Mukesh

Mukesh is a young thief whose brief appearances connect Lin’s earlier experience of imprisonment with the rising factional violence in Bombay. First remembered for helping Lin in two places of detention, he later meets Lin in the slum and reveals that he is involved in a secret gathering of men connected to Sapna. The change from a helpful fellow prisoner to a participant in an organized, communal campaign gives his return a sharply unsettling significance.

Identity and Earlier Connection

Mukesh is identified as a young thief. He helped Lin in the Colaba lock-up and Arthur Road jail, where both men had been confined. When Vikram Patel paid to get Lin out of prison, Lin demanded Mukesh’s freedom as well. This earlier episode establishes a bond grounded in mutual assistance under detention, though the account does not specify what Mukesh did to help Lin or describe the terms of his own release.

Reunion in the Slum

Much later, Lin encounters Mukesh while walking through the slum. The two recognize one another at once, and Mukesh greets him warmly, seizing his arms and asking what is happening. Lin laughs with him and asks how he is doing. The meeting initially carries the ease of an old connection renewed: Mukesh is no longer presented as a stranger from the lock-up but as someone who knows Lin and trusts him enough to share confidential information.

Secret Gathering and Communal Threat

Mukesh draws Lin aside and says that he is meeting with men associated with Sapna, whom he calls the king of thieves. He claims that these men know Sapna personally and speak with him frequently. Mukesh then describes the group as an emerging army of poor men, with the stated aim of teaching Muslims who holds power in Maharashtra. He links this campaign to the killing of Abdul Ghani, saying Sapna killed the mafia boss in his own mansion and left his body in pieces around the house. Mukesh presents the aftermath as a lesson in fear directed at Muslims; his account is his own explanation of the group’s purpose and of the effect he believes Sapna’s violence has had.

Mukesh runs off after disclosing the plan. His departure leaves Lin with news of an organized group forming within the same neighborhood that had offered him refuge and companionship. Lin turns away in anxiety and anger, so the encounter’s consequence is not merely the disclosure of Mukesh’s new allegiance: it exposes the possibility that poverty and local solidarity are being redirected into communal hostility.