past fruit salesmen and hand-holding loafers; my mother overheard: “… You newlyweds, I can’t stop coming to see, cho chweet I can’t tell you!” While feet approached, my father actually colored. In those days he was in the high summer of his charm; his lower lip really didn’t jut so much, the line between his eyebrows was still only faint … and Amina, stirring khichri, heard Zohra squeal, “Oh look, pink! But then you are so fair, cousinji! …” And he was letting her listen to All-India Radio at the table, which Amina was not allowed to do; Lata Mangeshkar was singing a waily love-song as “Just like me, don’tyouthink,” Zohra went on. “Lovely pink babies we’ll have, a perfect match, no, cousinji, pretty white couples?” And the feet clattering and the pan being stirred while “How awful to be black, cousinji, to wake every morning and see it staring at you, in the mirror to be shown proof of your inferiority! Of course they know; even blackies know white is nicer, don’tyouthinkso?” The feet very close now and Amina stamping into the dining-room pot in hand, concentrating hard at restraining herself, thinking Why must she come today when I have news to tell and also I’ll have to ask for money in front of her. Ahmed Sinai liked to be asked nicely for money, to have it wheedled out of him with caresses and sweet words until his table napkin began to rise in his lap as something moved in his pajamas; and she didn’t mind, with her assiduity she learned to love this also, and when she needed money there were strokes and “Janum, my life, please …” and “… Just a little so that I can make nice food and pay the bills …” and “Such a generous man, give me what you like, I know it will be enough” … the techniques of street beggars and she’d have to do it in front of that one with her saucer eyes and giggly voice and loud chat about blackies. Feet at the door almost and Amina in the dining-room with hot khichri at the ready, so very near to Zohra’s silly head, whereupon Zohra cries, “Oh, present company excluded, of course!” just in case, not being sure whether she’s been overheard or not, and “Oh, Ahmed, cousinji, you are really too dreadful to think I meant our lovely Amina who really isn’t so black but only like a white lady standing in the shade!” While Amina with her pot in hand looks at the pretty head and thinks Should I? And, Do I dare? And calms herself down with: “It’s a big day for me; and at least she raised the subject of children; so now it’ll be easy for me to …” But it’s too late, the wailing of Lata on the radio has drowned the sound of the doorbell so they haven’t heard old Musa the bearer going to answer the door; Lata has obscured the sound of anxious feet clattering upstairs; but all of a sudden here they are, the feet of Mr. Mustapha Kemal and Mr. S. P. Butt, coming to a shuffling halt.
“The rapscallions have perpetrated an outrage!” Mr. Kemal, who is the thinnest man Amina Sinai has ever seen, sets off with his curiously archaic phraseology (derived from his fondness for litigation, as a result of which he has become infected with the cadences of the law-courts) a kind of chain reaction of farcical panic, to which little, squeaky, spineless S. P. Butt, who has something wild dancing like a monkey in the eyes, adds considerably, by getting out these three words: “Yes, the firebugs!” And now Zohra in an odd reflex action clutches the radio to her bosom, muffling Lata between her breasts, screaming, “O God, O God, what firebugs, where? This house? O God I can feel the heat!” Amina stands frozen khichri-in-hand staring at the two men in their business suits as her husband, secrecy thrown to the winds now, rises shaven but as-yet-unsuited to his feet and asks, “The godown?”
Godown, gudam, warehouse, call it what you like; but no sooner had Ahmed Sinai asked his question than a hush fell upon the room, except of course that Lata Mangeshkar’s voice still issued from Zohra’s cleavage; because these three men shared one such large edifice, located on the industrial estate at the outskirts of the city. “Not the godown, God forfend,