A Walk Across the Sun (15 page)

“So where are we going?” Thomas asked.

“I'm going to give you a glimpse of why you're here,” Greer replied.

The taxi took them north out of Colaba and past the massive Victoria Terminus train station before merging onto Mohammed Ali Road. Thomas expected Greer to give him a briefing on their destination, but the field office director was content to ride in silence. Thomas rolled down his window, seeking relief from the heat. The city air was smogchoked and smelled of burning rubber, but the breeze compensated for the stench.

Twenty minutes later, the taxi left the highway and turned west along a crowded commercial boulevard. The driver spoke in rapid Marathi, trying to convince Greer of something. Greer held up his hands and spoke with calm deliberateness. He passed the taxi-walla a hundredrupee bill and delivered concise instructions. The driver pocketed the money and didn't speak again.

They took a tributary road and made a series of turns, each road narrower than the last. The First World city of swarming sidewalks and flashy billboards had vanished. In its place, the Third World had emerged in a jungle of unpaved lanes and ramshackle buildings, bullock carts, cows, and street children.

Greer spoke a few words to the taxi-walla and passed him more money. The taxi slowed and turned onto a dirt road lined with dilapidated houses and multistory
chawls
with rickety balconies. Except for a handful of bicyclists and cart-pushing vendors, there was almost no traffic on the road. The pedestrians and vehicles that thronged the nearby lanes seemed to avoid this street, giving it an eerie, abandoned look.

“This is Kamathipura,” Greer said. “The largest red-light district in Bombay.”

Greer's words gave Thomas new eyes. Suddenly, the old men lounging in the shade were not geriatrics but brothel owners. The young men smoking in shadowy doorways were not vagrants but pimps. The women wielding brooms in hallways and kitchens were not housewives but madams.

“Where are the girls?” Thomas asked, noticing the peculiar absence of young women.

“Some are sleeping. Others are doing chores. They aren't permitted to leave the brothel except in the company of a
gharwali
. That's what they call a madam.”

Greer pointed toward the upper stories of the buildings they passed. “The underage girls are up there, hidden in attic rooms. They're invisible. If it weren't for our field agents who know these lanes by heart, we would never find them.”

The taxi began to accelerate, but Greer touched the driver's shoulder and passed him yet more rupees.

“He's nervous because we're white,” Greer explained. “The taxiwallas get
baksheesh
—kickbacks—from the pimps to bring the customers, and the pimps know about CASE. If they see him with us, it will hurt his business.”

Near the end of the lane, Thomas saw a young man with dark eyes talking with a white-haired man whose back was to them. The young man glanced at the taxi and his eyes narrowed when he saw its passengers. He gave the taxi-walla a stern look that spooked him.

In an instant, the driver lost all interest in guiding the tour. He touched the hamsa charm hanging from his rearview mirror and began to chatter fearfully. Greer tried to soothe him, but it didn't work. He left Kamathipura in a hurry and dropped them off on a street corner a few blocks away.

“We'll get another cab,” Greer said, walking down the sidewalk between hawkers and street merchants.

Thomas felt intensely self-conscious. Theirs were the only white faces in a sea of brown. Three beggar children approached him, making a hunger sign with their hands. When Thomas didn't respond, they grabbed his arm and tried to reach into his pocket. He shrugged them off and nearly stepped on a blind man who sat beside a pile of burning trash.

Greer looked over his shoulder and noticed Thomas's distress.

“Just keep walking,” he said.

At last, Greer hailed another taxi and directed the driver to take them to Mumbai Central Station. Climbing into the back seat, Thomas took a deep breath, his relief palpable.

“So now you've seen what the investigators see,” Greer said. “By day, at least.”

“It's hard to believe so many girls are hidden behind those walls,” Thomas replied, thinking of the two men, presumably brothel owners or pimps, who had scared the taxi-walla.

“Thousands of them,” Greer said, “some as young as twelve or thirteen.”

At Mumbai Central, they hopped aboard a northbound train. The midday crowds were lighter than the morning madness. Thomas found a place by the door beside an elderly man and leaned out to catch the wind. The train headed inland toward Parel and the central suburbs. After stopping at Dadar, it skirted the fringes of Dharavi—Bombay's largest slum, according to Greer—and then crossed a mangrove swamp before pulling into Bandra Station.

Thomas followed Greer up a flight of stairs and across a walkway that overlooked a smaller slum. Beggars sat along the walkway, palms open, eyes pleading. Some were old; others were young, with children. A number were disfigured and displayed casts, crutches, and amputated limbs. No one in the multitude of commuters paid them any attention. Thomas took pity on a ten-year-old girl holding a baby and gave her a five-rupee coin. Then he followed Greer downstairs to the street.

A collection of rickshaws stood in a huddle, their drivers awaiting customers.

A young man approached them. “Where to? Bandra? Juhu? Santa Cruz?”

“Pali Hill,” Greer replied.

Greer looked at Thomas. “The office closes at noon today, but I figured you could come by and meet the staff.”

He climbed in the rick, and Thomas squeezed in beside him. The driver gunned the engine and entered the stream of traffic.

They were quiet for a while, enjoying the warmth of the wind. The midday sun blazed overhead, but the winter air held little moisture and the temperature was still comfortable. The sky was bluer than it had been earlier on. It looked as if some of the smog had cleared.

Fifteen minutes later, Greer tapped the rick driver on the shoulder and said,
“Bas. Bas.”

The driver pulled to the side of the road, and Greer paid the fare less one rupee—a Bombay custom he disclosed to Thomas without explanation. They were in a mixed-use neighborhood a few blocks west of the shopping district on Linking Road. The CASE office was located in a nondescript building, and there were no signs advertising its presence.

