‘You have to drink it here, there’s a deposit.’

So they leaned their backs against the tin bar and watched the city pass and drank their Limkas from the bottle which would have had Kyle’s mom screaming germs bacteria viruses infections and felt like two very very proper gentlemen. In a moment’s lull in the street racket Kyle heard his palmer call. He hauled it out of his pants pocket, a little ashamed because everyone had a newer better brighter cleverer smaller one than him, and saw, as if she knew what dirty thing he had done, it was his mom calling. He stared at the number, the jingly tune, the little smiley animation. Then he thumbed the off button and sent them all to darkness.

‘Come on.’ He banged his empty bottle down on the counter. ‘Let’s see this river then.’

In twenty steps, he was there, so suddenly, so huge and bright Kyle forgot to breathe. The narrow alley, the throng of people opened up into painful light, light in the polluted yellow sky light from the tiers of marble steps that descended to the river and light from the river itself, wider and more dazzling than he had ever imagined, white as a river of milk. And people: the world could not hold so many people, crowding down the steps to the river in their coloured clothes and coloured shoes, jammed together under the tilted wicker umbrellas to talk and deal and pray, people in the river itself, waist deep in the water, holding up handfuls of the water and the water glittering as it fell through their fingers, praying, washing - washing themselves, washing their clothes, washing their children and their sins. Then the boats: the big hydrofoil seeking its way to dock through the little darting rowboats, the pilgrim boats making the crossing from Ramnagar, rowers standing on their sterns pushing at their oars, the tourist boats with their canopies, the kids in inflated tractor tyres paddling around scavenging for river-scraps, down to the bobbing saucers of butter-light woven from mango leaves that the people set adrift on the flow. Vision by vision the Ganga revealed itself to Kyle: next he became aware of the buildings; the guesthouses and hotels and havelis shouldering up to the steps, the ridiculous pink water towers, the many domes of the mosque and the golden spires of the temples and little temple down at the river leaning into the silt; the arcades and jetties and galleries and across the river, beyond the yellow sand and the black, ragged tents of the holy men, the chimneys and tanks and pipes of the chemical and oil plants, all flying the green white and orange wheel-banners of Bharat.

‘Oh,’ Kyle said. ‘Oh man.’ And: ‘Cool.’

Salim was already halfway down the steps.

‘Come on.’

‘Is it all right? Am I allowed?’

‘Everyone is allowed. Come on, let’s get a boat.’