Narcopolis

She wrapped the pipes in muslin and took them to Rashid’s. It was early in the day. The screen doors were open to the light and the radio played a song from Pyaasa, Geeta Dutt singing of heartache. It made her think of the movies she’d watched growing up, secret excursions to Tardeo Talkies for Raj Kapoor and Guru Dutt, all that sepia longing and Government of India footage of war and industry. The room was from the same black-and-white era. She came in with the pipes and Rashid was reading an Urdu newspaper. He was islanded, barricaded by a bottle and glasses, cigarettes, pipes, dirty dishes, discarded clothing. He didn’t seem surprised to see her. The first thing he did, he asked if she wanted tea. I can call for it from the balcony, he said. I’ll put on a shirt and call for tea.

She said, ‘I don’t want tea, Mr Rashid, thank you.’

‘Okay, no problem, no problem. What can I do for you?’

‘Actually, I’ve brought something for you.’

She unwrapped the pipes and placed them on the floor and picked up the longer one, three feet something from tip to tip.

‘At least five hundred years old. Made by a Chinese pipe master, much superior to our local pipes because of the quality of the wood and the seasoning.’

‘Is it too long?’

‘No, sir; it’s constructed on the same principle as a hookah. The length is very important, it cools the smoke as it travels from the bowl to the mouthpiece.’

‘You’ve been practising this speech.’

‘Yes, sir, a little.’

He liked her manner, her conservative clothes, the way she spoke Hindi mixed with English. He watched her as she assembled the lamp and oil and chandu and he liked that too, the sight of a woman calmly making a pipe, because an Indian woman in a chandu khana was a rare sighting. She tapped the stem when the pipe was ready and it took him a moment, an awkward moment of grapple, to adjust to the big mouthpiece. But she was right: the pipe was a work of art. The wood was stained reddish brown and there was old brasswork at the mouthpiece and bowl. Maybe he was imagining it, but the smoke tasted better and you could take deeper drags and a single pyali went a long way.

‘How much do you want for it? Maybe I’ll take both.’

‘I don’t want to sell the pipes, Mr Rashid.’

‘You call me Rashidbhai or Bhai, not Mr Rashid, this is not America.’

‘Bhai, let me work for you. I can make pyalis and take care of the pipes.’

He said he would not be able to pay her. She would get three pyalis a day and tips. She could eat in the khana but she couldn’t sleep there.

‘I have a place to sleep, but I smoke four pyalis a day — of good opium.’

‘Mine is the best on the street. Where do you smoke?’

He was surprised to learn that Mr Lee was real. Like everyone else, he’d heard the story about a Chinese khana somewhere on Shuklaji Street and he’d dismissed it as fiction. But he knew the value of old stories and he incorporated Mr Lee’s into his own. Rashid told everyone he bought the pipes from the old Chini himself. He told the story so many times that eventually he came to believe it and with each telling he added new details. Mr Lee was on his deathbed when he sent for Rashid; it was the second last thing he did before he died, he handed over the pipes; the last thing he did was to smoke; he didn’t want anyone else to have the pipes, only Rashid, because he wanted them to go where they would be best used; the pipes had originally belonged to the emperor of China and had fallen into the hands of the Nationalist army; and so on.

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