I can barely get past the headers at the top of the forms, with their large fonts and capital letters. Sanskriti Institute of Hotel Management. Janpath College. SSDN College for Women. Seva Niketan College. Lady Victoria College for Women. They’re so official looking, so imposing.

  The sour, spicy scent of tangy chaat masala from the Juhu Beach snack centre wafts toward us, snagging my attention. I want to throw the applications into the sea and buy something fried and crunchy.

  I hand the papers back to Alex. “It is not feeling right. Tuition fees is too much, and maybe I am not getting a job in a hotel after. Then what? Gauri Ma’am isn’t taking me back.”

  “Just trust me,” he says.

  “Why?”

  He pauses. “I see how hard you work, how clever you are. All you’re missing is someone to open doors for you. Together we’re going to make this happen.”

  I want to believe him. “Okay,” I finally say, encouraged by his enthusiasm.

  “Good. Now let’s eat.” He rises to his feet and dusts the sand off his shorts, handing the applications back to me.

  Stuffing the papers into my bag, I follow him to the cluster of food stalls perched atop a set of concrete steps. In a couple of hours, when night falls, the snack centre will give off a fierce glow, a beacon of light for beachgoers ready to plow through paper plates of bhel puri, papdi chaat, and other street food.

  Alex and I stand in line for pav bhaji. When it’s our turn, the man at the counter slaps glistening heaps of orange-red bhaji from the hot tawa onto a paper plate, places some buttered white pav on top, and slides it toward us.

  We are making our way down the steps to find somewhere to sit when a loud hiss pierces the air. Probably some hero trying to get a girl’s attention. I roll my eyes and continue down the stairs.

  The hiss rings out again. “SSSSSSSSSSSSTT.”

  I ignore it, but Alex’s ears perk up. He turns back, scanning the growing crowd of people buying snacks and cold drinks and ice creams.

  And then: “SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSTTTT, Rakhi.”

  That voice—clear as water. I spin around, my eyes darting over the faces of the festivalgoers surrounding us. I don’t recognize any of them, but still. Could it be? No, it’s impossible. I look left and right, my hands trembling under the weight of the paper plate of pav bhaji. Then I turn back toward the sea and there in front of me—standing against the backdrop of roaring black waves lit up by the enormous stadium lights of the snack centre—is Babloo.

  A flash of cold hits me in the stomach while I try to catch my breath.

  He looks nothing like I had ever imagined. Taller and older, with neatly combed and oiled hair, a silky, collared purple shirt tucked in at his narrow waist, and crisp pressed black slacks. Maybe this is a strange hallucination brought on by all the hungama at the beach—the throbbing loudspeakers, buzzing neon lights, people shouting everywhere. I rub my eyes with my free fist to make it go away. When I open them, he’s still there, shaking his head and grinning.

  “Relax, yaar. I’m not going to steal your food.” He motions at the pav bhaji, now running off the plate and splattering onto the sand. It is absolutely two-hundred-per-cent-no-chance-in-hell-anyone-else-but Babloo.

  Alex rescues the plate just as it’s about to tumble from my hand. “Do you know this guy?” A warm, loud whisper in my ear.

  I open my mouth but the words are caught in my throat. “This,” I stammer. “This is…”

  “Mohammed.” Babloo touches his chest. “But this girl knows me as Babloo. We are old-old friends.”

  He speaks English now?

  “So I finally get to meet your friends, eh?” Alex thumps me on the back and I stumble forward. He turns back to Babloo and introduces himself. A smile curls along Babloo’s lips and he looks at me from the corner of his eye.

  I feel light-headed, and the beach starts to spin around me. “I…I must sit.”

  While Alex dashes up to the snack centre to buy water, Babloo negotiates a red plastic chair away from a family feasting on food-stall spoils by telling them I’m pregnant. He drags it up behind me and I sink into it. Then he crouches down in front of me and flashes a wide grin. A gold-capped tooth on the side of his mouth catches the light.

  “Babloo, is it really you?”

  “You tell me. Do I look the same?” He stands up tall.

  I nod, my breath catching. “You look nice.”

