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Another year had just ended. It was now 2008 and without anyone noticing half of January was already over. I had left a day Delhi after Christmas for Paris, met up with my family and a couple of relatives in Peisey-Vallandry where they had all gone skiing for the new year, then travelled for a couple of days to a village on the Côte d'Azur and returned to Paris for a few days of absolute debauchery with old friends. At the end of the first week, I'd flown directly to Singapore for strategy meetings with the other country heads under my chain of command, and finally returned to New Delhi in the middle of the third week.

For perhaps the first time, or was it the second, I was driven by Bahadur directly to my apartment from the international arrivals at Delhi airport, instead of to a hotel. It was an exciting feeling; felt surprisingly like coming home. Of course there was an extremely busy schedule planned in the weeks ahead for myself as well as the small coterie of staff at my executive office. But there were also details pending on the home front that I had been procrastinating about on the home front. One of these was to finalise domestic help by way of a housekeeper.

For the last six months or so, Annie had helped out by sending someone from house-keeping at her hotel twice a week. And Bahadur had helped by organising some of the domestic chores like laundry and so on; he found the most expensive dry cleaners in the vicinity because *quot;Sahib can only have the best*quot;. I was almost sure it belonged to a cousin of his! My kitchen was completely non-functional other than for making popcorn and heating the milk for my coffee; the microwave oven was the only thing I could operate. The few parties or get-togethers that I'd had at home were catered for and the caterers were perfect; they set things up, and they cleaned up after.

There was an agency that specialised in finding domestic help for expats. They had sent a number of *quot;maids*quot; home for me to interview but despite their impressive recommendations and resumes, I wasn't happy with any of them. I'm sure they were good at their jobs but I simply wasn't comfortable with their presence. And then finally, like so many times since my arrival in India six years earlier, Bahadur came to the rescue.

It was customary whenever he picked me up from the airport after one of my many business trips out of Delhi, for him to give me an informal debrief of everything that had happened either at office or at home during my absence. Bahadur was well placed to provide me with the information because, in my absence, his services were used as a general office functionary by the administrative staff and my secretary. Also, he would visit my flat every day, clean the car, and do odd jobs on my terrace; as a result he also met other tenants in my building as well as their assistants and domestic help. In fact, Bahadur was the ultimate source of information for me, both at home and at the office.

I always brought something back for him whenever I travelled overseas; once it was a pair of headphones, another time it was a CD player, on occasion I brought him a large bag of chocolates and snacks if I knew he was planning a weekend trip to his family; that sort of thing. And on the drive from airport to home, we would give each other what we had for each other: gifts and information.

*quot;Sahib, you interview maid on Sunday*quot;, he said once the pleasantries were over and he'd given me the office details (and work papers that my secretary had sent) and the home gossip. *quot;What maid*quot;, I mumbled as I switched on the overhead light in the car and scanned through the files that had been sent for me to look at from the office; the urgent files were always sent with the driver to the airport for some reason, even though I had handled most matters on email or electronically otherwise.

*quot;You know where I take my motorcycle for repairs? And sometimes the Tata Sumo?*quot; There was silence in the car for a minute till I realised a response was expected from me. But before I could finish reading the files on which I was trying to concentrate, Bahadur continued, *quot;His name Ram. Good man. Good friend. His sister looking for job as house-maid so you interview on Sunday. OK?*quot; Without anything he was saying really registering firmly, I hummed an OK and promptly forgot about it; I always thought that if something was critically important on my so-called domestic front, someone - either my assistant at the office or Bahadur - would remind me.

Two days later the weekend mercifully arrived. I didn't realise how tired the last month of hectic activity had made me; what with all the transcontinental trips and the family reunions and the partying with friends, and of the course the confusion of multiple jet lags, time and space had created a vortex that virtually sucked me in. So Friday night I went out for drinks and dinner with Annie and her sister and her sister's husband. We checked out a new restaurant that had opened in South Delhi - in a quaint quarter called Hauz Khas Village - but Escort bayan kept it light and easy; no heavy drinking, just wine and good food. And that's where the exhaustion overtook me.

Admittedly we were on our second bottle of wine, but I suspect I hadn't eaten since breakfast and the alcohol must have coupled with my general state of mind, but my brain seemed to have shut down. Through a soupy haze I heard Annie ask *quot;Are you feeling alright, Hjjer?*quot; Realising that my head was hung low, I propped it up and looked at her worried face and said *quot;Oui, fine, thanks*quot;. She wasted little time after that in ordering the food, which strangely enough I forked into my mouth like I had been starved for a year. I don't remember it being overly tasty or even delicately fine dining; in fact I don't remember it at all. What I do recall is Annie summoning Bahadur, bundling me into the car, and giving him strict instructions to drive me home and tuck me into bed.

The next thing I remember is waking up Saturday morning with the sun fighting a losing battle, trying to filter its might through the thick January fog - that was now lifting - into my bedroom. I'd slept about seven hours but still felt lazily refreshed; not sparky and bright, but certainly cosy and awake. I thought of the previous night but couldn't really remember too much; I thought of Annie and wished she was lying next to me right then; I wanted her to mother me, to nurse me, to cajole me back to life. And with a smile on my face perhaps, I fell back into sleep.

When I finally surfaced from deep slumber, it was late afternoon. It was the time when my terrace garden was brilliantly lit by healthy sunshine and I walked on to it with a certain joy that ran through my entire being. I called the pizza shack around the corner for a home delivery, had a quick hot shower, slipped into a comfortable pair of old jeans and a warming fleece cardigan, wrapped a woollen muffler round my throat, and stepped out on to the terrace with a sinful gin