The first time Rajesh saw a red address on his QuickBite delivery app, he thought it was a glitch. Mumbai's monsoon had been particularly vicious that July evening, and water had been seeping into everything—phones, shoes, souls. He wiped his phone screen with the edge of his rain-soaked delivery jacket and looked again.
Order #7834: Two chicken biryanis, one paneer tikka masala. Building 4, Flat 23B, Hiranandani Gardens. The address pulsed red like a wound.
"Bhenchod," he muttered, tapping the screen. The red didn't go away. If anything, it seemed to throb more insistently, as if his phone had developed a fever. But the timer was running—23 minutes to delivery or his rating would tank—so Rajesh kicked his Honda Activa to life and merged into the chaos of the Eastern Express Highway.
The thing about delivering food in Mumbai was that you became invisible. Rich people in their high-rises, middle-class families in their cramped flats, college kids in their PG accommodations—they all saw the uniform, not the man. QuickBite jacket, helmet, the perpetual hurry. Rajesh had been doing this for three years now, ever since he'd dropped out of his engineering program to take care of Ma. Three years of dodging autorickshaws, memorizing shortcuts, and pretending not to notice when customers didn't tip.
But tonight, something was different. The red address seemed to burn through his phone, through his pocket, straight into his consciousness. By the time he reached Hiranandani Gardens, his hands were shaking, and it wasn't from the rain.
Building 4 loomed like a concrete giant, its windows glowing yellow against the purple storm clouds. Rajesh parked his scooter and grabbed the food bags, their warmth a small comfort against the chill that had nothing to do with the weather. The security guard barely looked up from his phone—another invisible man recognizing his own kind.
The elevator ride to the 23rd floor felt endless. The red address on his phone seemed to pulse in rhythm with his heartbeat. When the doors opened, Rajesh found himself in a dimly lit corridor that smelled of phenyl and old cooking oil. Flat 23B was at the end.
He rang the doorbell. Once. Twice.
A man answered—mid-forties, wearing a wrinkled business shirt, eyes bloodshot. Behind him, Rajesh could see a woman setting the dining table, two children watching cartoons on a massive TV.
"QuickBite delivery," Rajesh said, his voice cracking slightly.
The man took the bags without a word, handed over exact change—no tip, of course—and started to close the door.
"Sir," Rajesh heard himself say. "Sir, please be careful."
The man paused, irritation flashing across his face. "What?"
"Just... be careful tonight. Please."
The door slammed shut.
Rajesh stood in the corridor for a moment, feeling foolish. What was he doing? Warning someone about a phone glitch? He checked the app again. The red glow was gone. Order completed. Rating: 5 stars.
He was halfway home, navigating the waterlogged streets of Ghatkopar, when his phone buzzed with a news alert: "Gas Leak Explosion in Hiranandani Gardens Kills Family of Four. Building 4, Flat 23B."
Rajesh pulled over to the side of the road and vomited into a gutter already overflowing with rainwater.
That night, he couldn't sleep. Ma was coughing in the next room—the sound that had become the soundtrack to his nights. Her dialysis treatments were eating through their savings faster than he could earn. Three sessions a week at two thousand rupees each. The doctors said she needed a transplant, but that was like saying she needed a million dollars. Same difference in their world.
He stared at his phone, at the QuickBite app with its cheerful orange interface. Tomorrow he'd have to go back out there. Tomorrow there'd be more orders, more addresses. Would they be red too?
They were.
The next evening, three red addresses appeared among his regular deliveries. Rajesh tried to ignore them, to treat them like any other order. But his hands shook as he handed over the food. His voice caught as he wished customers a good evening. And later, always later, the news would come. Heart attack. Suicide. Accident.
By the end of the week, he'd seen twelve red addresses. Twelve deaths he'd brushed against like a moth drawn to flames it couldn't touch.
"You look like shit," Arjun told him the following Monday. They were sitting outside the QuickBite hub in Kurla, waiting for the lunch rush to begin. Arjun was Rajesh's only real friend among the delivery drivers—a lanky guy from Bihar who'd been in Mumbai long enough to lose his accent but not his hunger.
"Haven't been sleeping," Rajesh admitted.
"Money troubles?" Arjun lit a cigarette, offered one to Rajesh, who declined. "Join the club, yaar. Lost five thousand on cricket last night. Sure thing, my ass."
Rajesh wanted to tell him. The words were right there, pressing against his teeth. But how do you explain that your phone has become some kind of digital oracle of death? That you're riding around Mumbai with a list of the soon-to-be-dead in your pocket?
"Just tired," he said instead.
The lunch rush was brutal. Rajesh took eight orders in two hours, racing from Bandra to Andheri to Powai like a man possessed. Only one red address today—a luxury apartment in Breach Candy. He delivered the sushi order to a young woman who looked like she'd been crying. Her eyes were puffy, her designer kurta wrinkled.
