Abdil felt himself the cock of the walk among the half a dozen dusty shacks he called his hometown.
The fact was this. Alone of all the shacks on the plot his boasted a single piece of corrugated tin roof. Alone of all the shacks, too, his threshold was sanctified by the presence of a hinged door. It sang when it swung and didn’t quite join with the frame, but it was a functioning hinge nonetheless, and a neat piece of technological devilry that Abdil would spend many a hot evening marvelling over.
Dharkesh, his nearest neighbour on the plot, was far too unsubtle to appreciate something like that wonderful hinge. Even when fingering that little hinge in the dark, Abdil nursed a lasting hatred for thick-headed Dharkesh.
	But the jewel of Abdil’s shack, the feature he was proud of most of all, was the window; perhaps because he had the ingenuity to engineer it all himself. It consisted of a floating pane of PVC that he had once salvaged from the ditch down the lane. Taking it to his home, he removed several loose bricks and jammed it in the gap. Scratched, draughty, adorned with muddy pendants of old rain; nonetheless Abdil now enjoyed a view of the field where he both lived and made his living. He closed many evenings by that window, righteously surveying the source of all his prosperity.
	One morning of many, clothed only in a filthy rag that he had wrapped at the waist, Abdil swung the door to his shack wide open and cursed Dharkesh.
“Good morning, rotten, filthy Dharkesh!” he spat as he stretched in the early Uttar Pradesh sun.
Abdil lowered his arms, cocked his eyes and waited, but no answer stirred from inside the doorless, tarpaulin-crowned mound of twigs and mud bricks that Dharkesh called home.
“Poor, miserable Dharkesh! Gone deaf, I hope.”
Yet still no answer came.
“The day has woken, I must work now, lazy-bones Dharkesh! The field won’t look after itself. You stay in your mangy hole and slumber.”
Satisfied with that, he went with a loud whistle to work.
Abdil didn’t return home until the sun had dipped and streaked the purple sky with orange. Sunil, his supervisor and one up on the chain of command, was waiting for him outside his shack in washed linen trousers and a polo shirt. He was even wearing shoes; thonged plastic sandals he had acquired in the city far over the way. Dharkesh, who by now had finally risen, had his elbows perched on the outside fence that doubled as a clothes line. Perhaps the two had seen Abdil coming, for they were waiting wordlessly.
“Sunil, sir, here is my today accomplishment,” said Abdil militarily, straight as a rod, as he passed Sunil a plastic grocery bag overflowing with twigs and other bits of odd paraphernalia. “All paths are clear for carts and no loitering ruffians to be found. Another full day of success, sir.”
Sunil held the dangerously withered plastic bag open with both hands and contemplated the discarded bric-a-brac that filled it. A measure of satisfaction passed over his stern face.
“Very good, Abdil. A good day of work for you once again. I will see you again tomorrow.” Sunil dropped off the day’s payment in the form of victuals, nodded at both men in turn and left.
Abdil took to the centre of the path and watched until Sunil had fully cantered away.
“Do you see that, Dharkesh?” Abdil barked, with Sunil out of earshot.
Dharkesh, keeled over on the clothesline, didn’t bother himself to answer.
“Of course you don’t, Dharkesh,” said Abdil, still in his same waistcloth from the morning, pacing philosophically around in the dusty path as if fronting a lecture.
“Do you see how Sunil makes a success of himself, hmm? Not that you could even recognise success if it stared you in the face, Dharkesh, goat-brain that you are.”
Dharkesh glossed over the provocation invisibly.
 “Well, you must see how Sunil dresses? Or the dignity of his walk? I tell you, we both went to the same temple as children; but look at Sunil now.”
Dharkesh had nothing for Abdil. A few seconds of peace passed them both by, Abdil commanding the road, Dharkesh leaning over into it lazily. Nothing could be heard but the hum of the canopy all around as nature made itself ready for the night.
“One day,” Abdil swore to himself, “I will be a success like Sunil.”
Abdil sealed this vow with a glance in the eyes of Dharkesh. Dharkesh stretched his cheek back on one side with an insulting smile, raised himself with some effort off of the clothesline and disappeared into his doorless, roofless shack. Waiting for him in there was the one thing Abdil didn’t have.
She was called Bindeep.
And when Abdil looked out the window later that night he thought only of Bindeep.

