They arrive in Bangalore in the early hours of the morning after the long night-journey from Tiruchirappalli, four hundred and fifty kilometres away. They have spent eight hours in the bus. Alighting at dawn when all is veiled in a mist, they see ghost figures under the feeble glow of street lamps through the chill haze, Amrita Sher Gil figures standing like wraiths covered with blankets and shawls. Where do they go now? This is a journey without carefully planned routes. But they must know where it is that they have arrived before they set out to discover the reality of treading on this soil which seems already to be losing its firmness, slipping away from under their feet so that the steps they take towards they know not where are tentative and uncertain. They trust to luck, confident that lodging houses and hotels will open their doors to them automatically. They walk across the bus station through a silent street and up the steps of the first lodging house they see. They enter through the open door. People are sprawled on the ground or are untidily asleep on scattered divans.

‘Can we have a room?’ Sri asks. ‘Single, double, family?’

‘No vacant rooms. All full.’

They drag their bodies down the steps. A figure disengages itself from the shadows on one of the steps where it sleeps huddled up.

‘I take you to hotel. You want? Come.’

‘Where?’ they ask.

‘Come, I take you. Here.’

They follow his young slight figure wrapped up in a blanket. He lopes along through the street, takes them to a brightly lit building. ‘SALEEM’S TRAVEL AGENCY.’ They are ushered in, greeted, welcomed, offered seats. Tumblers of hot chai are brought in from one of the hotels outside. They long to sleep, to find a room where they can close the doors and fling themselves down on some mattress. But it is not easy, not with Saleem. He has inexhaustible energy. He flashes a smile of great charm at them.

‘Sister, please sit, you can have double room. No family room. We can put extra bed. You pay fifteen rupees extra for bed.’

‘Can we go at once?’

‘Sister, now please sit. At six o’clock only you have room. Till then sister, sit, please sit. You can also take our tours. Bangalore, Mysore, Ooty.’

They sit with other weary travellers like themselves. There is a big placard on the wall before them advertising the tour: ‘TOUR TO MYSORE, SEATS SOLD OUT, SPECIAL SEATS RS 100/-’.

Dewa decides to take all the tours, preferring the easy way out. The bill is written out and presented at once. Saleem is happy. They take one step nearer the room. The room is no longer maya, illusion. They feel they are already in it, each sleeping like Vishnu on the serpent Ananta.

‘Don’t be a fool,’ Anna hisses under her breath to her mother. ‘They are going to play you out.’