"What about this man? Will you lock him up first?"

The assistant commissioner put his fingers together. He sighed. "See, at the time of the accident, your brother's bicycle had no working lights. That is illegal, you know. There are other things that will come out. I promise you, things will come out."

The boy stared. He shook his head, as if he hadn't heard correctly. "My brother is dead. This man is a killer. I don't understand what's going on here."

"Look here-go home. Have a bath. Pray to God. Sleep. Come back in the morning. We'll file the F.I.R. then, all right?"

The brother understood at last why I had brought him to the station-he understood at last that the trap had shut on him. Maybe he had only seen policemen in Hindi movies until now.

Poor boy.

"This is an outrage! I'll call the papers! I'll call the lawyers! I'll call the police!"

The assistant commissioner, who was not a man given to humor, allowed himself a little smile. "Sure. Call the police."

The brother stormed out, shouting more threats.

"The number plates will be changed tomorrow," the assistant commissioner said. "We'll say it was a hit-and-run. Another car will be substituted. We keep battered cars for this purpose here. You're very lucky that your Qualis hit a man on a bicycle."

I nodded.

A man on a bicycle getting killed-the police don't even have to register the case. A man on a motorbike getting killed-they would have to register that. A man in a car getting killed-they would have thrown me in jail.

"What if he goes to the papers?"

The assistant commissioner slapped his belly. "I've got every pressman in this town in here."

I did not hand him an envelope at once. There is a time and a place for these things. Now was the time to smile, and say thanks, and sip the hot coffee he had offered me; now was the time to chat with him about his sons-they're both studying in America, he wants them to come back and start an Internet company in Bangalore-and nod and smile and show him my clean, shining, fluoridated teeth. We sipped cup after cup of steaming coffee under a calendar that had the face of the goddess Lakshmi on it-she was showering gold coins from a pot into the river of prosperity. Above her was a framed portrait of the god of gods, a grinning Mahatma Gandhi.

A week from now I'll go to see him again with an envelope, and then he won't be so nice. He'll count the money in front of me and say, This is all? Do you know how much it costs to keep two sons studying in a foreign college? You should see the American Express bills they send me every month! And he'll ask for another envelope. Then another, then another, and so on. There is no end to things in India, Mr. Jiabao, as Mr. Ashok so correctly used to say. You'll have to keep paying and paying the fuckers. But I complain about the police the way the rich complain; not the way the poor complain.

The difference is everything.

The next day, sir, I called Mohammad Asif to the office. He was burning with shame over what he had done-I didn't need to reproach him.

And it was not his fault. Not mine either. Our outsourcing companies are so cheap that they force their taxi operators to promise them an impossible number of runs every night. To meet such schedules, we have to drive recklessly; we have to keep hitting and hurting people on the roads. It's a problem every taxi operator in this city faces. Don't blame me.

"Don't worry about it, Asif," I said. The boy looked so devastated.

I've come to respect Muslims, sir. They're not the brightest lot, except for those four poet fellows, but they make good drivers, and they're honest people, by and large, although a few of them seem to get this urge to blow trains up every year. I wasn't going to fire Asif over this.

But I did ask him to find out the address of the boy, the one we had killed.

He stared at me.

"Why go, sir? We don't have to fear anything from the parents. Please don't do this."

I made him find the address and I made him give it to me.

I took cash out of my locker in crisp new one-hundred-rupee notes; I put them in a brown envelope. I got into a car and drove myself to the place.

The mother was the one who opened the door. She asked me what I wanted, and I said, "I am the owner of the taxi company."

I didn't have to tell her which one.

She brought me a cup of coffee in a cup set in a metal tumbler. They have exquisite manners, these South Indians.

I poured the coffee into the tumbler, and sipped the correct way.

There was a photo of a young man, with a large jasmine garland around it, up on the wall.

I said nothing until I finished the coffee. Then I put the brown envelope on the table.

An old man had come into the room now, and he stood staring at me.

"First of all, I want to express my deep sorrow at the death of your son. Having lost relatives myself-so many of them-I know the pain that you have suffered. He should not have died."

"Second, the fault is mine. Not the driver's. The police have let me off. That is the way of this jungle we live in. But I accept my responsibility. I ask for your forgiveness."

I pointed to the brown envelope lying on the table.

"There are twenty-five thousand rupees in here. I don't give it to you because I have to, but because I want to. Do you understand?"

The old woman would not take the money.

But the old man, the father, was eyeing the envelope. "At least you were man enough to come," he said.

"I want to help your other son," I said. "He is a brave boy. He stood up to the police the other night. He can come and be a driver with me if you want. I will take care of him if you want."

The woman clenched her face and shook her head. Tears poured out of her eyes. It was understandable. She might have had the hopes for that boy that my mother had for me. But the father was amenable; men are more reasonable in such matters.

I thanked him for the coffee, bowed respectfully before the bereaved mother, and left.

Mohammad Asif was waiting for me at the office when I got back. He shook his head and said, "Why? Why did you waste so much money?"

That's when I thought, Maybe I've made a mistake. Maybe Asif will tell the other drivers I was frightened of the old woman, and they will think they can cheat me. It makes me nervous. I don't like showing weakness in front of my employees. I know what that leads to.

But I had to do something different; don't you see? I can't live the way the Wild Boar and the Buffalo and the Raven lived, and probably still live, back in Laxmangarh.

I am in the Light now.

Now, what happens in your typical Murder Weekly story-or Hindi film, for that matter? A poor man kills a rich man. Good. Then he takes the money. Good. But then he gets dreams in which the dead man pursues him with bloody fingers, saying, Mur-der-er, mur-der-er.

Doesn't happen like that in real life. Trust me. It's one of the reasons I've stopped going to Hindi films.

There was just that one night when Granny came chasing me on a water buffalo, but it never happened again.

The real nightmare you get is the other kind. You toss about in the bed dreaming that you haven't done it-that you lost your nerve and let Mr. Ashok get away-that you're still in Delhi, still the servant of another man, and then you wake up.

The sweating stops. The heartbeat slows.

You did it! You killed him!

About three months after I came to Bangalore, I went to a temple and performed last rites there for all of them: Kusum, Kishan, and all my aunts, cousins, nephews, and nieces. I even said a prayer for the water buffalo. Who knows who has lived and who has not? And then I said to Kishan, and to Kusum, and to all of them: "Now leave me in peace."