I am a master in India

Chapter 465 The City Knows His Secret
Barum continued walking through the market, not knowing where he was going.

As soon as he stepped out onto the street, he found himself surrounded by silence. He saw some people sitting in hammocks smoking, while others lay on the ground sleeping.

An eagle circled above the house. Suddenly, a strong wind, carrying the smell of water buffalo, rushed towards him.

Everyone knows there is a slaughterhouse somewhere in Old Delhi, but few people have actually seen it.

This is one of the wonders of Old Delhi: a row of roofless cowsheds, each filled with large, fat buffalo.

They turned their backsides to you, their tails swatting flies like windshield wipers, their hooves treading on pyramid-shaped piles of excrement.

Barum stood there, breathing in the scent of their bodies; he hadn't smelled buffalo in a long time!

The smell completely drove away the terrible city air that had accumulated in his lungs.

Barum heard the rumbling of wooden wheels and saw a buffalo walking along the road, pulling a large oxcart behind it.

There was no one sitting on the oxcart with a whip, but the buffalo knew where it was going.

It was coming along the road, and as it passed by him, he stopped and saw that the oxcart was covered with the faces of dead water buffalo.

Yes, it was a buffalo's face, or rather, its head. Because even the skin had been peeled off, leaving only a small patch of black skin on the tip of its nose.

Nose hairs protrude from the nostrils, like a dead buffalo still clinging to its last shred of dignity.

The rest of the face was gone, even the eyes had been gouged out.

However, even without an owner, the living buffalo continued to walk forward, dragging a cart full of the dead, to where it knew it should go.

Barum followed the poor buffalo for a while, his eyes fixed on the faces of the skinned, dead buffalo.

He swore the dead buffalo's face suddenly opened its eyes and spoke to him.

"I know what you're trying to do?"

"No, you don't."

"Your father will be beaten to death, are you happy now?"

"This is just a nightmare, I don't believe it."

"Your sister was raped and then beaten to death. Are you happy now? Your grandmother was kicked to death. Are you happy now?"

The buffalo glared at him.

“How shameful!” it said, then took a big step forward, and the oxcart slowly drove away.

At that moment, the skinned faces on the oxcart looked to Barum like the faces of his family.

Barum stayed out late, his heart filled with resentment.

The city knew he was filled with resentment, and under the dim orange light of the streetlights, she was filled with resentment as well.

The next morning, Barum was waiting outside. Satya was fiddling with a red travel bag, preparing to leave.

Lamar whispered to himself, occasionally glancing up at Barum with a look that seemed to be wary of something.

They spoke in English to make sure the conversation was only heard by the two of them.

Just then, the phone rang. Satya answered it and turned to go inside.

"Barum, take the bag downstairs, and drive the car to the door to wait for us," Lamar instructed.

"Yes, sir."

Barum closed the apartment door, walked to the elevator, pressed the button, and waited. His bag was heavy, and he had to shift his grip on it frequently.

The elevator has reached the fourth floor.

He turned and glanced at the view outside the thirteenth floor. Even in broad daylight, the shopping malls in Delhi were still brightly lit.

A new shopping mall just opened two months ago, and another is under construction; the city is developing rapidly.

The elevator went up very quickly, almost to the eleventh floor.

Barum turned and ran.

He kicked open the door to the emergency escape stairwell, hurriedly ran down two flights of stairs in the darkness, and then opened the red travel bag.

The entire stairwell was instantly filled with dazzling light, the kind of light only money could produce.

An ordinary servant would have been scared half to death by so much money.

They would close the bag as quickly as they could, as if it were a hot potato.

But Barum didn't; he admired it for a while.

Twenty-five minutes later, the car headed toward a minister's residence.

When he stopped at a red light, Barum glanced at the rearview mirror and saw his thick beard and chin.

He touched the rearview mirror, and the image in it immediately changed. He now saw two obese figures, and his eyes became piercing, like a cat staring at its prey.

A voice echoed in his mind, and the two of them asked and answered questions.

Barum, then, peek at this red travel bag. That doesn't count as stealing, does it?
He shook his head.

Barum, even if you did steal it, that wouldn't count as stealing.

how could be?

He looked at the creature in the rearview mirror.

The man is giving money to politicians in Delhi, and they will then exempt him from paying his taxes.

Who should ultimately benefit from these taxes? They belong to the ordinary people of this country, to you!

“What is it, Barum? Did you just say something?” Satya asked.

