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By Root 12000 0

they sat in the brush, drinking and gambling. Rashid applied the brakes and flung himself into the cornfield, running—FULL-TILT!—at the unsuspecting cattlemen, his guns cocked and ready. As he neared their campfire he released his “yell of hate” to frighten them. YAAAAAAAA! Obviously he did not really shout so close to the Doctor Sahib’s house, but he distended his mouth as he ran, screaming silently. BLAMM! BLAMM! Nadir Khan had been finding sleep hard to come by and now he opened his eyes. He saw—EEEYAAAH!—a wild stringy figure coming at him like a mail-train, yelling at the top of his voice—but maybe he had gone deaf, because there wasn’t any noise!—and he was rising to his feet, the shriek was just passing his over-plump lips, when Rashid saw him and found voice as well. Hooting in terrified unison, they both turned tail and ran. Then they stopped, each having noted the other’s flight, and peered at one another through the shrivelling corn. Rashid recognized Nadir Khan, saw his torn clothes and was deeply troubled.

“I am a friend,” Nadir said foolishly. “I must see Doctor Aziz.”

“But the Doctor is asleep, and is not in the cornfield.” Pull yourself together, Rashid told himself, stop talking nonsense! This is Mian Abdullah’s friend! … But Nadir didn’t seem to have noticed; his face was working furiously, trying to get out some words which had stuck like shreds of chicken between his teeth … “My life,” he managed it at last, “is in danger.”

And now Rashid, still full of the spirit of Gai-Wallah, came to the rescue. He led Nadir to a door in the side of the house. It was bolted and locked; but Rashid pulled, and the lock came away in his hand. “Indian-made,” he whispered, as if that explained everything. And, as Nadir stepped inside, Rashid hissed, “Count on me completely, Sahib. Mum’s the word! I swear on my mother’s gray hairs.”

He replaced the lock on the outside. To have actually saved the Hummingbird’s right-hand man! … But from what? Whom? … Well, real life was better than the pictures, sometimes.

“Is that him?” Padma asks, in some confusion. “That fat soft cowardly plumpie? Is he going to be your father?”

Under the Carpet

THAT WAS THE END of the optimism epidemic. In the morning a sweeper-woman entered the offices of the Free Islam Convention and found the Hummingbird, silenced, on the floor, surrounded by paw-prints and the shreds of his murderers. She screamed; but later, when the authorities had been and gone, she was told to clean up the room. After clearing away innumerable dog-hairs, swatting countless fleas and extracting from the carpet the remnants of a shattered glass eye, she protested to the University’s comptroller of works that, if this sort of thing was going to keep happening, she deserved a small pay raise. She was possibly the last victim of the optimism bug, and in her case the illness didn’t last long, because the comptroller was a hard man, and gave her the boot.

The assassins were never identified, nor were their pay-masters named. My grandfather was called to the campus by Major Zulfikar, Brigadier Dodson’s A.D.C., to write his friend’s death certificate. Major Zulfikar promised to call on Doctor Aziz to tie up a few loose ends; my grandfather blew his nose and left. At the maidan, tents were coming down like punctured hopes; the Convocation would never be held again. The Rani of Cooch Naheen took to her bed. After a lifetime of making light of her illnesses she allowed them to claim her, and lay still for years, watching herself turn the color of her bedsheets. Meanwhile, in the old house on Cornwallis Road, the days were full of potential mothers and possible fathers. You see, Padma: you’re going to find out now.

Using my nose (because, although it has lost the powers which enabled it, so recently, to make history, it has acquired other, compensatory gifts)—turning it inwards, I’ve been sniffing out the atmosphere in my grandfather’s house in those days after the death of India’s humming hope; and wafting down to me through the years comes a curious mélange of odors, filled