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large sums to spend—and on polling day, he and his gang, who called themselves Cowboys, were to be seen standing outside a polling station in the north of the city, some holding long stout sticks, others juggling with stones, still others picking their teeth with knives, all of them encouraging the electorate to use its vote with wisdom and care … and after the polls closed, were seals broken on ballot-boxes? Did ballot-stuffing occur? At any rate, when the votes were counted, it was discovered that Qasim the Red had narrowly failed to win the seat; and my rival’s paymasters were well pleased.

… But now Padma says, mildly, “What date was it?” And, without thinking, I answer: “Some time in the spring.” And then it occurs to me that I have made another error—that the election of 1957 took place before, and not after, my tenth birthday; but although I have racked my brains, my memory refuses, stubbornly, to alter the sequence of events. This is worrying. I don’t know what’s gone wrong

She says, trying uselessly to console me: “What are you so long for in your face? Everybody forgets some small things, all the time!”

But if small things go, will large things be close behind?

Alpha and Omega

THERE WAS TURMOIL in Bombay in the months after the election; there is turmoil in my thoughts as I recall those days. My error has upset me badly; so now, to regain my equilibrium, I shall place myself firmly on the familiar ground of Methwold’s Estate; leaving the history of the Midnight Children’s Conference to one side, and the pain of the Pioneer Café to another, I shall tell you about the fall of Evie Burns.

I have titled this episode somewhat oddly. “Alpha and Omega” stares back at me from the page, demanding to be explained—a curious heading for what will be my story’s halfway point, one that reeks of beginnings and ends, when you could say it should be more concerned with middles; but, unrepentantly, I have no intention of changing it, although there are many alternative titles, for instance “From Monkey to Rhesus,” or “Finger Redux,” or—in a more allusive style—“The Gander,” a reference, obviously, to the mythical bird, the hamsa or parahamsa, symbol of the ability to live in two worlds, the physical and the spiritual, the world of land-and-water and the world of air, of flight. But “Alpha and Omega” it is; “Alpha and Omega” it remains. Because there are beginnings here, and all manner of ends; but you’ll soon see what I mean.

Padma clicks her tongue in exasperation. “You’re talking funny again,” she criticizes, “Are you going to tell about Evie or not?”

… After the general election, the Central Government continued to shilly-shally about the future of Bombay. The State was to be partitioned; then not to be partitioned; then partition reared its head again. And as for the city itself—it was to be the capital of Maharashtra; or of both Maharashtra and Gujarat; or an independent state of its own … while the government tried to work out what on earth to do, the city’s inhabitants decided to encourage it to be quick. Riots proliferated (and you could still hear the old battle-song of the Mahrattas—How are you? I am well! I’ll take a stick and thrash you to hell!—rising above the fray); and to make things worse, the weather joined in the mêlée. There was a severe drought; roads cracked; in the villages, peasants were being forced to kill their cows; and on Christmas Day (of whose significance no boy who attended a mission school and was attended upon by a Catholic ayah could fail to be aware) there was a series of loud explosions at the Walkeshwar Reservoir and the main fresh-water pipes which were the city’s lifelines began to blow fountains into the air like giant steel whales. The newspapers were full of talk of saboteurs; speculation over the criminals’ identities and political affiliation jostled for space against reports of the continuing wave of whore-murders. (I was particularly interested to learn that the murderer had his own curious “signature.” The corpses of the ladies of the night were all strangled to death;