  He pulls one of my escaped curls taut and then lets it go, watching it spring back into its original shape. “You grew into that wild hair.”

  We both smile and I feel my chest expanding. Warm energy surges through my body and I spring out of the chair, wrapping my arms around his shiny purple shoulders. I laugh with relief as my eyes well up, not caring that the people he took the chair from are eyeing us suspiciously. Babloo hugs me tight, patting my upper back.

  “I tried to find you,” I finally say, blinking to push the tears back in. “I searched everywhere.”

  He breaks away from our embrace and takes a step back. “I never left.”

  “You were in Bombay this whole time?”

  “It’s a big city. Gets bigger every day.”

  “Yes,” I say, searching his face for a trace of emotion. Why can’t I find any?

  “Tell me, yaar,” he says, “what are you doing now, after all these years?”

  “I have a job. At an office. Couldn’t keep stealing from college kids forever.”

  “Accha? You’re a working woman?” He nods in exaggerated approval and claps his hands. “Very good. And who’s this hi-fi firanghi with you?” He tilts his head toward the pani puri stall where Alex is waiting in line for water. “Bet his pockets are lined with cash, na? Easy target.”

  I bury my toes in the sand. “No, yaar, that’s just Alex. He works with me. He’s from Canada.”

  Babloo reaches in his shirt pocket and pulls out a cigarette. It’s a Gold Flake, the brand that Saskia and Merel smoke. He pushes the cigarette between his lips and hunches forward to keep the wind from blowing out his match. He used to say cigarettes were a waste of money. “Tell me, then, where do you work?”

  “I work for human rights lawyers,” I say, sliding a sickle of dirt out from under my thumbnail.

  His eyes widen in disbelief. “You’re trying to tell me you’re a lawyer now?”

  “No way, yaar.”

  “Then? You’ve become an NGO didi or what? Teaching the street kids ABC-123-HIV?”

  “Not at all. I make chai, and photocopy papers.”

  He exhales a long plume of smoke. “Accha, you’re the peon. Still, that’s not bad.”

  Before I can reply, Alex reappears with a sweaty water bottle.

  As I gulp the cool water down, Babloo grins at Alex again and switches back to English. “So, boss? First time in India?”

  “No, man, I have an aunt here.”

  “You Indian?”

  “Half, I guess. Mom’s brown, Dad’s white.”

  “He is from Canada,” I interject.

  “You already told me that,” Babloo says. “You know, I was knowing Rakhi when we were small kids.”

  Alex’s eyes brighten. “Were you one of the street kids?”

  Babloo throws his head back and guffaws. “She has told you everything, then?”

  “Wait, are you—” Alex touches his chin, pausing. “Are you the best friend? The boy who got lost?”

  I try to stop him from saying anything more. “No, no—”

  Babloo cuts me off. “I was never lost.” He frowns and takes a short drag from his cigarette.

  Alex grabs my shoulder. “Rakhi, this is the guy you were telling me about, isn’t it? The one you’ve been trying to find all these years?”

  I wish Alex’s phone would ring, or the fireworks would start, or a fist fight would break out nearby just so he’d be distracted for a few minutes.

  Babloo leans in toward Alex. “So, my friend, you and Rakhi are working at Juhu Beach today?”

  “We’re just hanging out. Rakhi shows me around the city. All the parts that my family avoids.”

  “Your family doesn’t like Juhu Beach?”

  “They don’t like big crowds. Or the outdoors. Unless the space is…private.”

  Babloo narrows his eyes. “Where does your family stay?”

  “Pali Hill. In Bandra.”

  Babloo’s forehead smooths out and he nods, as if he suddenly understands why Alex’s family are not at Juhu Beach with us. “Good area. Rakhi is taking you to all nice-nice places?”

  “Awesome places. We did Oval Maidan, Bohri Mohalla, the Dadar flower market, Sassoon Docks…”

  “Haji Ali, Marine Drive,” I fill in.

  Babloo taps his cigarette and the ash flies off into the sea breeze. “All tourist sites?”

  Alex glances at me. “I guess. But they were cool.”

  “She has taken you to beer bars?”