Greer led Thomas up a flight of stairs to an unmarked door armed with a keypad. Beyond the door was a modern, air-conditioned office suite. Greer explained that CASE had twenty-nine employees in Bombay. Approximately a third were short-term interns from the United States, Australia, and Britain. Two of the full-time employees were Westerners; the rest were Indians from all over the subcontinent. Thomas was immediately impressed by the intensity of the CASE staff. The office was abuzz with activity even on New Year's Eve.

Greer took Thomas to meet the executive staff. The legal director, Samantha Penderhook, was a blond woman from Chicago. Petite and pretty, she was a vision of thoughtful efficiency. She shook hands with Thomas and motioned for him to take a seat.

“I'm sure Jeff painted an honest picture of what we do here,” she began. “But I'm more blunt than he is. Bombay is not D.C. The court system here is backlogged to the breaking point and full of idiosyncrasies that will drive you nuts even after you learn them. To compensate, we offer you two perks—the chance to make a difference in the lives of some real girls and Sarah's homemade chai.” Samantha paused and looked at the door. “What timing!”

A young Indian woman entered the office with a tray of steaming mugs. She smiled and handed around cups of chai.

Thomas looked at Samantha. “Well, I like chai. The rest I can handle.”

Samantha delivered him a wry grin. “If you can say that in two months, I'll know you mean it.”

Next, Jeff introduced Thomas to Nigel McPhee, the director of field operations and a garrulous bear of a man. Born in Lockerbie, Scotland, he had been a British special forces commando and a field agent with MI-5 before he “saw the light,” as he put it, and joined CASE.

“Bombay is a long way from Lockerbie,” Thomas remarked.

“Might as well be on the moon,” Nigel shot back. “This place is as pleasant as a malarial swamp most of the year. But I didn't come here to take a vacation. Bombay's full of bad guys—street thugs, traffickers, pimps, gangsters, drug dealers, brothel owners. The bad guys I like. They're predictable. The police are another story. About the most corrupt and incompetent lot I've seen. Except for a few. I'd give my life for those guys.”

“Shouldn't this office be down in South Bombay somewhere?” Thomas asked. “It's a long way from the action.”

“I took him down M. R. Road,” Greer explained for Nigel's benefit.

Nigel chuckled. “My boy, Kamathipura is only the beginning. There are poets who call this entire town Golpitha—the brothel district. Scratch the surface and you get a disease.”

Thomas frowned. “My wife is from Malabar Hill. She never told me that.”

“It's not something the well-heeled like to think about.” Nigel checked his watch. “Sorry to be abrupt, but I have to finish up a report. Come and see me anytime you want something to keep you awake at night. My stories are better than coffee.”

Rachel Pandolkar, director of rehabilitation, was last on Jeff 's list. She was a thin-boned Indian woman of about thirty-five with gentle features and wide eyes. She was on the phone when Jeff knocked. They stood outside her office for a minute, waiting for her to finish.

“Nice to see you, Jeff,” she said after putting the phone down.

“And you, Rachel. This is Thomas Clarke, the new legal intern.”

“Welcome,” she said. “What can I tell you?”

“Give him an overview of pending cases,” Jeff said.

Rachel folded her hands. “We have twenty-five girls right now, ten in government homes and fifteen in private homes. All are minors. Our people visit the girls on a weekly basis. We work closely with the Child Welfare Committee to ensure they get proper education, health care, supervision, and attention.”

“I don't mean to be cynical,” Thomas remarked, “but there are thousands of underage prostitutes in this city. Two dozen doesn't seem like much of a dent.”

Rachel's eyes flashed. “It's a fair point. Do you have a better idea?”

“I didn't mean it that way,” Thomas said. “The problem just seems overwhelming.”

Rachel nodded. “Someone once asked Mother Teresa how she dealt with world poverty. Do you know what she said? ‘You do the thing that's in front of you.' That applies here, too. The academics talk about statistics. We tell stories. Which is more compelling?”

Rachel let the question hang in the air and looked at the clock on her desk. “It's noon, Jeff. We should probably wrap this up.”

“Is it noon already?” Greer exclaimed, standing. “I lost track of time.” Thanking Rachel, he led Thomas back to the common area.

“So that's our work,” he said. “The glossy stuff they put on the brochures is a fragment of what we deal with.” He gave Thomas an appraising look. “I know what you've signed on for. But I need to know one thing—that you're the sort of person I can trust. If there's a chance you're going to have second thoughts, then you should think about backing out now.”

Thomas looked around at the staff tidying their workspaces for the holiday. He felt at once attracted and repulsed by what CASE offered him. The place was brimming with camaraderie and challenge but entirely bereft of the privileges he had come to expect from the law. Most of the Clayton attorneys he knew would find an excuse to walk away. But he was here and he had a year to kill. There was no going back.

“I'm in,” he said in his best no-nonsense tone. “I'll be here on Monday.”

Greer nodded. “Welcome to the team.”

Chapter 7

Million-fueled, nature's bonfire burns on.
—G
ERARD
M
ANLEY
H
OPKINS

Mumbai, India

For Ahalya and Sita, the attic room in Suchir's brothel was a prison of boredom and fear in equal portions. In the long hours of monotony, the fear came almost as a relief, for it meant human interaction. But the relief was short-lived. Each time the stairs creaked and the door handle turned, the sisters traded a look that resolved many meanings into one: what do they want with us now?

During the long days, when the sun blazed overhead and the beshyas below slept and ate and chatted and quarreled, Ahalya struggled to keep her sister's hope alive. She told Sita stories from the past—stories of their parents and stories of ancient India written by the sages. Stories were Ahalya's only weapon against the despair that threatened them both. The cadence of her words spirited the sisters away from Golpitha, at least until the stairs creaked and the doorknob turned again.