"Madam," he said as she signed for the food. "Please... take care of yourself."
She looked at him—really looked at him, maybe the first customer to do so in months. "What?"
"Just... if you're thinking of doing something. Please don't. Please."
Her face went pale. The sushi bag trembled in her hands. "How did you—who are you?"
But Rajesh was already backing away, mumbling apologies, fleeing down the hallway like a coward. What was he doing? He couldn't save them all. He couldn't save anyone. He couldn't even save Ma.
That night, he googled the woman's building. No news. No death. Maybe he'd been wrong. Maybe the red meant something else. Maybe—
His phone buzzed. A message from an unknown number: "Thank you."
Then another: "I don't know how you knew, but thank you. I had the pills in my hand when you said that. Thank you."
Rajesh stared at the messages until his eyes burned. Then he did something he hadn't done since his father died—he prayed. To Ganesh, remover of obstacles. To Hanuman, for strength. To whatever force had cursed or blessed him with this terrible knowledge.
The next day, the woman from Breach Candy was waiting outside the QuickBite hub. Mrs. Chandni Verma, she introduced herself, looking nothing like the broken creature he'd delivered sushi to. She wore a crisp sari, her hair perfectly styled, but her eyes held a vulnerability that makeup couldn't hide.
"I need to know how you knew," she said.
Rajesh's first instinct was to run. But something in her voice stopped him. A desperation he recognized, the sound of someone grabbing for any rope in a flood.
"I don't know how to explain it," he said finally. "Sometimes I just... know things."
She studied him for a long moment. Then she opened her purse and pulled out a bundle of cash. "For saving my life."
"No." The word came out sharper than intended. "I don't want money."
"Everyone wants money," she said softly. "Especially delivery boys working doubles to pay for medical bills."
Rajesh froze. "How did you—"
"I have my sources too." She smiled sadly. "Your mother. Kidney disease. You dropped out of IIT to take care of her."
"I didn't go to IIT. Just a regular engineering college."
"Still. You gave up your future for her." She pressed the money into his hands. "Take it. For her treatment."
The bundle was warm, as if it had been sitting against her body. Rajesh wanted to throw it back at her, wanted to maintain his dignity. But he thought of Ma's coughing, the bills piling up like accusations, the transplant they'd never afford.
He took the money.
That was his first mistake. Or maybe his salvation. With Chandni's money, he was able to pay for an extra month of dialysis, even upgrade Ma to a better facility. She didn't ask where the money came from, and he didn't tell her. But she smiled for the first time in weeks, and that was worth any price.
Chandni began ordering food regularly, always requesting Rajesh for delivery. She lived alone in a sea of marble and loneliness, her husband dead, her children abroad. She'd tip him generously and sometimes ask him to stay for tea. He always declined, but she persisted with the patience of someone who had nothing but time.
Meanwhile, the red addresses kept coming. Rajesh developed a system—a subtle warning here, a misdelivered order there that delayed someone just long enough. He couldn't save everyone, but he tried. God, how he tried.
It was Arjun who figured it out.
"You're acting strange, bhai," Arjun said one humid August evening. They were sharing a smoke break behind the hub, the air thick with exhaust fumes and the smell of coming rain. "You're taking weird routes. Declining good orders. And yesterday, I saw you crying after a delivery."
"You were following me?"
"I was worried." Arjun flicked his cigarette into a puddle. "What's going on, Rajesh? Really?"
So Rajesh told him. Not everything, but enough. About the red addresses, the deaths, the burden of knowing. He expected Arjun to laugh, to call him crazy.
Instead, Arjun's eyes lit up with something that looked dangerously like greed.
"You can predict deaths?"
"I can see where they'll happen. Not always who or how."
"But you know the address? The time?"
"Within a day, usually."
Arjun grabbed his shoulders. "Do you understand what this means? We could bet on it! Insurance fraud, inheritance issues—people would pay millions for this information!"
Rajesh shoved him away. "Are you insane? These are people's lives!"
"These are opportunities!" Arjun's voice was rising. "You're sitting on a gold mine and crying about it like a fool. Your mother needs treatment, right? I need to pay off my debts. We could help ourselves for once instead of always helping these rich assholes who don't even know we exist!"
"No."
"Think about it, at least. Just think—"
"I said no."
But the seed was planted. As Rajesh rode home that night, passing the slums of Dharavi where he'd grown up, he couldn't stop thinking about it. How many red addresses had he seen in the wealthy neighborhoods? How many rich people had he watched die while his mother suffered? Was it really so wrong to profit from information that was given to him anyway?