  “No—is that the same as a regular bar?”

  “What about leather tanneries? Old cotton mills? Toddy shops? Wrestling matches? Construction sites? Cockfights? Teen patti? You know what is teen patti? Means…card games. Gambling.”

  Alex’s eyebrows jump. “Uh, no.”

  “Arre, he can’t go to places like that—” I start to say.

  “Alex, my friend, you want to see the real Bombay?” He sounds like he’s selling a pair of chappals to a tourist. Friendly, persistent. Come, my friend, come. Looking is free!

  Alex glances at me, then back at Babloo.

  “You must join me. Some places are not…nice…for ladies, you see.” Babloo tilts his head in my direction. “Take my number, I will show you something different. Rakhi, it is okay with you?”

  I bite the inside of my lip and force a small smile. “Yes,” I say, surprised at the flatness of my voice as they exchange phone numbers.

  Babloo shakes Alex’s hand, then draws him in for a hug where he thumps him on the back a few times. They smile like they are old friends who haven’t seen each other in eleven years.

  “Too much time has passed,” Babloo says to me in Hindi. “Let’s catch up without this firanghi.”

  “Give me your number, then.” I hand Babloo my Nokia and he glances up a few times while punching in his number, as though he’s reading my face. He hands me the phone back and points to the bent paper plate of pav bhaji in Alex’s hands. “Looks cold now. Buy a new one.”

  Babloo’s mobile rings, loud and shrill. He holds it to his ear and turns away to face the sea. “Haan boss…Yes, yes, I’m coming. Be right there…Yes. Ten minutes.” He slips his mobile into his shirt pocket. “Business.”

  Before Alex or I can say a word, Babloo starts off up the sand to the road. “Alex, SMS me when you’re free.”

  Alex nods vigorously, the way he did when Gauri Ma’am first lectured him about human rights in India.

  “And you,” Babloo calls out to me, over a mob of children running toward a man with a candy floss machine. “Don’t be a stranger.”

  * * *

  BABLOO AND I SAW the real Rakhi Tilak when I was nine. Two years had passed since I arrived in Bombay, but it felt like I’d been living on the street with the other kids for a lifetime.

  It was during Ganesh Chaturthi. The monsoons were over, and the disappearance of the rains had given way to steamy afternoons. Me, Babloo, Kalu, Devi, Pappu, and this new kid, Raju, had gone down to Chowpatty Beach to watch families and their priests wade their enormous Ganesh murtis into the Arabian Sea. Salman couldn’t join us because he was locked up in Dongri. We weren’t sure what for.

  The roads to the beach were a thick web of dancing and acrobatics and trucks with loudspeakers. Fistfuls of coloured powder blew through the air. The group of us wove through the crowds together, following Babloo. Once we reached the beach, we pounded our heels in the sand and ran down to the frothy sea water. The waves lapped at the shore endlessly, like a stray dog licking its balls.

  While the others went looking for ice golas, Babloo and I followed a man carrying a long stick with a massive swell of pink, orange, and green speckled balloons fastened to the end of it, hoping one would come loose so we could snatch it. The flock of balloons blew violently in the sea breeze, threatening to detach, and it was when they parted that I saw her. Rakhi Tilak, the actress.

  Soon after Babloo gave me my name, I learned it was impossible to take a step in the city without being reminded of her. Her big eyes, rosy cheeks, and tiny chin were plastered on every bus, billboard, and TV screen. She was one of the few actors in the industry who didn’t belong to a filmi family. Instead, she came from a tiny fishing village on the Konkan Coast. Magazine covers proclaimed her Rakhi Tilak: Fisher Girl with Big Dreams even though she went to college in Pune and claimed to have never caught a fish in her life. As her career took off, her dance scenes always managed to be exciting without crossing into vulgarity. Her costumes never showed skin, but they were always sheer, or wet, but never both. She started landing heroine roles opposite A-list actors. And when “Drip Drip,” the Ruby M string-chaddi song, came out that year, the Fisher Girl with Big Dreams had gone on record as saying Ruby was simply giving the people what they wanted, and if anyone was to be judged, it should be all of us together.

