"The Village in the Sky!" she shouted back.

"You got it."

The elevator stopped at the twenty-third floor, and we stumbled out onto a concrete surface that sprouted clumps of steel rods and wires like metal weeds. It was a vast, cavernous space, divided by equidistant columns and canopied by a flat, concrete ceiling adorned with a creepery of cables. Every flat plane was an unrelieved grey, which gave a startling vividness to the human and animal figures grouped on the far side of the floor. An area around one of the pillars was fenced off with wicker and bamboo for use as an animal pen. Straw and hessian was strewn about to serve as bedding for the goats, chickens, cats, and dogs that foraged amid discarded food scraps and rubbish in the pen. Rolled blankets and mattresses, for the people who slept there, were heaped around another pillar. Yet another pillar had been designated as a play area for children, with a few games and toys and small mats scattered for their use.

As we approached the crowd of people, we saw that a great feast was being laid out on clean reed mats. Huge banana leaves served as plates. A team of women scooped out servings of saffron rice, alu palak, kheema, bhajee, and other foods. A battery of kerosene stoves stood nearby, and more food was cooking there. We washed our hands in a drum of water and joined the others, sitting on the floor between Johnny Cigar and Prabaker's friend Kishore. The food was much more piquantly spiced with chillies and curries than any available in restaurants in the city, and much more delicious. As was customary, the women had their own banquet, laid out some five metres away. Karla was the only female in our group of twenty men.

"How are you liking the party?" Johnny asked Karla as the first course of foods was being replaced by the second.

"It's great," she replied. "Damn nice food. Damn nice place to eat it."

"Ah! Here is the new daddy!" Johnny called out. "Come here, Dilip. Meet Miss Karla, a friend of Lin's who has come to eat with us."

Dilip bowed low with his hands pressed together in greeting, and then moved away, smiling shyly, to supervise the preparation of tea at two large stoves. He worked as a rigger on the site. The site manager had given him the day off to organise the feast for his family and friends. His hut was on the legal side of the slum, but close to my own across the wire. Beside the women's banquet area, just beyond Dilip's tea stoves, two men were attempting to clean something from the wall. A word that someone had painted there was still legible beneath their scrubbing. It was the word SAPNA, written in large English capitals.

"What is that?" I asked Johnny Cigar. "I've seen it everywhere lately."

"It's bad, Linbaba," he spat out, crossing himself superstitiously. "It's the name of a thief, a goonda. He's a bad fellow. He's been doing evil things all over the city. He's been breaking into houses, and stealing, and even killing."

"Did you say killing?" Karla asked. The skin on her lips was tight, and her jaw was set in a hard, grim line.

"Yes!" Johnny insisted. "First it was just words, in posters and such, and writing on the walls. Now, it has come to murder-cold blood murder. Two people were killed in their own houses just last night."

"He is so crazy, this Sapna, he uses a _girl's name," Jeetendra sneered.

It was a good point. The word sapna, meaning dream, was feminine, and a fairly common girl's name.

"Not so crazy," Prabaker disagreed, his eyes gleaming but his expression grave. "He tells that he is the king of thieves. He talks about making it war, to help the poor people, and killing the rich peoples. This is crazy, yes, but it is the kind of a crazy that many people will agree with, inside the quiet of their own heads."

"Who is he?" I asked.

"Nobody knows who he is, Lin," Kishore said, his American accented English, learned from tourists, flowing in a liquid drawl. "A lot of people are talking about him, but nobody I spoke to has ever seen him. People say he's the son of a rich man. They say he's from Delhi, and that he got cut out of his inheritance.

But some people also say he's a devil. Some people think that it's not a man at all, but a kind of organisation, like. There are posters stuck up around the place, posters telling the thieves and the poor buggers in the zhopadpattis to do crazy things. And like Johnny said, now two people have been murdered.

The name Sapna is getting painted on walls and streets all over Bombay. The cops are asking a lot of questions. I think they're scared."

"The rich peoples are scared, too," Prabaker added. "They were rich people, those unlucky fellows, killed in their homes. This Sapna fellow is writing his name in English letters, not the Hindi writing. This is an edu- cated fellow. And who painted that name here, in this place? The peoples are always here, always work or sleep, but nobody has seen who painted his name. An educated ghost! Rich peoples are also scared. Not so crazy, this Sapna fellow."

"Madachudh! Pagal!" Johnny spat again. _Motherfucker! _Madman!

"He's trouble, this Sapna, and the trouble will be ours, you know, because trouble is the only property that poor fellows like us are allowed to own."

"I think we might change the subject, guys," I interjected, looking at Karla. Her face was pale, and her eyes were wide with what seemed to be fright. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she answered quickly. "Maybe that elevator ride was scarier than I thought."

"Sorry for problem, Miss Karla," Prabaker apologised, his face pinched in a solicitous frown. "From now, only happy talking. No more talking about killing and murders and blood all over the houses, and all that."

"That should cover it, Prabu," I muttered through clenched teeth, glaring at him.

Several young women came to clear the used banana leaves away, and lay out small dishes of sweet rabdi dessert for us. They stared at Karla with frank fascination.

"Her legs are too thin," one of them said, in Hindi. "You can see them, through the pants."

"And her feet are too big," said another.

"But her hair is very soft, and a good, black Indian colour," said a third.

"Her eyes are the colour of stink-weed," said the first with a contemptuous sniff.

"Be careful, sisters," I laughed, speaking in Hindi. "My friend speaks perfect Hindi, and she understands everything you're saying."

The women reacted with shocked scepticism, chattering amongst themselves. One of them stooped to stare into Karla's face, and asked her loudly if she spoke Hindi.

"My legs may be too thin, and my feet may be too big," Karla replied in fluent Hindi, "but there's nothing wrong with my hearing."

The women shrieked in delight and crowded around her, laughing happily. They pleaded with her to join them, sweeping her away to the women's banquet. I watched her for some time, surprised to see her smile and even laugh out loud in the company of the women and the young girls. She was the most beautiful woman I'd ever known. It was the beauty of a desert at dawn: a loveliness that filled my eyes, and crushed me into silent, unbreathing awe.

Looking at her there, in the Village in the Sky, watching her laugh, it shocked me to think that I'd deliberately avoided her for so many months. I was no less surprised by how tactile the girls were with her, how easily they reached out to stroke her hair or to take her hands in their own. I'd perceived her to be aloof and almost cold. In less than a minute, those women were more familiar with her than I'd dared to be in more than a year of friendship. I remembered the quick, impulsive kiss she'd given me, in my hut. I remembered the smell of cinnamon and jasmine in her hair, and the press of her lips, like sweet grapes swollen with the summer sun.

Tea arrived, and I took my glass to stand near one of the huge window openings that looked out over the slum. Far below, the tattered cloak of the ghetto spread outward from the construction site to the very edge of the sea. The narrow lanes, obscured by ragged overhangs, were only partially visible and seemed more like tunnels than streets. Smoke rose in drifts from cooking fires, and stuttered on a sluggish seaward breeze to disperse over a scattering of canoes that fished the muddy shore.