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By Root 11997 0

had previously managed to do. In that infernal Club whose darkness was another aspect of its proprietor’s obsession with the color black (under whose influence he tanned his skin darker darker every day at the Sun ’n’ Sand), the two virtuosi goaded snakes into impossible feats, making them tie themselves in knots, or bows, or persuading them to drink water from wine-glasses, and to jump through fiery hoops … defying fatigue, hunger and age, Picture Singh was putting on the show of his life (but was anyone looking? Anyone at all?)—and at last it became clear that the younger man was tiring first; his snakes ceased to dance in time to his flute; and finally, through a piece of sleight-of-hand so fast that I did not see what happened, Picture Singh managed to knot a king cobra around the Maharaja’s neck.

What Picture said: “Give me best, captain, or I’ll tell it to bite.”

That was the end of the contest. The humiliated princeling left the Club and was later reported to have shot himself in a taxi. And on the floor of his last great battle, Picture Singh collapsed like a falling banyan tree … blind attendants (to one of whom I entrusted Aadam) helped me carry him from the field.

But the Midnite-Confidential had one trick left up its sleeve. Once a night—just to add a little spice—a roving spotlight searched out one of the illicit couples, and revealed them to the hidden eyes of their fellows: a touch of luminary Russian roulette which, no doubt, made life more thrilling for the city’s young cosmopolitans … and who was the chosen victim that night? Who, horn-templed stain-faced cucumber-nosed, was drowned in scandalous light? Who, made as blind as female attendants by the voyeurism of lightbulbs, almost dropped the legs of his unconscious friend?

Saleem returned to the city of his birth to stand illuminated in a cellar while Bombayites tittered at him from the dark.

Quickly now, because we have come to the end of incidents, I record that, in a back room in which light was permitted, Picture Singh recovered from his fainting fit; and while Aadam slept soundly, one of the blind waitresses brought us a congratulatory, reviving meal. On the thali of victory: samosas, pakoras, rice, dal, puris; and green chutney. Yes, a little aluminum bowl of chutney, green, my God, green as grasshoppers … and before long a puri was in my hand; and chutney was on the puri; and then I had tasted it, and almost imitated the fainting act of Picture Singh, because it had carried me back to a day when I emerged nine-fingered from a hospital and went into exile at the home of Hanif Aziz, and was given the best chutney in the world … the taste of the chutney was more than just an echo of that long-ago taste—it was the old taste itself, the very same, with the power of bringing back the past as if it had never been away … in a frenzy of excitement, I grabbed the blind waitress by the arm; scarcely able to contain myself, I blurted out: “The chutney! Who made it?” I must have shouted, because Picture, “Quiet, captain, you’ll wake the boy … and what’s the matter? You look like you saw your worst enemy’s ghost!” And the blind waitress, a little coldly: “You don’t like the chutney?” I had to hold back an almighty bellow. “I like it,” I said in a voice caged in bars of steel, “I like it—now will you tell me where it’s from?” And she, alarmed, anxious to get away: “It’s Braganza Pickle; best in Bombay, everyone knows.”

I made her bring me the jar; and there, on the label, was the address: of a building with a winking, saffron-and-green neon goddess over the gate, a factory watched over by neon Mumbadevi, while local trains went yellow-and-browning past: Braganza Pickles (Private) Ltd., in the sprawling north of the town.

Once again an abracadabra, an open-sesame: words printed on a chutney-jar, opening the last door of my life … I was seized by an irresistible determination to track down the maker of that impossible chutney of memory, and said, “Pictureji, I must go …”

I do not know the end of the story of Picture Singh; he refused to accompany me on my