I can smell the bootleg liquor on his breath, feel its effect on his hand that holds mine firmly but with fingers that push between my knuckles and dance up towards my wrist. He is dragging me across a sandy courtyard, surrounded by grubby housing blocks, and up towards his drinking companions that look down from the rooftop and jeer like jackals being bought a fresh kill. The fact that some of them are flying kites does not diminish their menace.
I am lead up a series of narrow stairways. There are now four men following me, cockroaches that climb up and around the walls, clicking that distinctive click whenever I risk a glance behind. Eventually, we emerge outside onto the first rooftop.
A man with a large moustache sits in a deckchair and smokes a beedhi. He is introduced to me as Big Brother – he runs these rooftops. I get the sense that I have to gain his approval to go further, but more importantly for me, his trust too. If anyone can control these wild men, it is him – I may need his help soon. I shake his hand and look him in his eyes for as long as I dare.
The rooftop is covered in broken glass, empty plastic bottles that a few hours earlier contained home-brewed spirit, lengths of snapped kite string and several types of faeces. I am escorted over to the group by my captor. Each of the men takes a moment to size me up, to shake my hand, and ask me my country.
One of them, a mean-looking man with brown teeth and an eye that has no pupil, no iris, just a formless piss-coloured swirl, hands me the string of his kite. The kite is orange. Above the other rooftops, I watch it tumble, spinning wildly in its descent. I try to imitate the sharp tugs I have seen but the kite does not recover and flies dangerously close to several other kites. I hand it back to him before it’s too late.
Without the focus of watching me struggle with the kite, the 15 or so men that surround me become restless, infected with an unwelcome energy. In Hindi, they urge me to buy them more liquor. I feel that if I agree, I will end up in a heap in the corner of this rooftop, discarded along with all the other detritus of their excesses. And if I disagree, then there is every chance I will be robbed. The level of drunkenness that surrounds me is one that I am familiar with – it’s my least favourite: that twilight zone of drinking where jokes and threats become interchangeable, indistinguishable; when banter becomes barbed; when violence can erupt just as easily as laughter.
Just as things threaten to turn ugly with hand gestures moving ever closer to my face and the demands getting louder and more specific, I decide to take out my camera and see if they will let me take their photograph. Amazingly, it works. Like children, they jostle for position, assuming hyper-macho poses; folding arms, thrusting hands down pants.
When I have finished, they gather around my camera and leer at the picture. The creepiest one likes how he looks, demands a photo alone with me. I have no choice but to give my camera over. I do my best to look relaxed and to laugh when inside, my stomach is cramping with fear.
I manage to wrestle the camera back and, in the lull, begin to edge my way slowly towards the stairs that lead down from the rooftop. Then, I go for it, make my escape. With considerable speed, I descend. Instantly, I hear whistling and shouts behind me but I keep on going, taking two steps at a time. Four steps.
Three men pursue me, following me across the gated courtyard, and out into the street. I duck down an alleyway, past two rutting goats, until I eventually lose them as a rickshaw skids blindly around a corner, only just missing me but not them.
With my heartbeat pounding in my head and my lungs sucking at the hot dry air of freedom, I look up and see the sky above Rajasthan’s pink capital stretch before me. It is full of kites; thousands of them. At first, they look like hawks, carelessly riding thermals, then the sunlight turns them indigo, amber, claret, gives them shape, frees them from formless blackness to something wonderful. I am free.
