When they were out in the corridor again, Gautam said to Khusroo, “You think they take drugs?” Khusroo snorted: “Those chaps? I doubt it, my dear fellow. They’re not even sixteen.” The music followed them out into the corridor and took on an independent, if less coherent, life there. “Jim Morrison was a tripper,” he said warmly. “But no one knows what happened to him.” They walked past the small quad, where NCC cadets marched to “daine baye daine baye,” on Fridays. On the wall at that end, which separated the school from the Gyan Sadhana College of Science and Commerce, founded by B. R. Ambedkar for the “scheduled castes,” a black-and-white cat, poised in profile, had actually paused to turn its face towards the noise in the corridor before it jumped down lightly into the abyss on the other side. Two crows hopping on the even black ground of the quad had been taken aback by the noise that seemed unrelated to the usual belligerence of hockey sticks and rubber balls in the area; unable to locate its source, they darted around together, shooting quick, investigative glances in the wrong direction, not yet ready to fly off. Urchin boys in khaki shorts and shirts with one or two buttons left were standing by the main gate of the school, grinning, but not daring to come in. The music had reached here, softer but still clear, joyous, contrasting with the tiny everyday sounds of the hospital, the college, and the rest of the lane. The two began to go up the stairs, stomping recklessly and making as much noise as they pleased, passing a room next to the vice principal’s office where question papers for a terminal exam were being unhurriedly cyclostyled. As they went past, they saw one of the hamaals, Fernandes, no longer in his khaki uniform but wearing grey trousers and a terylene shirt, sitting on a stool, his hand cupped round a beedi, smoke issuing from his nostrils. There were no teachers around—only the vice principal, Mr. Pascal, lived upstairs in a flat no one had ever seen, with his wife and children, who too were unknown figures. Yet it was said that Mr. Pascal sometimes descended the stairs at six o’clock with a rifle in his hand, strode to the centre of the empty quad where, during the day, they played basketball, and shot at the pigeons decreed to be a nuisance in school.