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No sooner had Kasturba completed her shocking entrance than Changez skipped past his son and planted himself beside the erstwhile ayah. Zeeny Vakil, her eyes sparkling with scandalpoints of light, hissed at Chamcha: “Close your mouth, dear. It looks bad.” And in the doorway, the bearer Vallabh, pushing a drinks trolley, watched unemotionally while his employer of many long years placed an arm around his uncomplaining wife.

When the progenitor, the creator is revealed as satanic, the child will frequently grow prim. Chamcha heard himself inquire: “And my stepmother, father dear? She is keeping well?”

The old man addressed Zeeny. “He is not such a goody with you, I hope so. Or what a sad time you must have.” Then to his son in harsher tones. “You have an interest in my wife these days? But she has none in you. She won’t meet you now. Why should she forgive? You are no son to her. Or, maybe, by now, to me.”

I did not come to fight him. Look, the old goat. I mustn’t fight. But this, this is intolerable . “In my mother’s house,” Chamcha cried melodramatically, losing his battle with himself. “The state thinks your business is corrupt, and here is the corruption of your soul. Look what you’ve done to them. Vallabh and Kasturba. With your money. How much did it take? To poison their lives. You’re a sick man.” He stood before his father, blazing with righteous rage.

Vallabh the bearer, unexpectedly, intervened. “Baba, with respect, excuse me but what do you know? You have left and gone and now you come to judge us.” Saladin felt the floor giving way beneath his feet; he was staring into the inferno. “It is true he pays us,” Vallabh went on. “For our work, and also for what you see. For this.” Changez Chamchawala tightened his grip on the ayah’s unresisting shoulders.

“How much?” Chamcha shouted. “Vallabh, how much did you two men decide upon? How much to prostitute your wife?”

“What a fool,” Kasturba said contemptuously. “Englandeducated and what-all, but still with a head full of hay. You come talking so big—big, in your mother’s house etcetera, but maybe you didn’t love her so much. But we loved her, we all. We three. And in this manner we may keep her spirit alive.”

“It is pooja, you could say,” came Vallabh’s quiet voice. “An act of worship.”

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