'What did God have to do with that briefcase? I don't need to offer Him any thanks.' I dismiss the suggestion with a wave of my hand.

Champi sighs. 'I shall intercede for you with Allah, the Forgiver of Sin, the Bestower of Favours. La ilaha illa huwa, to Him is the final return,' she says with both hands raised to her face.

I shake my head. Considering what has happened to her eyes and face, Champi's faith in God is even more remarkable.

'Don't breathe a word about the briefcase to Mother,' I instruct her and saunter out towards the main gate.

It is a Monday, Lord Shiva's day, and the temple is already filling up with worshippers. By noon there will be a half-kilometrelong queue for the darshan.

The Bhole Nath Temple of Mehrauli is a recent construction, no more than twenty years old. It was probably built for the same purpose that most temples in the city are built – to grab land. But its fame spread quickly and it has now become a place of pilgrimage. Devotees believe it has wish-fulfilling properties and they can be seen thronging the massive marble hall at all times of the day, sitting on the floor meditating or chanting. This is also where Mother can be found in the mornings, diligently mopping the floor, scrubbing the tiles, rinsing the side drains of any obstruction.

Several useful activities can be conducted on the temple premises, but the only one which interests me is girl-watching. Because Shiva is considered to be the granter of good spouses, there is a constant stream of unmarried maidens and young brides entering the temple to pray for a suitable husband or a harmonious family life. If only the chicks could be made to realize that an excellent groom is lurking just round the corner, in Kholi Number One!

The temple has been a part of my existence since I was six. I have been a witness to its growth and expansion. I have seen the garden bloom and trees populate the compound. I have grown up watching the increasing prices of flowers and sweets and the widening girths of sweet-makers and priests.

Some of the temple's luck has also rubbed off on us. Before Mother started working here, we lived in the Sanjay Gandhi slum, in a makeshift hut made with corrugated-metal sheets. We had no electricity and no water. Mother cooked with cow-dung patties on a mud hearth which used to fill the entire hut with smoke and make my eyes water. Now we have a pukka one-and-a-half-room house, with a paved brick fireplace, a ceiling fan and even cable TV (which I have siphoned off the temple's connection). Of course, it is still extremely cramped for three people. We have divided the main room into two parts, separated by a wooden partition. I have one side, with my mattress and a small wooden table, and Mother and Champi have the other side. I have decorated the walls on my side with posters of Salim Ilyasi and Shabnam Saxena, though they are mostly obscured by my trousers and shirts draped over the wall-mounted hanger. Mother has some faded old calendars with gods and goddesses on her walls. She also has an aluminium trunk containing some of her clothes. Its top serves as a mantle for a framed black-and-white picture of Father, garlanded with brittle roses. It is Mother's most prized possession. She sees her husband in that photograph, but I see a martyr.

Mother never talks about it, but I have learnt that my father was killed in a road accident. Even though I was only six years old at the time, I still remember Father's dead body lying outside our hut, wrapped in a white sheet, and Mother breaking her bangles and bashing her head repeatedly against the wall. A week later a heavy-set man wearing white kurta pyjamas came to meet Mother with folded hands. He shed a few crocodile tears and gave Mother twenty-five thousand rupees. He also got her the job in the temple and this house. Father gave us in death what he couldn't give us in life.

'It has been a month since you quit working for the Bhusiyas. Are you going to look for another job or not?' Mother asks me the moment she returns in the evening. It has become her constant refrain. 'What is the use of all that university education if you are going to remain idle? Arrey, if you don't think of your old mother at least think of your sister Champi. How will I get her married if you refuse to earn money? God, why did you make me give birth to a wastrel?'

I smile at her. 'I was waiting to give you the good news. I have just landed a new job – operations manager at the box factory on MG Road. They will pay me ten thousand a month.'

'Ten thousand?' Mother's eyes open wide. She looks at me sternly. 'You are not pulling my leg, are you?'

'I swear on Father, I am telling the truth,' I say solemnly.

'Lord Shiva be praised… Lord Shiva be praised.' Mother looks up to the heavens and races out of the house. She will probably start distributing sweets to everyone in the temple complex.

Champi is not amused. 'How can you lie so brazenly? I pity the woman who will marry you.'

'But won't she prefer a millionaire liar to an honest pauper?' I grin.

A young woman wearing denim jeans and a printed kurti has come to interview Champi. She is rather pretty, with short hair and brown eyes. Her name is Nandita Mishra and she claims to be a documentary film-maker.

'I am doing a film on the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, and the situation twenty-five years later. I have come to get Champi Bhopali's perspective,' she tells me as she sets up her tripod. Champi quickly goes to the kitchen, scrubs her face with water, puts a flower in her hair and returns to face the video camera. She has become quite adept at giving interviews, peppering her sentences with words like 'contamination', 'conspiracy' and 'compensation'.

After the recording with Champi is over, the woman turns to me.

'Do you know any people in the Sanjay Gandhi slum?'

'Why do you ask? What work could someone like you possibly have there?'

'My next project is a film on slum life. Something along the lines of Salaam Bombay, but grittier, edgier. We see slums from afar, sitting in trains and cars, but how many of us have actually ventured into one? My documentary will seek to give viewers an authentic experience of slum life.'

'A slum is not a tourist attraction, Madam,' I scoff. 'To experience slum life, you have to be born in one.'

She looks at me sharply. 'That's quite a good line. Would you mind repeating it for the camera?'

So I, too, prepare to give an interview for the first time in my life, expounding on life in the Sanjay Gandhi slum. It is a subject

I know well. The slum has been my playground since the age of three. I have many insights into slum living – how a family of six manages to squeeze itself into an eight-by-eight-foot space. How a girl protects her modesty while bathing underneath a municipal tap in full view of hundreds of people. How a married couple makes clandestine love with furtive eyes watching their every move. How grown men sit in rows and shit like buffaloes at the edge of the railway track. How the poor breed like mosquitoes and live like dogs, while the dogs of the rich sleep on Dunlopillo mattresses in mosquito-free mansions.

I could have said all these things, but face to face with the lens of the camera I falter and become tongue-tied. Nandita Mishra tries to prompt me, but the words have suddenly dried up inside me. She gives up after a while and begins packing up her equipment.

After she has gone I brood upon my failure. Was it because of the camera in my face or the briefcase under my bed? Is it possible that because I now have wealth, I am unable to think like a slum-dweller?

Ten days have passed since I acquired that briefcase and no one has come looking for it. As per plan, inside the temple I will continue my life exactly as before. I will be frugal and abstinent. But outside, I can afford to be an entirely different person. I can start spending some of the money, enjoy the fruits of my good fortune. I decide to begin with a taxi ride.