Trailer by Welc0meT0MyW0rld.

EDITED 

This chapter is dedicated to Wattpad for being an excellent medium through which I can tell this story. Honestly, you guys are amazing. 

"But even so, every now and then I would feel a violent stab of loneliness. The very water I drink, the very air I breathe, would feel like long, sharp needles. The pages of a book in my hands would take on the threatening metallic gleam of razor blades. I could hear the roots of loneliness creeping through me when the world was hushed at four o'clock in the morning."

---Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

He hoped the girl would come again.

He walked towards the bus-stand, his eyes shifting either way across the road, his rucksack slamming into his back, chock full with the evening magazines. The paper's he'd get on the way.

Evening settled like a pall on the city, orange flame lighting the shit and squalor of the streets. The scent of chemicals hit him again just as it had hit him the first time he had been here.

Mumbai.

Fresh from U.P with dreams to fly. Maybe paint hoardings for Bollywood.

He had a job now. Selling newspapers.

As good a job as any, he supposed.

The bus was packed with a strange concoction of degenerates and the middle-class men on their way back home. Saving what they could to feed the kids, he guessed.

He was a kid once. He was a good kid. He studied hard, all the way up to the sixth standard. He could read English. He even scored seventy-six in it before he was kicked out into the world. He could measure the volume of a cylinder. He could still recite the old Hindi poems his teacher had taught him in her awkward sing-song.

He learned some other things as well. But not from school. He learned that men got excited by hurting you. Old, fat, smelly men. You stay away from those men. He also learned how to fix old bulbs and jack power from houses. He learned, in his own way to stay warm at night.

And to stay out of the slums.

The bus jostled him and he pressed closer to the grills of his window. He held his book tight so it wouldn't slip away into the streets and he read. It was called Old Wisdom Tales and he liked it. He liked Heart of Darkness too but he didn't understand all of it. The same went for Pride and Prejudice. He had to ask this one nice customer who used to stop to chat what those words meant. Pride meant thinking you were a big-shot and prejudice meant not liking lots of people for something stupid. Like what they prayed to.

He understood that word very well. A little too well for his comfort.

He read Old Wisdom Tales slowly and carefully, not wanting to miss any of the words, filling in the gaps when he didn't understand anything and trying not to vomit. A nice old lady sitting next to him had told him once that reading on moving buses could make you nauseous. He could never shake the feeling after that.

The bus ground and crawled through the city, stopping with a ding of the conductor's bell and letting people out. Not many people rushed in to take their place.

The boy stretched. He found the bus ride delightful, in the end. One of the few pleasures he could enjoy throughout his long and lonesome day, hawking books and magazines in three different spots till the sun came down.

He smelled his destination before he saw it. There was a smell this place had. Of fresh chemicals on dying lawns and newly churned earth. The kind of neighbourhood where everyone had a lawn. There was more to it, of course. More smells to add to the olfactory cacophony of the well-to-do. Scents assailed him. Beef, mutton, chicken all marinating in spicy sauces, slowly bubbling below open kitchen windows, wafting towards him.

He had seen a Tom and Jerry cartoon once. The grey cat sailed away on a puff of delicious chicken-smell. He could relate. He knew what that meant.

He disembarked and thought about it.

He had ten thousand rupees saved up. He could spare twenty or so for some beef, couldn't he? He could make his own bread. Or borrow some from one of his neighbours. It had been so long since he had some of his own. So incredibly long.

He waved goodbye to the bus driver and crossed the quiet road. All the cars here were high-end. BMWs and things like that. No scooters too. The only two wheelers you'd find here would be Enfields.

He found his usual spot and cleared it up a bit. He picked up the broom he had left there yesterday and wiped away the day's dust. Then, he began setting up his wares.

He saved his best stuff for this area. India Today, Times, the fashion magazines, Cosmopolitan (another word he couldn't understand the meaning of) and the newspapers.

He sat, finally on his green fold-up stool and opened up Old Wisdom Tales.

He was halfway through the Tale of The Old Brown Mare when the customers arrived.

They didn't know him by name yet, but they were getting there. Most of them bought their evening papers from him. They smiled. Some of them gave tips. Some of them even stopped to chat.

And the sun kept sinking lower and lower behind the trees and shrubs.

He waited. He was killing time. He kept reminding himself that he was here to make money. That he needed to be in this particular neighbourhood in this particular street corner.

The girl mattered, of course. She was his friend. He liked meeting her every day. She was pretty and kind and never left without buying something from him. Or talking to him.

