I lay on the bed. I was not ill. I just could not get up. I lacked the strength. I looked out of the window. Evening. The chowk of the Empire Hotel, the biggest in Mumbai. The same buildings. The same crowds of people. Trams, buses, cars. The same chaos.
I remembered all those other cities: London, Paris, Venice, Naples… I have a friend, Jaggu, who has an odd habit. In the middle of a sentence, he would stop suddenly. “What are you thinking about, Jaggu?” I’d ask. His voice would be plangent with melancholy. “You’ll laugh but it just occurred to me that it’s four o’clock now and I can see the Calcutta Mail steaming into Nagpur. The Delhi Express will be at Jhansi, the Punjab Mail at Delhi, the Frontier Mail at Nagda and oh yes, the Madras Mail will soon leave Solapur.”
I would laugh but that didn’t stop Jaggu from swooping over the map. At these times, I would think of us flying kites together. That was when Jaggu’s imagination would take wing. If…