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By Root 952 0

had them to suit all tastes and all budgets; some could even hold up to two thousand guests. Others, by virtue of the refinement of their patterns, were real museum pieces. Parvez only hired them out on very special occasions and then only to friends or people of prominence. That Sunday, his staff was preparing the most beautiful shamiana for the wedding of the daughter of the controller-in-chief of the Bhopal railway, the Hindu Ashwini Diwedi, whose brother Sharda was managing director of the city’s power station, two people of standing whom Mahmoud was eager to please. The remaining rugs and shamianas would be used in the day’s numerous other weddings, the Ishtema festival on the following day, as well as the mushaira, the poetry recital arranged for ten o’clock that night in Spices Square. For this event, Parvez would also be providing small cushions so that the poets could relax between recitations, accessories all the more necessary because a number of these men of letters were members of the celebrated Lazy Poets’ Circle.

Mahmoud Parvez rubbed his hands as he watched his storehouse empty. That Sunday was going to be an auspicious one for the Bhopal Tent and Glass Store.

The feverish preparations had spread as far as the workshops of Kali Grounds’ two main artisans. The shoemaker Mohammed Iqbal had been working since dawn to finish the shoes made of Agra leather and sandals encrusted with precious stones that several of the wedding guests had ordered. With the help of his young apprentice Sunil Kumar, the son of poor peasants newly arrived in the bustee, he cut, trimmed and sewed away, surrounded by the suffocating smell of glue and varnish that filled the hut where his wife and three children were still sleeping. Across the way, in hut No. 240, his friend Ahmed Bassi had also been up since dawn, finishing embroidering the saris and veils ordered by the wealthy families of Arera Colony for their daughters’ weddings. Bassi had such fine silk fabrics brought from Benares that his shop attracted Bhopal’s smart set, despite its location in the poor quarter. Five times a day, he thanked Allah for all the benefits He had bestowed upon him. His order book was overflowing. In two weeks’ time, it would be Eid, the most important festival in the Muslim year. The treadle of his sewing machine would not stop, as he made kurtas out of satin and sherwanis in Lucknow brocade.

At the other end of town, in a church with a slate-covered steeple in the Jehangirabad district, on that same December 2, Bhopal’s Christian minority gathered to celebrate Advent. The first Sunday in Advent was the beginning of a time of prayer and recollection leading up to the year’s most important Christian festival: Christmas. A life-size crèche commemorated the birth of the Messiah in a Bethlehem stable. A noisy and colorful congregation of women in superb saris with the embroidered ends covering their heads, and sumptuously dressed men and children filled the nave, cooled by a battery of fans. Majestic in his immaculate alb and red silk vestments, Eugene de Souza, the Roman Catholic archbishop, originally from Goa, read the first psalm with fervor. “Awake thy glory, O Lord, and deliver us, for our transgressions have led us into imminent danger.”

That morning one pew remained unoccupied. Sister Felicity had called the prelate to ask him to excuse her, and to request that his vicar, Father Lulu, come to Ashanitekan, the House of Hope, to give mass for the handicapped children in the building’s small chapel. There, to the right of the altar stood a large picture of Jesus, under which were inscribed the simple words: I AM WITH YOU ALWAYS.

A dozen children were kneeling on jute sacks sewn end to end. Among them was Raina, the little girl with spina bifida, whom the nun had put in her own bedroom in order to better care for her. For much of the time, especially at night, her illness plunged her into a comalike state, almost as if she were dead. The previous night, however, Raina had suddenly woken up, screaming.

“People with this kind of illness