse, “Don’t get close to me. Mustn’t … mustn’t touch me … Stay back!”

  But they misunderstood him.

  “See! He’s afraid of us—us! What a chickenheart—what a dickhead …”

  The language they used was similar to what the man beside the morning’s corpse had spoken, an amalgamation of many tongues. Dome could understand some words better than others. There were even a few Hinglish phrases woven in amongst the medley.

  Raucous gusts of laughter rippled through the gathered crowd as they ridiculed him for his fears, and pitied him too. Here he was, abandoned to their care, a naked stranger and—trying to push them away! The glasses of water were shoved ever more insistently toward his mouth. Hands were reaching to pull away the bag in which he had come, to free him completely from its grip, even as another cry went out for cloth, a plastic sheet, anything to cover the stranger’s nakedness.

  A fit of violent coughing convulsed him. His joints felt spongy with weakness.

  “Please!” he rasped. “It’s not safe—not safe for you.”

  But his voice lacked power and no one could hear him. Even as his senses swam, bodies were pushing all around him, holding him up, shifting him to a different location. There was nothing he could do. The deadly virus was already slithering into new hosts, fresh from his skin. Bitter tears joined the sweat pouring down his cheeks. The linen suit’s cruel scheme was working like precision electronics.

  Some hours later, the young ex-agent had been reestablished in the hut of a man who introduced himself as Shankh. He seemed to be the same person who had been standing beside the morning’s corpse, but the difference in his behavior made it hard to be sure. He was no longer reserved and self-effacing, but welcoming and friendly.

  Inside the hut were Shankh’s wife and two other women who may have been cowives or sisters, it was hard to tell.

  Dome was lying on gunnysacks spread out on the floor, which was clean and dry. The dwelling was perhaps six feet square and a little less than that in height. The only source of illumination was a gas lantern. The women were crouched in the far corner, talking between themselves, while Shankh was turned toward Dome. There were at least three infants inside the hut and a couple of chickens, pecking here and there on the floor.

  Blocking the entrance were the head and forequarters of a huge portly animal that had settled itself down right there.

  “What is that creature?” Dome asked.

  Shankh replied, smiling at the ignorance of the visitor, “A pig. Have you never seen one? We know that you eat them from the pictures on the tins of food products that you city people throw away.”

  A pile of old newspapers sealed within plastic bags formed a bolster for Dome to lean against. He was wearing borrowed clothes, a string vest and a thin cotton lungi. Still practically naked by his standards, yet he didn’t have the energy to care.

  His head was spinning with fever and his speech was reduced to a bare trickle of sound.

  “Never mind pigs. Listen to me, Shankh,” he whispered.

  “Please … there’s something terrible I must tell you … even though it’s too late.”

  Shankh’s smile didn’t waver as he listened.

  When Dome was finished—it did not take long—the other man said, “Bas? That’s all you’ve brought for us—one more disease?” He
threw his head back and laughed. “Never mind! We’ll accept it graciously; after all, you know what they say about beggars …”

  Dome’s heart contracted with sadness. “You don’t understand. This is something worse than anything that has yet existed—it’s been designed to destroy you—”

  “But we refuse to be afraid,” interrupted Shankh. “And you know why?” He waggled his finger in the air. “Because whatever’s thrown at us, we grab it, recycle it, and return it with interest. So they have cooked up a new disease in their medical factories? Good. Wonderful. We will circulate it through the living factories of all our hundred thousand bodies, and some of us will die, and some of us will live, and those who survive will repackage that same disease and send it back out to your friends in the city, so that they can enjoy it too.” He laughed once more and patted Dome’s hand. “So stop worrying! Cheer up. Let’s eat.”

  The women brought food on tin plates. Later someone brought a herbal infusion that would help Dome with his breathing. Later still, in the darkness of that steamy night, a young woman joined him on his gunny bed and showed him a definition of hospitality that he had never known before.

