Kukri

Happiness, innocence, abandon, it is all too much to sustain over a life

- Vikram Shah

In the absence of the predictable rhythm of domesticity, he is washed up in a way men his age aren't. It cost him his thirties to realise that a spouse and child don't wear you down. They ennoble you instead. When you lose the luxury of time and thought, you have no choice but to keep moving. Alone, you're trapped between thinking and doing, lacking the courage to juice the freedom for its worth.

The lonely ruminative spy. Such a cliche, he thinks as he checks into a hotel the Wing has booked him into. He doesn't need a fake name. This is only an identification job, a one-off for old times' sake.

They have flown him in from Delhi with a strict instruction: No engagement with Kukri.

The hotel is on Residency Road. Its ashtrays and cheap soaps remind him of the city this once was, before it was choked by musty Ubers and coffee shops that blend into each other. In the restaurant below, he watches men in polyester track pants wipe their bushy moustaches after wolfing down a masala dosa. As he sips a second filter coffee, he thinks back to 2002, when he was tapped by the Wing.

It was his final week in law school, in a leafy campus at the other end of this city. A visiting American professor, an authority on Indian constitutional law, summoned him to an office overlooking the main quadrangle. Skipping pleasantries, Melville asked if he would work with the Wing. I'm CIA, the professor said flatly. Those were early days in the global war on terror. Melville was recruiting for a joint intelligence-gathering project.

He had a feeling that the offer may not be a practical joke. The CIA had a history of collaborating with academics working on foreign countries. It was a Cold War thing and Melville was a Cold War man, a learned American in the old-fashioned sense.

Still, he said: You're messing with me.

Melville swiveled in his chair: If you're not interested, forget I ever asked.

Why me, he asked.