Barum touched the rearview mirror, and his own beard appeared in it again. "No, sir, there's a guy running a red light up ahead."

The city knew his secret; that morning, smoke shrouded the Prime Minister's residence.

You can't see it anywhere on the road; it feels like Delhi has no government one day.

The thick cloud of pollution outside, which had shrouded the chieftain, all the ministers and bureaucrats, seemed to say to him:

They won't see what you do, I can guarantee that.

He drove past the Capitol Building, where there was a sentry post on the red wall. Inside, an armed guard was watching him, but the guard lowered his gun as soon as he saw him.

The soldier seemed to be saying: Why should I stop you? If I could, I would have done the same.

At night, a woman was walking down the street, carrying a cellophane bag. The headlights of a car shone into the bag, making it appear transparent.

Barum saw four large, dark-colored fruits in the bag, each one seemingly saying: You've already done it. You've already taken the money in your heart.

The car headlights flashed by, and the cellophane bag turned black again, with the four fruits inside disappearing.

Even the roads, Delhi's flat and smooth roads, the best roads in all of India, know his secret.

Barum heard the alarm and turned around. A car slowly drove by, towing chicken coops behind it.

The alarm in the chicken coop is going off, the wheels are turning, and the red light is flashing!

A rooster is trying to escape from its coop!
Lamar returned to Uttar Pradesh to handle matters there. Satya continued her activities, always carrying a red travel bag whenever she went out.

That night, Barum lay in bed unable to sleep, so he pricked up his ears and listened quietly.

The sound of a wooden stick being struck came from the concrete ground outside; the night watchman of Windsor Apartments was patrolling with his long stick.

After the sound of the wooden stick fading away, the room fell silent, save for the sizzling of cockroaches gnawing at the walls and buzzing as they flew around.

It was another humid, sweltering night; even the cockroaches must have been sweating.

Barum was struggling to breathe; something was weighing on his mind.

Unable to fall asleep, his heart pounding, he got up and went to the garage.

He picked up a rag and wiped the car three times; the wine bottle was on the floor inside the car.

Johnnie Walker Black Label—even the empty bottle can fetch a good price on the black market. Barum picked it up and headed towards the servants' quarters.

Give him a Johnnie Walker Black Label bottle and he won't mind being woken up.

As he walked, Barum twirled the bottle on his wrist, feeling its weight. Even though it was empty, it was surprisingly heavy.

He noticed that his pace had slowed down, and the bottle was spinning faster and faster in his hand.

The key to his soul that he had been searching for for years
The sound of the bottle shattering echoed in the empty parking lot, surely reaching the tower lobby and bouncing off each floor, even reaching the thirteenth floor.

He waited for a few minutes, thinking someone would run down.

There was no one around; he was safe.

He held the rest of the bottle up to the light; the long, jagged notch, like a claw, exuded a hint of ferocity.

so perfect.

Barum kicked the broken glass bottles scattered around him into a small pile, wiped the blood off his hands, found a broom, and swept the area clean.

Then he knelt down to see if there were any remaining pieces of broken glass.

His repeated mutterings echoed through the parking lot: But that door remained wide open.
Two nights later, Barum heard the bells ringing in the servants' quarters.

"Hey country rat, hurry up! That bell is ringing like crazy!" Vitiligo urged him from the side.

Barum walked to the car, inserted the key, and started the engine.

Satya stood at the gate, holding an umbrella in one hand and a mobile phone in the other.

He got into the car and slammed the door shut, but his phone never left his ear.

"That scoundrel suddenly raised the price, and I only have forty lakhs left."

Their first stop was the city center, at one of his usual banks.

He picked up the red travel bag and went inside.

Barum saw him standing in the glass booth, pressing buttons on the ATM.

When he returned, Barum could feel the bag on the back seat of the car had become heavier.

They went from one bank to another, and the bag got heavier and heavier.

Barum could feel its weight pressing down on his back; it was heavy and made his heart beat fast.

Four million five hundred thousand rupees.

That's enough to buy a house, a taxi, a small shop, and enough to start a new life.

My four million rupees!
"Barum, now to the Sunshine Hotel."

"Okay, sir."

There were few vehicles on the road, and a light drizzle continued to fall.

If they continue on this path, they will reach the hotel, the most magnificent hotel in the country's capital, where important figures stay.

However, Delhi is the kind of city where civilization can appear and disappear in five minutes.

Now, only wasteland and garbage remain on both sides of the road.

(End of this chapter)