The airport doors slid open, and the heat hit me.
It was after midnight in October.
My brother had warned me the worst of Delhi’s summer had already passed, but the air still felt heavy enough to wear.
I looked around and took a deep breath. Then I saw by brother and smiled.
He and his girlfriend were waiting outside with a driver they’d hired for the trip home. The ride cost ten dollars.
I couldn’t believe it was so cheap.
They couldn’t believe it was so expensive.
I sat in the back seat watching the city pass through the window.
Barefoot construction workers mixed concrete beneath floodlights.
Families slept on the sidewalks.
Brightly painted trucks drifted through the darkness with horns that sounded more like songs than warnings.
An hour later, we pulled into Mukherjee Nagar.
Their apartment had marble floors, high ceilings, and windows with no glass. There was no furniture and a few random dishes scattered about.
“It’s home.”
He shrugged.
“Your bed’s… over there.”
He pointed to some blankets and mattresses in the corner.
I didn’t mind.
“But, we should probably fix this.”
He gestured to the window and pulled an old mosquito net from a closet.
For the next hour we stood on chairs, stretching torn netting across the opens and securing it with strips of duct tape while mosquitoes drifted around us.
~
The next afternoon, I followed my brother to his school.
“Isn’t it a bit late for classes?” I asked.
“Oh, school’s don’t today. I’m just letting my teachers know I’ll be missing classes while you’re here.”
When we arrived, he ran into some friends.
“Come over for a movie?”
So we all climbed into the back of a rickshaw. Three squeezed onto the bench seat behind me. I sat up front beside the driver.
The day was hot and sticky. Traffic crawled around us, noise and daylight pouring through the open sides of the vehicle.
As we climbed onto a bridge, the traffic noise faded and my view opened over the water below.
Then the smell hit.
I gagged and looked over the railing. The water was muddy brown.
“What river is this? That smell. It’s awful!”
One of my brother’s friends laughed.
“You know, for the first month, I thought it was a river too. Then I realized it wasn’t. It’s an open sewer. Najafgarh Drain.”
My brother leaned forward.
“I’ve always wondered about this place,” he said. “My love of Delhi changes with the smell. When the drains start cooking in the heat, and the sun is at its strongest, the whole city reeks. It wears my patience down. Most days, I love India. But those hot, stinky days…”
He let the thought trail off.
I pulled at my collar, then lifted it over my nose.
“Yeah. Today sure feels hot.”
The driver snickered beside me.
“Don’t worry.,” he said, “It’ll rain again.”
~
We left the bridge and continued through traffic. Eventually, the driver pulled over, and we followed the others to an apartment.
It looked nothing like my brother’s.
Beanbags spilled across the floor beside hookahs and drums.
A couch faced a television playing a bootleg copy of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Tapestries covered the walls. Floor lamps glowed in the corners.
In a few months they’d leave India and abandon almost all of it.
Halfway through the movie I fell asleep.
Afterward, we stumbled home through the sleeping streets. Along the way, my brother stopped to visit his favorite dog.
We found Indian Pariah Dogs everywhere in Delhi, sleeping in gutters or curled beneath parked cars.
They were intelligent, friendly animals, but people often shouted at them or kicked them aside without provocation.
My brother, however, had taken a liking to one.
Near a rickshaw, he found her—a mother dog sleeping with her puppies beneath the metal frame.
As we approached, she rose and walked toward us, low and protective.
Then she recognized my brother, and her posture softened.
The rickshaw was no more a home than an empty apartment was. Yet somehow, beneath it, she had made one.
She let us pet her and hold her puppies before settling back down beside them for the night.