Cold turkey goes on for about two weeks, but the first five days are the worst. If you can get through the first five days, if you can crawl and drag yourself into that sixth morning without drugs, you know you're clean, and you know you'll make it. Every hour, for the next eight to ten days, you feel a little better and a little stronger. The cramps fade, the nausea passes, the fever and chills subside. After a while, the worst of it is simply that you can't sleep. You lie on the bed at night, twisting and writhing in discomfort, and sleep never comes. In those last days and very long nights of the turkey, I became a Standing Baba: I never sat or lay down, all day and all night, until exhaustion collapsed my legs at last and I sank into sleep.

And it passes, the turkey passes, and you emerge from the cobra bite of heroin addiction like any survivor from any disaster: dazed, wounded forever, and glad to be alive.

Nazeer took my first sarcastic jokes, twelve days after the turkey began, as the cue for my training to commence. From the sixth day I'd been walking with him as light exercise, and for the fresh air. The first of those walks had been slow and halting, and I'd returned to the house after fifteen minutes. By the twelfth day I was walking the length of the beach with him, hoping to tire myself so much that I could sleep.

Finally, he took me to the stable where Khader's horses were kept. The stable was a converted boathouse, one street away from the beach. The horses were trained for beginning riders, and carried tourists up and down the beach in the high season. The white gelding and grey mare were large, docile animals. We took them from Khader's stable-master and led them down to the flat, hard-packed sand of the beach.

There's no animal in the world with a deeper sense of parody than a horse. A cat can make you look clumsy, and a dog can make you look stupid, but only a horse can make you look both at the same time. And then, with nothing more than the flick of a tail or a casual stomp on your foot, it lets you know that it did it on purpose. Some people know from the first contact with the animal that they'll ride well, and bond with the beast. I'm not one of those people. A friend of mine has a strange, antimagnetic effect on machines: watches stop on her wrist, radio receivers crackle, and photocopy machines glitch whenever she's near. My relationship with horses is something like that.

The thickset Afghan cupped his hands to boost me onto the gelding's back, nodding his head for me to climb up, and winking encouragingly. I put my foot into his hands and sprang up onto the white horse, but in the instant that I sat on its back the previously meek, well-trained creature hurled me off with a prodigious, arching kick. I soared over Nazeer's shoulder and landed with a thump on the sand. The gelding galloped away down the beach without me. Nazeer stared after it, gape-mouthed. The animal was only calmed and returned to my presence when he fetched a blinding bag, and placed it over its head.

That was the beginning of Nazeer's slow, reluctant acceptance of the fact that I would never be anything other than the worst horseman he knew. The disappointment should've plunged me deeper into the well of his contempt, but in fact it provoked an opposite reaction. In the weeks that followed he became solicitous and even tender-hearted toward me. For Nazeer, that stumbling ineptitude with horses was a terrible affliction, as pitiable in a man as a painfully debilitating illness. And even at my best, when I managed to remain on the horse for minutes at a time, and work the beast in a circle by flapping my legs at its sides and yanking with both hands at the bridle, my gracelessness moved him close to tears.

Nevertheless, I persevered with the lessons, and I exercised every day. I worked my way up to twenty sets of thirty push-ups, with a minute rest between each set. I followed the push-ups every day with five hundred sit-ups, a five-kilometre run, and a forty-minute swim in the sea. After almost three months of the routine, I was fit and strong.

Nazeer wanted me to gain some experience at riding over rough terrain, so I arranged with Chandra Mehta for us to visit the riding range at the Film City movie studio ranch. Many of the feature films had horse-and-rider sequences. The teams of horses were cared for by squads of men who lived on the vast tracts of hilly land, and were on call for stunt and action scenes. The animals were superbly well trained but, barely two minutes after Nazeer and I had mounted the brown mares assigned to us, my horse threw me into a stack of clay pots. Nazeer took up the reins of my horse and sat in his saddle, shaking his head pityingly.

"Hey, great stunt, yaar!" one of the stunt men called out. There were five of them riding with us, and they all laughed. Two men jumped down to help me up.

Two falls later, as I climbed wearily into the saddle, I heard a familiar voice. I looked around to see a group of riders. At their head was a cowboy looking like Emiliano Zapata, with a black hat hanging on his back from a leather thong.

"I fuckin' knew it was you!" Vikram shouted. He drew his horse up close to mine and shook my hand warmly. His companions joined Nazeer and our stunt riders, and they trotted away, leaving us alone.

"What are you doing here?"

"I own the fuckin' place, man!" He spread his arms wide. "Well, not exactly. Lettie bought a share, as a partner, with Lisa."

"My Lisa?"

He raised one eyebrow quizzically.

"Your Lisa?"

"You know what I mean."

"Sure," he said, grinning widely. "Her and Lettie, you know, they're running that casting agency together-the one you guys started up. And they're doin' all right, man. They're good together. I decided to get in on it as well. Your friend, Chandra Mehta, told me there was a share going in the stunt stable. Hey, it's a natural for me, wouldn't you say?"

"Oh, no doubt about that, Vikram."

"So, I put some damn money in it, and now I come out here every week. I'm an extra in a fuckin' movie tomorrow! Come and watch me get shot, brother!"

"It's a tempting offer," I said, laughing with him. "But I'm leaving town for a while tomorrow."

"You're leaving? For how long?"

"I don't know, exactly. A month, maybe longer."

"Then you'll be back?"

"Sure. Keep a video of the stunt. When I get back, we'll get stoned, and watch you get killed in slow motion."

"Ha! You got a deal! Come on! Let's ride together, man!"

"No, no!" I shouted. "I'll never get this horse to ride with you, Vikram. I'm the worst rider you ever saw. I've already fallen off this one three times. If I can get it to _walk in a straight line I'll be happy."

"Come on, brother Lin! I tell you what, I'll lend you my hat. It never fails, man. It's a lucky hat. You're having trouble because you got no hat."

"I... I don't think the hat's gonna cover it, man."

"It's a fuckin' magic hat, man, I'm telling you!"

"You haven't seen me ride."

"And you haven't worn the hat. The hat can fix anything. Plus, you're a gora. No offence to your whiteness, yaar, but these are Indian horses, man. They just need to get a little Indian style from you, that's all. You speak in Hindi to them, and dance a little, then you'll see."

"I don't think so."

"Sure, man. Come on, get down and dance with me."

"What?"

"Come on and dance with me."

"I'm not dancing for the horses, Vikram," I declared, with as much dignity and sincerity as I could pack into the bizarre string of words.

"Sure you will! You get down with me now, and dance a little Indian magic. The horses have to _see that cool, Indian motherfucker you got inside your tight, white exterior, man. I swear, the horses will love you, and you'll ride like Clint fuckin' Eastwood!"

"I don't want to ride like Clint fuckin' Eastwood."