The fine dagger-line of his moustache accentuated his scowl, and he looked at me with such undiluted loathing that a little prayer unfurled itself in my mind. Please God, don't make me fight this man.

He raised the palms of his hands to stop Prabaker's wheedling cajolery. They were huge hands, gnarled and calloused enough to scrape the barnacles off the side of a dry-docked oil tanker.

"He says we are not allowed inside," Prabaker explained.

"Well," I replied, reaching past the man and attempting with unforced enthusiasm to open the door, "you can't say we didn't try."

"No, no, Lin!" Prabaker stopped me. "We must argue with him about this matter."

The big man folded his arms, stretching the seams of his khaki shirt with little ripples of sound.

"I don't think that's such a good idea," I mumbled, under a tight smile.

"Certainly it is!" Prabaker insisted. "Tourists are not allowed here, or to any of the other people-markets, but I have told him that you are not one of these tourist fellows. I have told him that you have learned the Marathi language. He does not believe me. That is our problem only. He doesn't believe any foreigner will speak Marathi. You must for that reason speak it a little Marathi for him. You will see. He will allow us inside."

"I only know about twenty words of Marathi, Prabu."

"No problem twenty words, baba. Just make a begin. You will see.

Tell him your name."

"My name?"

"Yes, like I taught it to you. Not in Hindi, but in Marathi.

Okay, just begin..."

"Ah, ah, maza nao Lin ahey," I muttered, uncertainly. My name is Lin.

"Baapree!" the big man gasped, his eyes wide with genuine surprise. Good Lord!

Encouraged, I tried a few more of the phrases Prabaker had taught me during the last few weeks.

"Maza Desh New Zealand ahey. Ata me Colabala rahella ahey." My country is New Zealand. I am living in Colaba now.

"_Kai _garam _mad'chud!" he roared, smiling for the first time.

The phrase literally means, What a hot motherfucker! It's so frequently and inventively applied in conversation, however, that it can be loosely translated as Son of a gun!

The giant grasped my shoulder, squeezing it with amiable severity.

I ran through the range of my Marathi phrases, beginning with the first words I'd asked Prabaker to teach me-I love your country very much-and concluding with a request I was often forced to make in restaurants, but which must've seemed spectacularly inappropriate in the little alcove: Please turn off the fan, while I am eating my soup...

"Enough now, baba," Prabaker gurgled through his wide grin. When I fell silent, the big man spoke swiftly and exuberantly.

Prabaker translated for him, nodding and gesturing expressively with his hands. "He says he is Bombay policeman, and his name is Vinod."

"He's a cop?"

"Oh yes, Lin. A police-cop, he is."

"Do the cops run this place?"

"Oh, no. This is part-time work only. He says he is so very, very happy to meet you...

"He says you are the first gora he ever met who can speak Marathi ...

"He says some foreigners speak Hindi, but nobody foreigner can speak Marathi...

"He says Marathi is his language. His native place is Pune...

"He says they speak it a very pure Marathi in Pune, and you must go there to hear it...

"He says he is too happy! You are like a son to him...

"He says you must come to his house, and eat foods and meet his family...

"He says that will be one hundred rupees."

"What was that?"

"Baksheesh, Lin. To go inside. One hundred rupees, it is. Pay him now."

"Oh, sure." I fumbled a few notes from my pocket, peeled off one hundred rupees, and handed it over. There's a special sleight of hand that's peculiar to policemen: the conjuring trick that palms and conceals banknotes with a skill that experienced shell-game swindlers envy. The big man collected the money with a two-handed handshake, smeared a palm across his chest as if brushing away crumbs after eating a sandwich, and then scratched at his nose with practised innocence. The money had vanished. He pointed along the narrow corridor. We were free to enter. Two sharp turns and a dozen paces beyond the gate and its shaft of bright light, we came upon a kind of courtyard. Several men sat on rough wooden benches, or stood in talking groups of two or three. Some were Arabs, dressed in loose, cotton robes and kaffiyehs. An Indian boy moved among them, serving black tea in long glasses. Some of the men looked at Prabaker and me with frowning curiosity. When Prabaker smiled widely and waved a greeting they turned away, concentrating their attention once more on their conversation. Occasionally, one or another of them looked up to inspect a group of children who sat together on a long wooden bench beneath a ragged canvas awning.

It was darker there, after the bright light of the entrance chamber. A patchwork of canvas scraps provided an uneven cover that screened out most of the sky. Blank brown and magenta walls rose up all around us. The few windows I could see, through tears in the canvas coverings, were boarded over. Not a real courtyard, the roughly square space seemed unplanned, a kind of mistake, an almost forgotten architectural accident formed by building and rebuilding on the ruins of other structures within the congested block. The ground was paved with haphazard collections of tiles that had once been the floors of kitchens and bathrooms. Two naked bulbs, strange fruit on the withered vines of bare wires, provided the poor light.

We moved to a quiet corner, accepted tea when it was offered, and sipped it in silence for a while. Then, speaking quietly and slowly, Prabaker told me about the place he called the people- market. The children sitting beneath the tattered canopy were slaves. They'd come from the cyclone in West Bengal, the drought in Orissa, the cholera epidemic in Haryana, the secessionist fighting in Punjab. Sourced in calamity, recruited and purchased by scouts, the children had journeyed to Bombay by train, often alone, through all the many hundreds of kilometres.

The men gathered in the courtyard were purchasers or agents.

Although they seemed to express no great interest, talking amongst themselves and for the most part ignoring the children on the wooden bench, Prabaker assured me that a restrained haggling was taking place, and that bargains were being struck, even as we watched.

The children were thin, vulnerable, and small. Two of them sat with their four hands bunched together in a beehive-ball. One child embraced another within the huddle of a protective arm. All of them stared out at the well-fed, well-clothed purchasers and agents, following every change of expression or emphatic gesture of their bejewelled hands. And the eyes of those children were like the black gleam at the bottom of a sweetwater well.

What does it take to harden a man's heart? How could I see that place, look at those children, and not put a stop to it? Why didn't I contact the authorities? Why didn't I get a gun, and put a stop to it myself? The answer to that, like the answers to all the big questions, came in many parts. I was a wanted man, a hunted criminal, living on the run. Contacting police or government authorities wasn't an option for me. I was a stranger in that strange land: it wasn't my country, and it wasn't my culture. I had to know more. I had to know the language that was spoken, at the very least, before I could presume to interfere.

And I'd learned, the hard way, that sometimes, even with the purest intentions, we make things worse when we do our best to make things better. If I came back with a gun and stopped the slave market there, in that crooked concrete maze, it would start up again somewhere else. Stranger that I was, I knew that much.

And maybe the new slave market, in a different place, would be worse. I was helpless to stop it, and I knew it.