It would do.

The second night, I did not sleep in the dormitory-I went to the room. I swept the floor, tied the mosquito net to four nails on the wall, and went to sleep. In the middle of the night, I understood why the mosquito net had been left there. Noises woke me up. The wall was covered with cockroaches, which had come to feed on the minerals or the limestone in the plaster; their chewing made a continuous noise, and their antennae trembled from every spot on the wall. Some of the cockroaches landed on top of the net; from inside, I could see their dark bodies against its white weave. I folded in the fiber of the net and crushed one of them. The other roaches took no notice of this; they kept landing on the net-and getting crushed. Maybe everyone who lives in the city gets to be slow and stupid like this, I thought, and smiled, and went to sleep.

"Had a good night among the roaches?" they teased when I came to the common toilet.

Any thought I had of rejoining the dormitory ended there. The room was full of roaches, but it was mine, and no one teased me. One disadvantage was that the electric bell did not penetrate this room-but that was a kind of advantage too, I discovered in time.

In the morning, after waiting my turn at the common toilet, and then my turn at the common sink, and then my turn at the common bathroom, I went up one flight of stairs, pushed open the door to the parking lot, and walked to the spot where the Honda City was parked. The car had to be wiped with a soft, wet cloth, inside and outside; a stick of incense had to be placed at the small statue of the goddess Lakshmi, goddess of wealth, which sat above the instrument board-this had the double advantage of getting rid of the mosquitoes that had sneaked in at night, and scenting the insides with an aroma of religion. I wiped the seats-nice, plush leather seats; I wiped the instruments; I lifted the leather mats on the floor and slapped the dust out of them. There were three magnetic stickers with images of the mother-goddess Kali on the dashboard-I had put them there, throwing out Ram Persad's magnetic stickers; I wiped them all. There was also a small fluffy ogre with a red tongue sticking out of its mouth hung by a chain from the rearview mirror. It was supposed to be a lucky charm, and the Stork liked to see it bob up and down as we drove. I punched the ogre in the mouth-then I wiped it clean. Next came the business of checking the box of paper tissues in the back of the car-it was elaborately carved and gilded, like something that a royal family had owned, though it was actually made of cardboard. I made sure there were fresh tissues in the box. Pinky Madam used dozens of tissues each time we went out-she said the pollution in Delhi was so bad. She had left her crushed and crumpled used tissues near the box, and I had to pick them up and throw them out.

The electric buzzer sounded through the parking lot. A voice over the lobby microphone said, "Driver Balram. Please report to the main entrance of Buckingham B Block with the car."

And so it was that I would get into the Honda City, drive up a ramp, and come out to see my first sunlight of the day.

The brothers were dressed in posh suits-they were standing at the door to the building, chatting and chirruping; when they got in, the Mongoose said, "The Congress Party headquarters, Balram. We went there the other day-I hope you remember it and don't get lost again."

I'm not going to let you down today, sir.

Rush hour in Delhi. Cars, scooters, motorbikes, autorickshaws, black taxis, jostling for space on the road. The pollution is so bad that the men on the motorbikes and scooters have a handkerchief wrapped around their faces-each time you stop at a red light, you see a row of men with black glasses and masks on their faces, as if the whole city were out on a bank heist that morning.

There was a good reason for the face masks; they say the air is so bad in Delhi that it takes ten years out of a man's life. Of course, those in the cars don't have to breathe the outside air-it is just nice, cool, clean, air-conditioned air for us. With their tinted windows up, the cars of the rich go like dark eggs down the roads of Delhi. Every now and then an egg will crack open-a woman's hand, dazzling with gold bangles, stretches out an open window, flings an empty mineral water bottle onto the road-and then the window goes up, and the egg is resealed.

I was taking my particular dark egg right into the heart of the city. To my left I saw the domes of the President's House-the place where all the important business of the country is done. When the air pollution is really bad, the building is completely blotted out from the road; but today it shone beautifully.

In ten minutes, I was at the headquarters of the Congress Party. Now, this is an easy place to find, because there are always two or three giant cardboard billboards with the face of Sonia Gandhi outside.

I stopped the car, ran out, and opened the door for Mr. Ashok and the Mongoose; as he got out, Mr. Ashok said "We'll be back in half an hour."

This confused me; they never told me in Dhanbad when they'd be back. Of course it meant nothing. They could take two hours to come back, or three. But it was a kind of courtesy that they apparently now had to give me because we were in Delhi.

A group of farmers came to the headquarters, and weren't allowed inside, and shouted something or other, and left. A TV van came to the headquarters and honked; they were let in at once.

I yawned. I punched the little black ogre in its red mouth, and it bobbed back and forth. I turned my head around, from side to side.

I looked at the big poster of Sonia Gandhi. She was holding a hand up in the poster, as if waving to me-I waved back.

I yawned, closed my eyes, and slithered down my seat. With one eye open, I looked at the magnetic sticker of the goddess Kali-who is a very fierce black-skinned goddess, holding a scimitar, and a garland of skulls. I made a note to myself to change that sticker. She looked too much like Granny.

Two hours later, the brothers returned to the car.

"We're going to the President's House, Balram. Up the hill. You know the place?"

"Yes, sir, I've seen it."

Now, I'd already seen most of the famous sights of Delhi -the House of Parliament, the Jantar Mantar, the Qutub-but I'd not yet been to this place-the most important one of all. I drove toward Raisina Hill, and then all the way up the hill, stopping each time a guard put his hand out and checked inside the car, and then stopping right in front of one of the big domed buildings around the President's House.

"Wait in the car, Balram. We'll be back in thirty minutes."

For the first half an hour, I was too frightened to get out of the car. I opened the door-I stepped out-I took a look around. Somewhere inside these domes and towers that were all around me, the big men of this country-the prime minister, the president, top ministers and bureaucrats-were discussing things, and writing them out, and stamping papers. Someone was saying-"There, five hundred million rupees for that dam!"-and someone was saying-"Fine, attack Pakistan, then!"

I wanted to run around shouting: "Balram is here too! Balram is here too!"

I got back into the car to make sure I didn't do anything stupid and get arrested for it.

It was getting dark when the two brothers came out of the building; a fat man walked out with them, and talked to them for a while, outside the car, and then shook their hands and waved goodbye to us.

Mr. Ashok was dark and sullen when he got in. The Mongoose asked me to drive them back home-"without making any mistakes again, understand?"

"Yes, sir."

They sat in silence, which confused me. If I had just gone into the President's House, I'd roll down the windows and shout it aloud to everyone on the road!