The day passed in a blurry fizz truly tangible in this east. Dream hours almost. Punctuated by intense in-between trips, connections brimming with people-made seas. Lucid, fast episodes. Moving-picture, inside-tunnel billboards giving the impression that the trains were travelling twice as fast.

How I melted into those moments and how they trickled away into the trip’s potpourri multi-memories. I let it all wash off me as I made my way towards the room, then into it. That rich musty smell. The feeling of distance. Still mesmerising, the view. There was another thing. Movement in the bathroom, slight touches. ‘Hello?’ That one was me. Almost in sync with my greeting-question, a dark figure appeared, the same figure, the attendant. ‘Sir.’ No less friendly but hotel-man formal, and I became attuned to an unusual essence – maybe I was really spaced out, but I was definitely out of rhythm with my own normal thinking, and there was a palpable eeriness. I felt giddy. ‘Hi. Back?’

‘Yes, they have me working all week!’ Un-gettable traces on his face, now quite boyish in poor light. ‘No rest for the wicked. I’m growing tired. But at least I still have that... .’ He turned to face the window. I was pleased that he too clocked the scene. Strangely, that special backdrop doused his features in an even more glowing light. I felt we had an instant, mini-bond forged from our admiration of that scene.

‘How long have you done this, then? D’you wanna do something else, go anywhere?’ I immediately worried that this quick-fire batch of questions was so out of the blue that he’d think them unnecessary. ‘Some years [I relaxed]. I often believe I was born here [a joke, going by his almost-phantom smile] ... and when it’s a drag, I feel down, lonely, you know. This place gets claustrophobic, suffocating I guess. Yet... .’ He stammered and looked up again. Had he spotted a noteworthy movement on that panorama? Maybe, but he settled back on me in a second. ‘I feel a connection with this place – don’t smirk! – just, what can I say, a pull, chaining me here. I don’t know, it’s tough to describe.’ He finished with that claim, but he’d done well to outline it.

An undercurrent, the same as before, stirred inside me again as he spoke. At moments it was as though he was picking at my own deeply covered thoughts and giving voice to them. But I dismissed the connection as nonsense. For a little while – in fact, time had become liquidy, it was difficult to determine the exact amount of it – I, probably both of us, respected the silence that had fallen, bar that much-muffled background hum of the city.

In those seconds or however long it was, I grew even more fascinated by him, that man I didn’t know but who grew quietly angelic in my presence. It was absurd. The neon-ness of outside creeping in. I wasn’t adding anything, wasn’t enhancing the details to match some inner, pre-existing notion of heavenliness; in that colour palette he genuinely seemed otherworldly, more than just that man, the one who gave a good impression of being lost but also a perfect fit in his surroundings.

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