‘Come on, man, we can’t do that. The writer didn’t intend to hurt your feelings,’ the owner grumbles. ‘It’s a question of the paper’s credibility. Why don’t I turn your men’s attention away from this? I can throw in some other kind of news for which your men can go on a rampage.’

‘No, that won’t do. Till now, Parsis have never made a fuss about such things. But there are hotheads in every community. If they decide to protest, public sympathy is bound to go to them.’

‘Oh all right. But what must the apology say?’

‘That you’ve hurt Hindu feelings. And put it on the front page. In bold. Tomorrow.’

‘Okay, okay. It will be done.’

The owner calls up the editor. The editor calls up the news editor. The chief sub makes a draft of the apology. He shows it to the news editor. The news editor passes it. Singh sahib approves it and leaves the office for a keynote address he has been invited to deliver at a seminar on ‘Religious Fanaticism and Democracy’ at the Nanikji Mehta Arts, Science and Commerce College.

Singh sahib was once a lecturer in Delhi’s famed St Stephen’s College. In those days he used to lean left. In later years he tilted a little towards the right. By the time he entered the newspaper business, he had decided there was not much to be said for leaning either to the left or right. So he became flexible. He leaned towards the owners of his newspaper when he was in the office and allowed his leanings outside the office to be determined by whosoever was honouring him or paying him or entertaining him.

When Singh sahib delivers keynote addresses, he shows a pronounced leftward incline because he believes, mistakenly, that students as a group tend to incline that way. But when he is dining with some of his wealthy, pure-vegetarian friends, he slips judicious soupçons of yeses into the rabid fare that comes to the table with ghee-fried delights.

Today he intends to assume a strictly secularist position. Briefly, he will posit faith and emotion against thought and reason, to show how the former militates against the very idea of democracy. He is also toying with the idea of referring to the attack on Feroze Banatwala’s Krishna painting, with a not-too-deep or lengthy exegesis on the significance of Krishna, a subject he happens to have devoted himself to some years ago. This would, incidentally, give the audience a glimpse of his erudition. Sitting in his car, he goes over what he might say.