‘I saved it all up and bought it. Remember, I said? It’s new, no one else has one. All that gear, that’s old, you can do everything with this, just in your head, in the pictures and words in your head.’ He gave a stoned grin and moved his hands in a dancer’s mudra. ‘There.’

‘What?’

‘You’ll see.’

The hummer was easy to drive: the in-car aeai had a flocking reflex that enabled it to navigate Varanasi’s ever-swelling morning traffic, leaving little for Sanjeev to do other than blare the triple horns, which he enjoyed a lot. Somewhere he knew he should be afraid, should feel guilty at stealing away in the night without word or note, should say stop, whatever it is you are doing, it can come to nothing, it’s just silliness, the war is over and we must think properly about what to do next. But the brass sun was rising above the glass towers and spilling into the streets and men in sharp white shirts and women in smart saris were going busy to their work, and he was free, driving a big smug car through them all and it was so good, even if just for a day.

He took the new bridge at Ramnagar, hooting in derision at the gaudy, lumbering trucks. The drivers blared back, shouting vile curses at the girli-looking robotwallahs. Off A roads on to B roads, then to tracks and then bare dirt, the dust flying up behind the hummer’s fat wheels. Rai itched in the passenger seat, grinning away to himself and moving his hands like butterflies, muttering small words and occasionally leaning out of the window. His gelled hair was stiff with dust.

‘What are you looking for?’ Sanjeev demanded.

‘It’s coming,’ Rai said, bouncing on his seat. ‘Then we can go and do whatever we like.’