Such a logistical question, the professor thought. He stared blankly at Young. His mind drifted. Last night, the baniya who came to the paan shop wanted ripe red lips. In the evenings, the errand boy of the kotha, Babu, probably sixteen years old, would take sixty paans for the dancers. The next day he would return with stories of the night. The red betel juice trickled down from her lips to the bed. Babu wondered about those stains? Was it her first time? Was it her menstrual flow staking claim? Was it a night without inhibitions, the effects of which were to be felt only the next day, blood and pain, yet her memory etched with desire and delight? Could the cloves be a sign of that night?

‘No problem. Question two. Why do paanwalas in Fort offer credit while the others rarely do?’ Young asked.

The professor did not respond. He remembered the signs on his paanwala’s shop:

A debtor shall pay twice if debt is due and denied

—Manusmriti

The person in debt will not enter Paradise until the debt is paid off

—Koran

The wicked borrow and do not repay

—Bible

The paanwala had tried in vain to find something more daunting in Hindu scripture—verses more terrifying than those found in the Bible and the Koran. It seemed to him that the Hindus had long secularized their economic relations and nothing earthshattering was going to happen to them if they failed to pay their debt to the paanwala. Irrespective of the choice of text, the paanwala provided the first lesson of religious tolerance. The customers were no longer Hindu, Muslim, or Christian.

The paanwala created the first democratic republic of paan and alongside it, a whole new accent. So what if it was warbled, garbled, or marbled, it was invented for the new republic. If the paan-public was to be one country it would be egalitarian in spit and spirit, with all liberties safe and fully exercised, and the English at arm’s length. Paan was a protest against their civilizing impulses. A civil disobedience against sanitation laws. How can a country that does not eat paan rule a country that does? ‘No Paan, No King.’

The seeds of radicalism had been sown; no, not seeds, the leaves—the betel leaves—of radicalism, bore fruit—or rather leaflets—when education was in the service of the state. When Macaulay tried to transform a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, to English in taste, opinions, morals and intellect, he had forgotten about this independent sanctuary.