  The remaining two days of Dome’s life were spent peacefully and comfortably, given the circumstances. With the desperate thirst of one who is about to leave this world forever, he wanted to understand how the residents of Golden Acres had survived, what gave them the incentive to keep fighting.

  According to Shankh, it was simply a question of perspective. “From the bottom of the pit, all roads lead up,” he explained, smiling. “So in one sense, this is an extremely positive place to be. Rich people throw away things at such a rate that for us, living in the dump, we only have to wait long enough before whatever we want comes sailing out of the sky—for free! Cars, food, books, furniture, machinery, medicine, bottles, toys—you wouldn’t believe how much gets thrown away. And very often in its original packing. So we’re not complaining. We take what we need, repackage the rest, and send it back out.”

  A week after Dome died, a new product began to appear on the shelves of fashionable stores in the city. Small black tins of pickled beetroot, straight from Russia, according to rumors.

  The labels looked like burnished gold and each tin was secured within its own individual membrane of cling film. A flattened medallion of red sealing wax provided a guarantee that the contents were authentic and had not been tampered with in transit.

  It proved to be very popular and the entire stock sold out even before the first case of a terrifying new strain of flu was reported in the Continuum.

  Among the first hundred people to fall ill was the man in the linen suit.

  He, more than anyone else, should have known exactly how soon he would succumb to the mysterious fever that had already felled dozens of victims. He had no family and all his staff had deserted him the moment he began to manifest the telltale symptoms. As he lay in his silk pajamas, alone in bed, writhing with joint pains and gasping for breath, his attention was caught by something on his bedside table. It was a little black tin that he’d bought at great expense a few days earlier.

  “Tasty stuff,” he wheezed to himself, as he fished for the last few morsels with a silver pickle fork. “Might as well fin-ish it.” With streaming eyes, he squinted at the gilded label, embossed in running script with the product’s name: D’Ohm’s Pickled Beetroot.

  “D’Ohm’s …” he said aloud. “Doesn’t sound very Russian!”

  It reminded him of something.

  Someone.

  If only he could remember who! He sensed a gigantic truth swirling in the ether, just out of reach of his understanding.

  But a spasm of coughing shook him just then.

  A day later, he was dead.

  GLOSSARY

  The following glossary provides simple explanations of certain Indian terms used in Delhi Noir. These words come from Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu, English, and Bengali.

  aarti: Hindu ritual that usually occurs at the end of religious ceremonies..

  abhi aaya: I’ll be right there.

  achaar: pickled vegetables or fruits.

  adda: station; den for thieves.

  almirah: closet.

  amla: Phyllanthus emblica; the Indian gooseberry tree.

  anchal: end of a scarf, sari, or other garment.

  Angrezi: English language.

  aunty: term of respect used for older female family friends, neighbors.

  ayah: nanny.

  baba: old wise man; also used colloquially to express frustration or irritation.

  babu: midlevel civil servant.

  bahoot: very.

  bahu: daughter-in-law.

  baingan bharta: curried eggplant.

  bakra: goat.

  bakwas: bullshit.

  bania: trader, shopkeeper.

  banyan: undershirt.

  barfi: sweetmeat made from milk, sugar, and other ingredients. barsaati: single-room top-floor flat of a post-Partition north Indian home.

  bas: stop, enough.

  basti: settlement; often used to describe marginalized urban areas.

  beta: son; child.

  bhabi: sister-in-law.

  bhaisahab: respectful way to address a brother or older male.

  bhaiyya, bhayya: brother.

  bhanchod, bhenchod: sisterfucker.

  bhang: leaf or flower of the cannabis plant consumed in the Indian subcontinent; often used in drinks or food items.

  bhavra: bee.

