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vitiligo, or Rajvati and her husband Gulshan, who sell hard-boiled eggs at night – they’ll all give you the brush-off.
    Even the fair and graceful Sushma, who comes every day from Samaypur Badli to clean people’s homes, will walk right past you at a brisk pace without so much as a word. That’s how bad it is. Nowadays, she’s been seen taking excursions in auto rickshaws with Santosh, the motor scooter mechanic. I saw the two of them munching on chat and papri in front of the Sheela Cinema last week.
    That’s how life goes on.
    And if you happen to travel to that little settlement by the sewage runoff in Samaypur Badli and manage to ask for the address of the tiny hut that Ramnivas had converted into areal house, and, once there, ask his wife, Babiya, or his sickly son, Rohan, or his daughter, Urmila, Where is Ramnivas? you’ll face a stare as blank and cold as stone. They’ll say, He’s not home. He’s out of town. If you ask when he’ll be back, Babiya will reply, ‘How should I know?’ and walk back inside.
    In the New Delhi Municipal Office in Saket, where Ramnivas used to work, go and ask Chopri sahib or some other worker about a man by the name of Ramnivas, and they’ll tell you, ‘How are we supposed to remember the names of the hundreds of daily wage workers who come through here every day?’
    No one in all of Delhi has any idea about Ramnivas – that much is clear. He simply doesn’t exist anywhere – no trace is left. But hold on a minute. I’m about to give you the final facts about him. That’s why I’ve used this story as a cover, so you can find the secret behind.
    If you read any of the Hindi or English newspapers that come out in Delhi – say, Indian News Express, Times of Metro India, or Shatabdi Sanchar Times – and opened the June 27 2001 edition to page three, where they stick the local news, you’d see a tiny photograph two columns wide on the right side of the page. Below the photo, in twenty point boldface, the headline of the capsule news item reads: Robbers Killed In Encounter, and below that, in sixteen point font, the subheader: Police Recover Big Money From Car.
    The three-line capsule was written by the local crime reporter, according to whom, the night before, near Buddha Jayanti Park, the police stopped a Suzuki Esteem that bore no licence plates, and was travelling on Ridge Road from Dhaula Kuan to Rajendra Nagar and Karol Bagh. Instead of stopping, the people inside the car opened fire. The police returned fire,and two of the criminals were killed on the spot, while three others successfully fled in the dark of night. One of the dead was Kuldip aka Kulla, a notorious criminal from Jalandhar. The other dead man could not be identified. Police Assistant Superintendent Sabarwal said that two point three million rupees were recovered from the trunk of the car, most of which were counterfeit five-hundred-rupee bills. It was the biggest police haul in many years. The Assistant Superintendent stressed the importance of information provided by the Agra police in netting the loot.
    If you were to examine the photo printed above this news item, you’d notice that the car is parked right in front of Buddha Jayanti Park. The front and back doors are open. One of the men is lying face down next to the front tire, and he’s wearing a Sikh pagri on his head. And the dead man lying right beside the back door seems to be staring up at the sky. Look closer – use a magnifying glass if you have one, or, better yet, enlarge the photo.
    The dead man lying face up in the street next to the back door of the car, mouth open, pants coming undone and shirt unbuttoned, chest riddled with bullet holes from the police, is none other than Ramnivas – the criminal who, to this day, remains unidentified. And he will never be identified, since no one would recognise him any longer.
THE REVEALING OF THE SECRET,