A Dead Hand by Paul Theroux

pain.
    I go for walks,
I wrote.
I look for the man I once was. I believe that by wandering I might find him wandering here. I need to soothe myself in this uncertainty. I want something to write about. Walking in the big decaying yet eternal-seeming ruin of the city helps me meditate on the past and gives me the hope that I might find the man I had once been
—
confident in a strange country, so anonymous as to be invisible, living the muffled and spectral existence of a traveler, ghosting from street to street in the endless decrepitude, unseen. I expect to come face to face with myself.
    What a shock, then, in this mournful scribbling, in my mood of anonymity, one afternoon to be touched physically in the street. It was not the sleeve-tug of the beggar or the tout but a hard pinch, skin to skin, by the pincers of a skinny person's fingers. I pulled my hand away.
    "Take, sir."
    "No."
    "Please, sir."
    A thin-faced girl in a shawl was urging me to accept a piece of folded paper from her. I imagined she was selling something or that she was trying to distract me so that my pocket could be picked. This was why, when she touched me, I shoved my hands into my pockets and clutched my wallet and keys, pressing my arms to my sides. Or I'd take the paper and she would say, "No mother, no father. Please, you give me, sir."
    But she said, "Mobile number, sir."
    "I don't want it."
    "Mina, sir."
    That stopped me. And now I recognized this nervous girl in the shawl as the new clerk from the Ananda, the head of gleaming hair that had bobbed beneath the counter.
    I accepted the paper. Without a pause, she drew her shawl tighter and darted away, dodging oncoming pedestrians, slipping past a man with a barrow piled with coconuts and children's sandals.
    It always amazed me to see an Indian run—sprint in this traffic, through the crowds, into the heat. Yet they often ran, and the poorer and more ragged they were, the faster they went, knees pumping, feet slapping. Foreigners never ran in India.
    I unfolded the paper. I walked a bit, then stepped into a doorway, dialed the number, and cupped my hand over the phone. I heard ringing, then gabble. I could not understand a word. I said into the din, "Mina?"
    "Yes, here."
    "Someone just gave me your number."
    "My friend. I am knowing."
    "What do you want?"
    "Pass information."
    "Okay. Let's meet."
    "Tomorrow, teatime."
    "My hotel. The Hastings."
    "Cannot hotel, sir."
    "What about the Roxy, or the Oly Pub?"
    "Cannot Roxy. Go to Eden Teashop. Middleton Row at Park Street. Teatime."
    I had to ask her to repeat this several times.
    Finally she said, "Taxi will know."
    "Will I recognize you?"
    "I will find you, sir."
    Of course, the big pink
ferringhi
would be obvious.
    As Mina had predicted, the taxi driver knew the precise place, a small bakery and café with some trays of Indian sweets in the window and more in a glass case under a counter inside. I had last seen Mina wearing a pink dress, so I was confused when I went in at the appointed time—I took it to be four—and didn't see a woman who resembled her. No dresses, only saris.
    Seating myself in the corner, with a good view of the door, I ordered tea from a waiter and cautiously looked around. Three tables were occupied. My tea was served. I sipped it. I read a section of the
Statesman
that was lying on a nearby chair, and when after thirty minutes or more I did not see Mina, I paid the bill and left. I wondered what had gone wrong. I turned into Park Street and kept walking.
    The heat, the stink, the diesel fumes, the noise, all combined to thicken the steamy air and burden me. How could people run in this air? I had stepped briskly onto the sidewalk but slowed my pace, with the heat on my shoulders, my head ringing from the smells. It was exhausting to be in the middle of so much human activity—so much futility, so it seemed—the people pressed against me and stepping on my feet. It wearied me to be touched and jostled