Meet Singh shut the prayer book and again put it to his forehead. He begun to mumble the epilogue to the morning prayer:

Air, water and earth,

Of these are we made,

Air like the Guru’s word gives the breath of life

To the babe born of the great mother Earth

Sired by the waters.

His voice tapered off to an inaudible whisper. Juggut Singh put back the fly whisk and rubbed his forehead on the ground in front of the scripture.

‘Is that good?’ he asked naïvely.

‘All the Guru’s word is good,’ answered Meet Singh solemnly

‘What does it mean?’

‘What have you to do with meaning? It is just the Guru’s word. If you are going to do something good, the Guru will help you; if you are going to do something bad, the Guru will stand in your way. If you persist in doing it, he will punish you till you repent, and then forgive you.’

‘Yes, what will I do with the meaning? All right, Bhaiji. Sat Sri Akal.’

‘Sat Sri Akal.’

Jugga rubbed his forehead on the ground again and got up. He threaded his way through the sleeping assembly and picked up his shoes. There was a light in one of the rooms. Jugga looked in. He recognized the head with tousled hair on the pillow. Iqbal was sleeping with the silver hip flask lying on his chest.

‘Sat Sri Akal, Babuji.’ he said softly. There was no reply. ‘Are you asleep?’

‘Do not disturb him,’ interrupted Meet Singh in a whisper. ‘He is not feeling well. He has been taking medicine to sleep.’

‘Achha, Bhaiji, you say Sat Sri Akal to him for me.’ Juggut Singh went out of the gurudwara.

‘No fool like an old fool.’ The sentence kept recurring in Hukum Chand’s mind. He tried to dismiss it, but it came back again and again: ‘No fool like an old fool.’ It was bad enough for a married man in his fifties to go picking up women. To get emotionally involved with a girl young enough to be his daughter and a Muslim prostitute at that! That was too ludicrous. He must be losing his grip on things. He was getting senile and stupid.

The feeling of elation which his plan had given him in the morning was gone. Instead there was one of anxiety, uncertainty and old age. He had released the budmash and the social worker without knowing much about them. They probably had no more nerve than he. Some of the leftist social workers were known to be a daring lot. This one, however, was an intellectual, the sort people contemptuously describe as the armchair variety. He would probably do nothing except criticize others for failing to do their duty. The budmash was a notorious daredevil. He had been in train robberies, car holdups, dacoities and murders. It was money he was after, or revenge. The only chance of his doing anything was to settle scores with Malli. If Malli had fled when he heard of Jugga’s arrival, Jugga would lose interest and might even join the gang in killing and looting the victims of the ambush. His type never risked their necks for women. If Nooran was killed, he would pick up another girl.