Meena and Joy stood facing each other on stage. The afternoon threw a golden hue on them and gave them a sense of permanence, at odds with the chaos of the drowning city around them. They looked impressive: Meena in her skimpy bikini, her skin light in tone and covered in tattoos; Joy, huge, her breasts bulging under a long black kurta, golden thread running its length. There was an audience of five, all family, not counting a lone langur, on the raised, rickety turnstiles that loomed out of the shallow water that had been covering the Maidan for weeks. It was just a little too deep to wade, so punters arrived in crude wooden rowboats, piloted by Bihari migrants who’d once driven or pulled rickshaws. Beyond the Maidan, the vulgar fingers of two abandoned Trump Towers reached out of the sha