She was probably the only friend he had in the city. In the world, if he was completely honest with himself.

He waited and watched. Until he felt the familiar tread along the gravel footpath. He put Old Wisdom Tales down and looked up at her with a smile.

She returned it.

"Did you like Emma?" she spoke in perfect, unaccented Hindi without a hint of scorn.

"No. Too much natak she was doing, trying her tricks with everybody. I liked Pride and Prejudice more. The story was very filmy."

She giggled. "That's right I guess. I'll read a Cosmopolitan today, I guess."

He nodded, picked out the freshest looking copy he could find and handed it to her. She paid him.

As she walked away and the sun shone past her hair, he couldn't help but notice just how beautiful she was. Poverty gave him a new perspective on things like that. You couldn't appreciate the beauty of things like motorcycles or girls if you weren't stripped of the chance of ever getting one for yourself.

And this girl was beautiful.

He went back to Old Wisdom Tales.

And just as the fox began his third leap to try to reach the luscious (new word ask the girl tomorrow) grapes, he heard a roar.

Moonlight.

It danced across his legs, highlighting odd little goose-bumps. He shivered.

It was not cold.

It was not cold at all.

He looked up.

A panther sat, blocking the road to the cul-de-sac housing facility behind him. A panther.

Like Jungle Book.

It licked its whiskers and winked at the boy.

The boy shut his eyes tight and opened them again.

It was still there.

Only its left eye was now a pale, rheumy white. And it had a bloody stump for a tail. And it wasn't nearly so big. It was a cat now. A stray.

Why was he so afraid?

He blinked again and the panther was back.

"Cat got your tongue?"

The boy looked around himself. Nothing. Nobody.

"I'm sorry, I couldn't resist. Would you mind coming with me? Of course you won't. Why do I even bother asking anymore?"

The boy stood up. He was afraid. In the dead silence of the street at night he was dead afraid.

The panther/cat yawned.

"Walk."

He walked.

He dogged the cat.

The cat would turn every few steps as they made their way deeper and deeper into the housing colony, just to make sure he was still following. He still was.

The houses were plush and cosy lights emanated from within. Inviting him.

Come away.

Come away from your destiny.

"Don't look. It'll save me the trouble of having to bite and drag. I'm not in the mood tonight."

Cats don't talk.

But they did in Old Wisdom Tales, didn't they?

Foxes could ponder on the meaning of important things, couldn't they?

He was following a talking cat.

He was following

a

                       talking 

                                                     cat.

He laughed a little.

"It is funny. I won't argue with that." the cat said.

"Where are you taking me?" he asked.

"To my destiny. Not yours."

The boy stopped talking. He pattered behind the cat, following it closely.

It chose a house, almost at random and walked in through the cat door.

The boy stood.

The fear was gone. The sense of obligation to keep following was gone. He could turn back now, if he wanted.

He didn't.

He opened the door.

The voice was musty and aged to perfection. It was the voice of an old bookshelf. Dusty and dry and warm and rich and bountiful.

"I knew you'd join us."

The furniture was clumped close together but rich and welcoming. The light was a diffused orange.

The man waiting for him was tall and bald. He was white, by the looks of him. Or maybe Kashmiri.

He was wearing a black shirt and matching trousers, all impeccably ironed. He smiled.

"Whiskey?"

The boy said nothing?

"You don't want any? Scotch maybe? Toddy? Wine? Pepsi? Can I get you anything to drink?"

"W-w-water."

The man laughed. "Nothing better than Jack-D to loosen a stammering tongue."

The boy drank.

"What's your name?"

The boy told him.

"And you're seventeen?"

The boy nodded.

"How much do you earn?"

"500 a day?"

"Enough?"

"Just about."

"What do you want?"

"To be happy."

The man walked around, wiping the edges of his mouth with a red handkerchief.

"I'm Fisk. I fulfil wishes. I satiate wants."

The boy nodded.

He kept walking. The cat was curled up in a heap next to the boy's right leg.

"I don't dole out luxury. You'll have a house. A little apartment. You'll have a little car. And you'll have a bookshop. You build your way up from there."

The boy just sat.

"Do you understand what I'm saying to you?"

"You're giving me a life. That's...that's...philanthropy."

The man threw his head back and laughed. "It's not free."

"Nothing in life is free." The boy said.

"Nothing in life is free." The man parroted.

"What do you want?"

"A walk. And love."

The boy thought.

He knew how to walk.