A white-suited cocaine dealer named Ganesh Anna did a galloping business at the airport, and twice a week sent some of his distributors—Annawadi men in their early twenties—to pick up the bulk cocaine in another suburb. Though Ganesh Anna paid the police to stay off his back, the constables weren’t satisfied with their cut. In return for good information about the time and place of drug buys, they would leave Kalu’s trash pilferings alone. Kalu kept a scrap of paper with the officers’ cellphone numbers in the side pocket of his cargo pants—red-and-brown camouflage, Mirchi castoffs.
