He smiles most at Miss Salma R - a TV host who is, like himself, from Mumbai. We learn that some “Interior Event” (there are a lot of capital letters in this story) changed him long ago and forever, so that he walks with a limp, has trouble remembering his past, depends for money on a pompous cousin in pharmaceuticals, whose dubious medicines he sells across America. By day he may look like a low-paid elderly Indian gentleman of no fixed abode, but by night he is “Dorothy contemplating a permanent move to Oz.” The “unreal real” of the small screen becomes Quichotte’s brighter world. The story starts with a man in the wrong key, out of tune with the real world, loading up his traveling salesman’s car every morning, lying on a motel bed every night, watching TV. (Trigger warning: The gun talks.) Quichotte needs more than one key to more than one door, although, at last, because this is a fairy tale, the final door opens by itself. His quest is a long shot, and there’s a gun involved.
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