The Girl with the Seven Lives: Read an exclusive excerpt from Vikas Swarup’s new book

The most valuable thing in the world is not money, it is attention.

At least that’s what Nancy D’Souza, the cranky old English teacher at the observation home, used to tell us all the time. And she would throw a chalk at anyone not paying enough attention.

In the two years she taught us, I received the highest number of chalks. Because my attention would always wander. To the smell of food drifting in from the kitchen. To the film magazines the older girls read sneakily under their desks. Most of all to the bell above the door, whose buzzing would get me out of that suffocating class.

If only Nancy Ma’am could see me now. I’ve never been more attentive in my life, gazing intently at the man sitting on the chair in front of me. It helps, of course, that he has a gun held ten inches from my forehead, a blunt, silvercoloured revolver which looks like it has seen more action than a James Bond film.

Something like this was bound to happen sooner or later. When you’ve been doing the shady shit that I’ve been doing, you know that it’s just a question of time before you hit a rough patch, before you get entangled with the wrong man. It takes so little to set men off. They are like wound- up rubber bands, ready to snap at the slightest provocation. There is no greater provocation than an assault on their pride. And there is nothing more dangerous than a man hell-bent on revenge.

Still, I never imagined I would be kidnapped from the middle of a public thoroughfare. It took place while I was returning home from the parlour. I was hurrying towards Churchgate, to catch the 8 pm local to Santacruz, when I was ambushed on that dimly lit stretch of road between Royal Supermarket and the railway crossing.

It was just like they show in the movies. A black Scorpio drew up next to me and the door swung open. Two men jumped out, grabbed me from the pavement and bundled me into the back seat of the SUV.

The entire operation was over in a couple of seconds, so fast that I didn’t even have time to scream, let alone take out that can of pepper spray I always keep inside my handbag. The road was dark but not deserted. At least twenty other pedestrians must have seen me being taken, but they simply watched in stupefied horror. Not one person came to my rescue. No one even bothered to raise an alarm, call the police.

I don’t blame them. This is the way of the city. It may be teeming with people, but it is each person to themselves.

(Excerpted with permission from The Girl with the Seven Lives by Vikas Swarup, published by Simon & Schuster; 2024)