Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

"Islam! The brutalness of it!" He pointed outside, where the Chor bazaar was thronged with Muslim shops and secondhand dealers and car repairers and watch menders. "Bush had to do that. Look at history. Aurangzeb killed his father."

He also killed his brothers. He was a notorious bigot, a mosque builder, a warrior king. "That was, what, about four hundred years ago?"

"They kill animals. They eat them. Have you seen them kill a goat? It is horrible."

"Hindus in Jodhpur kill goats during religious festivals. They did it a few weeks ago at Navratri."

"But Muslims bleed it while it is still alive!" Rajendra said. "We have always had problems with Muslims. Look at Indian history! Twenty years ago a maharajah came to me to buy some things. I said to him, 'Never mind these few things. You can have them. But I want to say to you that Islam will be the main problem in the world. The main cause of the world's troubles.'"

"What did the maharajah say?"

"He didn't listen. But Bush knows better. People say—even my friends say—Bush is wrong. But no, Bush is pukka right. Without Bush the world would be finished!" He now held the dagger in both hands, as though offering it. "I want to give this to those who have died. Maybe you can talk to someone."

"There's an American consul general in Mumbai. Just call him and tell him what you want to do."

Rajendra put the dagger back into its silk-lined box. He said, "People will be angry with me if I do this, so I am hesitating. They will say, 'Who is he? Just a bunniah [trader],' but I know I am right. I know that Bush is right."

On my trip of twenty-eight thousand miles and hundreds of encounters, I met two people who supported the American president: the man in Baku who wanted the United States to invade Iran, and Rajendra. No one else.

***

EVERYBODY IN INDIA —and in the States too—talked about outsourcing. India was making shirts and shoes and electronics, and the growth area was IT (information technology), BPO (business process outsourcing), and KPO (knowledge process outsourcing). These were labor-intensive businesses that had helped swell Mumbai to its present size of twenty million, overfilled its trains with commuters, packed its hotels and restaurants, and impelled developers to look at Dharavi slum as a real-estate opportunity. Hundreds of millions of Indians lived below the poverty line—the suicide rate in rural areas was unusually high—but hundreds of millions were also making money.

"The Indian miracle, I tell you," Indians said to me as we drove through the streets of Mumbai, past the slums, the sidewalk sleepers, the lame and the halt. Was the miracle, I wondered, just an illusion?

I badgered friends to connect me with some moneymakers. The biggest IT company in India was Tata Consultancy Services. In the month I visited the TCS office in Mumbai, the company was worth $4 billion. It had more than eighty thousand employees in seventy-four cities worldwide, but this place in Mumbai was one of the largest, and since the Tata family is from Mumbai, this office was perhaps the firm's hub and headquarters.

Instead of taking the train, I allowed myself to be persuaded that a car would be quicker. But the car took twice as long—one and a half hours to get to Vikhroli, on Mumbai's sprawling outskirts. The company lay behind a high wall, traffic-choked and desperate on the outside, serene on the inside, tree-shaded and orderly, like a college campus. This was the Godrej and Boyce Industrial Garden, and though the Godrej Group manufactured soap, detergent, hair dye, hair oil, diapers, "stylish wedding napkins," machine tools, and furniture, its large tracts of available land also made it an outsourcing heaven. Dozens of American companies were also located behind the walls of this shady compound.

"Welcome, sir," said Mr. Burjor Randeria, the CEO of this branch of TCS. He was sixty-one, a Parsi, very hospitable and helpful. He was a Zoroastrian—a flame flickered on a dish on his desk, where there was an image I took to be Ahura Mazda. "We know him as Asho Farohar," Mr. Randeria said. Next to this bearded guardian was a portrait of the frizzy-haired guru Sathya Sai Baba, a small statue of the elephant god Ganesh, and a Ganesh mantra box, about the size of a large matchbox, which cleverly buzzed with intoned mantras day and night.

"It creates vibrations of Ganesha," Mr. Randeria said. "I have it on all the time."

"But you're a Parsi."

"I find this soothing"

We talked about the Parsis. The Tatas were a Parsi family, noted for their philanthropy, having founded hospitals, schools, training colleges, and orphanages. There were, Mr. Randeria said, only seventy-three thousand Parsis in the world, most of them in Mumbai. They were a dying breed.

"We marry late. We seldom have more than one or two children. And Zoroastrians don't convert others. You have to be born a Parsi."