The next red address that appeared was for a politician's house in Malabar Hill. Rajesh delivered the order—kebabs and naan for what looked like a party—and said nothing. The politician died of a heart attack six hours later. His estate was worth crores.
Arjun found out through the news. "You could have warned him," he said accusingly.
"I've warned dozens of people. It doesn't always work."
"You could have told me. I could have placed bets, found buyers for the information—"
"Drop it, Arjun."
But Arjun didn't drop it. He became obsessed, following Rajesh on deliveries, tracking which addresses he visited, correlating them with death notices in the papers. It was exhausting, maintaining his delivery schedule while trying to shake off his friend's surveillance.
Things came to a head on a September evening when the rains had finally broken and the city was gasping in the humid aftermath. Rajesh's phone showed five red addresses for his evening shift. Five deaths waiting in the wings of Mumbai's great theater.
The fourth address made his blood freeze.
It was his own building. His own flat.
Ma.
Rajesh abandoned his other deliveries, racing through traffic like a man possessed. He took shortcuts through narrow gullies, scraped past buses, nearly killed himself three times over. By the time he reached their building, his shirt was soaked with sweat and tears.
He found Ma in the kitchen, humming an old Kishore Kumar song while making dal.
"Ma, we need to go to the hospital."
She turned, surprised. "Beta, what's wrong? You look—"
"Please, Ma. Just come with me. Now."
Something in his voice must have convinced her. She turned off the stove, grabbed her purse, and followed him without another word. They spent the night in the emergency room, Rajesh insisting on every test, every scan, driving the doctors crazy with his demands.
They found nothing wrong. Her kidney disease was stable, no worse than before. The doctors sent them home with irritation and a hefty bill.
But Ma didn't die that night. For the first time, Rajesh had beaten the red address.
"How did you know?" Ma asked as they rode home in an auto the next morning.
"Know what?"
"That something was wrong. You saved me, beta. I could feel it—something dark passing over. But you pulled me away."
Rajesh didn't answer. He held his mother's hand and watched the city wake up around them, vendors setting up their stalls, children walking to school, life persisting despite death's constant shadow.
When he checked his phone later, there was a message from Arjun: "I know your secret. Meet me tonight or I tell everyone."
They met at a dhaba near the airport, planes roaring overhead like metal dragons. Arjun looked manic, his eyes bright with sleepless nights and desperate schemes.
"I figured it out," he said without preamble. "The app, the predictions—I know how it works."
"You don't know anything."
"I know you saved your mother last night. I know you've been saving others too. And I know you could save more if you'd just let me help monetize this gift."
"It's not a gift. It's a curse."
"It's an opportunity!" Arjun slammed his hand on the table, making the steel plates jump. "My sister needs surgery. My father needs care. I'm drowning in debt from trying to help them. And you're sitting here with the power to predict death, wasting it on warnings that people ignore anyway!"
"What do you want from me?"
"Partnership. You identify the red addresses, I find ways to profit. Not from killing—I'm not a monster. But information has value. Insurance companies, property developers, even families who want closure. We could help people and ourselves."
Rajesh stared at his friend—former friend?—and saw himself reflected there. The desperation, the weight of family obligations, the crushing unfairness of poverty in a city built on wealth. How different were they, really?
"One week," he heard himself say. "We try it for one week. But we don't cause any deaths. We don't let people die who could be saved. And Ma doesn't know."
Arjun's grin was sharp as a blade. "Deal."
The partnership was a disaster from the start. Arjun was too eager, too obvious. He approached grieving families before their loved ones were even dead. He tried to sell information to insurance companies that immediately smelled fraud. Within three days, he'd drawn attention from the kind of people who thrived on desperation—loan sharks, fixers, the shadow economy of Mumbai that fed on misery.
"You need to stop," Rajesh told him after a particularly close call with a local gangster who'd gotten wind of their "predictions."
"Just a few more scores. I'm so close to clearing my debts—"
"Arjun, please."
But Arjun was lost to the fever of possibility. He started following Rajesh openly, livestreaming his deliveries, creating elaborate betting pools on which addresses would turn red next. It was only a matter of time before someone connected the dots.
That someone was Chandni.
"You're playing with forces you don't understand," she told Rajesh over tea in her too-empty apartment. She'd ordered food just to talk to him, the containers sitting unopened on her marble counter.
"I don't have a choice. My friend—"
"Your friend is going to get you killed. Or worse, he's going to corrupt what you have into something monstrous." She leaned forward, her eyes intense. "This gift you have—it's not about the deaths. It's about the choices. Each red address is a test. Will you save them? Will you profit? Will you look away? The universe is watching your decisions."
"The universe doesn't pay for dialysis."
"No," she agreed. "But it remembers everything."
That night, Rajesh's phone showed ten red addresses. An unprecedented number. And at the bottom of the list, like a signature on a death warrant, was the QuickBite hub itself.