  Bhumihar: caste found in states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh that consider themselves Brahmans.

  bibiji: mother; madam; term of respect for older women.

  bidi: Indian cigarette rolled in tobacco leaves.

  biji: mother; term of respect for older women.

  bindi: decorative or religious dot women wear on their foreheads, in previous times to denote marital status.

  brake lagao: put on the brakes.

  bua: aunt; father’s sister.

  chaalu: shrewd, cunning.

  chaat: savory snack often made with tamarind yogurt.

  chacha: father’s younger brother; colloquially, used to denote fondness or respect for nonfamilial relations.

  chai: tea.

  chai-pani: literally, the tea and water served to guests; figuratively, a small bribe paid to the lower echelons of the bureaucracy.

  chaiwala: person who serves tea.

  chal: come on; let’s go.

  chamchagiri: sycophancy; ass-kissing.

  chapatti: round whole-wheat flatbread cooked on a stovetop.

  chappal: open sandals.

  charas: hashish.

  choder: fucker.

  chodo: let go, drop it.

  chokra: young boy.

  chole batura: fried round bread made of wheat, flour, and potato accompanied with spicy chickpeas.

  chotey: young one (affectionate).

  choukhat: threshold.

  chowkidar: watchman.

  chunni: long scarf women wear with a salwar kameez.

  churidar: long, tight pajamas worn with kurta or kameez.

  chut: cunt.

  chutiya: moron, loser, fucker.

  da: suffix that shows respect for men.

  daal: curried lentils.

  dargah: mausoleum.

  desi: countryman; colloquially, from India or the subcontinent.

  dhaba: inexpensive roadside restaurant frequented by workers, truck drivers, and travelers.

  dhanda: trade, work.

  dharamshala: cheap hotel for pilgrims.

  dharna: sit-in, protest.

  dhobi: person who washes and irons clothes.

  didi: sister.

  Dilli: Delhi.

  Dilli-wallah: someone from Delhi.

  dupatta: long scarf that women wear with a salwar kameez.

  falooda: noodle served over kulfi.

  fauji: soldier.

  firang, firangi: foreigner (somewhat derogatory); from Fering-hee, Persian for Frank.


  gaali: abusive terms.

  gaand: ass.

  gali: lane, alley.

  ganji: undershirt.

  ghada: rounded earthen vessel for storing and cooling liquids. ghazal: poetic form consisting of rhyming couplets and a refrain.

  ghee: clarified butter.

  gora: white person.

  gulmohar: Delonix regia; royal poinciana trees; when in bloom, they have bright red or orange flowers.

  gurdwara: Sikh house of worship.

  gutka: intoxicant made from tobacco, betel nut, and other spices.

  hafta: one week; refers to weekly protection money paid to police or gangsters.

  hakim: traditional doctor.

  harami: bastard.

  haveli: old mansion or residence.

  huzoor: sir.

  Jai mata di: Hail to the mother goddess.

  jalebi: fried sweet dipped in sugar syrup.

  Jat: north Indian caste.

  jawan: soldier.

  jhuggi: thatched hut.

  ji: suffix that indicates respect.

  jooti: shoe.

  kaabadi: physical-contact sport.

  kaana: blind in one eye.

  kadai: deep wok.

  kaftan: one-piece dress.

  kameez: shirt.

  katta: single-shot country-made handgun that’s illegal, inexpensive, and crudely made.

  kewra: Pandanus odoratissimus; a fragrant flower whose essence is used to flavor food.

  khadi: homespun cotton popularized during the independence movement.

  khamba: colloquially, a 750 ml/1 liter bottle, usually of Indian-made foreign liquour; literally, a column or pillar.

  khus: type of grass used to cool buildings.

  kikar: Acacia nilotica; a thorny small tree with yellow flowers.

  kirpan: dagger carried by Sikhs.

  kulfi: ice cream made from boiled milk.

  kurta: loose shirt.

  kurti: contemporary, casual, and shorter version of a kurta.

  lakh: one hundred thousand.

  lathi: wooden baton carried by a policeman.

  loocha-lafanga: lecherous male.

  Lucknow: capital of Uttar Pradesh, once a seat of Awadh (Muslim) power.

  lungi: garment which consists of a single piece of cloth wrapped around the waist and legs.