* * *

The next morning, the sun rose in the mists like it always did.
“Good morning foul Dharkesh, soul of indolence!”
Locals differ on the account of what happened next. Some say Dharkesh ratted Abdil out (certainly this is how Abdil saw it), others lay the blame of Sunil getting lazy with his operation. But when Sunil returned he accused Abdil of pilfering rubbish from the waters of the neighbouring ditch and claiming it as the refuse of his own field.
Abdil thusly found himself berated and stripped down in front of the whole village. In front, even, of his unrequited Bindeep, the least hairy woman for miles around.
So when an overturned donkey cart was found turned over by a wayward stick on Dharkesh’s turf, where he alone was responsible for safe, litter-free passage, all eyes were on Abdil as the perpetrator responsible for this sabotage. Not that this intrigue mattered to Sunil, who broke Dharkesh down to tears at the end of the day, and his Bindeep saw this, too.
Taciturn Dharkesh thus had select words for Abdil.
“Butter-mouthed grandson of a donkey’s behind!”

* * *

Tensions simmered, until Sunil’s own boss Panjeet was called down to mediate. Panjeet owned this field, employed Sunil, and even had a room for himself in the heart of the city twenty fields over. Some say he was a millionaire, in rupee terms.
Panjeet summoned all three of his underlings for a talk in the high sun of the Indian afternoon.
Abdil in his simple cloth looked in awe at this big man from the city. Shoes that covered his whole feet - not some vulgar sandals! Hemmed trousers. A wristwatch. A chain necklace. And then something that covered his eyes - glasses, they were called - with circular lenses, and chunky golden rims. Abdil had never seen anything like it. No wonder Sunil took his orders from this majestic being!
As the meeting wound up, Panjeet shook Abdil off from his leg - he had turned to open grovelling in apology as Dharkesh looked on in faint embarrassment - and left with a promise to return for an update in one week. Abdil and Dharkesh were ordered to make amends.

* * *

One night that week, Abdil was at his window once again, thinking about Bindeep. There was a rap of knuckles at the door, and Dharkesh let himself in as the hinges squealed in the semi-darkness.
	Abdil was ready with both fists balled by his temples.
	“Dogshit poor Dharkesh! You break down my door, you mean to brutalise me in my own home?”
	Dharkesh lingered in the doorway, head sunk darkly into his chest against the lavender Uttar Pradesh dusk sky.
	Abdil yelled past Dharkesh. “Bindeep! Help me!” and he retreated into the far corner of his single room.
	Nothing answered but a whimper from Dharkesh.
	“Bindeep is gone… Bindeep is gone.”

* * *

Where Bindeep went is not clear. Some say to the city, some say Panjeet took her on the back of a donkey. However the facts lay, the two of them spent that night together in Abdil’s room. In fact they shared a bed every night that week, and so they talked about Bindeep, about the field, about Panjeet, about the city until their mouths were sore.
	But soon one week had gone by, and Panjeet, alone and before them once again, demanded an update. Abdil stared through Panjeet’s glasses at him once again, but this time with a twinge of envy. Dharkesh, too, harboured ill thoughts.
	But the obsequious pair soon convinced him they had made up, and that work had never been better. In fact, they offered to take him to the site of the donkey crash to see just how much they had improved the state of the road.
	There, Abdil dropped to the ground and started sifting through the muck.
	“See here, Panjeet? The fineness of the grains? Not a stick in sight. Never again shall a cart come to jeopardy your path.”
	“Abdil,” said Panjeet, “I am glad. I see that-”
	“Now, Dharkesh!”
	Before Panjeet could react, Dharkesh had wrapped a rotten old cricket bat around the back of his head. Panjeet fell to the ground with a sick thud. Dharkesh peeled off the bat and threw it into the river, destroying the evidence of their heinous crime.
	Soon the pair had stripped him as he lay; his trousers, his polo shirt, his wrist watch and necklace, the shoes that covered his whole feet, even his spotless underwear. Each wore an incongruent share of the clothes from their hated boss.
	But Abdil took the greatest prize of all. The gold-framed glasses. He jiggled them on his head and showed off.
	“Dharkesh, look who is boss now!”


 * * *

Bindeep was not to be found in the heart of the city twenty fields over.
	The two of them sat in the main square under the shade of a great dark cannon, a relic of former empires, as life bustled on around them.
	“Dharkesh, I am sorry.”
	“Abdil, it is not your fault. Perhaps we all acted rashly. Come, let us take a walk to the river.”
	Both men wept that day as the city closed its doors on them. Now they only had each other.
	Abdil had begun to talk about the value of friendship as Dharkesh watched the reeds sway in the beautiful river. It was a beautiful, poignant moment for the both of them. Abdil didn’t notice as Dharkesh rustled in the reeds and pulled something from them.
	“Abdil, watch out!” shouted Sunil, who had just arrived at the same point of the river by chance. But before Abdil could react, a rotten old cricket bat had been wrapped around the back of his head. Dharkesh had struck again.
Abdil was dead. Bindeep was gone. Dharkesh had lost everything. But at least he still had Sunil, who helped cover up both murders and even let Dharkesh keep the boss’s glasses.