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to the Naharpur sewage runoff in a rented tin shack, warned me. All planets and constellations were conspiring against me in the most dreaded alignment; Saturn was rising and casting a dark seven-and-a-half year shadow over my life, and I would soon face the full wrath of the government.
    I think that Kuvera must have been in the right position last year, on Tuesday, 23 May, that made the change in Ramnivas’ luck possible. Think about it: a simple whisk broom sweeps up the trash. The twine holding the bristles together gets loose, and the bristles need to be righted, so he beats the broom against what looks like a normal wall. And he finds a huge cache of cash. How? Think about it: for a few months he entered a fantasy land, getting everything his heart desired. He was able to give his wife, Babiya, and two kids, Rohan and Urmila whatever they wanted to eat and whatever clothes they wanted to wear. And he was able to take his teenage mistress to the other side of a shimmering, technicolour rainbow, where they got to see the Taj Mahal and have their pictures taken in several different poses.
    That may be the case. But the astrologer-ji was quick to add that if the manna was, in fact, dark and dirty from the stain of sin, the result would be disastrous. What do I believe? I believe that somewhere around midnight on 26 June 2001, the sin, or vice, or bad karma attached to that money caught up with Ramnivas once and for all, bringing him and his dreams to a violent end.
    And you ask me: so what’s the big secret you want to tell me? Why use this story as a cover, and hide the secret behind it?
    You already know that only a few lakhs of rupees were recovered from the trunk after Kuldip aka Kulla and Ramnivas were killed on Ridge Road that night – and a large part of that cash was counterfeit too. And yet, we know that there was at some point three billion rupees taken out of that wall.
    The police officer who supervised ‘Operation Ramnivas’ is a respected and powerful cop who owns a few homes and has one of those farm houses outside Delhi perfect for all-night parties. And when he throws one, he invites politicians, high-ranking cops, journalists, top intellectuals, and a few senior literary figures. They drink until they fall down on the floor. I’m sure you’ve seen their photos in all the local Delhi papers. These people are no longer like you or me – they’ve helped turn each other into name brands. If you read any poetry or stories coming out these days, you know what I mean when I say that you can smell the stench of liquor coming from the words they write. And underneath their sentences lies a pile of chicken and goat bones, and the skeletons of the innocent ones. If you poke the head of your broom into contemporary literature, you’ll find a hollow wall stuffed full of money – impure, dirty money.
    I’ve been in Delhi for some twenty-five years, and I’m scared. I suspect that Ramnivas told the cops that he’d told me the secret about the hollow wall in Saket, and you know how much danger that puts me in.
    It doesn’t matter how many days I’ve got left in this sorry life before I also disappear – but I, too, would also like to enter into a world of my dreams, just like Ramnivas did.
    So that’s why every night at midnight, when all of Delhi is asleep, I put on some black clothes, sneak out of the house with a pick in one hand, trowel in the other, and spend the restof the night scraping out the walls of Delhi. Treasures beyond anyone’s wildest dreams are hidden in the countless hollows in Delhi’s countless walls. I’m sure it’s there, and I’m sure all of it is unmarked. My only regret is that I’ve wasted the last twenty-five years of my life. Even if I’d only taken twenty-five days to see what’s inside the walls of Delhi, I’d be a billionaire by now, and I’d be able to live my life with a little