- Life in the slum continues for five months for Lin.
- Abdullah stops coming around in the fifth month, but sends messengers to keep in touch.
- One morning Lin wakes up to the sound of a wild pack of dogs, and he grabs a stick to defend himself as he opens his plywood door.
- Rather than wild dogs, he finds a huge, brown bear standing outside his hut.
- The bear's presence had made the dogs go nuts, waking up Lin.
- A couple of men, painted blue from head to toe and wearing blue clothes to match, ask for "Mr. Lin." They claim to be friends, and to have an important message.
- There's a catch, though: Lin must hug the bear before they deliver the message.
- The blue men promise that it's safe, but Lin is adamant that he will not hug the bear, whose name is Kano.
- Prabaker and the crowd that has gathered beg Lin to do it, so he does, even though he's terrified.
- Lin passes out in the bear's embrace. When he comes to, Kano and his trainers are already leaving the slum. Prabaker gives him the message.
- It is a note from Abdullah, who makes a crack about the bear hug that Lin had mentioned on their trip to the leper colony.
- Because of the monsoon rains, which will be coming any day, trained animals and entertainers have parked in the slums, which makes life even more exciting than usual—what with the escaped monkeys and cobras and all. (Sounds like a real blast to us.)
- There are also problems with gangs attacking homeless people and slum dwellers to keep them from undercutting shops and other businesses.
- A construction worker, who is helping to build the World Trade Center right next to the slum, comes to Lin's clinic with a nasty gash on his arm after a gang attack. Lin cleans and bandages him up.
- Later, an elderly woman comes in and, because she doesn't want a strange man touching her, has her niece follow his instructions, palpating her breast to see where she hurts.
- She has lumps in her breast, the niece tells Lin, and he sends her to Doctor Hamid.
- Just then Karla shows up and sits down to have a cigarette in Lin's hut.
- The neighbor boy, Satish, serves them tea, and Prabaker eavesdrops on their visit.
- Lin invites Karla to join him at a lunch party in the slum, in the Village in the Sky.
- Karla, Lin, and Prabaker climb through the fence from the illegal slum, where Lin and Prabaker live, to the legal workers' slum on the World Trade Center building site.
- The lunch is to celebrate the establishment of a slum school. It is being held on the 23rd floor of the unfinished WTC tower.
- They step aboard a freight elevator and head up to the Village in the Sky, which is where the workers live most of the time to keep from having to go all the way to the ground while they're building the top floors.
- Karla joins the men in the men's banquet area for the feast. Near the women's area, some men are cleaning the painted word "SAPNA" from the wall.
- Johnny Cigar, Lin, Karla, Jeetendra, and Prabaker discuss the serial killer Sapna, who has been terrorizing Bombay and using Robin-Hood propaganda to convince people that it is a war on the rich to help the poor.
- Some women pick apart Karla's appearance in Hindi, and are scandalized when they realize she understands them perfectly.
- Karla and Lin chat for a while, until she comes out with her request for a favor. She explains that her friend Lisa is working at a house of prostitution and owes the overseer, Madame Zhou, too much money to get out. She wants Lin to pose as an American embassy worker and accompany her to Madame Zhou's to free Lisa.
- He agrees.
- They are interrupted by Prabaker screaming that the Bombay Municipal Corporation has arrived to tear down some slum houses, as they do every month to keep the settlement from spreading.
- The partygoers watch the demolition from above.
- Karla and Lin kiss, finally, and he tells her he's in love with her. She says she hates love, but that she likes him. Ouch.