Ashesh had reached the wide entrance to the park, his head down. Just as he was about to step into the park, the end of a gun barrel had appeared before him. He had looked up startled. The barrel had swung a little to the left. ‘That way,’ said the voice behind the barrel. The man was young, his face expressionless. ‘Why not through?’ Ashesh had inquired, mildly.

‘Order.’

‘Whose?’

The young warrior did not answer, merely pointed his gun once again to the left. An old man passing by had said with pride, ‘Haven’t you read the papers? Army exhibition next week. Parade, cannons, tanks, rockets, helicopters—they’ll all be here, in our park.’

Ashesh saw then that the low parapet round the park, usually crowded with people out to take the air, was covered with a barbed wire spiral that extended all the way round it. Even the hardiest souls respect barbed wire. You can’t slip through unless you want to be flayed both by the wire and the authorities. Ashesh submitted to the order. The old man had been mistaken. This was nothing like ‘our park’. It was enemy country.

Yogesh had looked strained that evening. The skin seemed to be stretched abnormally tight over the fine bones of his face. ‘I didn’t do an inch of work in London,’ he had begun without preamble. ‘Just couldn’t. Back here I was like crazy. Had to get it all out. Sorry, sir, water? Tea?’ He led Ashesh to a chair.

‘No, thanks.’

‘Work wasn’t expected. But a whole year doing nothing? It has never happened to me before. I felt weird out there—that weather, that light, the way people moved, spoke . . . so totally alien.’ Yogesh fell silent. His gaze became withdrawn. ‘Shall I show you the work?’ he asked, coming out of his reverie.

In the room that Yogesh led him to, Ashesh was rooted to the spot. Before him stood an enormous, horizontal triptych. The background carried blurred bits of a soliloquy from Hamlet. On closer view, some lines were visible: ‘What a piece of work is man’; ‘how like an angel’; ‘the beauty of the world’; ‘the paragon of animals’. The first part of the triptych was the right profile of a large male head. The middle was a frontal view of a torso and upper arms. The third was the left profile of male thighs, the member upright. Wound around these central images was the wild growth of a black creeper. On it crawled caterpillars of all sizes, colours and shapes. The muscles, hair and nails of the male body were meticulously drawn in realistic detail and painted in vivid colours to create a crowded world of natural life.