Shanghai in the morning smelled like wet concrete, diesel, and steamed buns. Rajendra stood outside a bland, white-tiled government building, watching bicycles swarm past like schools of silent fish. Mr. Liang, his host from the China-India Trade Council, was smoking a cigarette beside him, looking pleased.
"Good meeting, good meeting," Liang said in his careful, earnest English. "They like your pressure cooker story. Simple. Useful. Not too flashy." He tapped his temple. "In China now, flashy is dangerous. Useful is safe."
Rajendra nodded. The meeting had been three hours of drinking tea so bitter it made his eyes water, while men in identical grey suits asked polite, razor-sharp questions about production costs, import licenses, and "political stability in your region." It was business, but business conducted like a slow, careful chess game where no one quite showed their pieces.
"They want to see the factory," Liang went on. "In Pune. Next month maybe. They will send two junior cadres. Very low level. If they like it, then maybe a deputy director comes. Everything step by step. Like climbing a mountain."
"Step by step," Rajendra agreed. His mind was already tired. The formalities were exhausting. He preferred the chaotic honesty of the Bombay docks.
A sleek black car, a Red Flag sedan, pulled up to the curb about twenty feet away. It didn't look new, but it looked official. The back door opened and a woman stepped out.
She was young, maybe late twenties, dressed in a blue-grey cadre suit that was severe but impeccably fitted. She had a sharp, intelligent face, eyes that took in the scene in one sweep, and a severe black bob that ended precisely at her jawline. She held a leather folder against her chest and was already turning toward the building entrance, moving with the unhesitating direction of someone who knew exactly where she was going and why.
At that moment, a bicycle courier came tearing around the corner. The man was a blur of blue uniform, his front basket stacked so high with packages he couldn't see over it. He was going too fast, one hand ringing his bell frantically.
He was headed straight for her.
Rajendra didn't think. It was pure reflex. He took two quick steps forward, reached out, and caught the woman's arm just above the elbow. He pulled her back, not roughly, but firmly, onto the higher curb where he stood.
The bicycle shot past, the rider's shoulder brushing the empty air where she had been. The man didn't stop, just shouted something that sounded like an apology into the wind.
The woman, Guo Huilan—though Rajendra didn't know her name yet—regained her balance instantly. She didn't gasp or startle. She just turned her head, first to look at the retreating bicycle, then up at Rajendra. Her eyes were dark, focused, and held not gratitude, but a swift, recalculating assessment. Like a computer updating a file.
She nodded once, a sharp, economical dip of her chin.
"Thank you," she said. Her English was clear, with only a faint, musical accent.
Then, before he could say "you're welcome," she added, her voice lower, "I will thank you properly sometime."
And then she was gone, dissolving into the stream of people flowing into the government building.
Mr. Liang had gone pale. He stubbed out his cigarette as if it had offended him.
"You have good reflexes, Mr. Shakuniya," he said, his voice hushed. "Very good. That was Deputy Director Guo. Ministry of Light Industry. Her father is… a very important man in Beijing. A general." He looked at Rajendra with new, nervous respect. "A very good thing you did. But also… a thing that is now seen."
"It was a bicycle, Mr. Liang."
"In China," Liang said, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief, "a bicycle can be many things."
The state guesthouse they put him in was clean, quiet, and felt like a hospital. The walls were bare, the bed was hard, and the only window looked out onto another identical white building. Rajendra felt caged. He needed air that didn't smell of disinfectant and political caution.
He asked the drowsy concierge for suggestions for a short-term rental—a room, maybe in the old city. The man looked at him as if he'd asked for a trip to the moon. "Foreigner must stay registered hotel," he droned, and went back to his newspaper.
Fine. He'd find it himself.
As evening fell, he walked. He left the wide, quiet boulevards near the government district and found himself in the older parts of Shanghai. The streets narrowed, life spilled out of doorways, and the air grew thick with the smell of frying oil, sewage, and laundry soap. It was more familiar. It was messy. He liked it.
He eventually wandered into Fuxing Park. In the dusk, it was peaceful. Old men huddled over stone chess tables, slamming pieces down with violent satisfaction. From somewhere, the lonely, whining song of an erhu drifted through the trees. It was a sound that seemed to hold all the sadness in the world.
Rajendra walked along a path beside a small, dark pond. The noise of the city faded to a distant rumble. He was thinking about the meeting, about Liang's nervousness, about the sheer scale of the country around him, when he saw her.
On a stone bench at the water's edge, sitting perfectly still, was the woman from the morning. Guo Huilan.
She was still in her cadre suit, but everything else was different. The urgent purpose was gone. She sat slumped, just slightly, her hands resting loosely in her lap. She wasn't looking at anything. Her gaze was fixed on the black water, but she wasn't seeing it. Her face, pale in the light of a distant lamppost, was empty. Not sad, not angry. Just empty. Worn out. She looked like a shell, abandoned on the shore.
Rajendra stopped. He was intruding. This was a private moment, a crack in the official facade, and he had no business seeing it. He began to turn away.
Her head turned. Not quickly. Slowly, as if moving through water. Her eyes found him. There was no surprise in them. Only a deep, weary recognition. She didn't speak. She just looked at him, and in that look, he didn't see a powerful deputy director. He saw someone carrying a weight so heavy it had hollowed her out.
He gave a slight, polite nod, the kind you'd give a stranger on a train platform, and made to move on.
Her voice stopped him. It was quiet, but it cut through the erhu's song.
"In this city," she said, still looking at him, "a thousand people see you fall. One reaches out. Why?"
Her English was even clearer now, stripped of all official pretense.
Rajendra turned back. He thought about it. "Because it was there to do."
A flicker passed over her face. Not a smile. Something thinner, more fragile. "A simple answer," she said. "We do not have many simple things here." She looked back at the pond. A silence stretched, comfortable in its awkwardness.
Then she spoke again, her voice practical, as if giving a report. "The room you are looking for. The short-term rental. Try the old lane behind the Jing'an Temple. A widow lives there, in the house with the green door. She rents the upstairs room to quiet foreigners. She asks no questions."
Rajendra felt a chill that had nothing to do with the evening air. She knew he'd been asking. She'd had him followed, or someone had reported it. The kindness of the information was also a demonstration of power: I know what you're doing.
Before he could formulate a response, she stood up. In one smooth motion, the empty ghost was gone, replaced once more by the poised deputy director. The mask was back on, seamless.
"Be careful, Mr. Shakuniya," she said, brushing a non-existent wrinkle from her sleeve. "The tea here can be… bitter."
And with that, she walked away, not back toward the grand boulevards, but down a darker, narrower path, swallowed by the shadows of the park.
Rajendra stood by the pond for a long time, listening to the erhu player finish his mournful tune. The melody faded, leaving only the sound of chess pieces clicking and the distant, endless murmur of Shanghai.
He had come to China to talk about pressure cookers. Instead, he'd pulled a lonely ghost back from a bicycle, and she had told him where to find a room with a widow who asked no questions.