Thompson, although alarmed, could not make sense of the intrusion. He followed the direction of the guard’s trembling finger, parted the curtain and peered through the window. He located the mob a few hundred metres away. About six hundred he estimated, with banners, sticks, steel and the remains of the Company’s mutilated billboards.

‘God save us. Call the police!’ Thompson ordered.

‘Too late, sir. They’ve burnt our posters. They will rip our flesh from our bones. They will wring our heads from our bodies. They will kill us all,’ cried the guard.

‘Call the police!’ Pestonjee yelled, running into Thompson’s room.

‘We are all going to die. I have two children, infants both,’ the guard sank down to the floor, sobbing.

‘Tell everyone to leave. Lock the building,’ said Thompson, gathering papers from the second drawer of his desk and tossing them into his briefcase.

Within minutes all the employees were out, and the guard had locked the gates. Thompson’s carriage took off first. The rest, like Pestonjee, hurried away through the alleyways behind the building.

31

The mill worker was delirious. All his energy was sourced from the outside, from his companions, from the invocations of their vibrating lips, from the determination of their raised fists, from the urgency of their feet. He rose. He joined. He stumbled. Their hands responded in support.

‘Brother, come!’ Joyously they carried him.

‘Enemy number one. Enemy number two. Enemy number three,’ he shouted, barely audible, his hands pointing at the headquarters of the Bombay Municipal Corporation. They jostled him to the front effortlessly. Starvation had hollowed his bones.

‘Enemy number one.’

He was passed on to two others. Tears dripped from his eyes. His heart raced unsteadily.

‘Break down that door,’ he screamed.

‘Break down that door. Break down that door,’ repeated the man next to him, and soon there was an echo of a hundred and more voices.

They turned right. He found that the direction of his hand had changed from the Bombay Municipal Corporation’s headquarters on the left to the building opposite it—Metro House, the headquarters of the British Chewing Gum Company. When they reached the building’s iron door, he was carefully placed against the wall. His fingers remained pointed in the opposite direction.

‘Gai hamari mata hai. Jo haath uthey usey kata hai (The cow is our mother. We have cut every hand that has risen against her).’

‘Gai ko jo khayega, maut ke moo mit jayega (Those who eat cows will end up in the jaws of death).’

‘There, not here,’ the mill worker shouted.

‘Gaay bachao, aay bachao (Save the cow, save your income).’

‘Gaay bachao, mai bachao (Save the cow, save your mother).’

‘Gaay bachao, hai bachao (Save the cow, save yourself from destitution).’