Rebbie-ji’s Hasidim had displaced our devadasis. They were circling ecstatically in the center of the courtyard, stamping their feet, crying out at the top of their voices in rhythmic song their longing for Nah-Nah-Nahman from Uman, rapturously extolling the great mitzvah of remaining perpetually in a blissed-out state. They succeeded in carrying on their wild dance unmolested far longer than anyone other than persons maddened with faith would have anticipated possible, while officials, in uniform and plain clothes, huddled all around trying to figure out if this was part of the program too, if this trancelike whirling was also something that the stupendously rich memsahib had paid for. It took a single cry from a voice in the crowd—Musalmans!—and everything became electrified, as if a fire had broken out in the theater and lit it up, unleashing the panic coiled up in wait just below the surface. For what else could these strange extreme creatures be spinning fanatically but another species of Muslim dervishes desecrating their Hindu place of worship yet again, attempting once again to blow up their gods and take over their temple mount? The gates to the Kali viewing area slammed shut. Loose objects began to fly—stones, shoes, coconuts, candles, animal entrails, balls of congealed blood mixed with incense and excrement from the goat pen, people were running frantically in every direction, some struggling to escape, others falling murderously upon each other, guards were swinging their lathis, there was screaming, crying, human and animal, I cast my eyes over the chaos searching for my devadasis, but could make nothing out in the masses writhing like worms under a canopy of white smoke.

The surging throng pushed me out of its path, to a corner near the opening to the chamber where the goats were sacrificed. Someone ran past me with Mahamaya under one arm, he was kidnapping her. Her legs were flailing, her arms fluttering, she was howling. He entered the sacrificial space, set the girl down between the two posts planted in the ground where the goats were positioned, and clamped her head in place. Laughing hideously, he raised a sword to bring it down in a single stroke on her outstretched neck—loosening everything inside me. I was spurting out vomit in great painful heaves. Emptied, hollowed—and then I must have passed out.

When I opened my eyes again in a strange white cell, I did not know how many hours or days or years later, Manika was sitting on her haunches against the wall opposite my bed, her chin propped on her knees, the end of her sari drawn forward over her head like a cowl. Geeta saved her, she said. Geeta came down from Delhi to take the child away to her exclusive orphanage.

I did not probe. She had contacted Geeta, she had sold her again.