He called Arjun immediately. No answer. He tried again, then sent a message: "Stay away from the hub tomorrow. Please."
Arjun replied instantly: "Is it red? The hub is red? This is it! We can warn everyone, be heroes, get reward money!"
"Arjun, no—"
But Arjun had already posted in the delivery drivers' WhatsApp group: "Don't come to hub tomorrow. Trust me."
Chaos erupted. Drivers demanding explanations. Managers threatening terminations. And through it all, Arjun's manic messages about destiny and opportunity and the biggest score of their lives.
Rajesh didn't sleep that night. He sat with Ma, watching her breathe, thinking about choices and consequences. When morning came, he made his decision.
He went to the hub.
It was nearly empty—Arjun's warning had scared off most drivers. Only the desperate or skeptical remained. Rajesh found Arjun in the back, frantically making calls to news stations.
"They'll pay huge money for the exclusive when this place goes up," Arjun said, not looking up. "We'll be set for life!"
"There's a gas line leak," Rajesh said quietly. "In the basement. It's been building for days. One spark and this whole block goes."
Arjun finally looked at him. "You know what causes it?"
"Yeah." Rajesh pulled out a lighter from his pocket. "Me."
Arjun's face went pale. "You're joking."
"The red addresses aren't predictions, Arjun. They're choices. Every time I see one, I choose—save them or let fate run its course. But you've turned it into something ugly. You've made me complicit in profiting from death."
"Rajesh, put the lighter away."
"I already called the fire department about the gas leak. They're on their way. This place will be evacuated, repaired, made safe. No one dies today."
"But... the red address?"
"Was never about the building." Rajesh looked at his friend—his desperate, broken, corrupted friend. "It was about us. About what we've become."
The fire department arrived with sirens blazing. The hub was evacuated, the leak found and fixed. No explosion, no deaths, no exclusive story for Arjun to sell. Just another near-miss in a city full of them.
Arjun never spoke to Rajesh again. He transferred to a different delivery service, still chasing his schemes and bets, still drowning in the debt that had driven him to darkness.
Rajesh kept delivering food. The red addresses still came, less frequently now, and he dealt with each as best he could. A quiet warning here, an anonymous tip there. He wasn't saving everyone—he'd learned that wasn't his burden to bear. But he wasn't profiting from their deaths either.
Chandni continued ordering food she never ate, just to check on him. She'd increased her tips to exactly match his mother's dialysis costs, a kindness disguised as transaction.
"You made the right choice," she told him one evening as October brought brief relief from the heat.
"Did I? Arjun's still suffering. His family's still in trouble. I could have helped him."
"You couldn't have saved him from himself. Just like no one could have saved me except me." She smiled sadly. "The red addresses aren't about death, Rajesh. They're about life—about choosing what kind of person you'll be when faced with impossible knowledge."
Ma's condition stabilized. Not cured—that miracle was beyond even mysterious apps and generous customers—but managed. She started teaching neighborhood kids again, finding purpose in their eager faces and terrible handwriting.
Rajesh still delivered food through Mumbai's chaotic streets. He still saw red addresses, though he'd stopped counting them. Each one was a weight, a choice, a reminder that death rode alongside him on his battered Honda Activa.
But he'd learned something important in those monsoon months when everything had turned red. The city was full of invisible people—delivery drivers, security guards, maids, sweepers—all of them carrying their own impossible burdens, their own desperate choices. The red addresses had shown him death, yes. But more importantly, they'd shown him life: fragile, precious, and worth protecting even when protection seemed impossible.
His phone buzzed with a new order. Butter chicken and naan for an address in Bandra. The address glowed soft green in the dying light of another Mumbai evening. A normal delivery to normal people living their normal, precious lives.
Rajesh kicked his scooter to life and merged into traffic, carrying food and secrets through a city that never stopped hungry, never stopped dying, never stopped living with fierce determination despite it all.
The red addresses would come again tomorrow. They always did. But tonight, there was butter chicken to deliver, a mother to care for, and the strange mercy of being invisible in a city of twenty million souls, each one burning brief and bright against the darkness that waited, patient and certain, for everyone.
In the end, that's all any of them could do—deliver what sustenance they could, warn who they could, save who they could, and hope that when their own address finally turned red, someone would care enough to notice, to mourn, to remember that they had been there, riding through the rain with food growing cold and hearts growing heavy with the weight of unwanted knowledge.
The city swallowed him up, one more delivery driver in an ocean of them, carrying more than food through the streets of Mumbai. And somewhere in the distance, a phone screen flickered red, then green, then red again, like a heart that couldn't decide whether to break or keep beating.
But it kept beating anyway. They all did. That was the miracle and the curse of it—they all kept beating anyway, right until the moment they didn't.