Singh sahib calls the news editor before he reaches the college. ‘Has the apology gone in?’ The news editor assures him that the chief sub has ‘done the needful’. What he has actually done comes to light only the following morning. The chief sub is not a neutral conduit. He was angry that the apology was going to appear in the very space which the news editor had promised him for a personal favour. The daughter of a man to whom he owes much was the only girl from the city to be selected for an international student-exchange programme. He had promised the man that he would slip in a small news item about it somewhere on the front page with a tiny picture of the girl. He had to butter up the news editor to allow him to do this, and now that space was going to this damned apology. The news editor had asked him to push his little item to page five, still a good page. ‘That’s where it really belongs,’ he had said. ‘Tell your friend even that’s a big favour we’re doing him.’

It is not certain whether this complication or plain journalistic ineptness is responsible for what happens to the apology. But the apology does not appear the following day, not on the front page nor on any other page of the edition. Singh sahib goes over the front page four times. No apology. The owner will not be amused. Singh sahib steels himself for the inevitable. Meanwhile he mulls over the words in which he will ask the news editor what the f---ing hell ‘doing the needful’ means in his part of the country.

The MR Party goes berserk. Party workers burn thousands of copies of the paper in Chinchpokli. They stone M.F. Husain’s house as a matter of course. They descend on the Mumbai Observer office and go on the rampage. Television cameras are invited to record the action. The police are also invitees to the show. Video clips of the riot are run on TV channels as a loop from noon onwards. They show a couple of constables walking around the place swinging their batons. A couple of senior police officers are locked in a discussion, their faces confused. Their confusion is understandable. They are not at all sure what their role in this particular riot is. They are caught in a trap described exactly by the saying, ‘If you catch it, it bites; if you leave it, it runs away.’ Free India has never made it clear to the police whether they are supposed to serve the politicians or the people.

In the afternoon the chieftain of the MR Party calls the owner once again. ‘If you want us to halt the rioting, give us that apology on page one in tomorrow’s paper. But that’s not all. We now demand the dismissal of whoever was responsible for not carrying the apology today.’