India

For some days that part of Bombay had been tense. Every street was utterly silent and still.

In one direction there was the estuary flowing into the Arabian Sea, over which a monstrous flyover, one and a half kilometres long, had been built to carry the six-lane highway. Close by and far off, countless high-rise blocks lifted their heads up to the sky. In the opposite direction was a vast, dense slum—an ugly, impermanent human colony made from such things as asbestos, polythene sheets, beaten tin, tiles, bamboo, and tarpaulin. The inhabitants were all "no work–no pay" day labourers, poorer than poor. However, as Bombay was the city of gold, people from all over India had come to settle there in search of work and food. Most of them were Muslims.

Far from the slum was the three-storey home of Sumitra Talwarkar. With apartment houses on all sides, it might almost miss the eye, though there was a lot of open space around it. On many occasions, promoters had been around, wanting to demolish it and put up a huge high-rise building. They would pay handsomely and offer three flats of fifteen hundred square feet each. Sumitra and, in particular, her husband, Dibakar Talwarkar, would not agree. He was a man of a different kind of temperament, not to be shaken by the promise of unlimited profits.

The house had been built by Dibakar's grandfather sixty years before, so it was some fourteen years older than India's independence. Whereas the Bombay metropolis is marked by spectacular architecture, there was nothing splendid or showy about this residence. However, if this home, pervaded by the joys and sorrows, the dreams and memories of four generations, were demolished and a high-rise constructed of flat on top of flat in a suffocating environment like a pigeon-coop, people from regions of India from Assam to Kerala would become neighbours, producing a din of rowdy, excited, and agitated cries in various languages, and the Talwarkars would have no real identity of their own. And so Dibakar was unable to accept the offer. The unrestrained pursuit of wealth in the city of Bombay could have made him the master of twenty or thirty million rupees with no effort at all, but putting his house into the hands of promoters would mean the extinction of his family history. He did not want that. He had immense pride in his family.

* * *

A short time had passed since evening had fallen.

Sumitra was sitting beside the window in the huge bedroom on the second floor, frightened and anxious. At that moment, there was no one else in the house. They had a cook, a Marathi Brahman called Dhumal, who lived a considerable distance away. He had left after preparing the evening meal in the afternoon and would not be there again until the next morning at about nine—if the buses and trains were still running.

The house had two other domestic staff: a woman and a man. But the whole area where they lived had been cut off by terrible riots for the past few days and transport had been brought to a stop, so how could they come to work? Sumitra's only support was Dhumal, and who could say how much longer he would be able to keep working?

This year Sumitra had turned fifty-three. Although her complexion was no longer bright and fair, she was still quite beautiful for her age. Only a few days before, she had been vibrant and cheerful, always effervescent and full of life. But right now she was like a stone sculpture with thick, dark blotches all over her face. In a moment her well-being had been destroyed. It was as though all the joy and optimism had been sucked out, leaving her only a withered shell.

A photograph of Dibakar with a garland of jasmine draped around the frame sat on the large bed in the middle of the room. Sumitra would give money to Dhumal, and each day when he came to work...