Sai Baba (p. 56): Sathya Sai Baba (born Sathya Narayana Raju; 1926–2011) was an Indian guru, cult leader, and philanthropist. His purported materializations of vibhuti (holy ash) and small objects such as rings, necklaces, and watches, along with reports of miraculous healings, resurrections, clairvoyance, and bilocation, and were a source of both fame and controversy. His acts were based on sleight of hand though his devotees considered them signs of his divinity.

Thakurpo (p. 58): Affectionate moniker for the son (“pola,” “son,” shortened to “po”) of one’s husband’s older brother (“Thakur” or “god”).

As strong as Balaram (p. 59): The elder brother of Krishna. Etymologically, Balarama derives from the Sanskrit words bala (meaning “strength”) and Rama (a name of a god). The stories associated with him emphasize his love of wine and his enormous strength.

Washing powder Nirma (p. 76): A brand of low-priced detergent launched in 1969, which emerged as the competitor to Surf. Its advertising jingle, proclaiming it washed white clothes as white as milk and made colored clothes shine and sparkle, played continually on television and before the movies in theaters, was so popular that it remained unchanged for more than thirty years.

Stoneman (p. 77): “He strikes only when Calcutta sleeps. His victims are street people, Calcutta’s helpless beggars, lunatics and rickshaw pullers who share their muddy concrete beds with the city’s rats, garbage and disease. And his is the perfect murder weapon in a crumbling city of broken streets—an anonymous, 50-pound concrete slab that is always taken from near his sleeping victims. He has killed seven people in the past three months, crushing their skulls with a single blow … They call him, simply, the Stoneman.”—Mark Fineman, “A Calcutta Murderer Slinks from Depths of Depravity,” Los Angeles Times (October 9, 1989).

Gopal Bhaar (p. 80): “Jester and sometimes barber to Raja Krishnachandra of Krishnanagar in eighteenth-century Bengal. The raja, in owing allegiance both to his Hindu subjects and to the imperial Muslim nabob of Murshidabad, is continually faced with conflicts of obligation. He has the responsibility of keeping the peace, of reconciling the internal needs of the people of Krishnanagar with the external demands of the nabob. It is Gopal, the clown and trickster, who through his comic wit and playfulness inevitably enables the raja to perform this function.”—Lee Siegel, Laughing Matters: Comic Tradition in India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).

Harshad Mehta (p. 82): A financier (1954–2001), the prime architect of a bank securities scam, estimated to have involved fifty billion rupees, that shook the subcontinent’s banking system in 1992. Mehta was jailed that year.

Chandernagore (p. 84): Established as a French colony in 1673, when the French obtained permission to establish a trading post on the right bank of the Hooghly River, and was, for a time, the main center for European commerce in Bengal.

Saha-da–Swapan case (p. 100): Satyajit Ray’s cremation on April 24, 1992, was overshadowed by controversy after local goon Smashan [“Crematorium”] Swapan addressed Police Commissioner B. K. Saha as Saha-da [informally, as a brother]. The proof of proximity with the goon cost Saha his chair.