  Babloo and I quickly forgot about the balloonwala and watched from afar as Rakhi Tilak walked toward the shore, pious and silent, with her Ganesh murti cradled under her large breasts. Trudging behind her were a chubby woman in thick glasses carrying a few handbags and a notebook, and a big, bald-headed man with large biceps who kept an eye on the crowds of young men following closely, bouncing, dancing, and hooting at the sight of Rakhi Tilak. By then, I was old enough to know that all of them would happily drown in the sea if they could trade places with the murti for a few moments.

  I elbowed Babloo. “Come on,” I said, darting off toward the front of the crowd.

  As we drew nearer, Babloo called out, “Rakhi Aunty, Rakhi Aunty!”

  The men in the crowd began to shout her name, too, professing their love and offering their hands, as if she might actually say yes to one of them. The big bald man held them back with his tree-trunk forearms.

  Rakhi Tilak floated serenely through the shouting and chaos like a tiny bubble above a freshly poured soft drink. Wrapped in a yellow sari with a modest gold border, she covered her head with her pallu. She was much smaller than I thought a movie star would be.

  “Help me call her name,” Babloo yelled as he gripped my hand, dragging me through the web of young men. “Bhutan ki baby! Bhutan ki baby! Over here!”

  I flailed my arms about and shouted out for her. “Ey! Rakhi Aunty! Eyyy!”

  That’s when Rakhi Tilak, almost at the sea, stopped in her tracks and turned toward Babloo and me. Then, maybe because I was the lone girl in a sea of horny male faces, she handed her Ganesh murti to the chubby lady beside her and bent down, so her eyes were level with mine, and gestured for me to come closer.

  I shrank back a little and looked to Babloo. His jaw hung down as limp as a dead fish. I turned back to Rakhi Tilak, took a few steps forward. Up close, I could see how her eyelashes resembled spiders’ legs and the powder on her face cracked like the earth before monsoon season. Her mouth was painted with a thick pink ribbon of colour, and when her lips parted into a smile I swore she had a snaggletooth, but Babloo later said I was full of shit.

  “Hello, darling. Tell me, how old are you?” she asked. Her voice was mostly sweet, a little hoarse, like perhaps she was tired. She smelled of sandalwood and flowers. A tiny see-through Ganesh pendant dangled from a delicate silver chain around her neck.

  “Nine,” I said, my eyes darting between her face and the Ganesh pendant as it caught shards of afternoon light.

  “Such a pretty girl, you are.”

  I raised my eyebrows in disbelief. This woman must be mad.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Rakhi,” I told her.

  “Really? Or you’re doing some masti?”

  “No, Rakhi Tilak Madam, I swear. It is my real name. My chosen name. My parents named me Bansari, but here in Bombay I go by Rakhi.”

  “What do your parents think of your new name?”

  “They…they’re dead.”

  With a clenched half-smile, she reached for my hand and squeezed it. “You know, when I was in college, I read a book that said that you’re not born only once, on the day your mother gives birth to you, but that life forces you to give birth to yourself, over and over again.”

  I had only just learned how people had babies, thanks to some NGO sex education didis. Whatever Rakhi Tilak was saying sounded yuck. Like your body folding up and twisting inside your privates and then out again, but then you’d come out as someone different. As I reeled from the hideous image in my brain, she let go of my hand, removed the Ganesh pendant from her neck, and placed it around mine.

  “It means that you are in charge of your destiny. When life gets hard, remember what I told you,” she said, fastening the necklace. Then she straightened up, adjusted the pallu of her sari, took the Ganesh murti back, and carried on walking toward the surf. The crowd followed behind her, but I stood still, men bumping into and shoving me in all directions. I didn’t care. The grin on my face was so huge I could feel it in my toes.

  Babloo thumped me, hard, on my back. “Stupid! Why didn’t you tell her to adopt you?”

  I drew my hand back to slap him but he dashed away, and then I chased him down Chowpatty Beach until we were out of breath. We found Kalu, Devi, Pappu, and Raju sucking away on orange ice golas. They didn’t believe the story of my encounter with Rakhi Tilak until I showed them the pendant.