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Chamchawala rose to his feet, and extended his right hand. Zeeny, also rising, took it like a dancer accepting a bouquet; at once, Vallabh and Kasturba diminished into servants, as if a clock had silently chimed pumpkin-time. “Your book,” he said to Zeeny. “I have something you’d like to see.”

The two of them left the room; impotent Saladin, after a moment’s floundering, stamped petulantly in their wake. “Sourpuss,” Zeeny called gaily over her shoulder. “Come on, snap out of it, grow up.”

The Chamchawala art collection, housed here at Scandal Point, included a large group of the legendary Hamza-nama cloths, members of that sixteenth-century sequence depicting scenes from the life of a hero who may or may not have been the same Hamza as the famous one, Muhammad’s uncle whose liver was eaten by the Meccan woman Hind as he lay dead on the battlefield of Uhud. “I like these pictures,” Changez Chamchawala told Zeeny, “because the hero is permitted to fail. See how often he has to be rescued from his troubles.” The pictures also provided eloquent proof of Zeeny Vakil’s thesis about the eclectic, hybridized nature of the Indian artistic tradition. The Mughals had brought artists from every part of India to work on the paintings; individual identity was submerged to create a many-headed, many-brushed Overartist who, literally, was Indian painting. One hand would draw the mosaic floors, a second the figures, a third would paint the Chinese-looking cloudy skies. On the backs of the cloths were the stories that accompanied the scenes. The pictures would be shown like a movie: held up while someone read out the hero’s tale. In the Hamza-nama you could see the Persian miniature fusing with Kannada and Keralan painting styles, you could see Hindu and Muslim philosophy forming their characteristically late—Mughal synthesis.

A giant was trapped in a pit and his human tormentors were spearing him in the forehead. A man sliced vertically from the top of his head to his groin still held his sword as he fell. Everywhere, bubbling spillages of blood. Saladin Chamcha took a grip on himself. “The savagery,” he said loudly in his English voice. “The sheer barbaric love of pain.”

Changez Chamchawala ignored his son, had eyes only for Zeeny; who gazed straight back into his own. “Ours is a government of philistines, young lady, don’t you agree? I have offered this whole collection free gratis, did you know? Let them only house it properly, let them build a place. Condition of cloths is not A-1, you see . . . they won’t do it. No interest. Meanwhile I get offers every month from Amrika. Offers of what-what size! You wouldn’t

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