‘I must tell you what happened today. My God! I nearly died of shame.’ Champak always added ‘my God’ or ‘by God’ whenever she wanted to emphasize something. She also had the habit of turning the conversation to herself. It was either some compliment paid to her, a pass made at her in the street, or someone looking at her lecherously. It invariably ended the same way, ‘my God,’ or, ‘by God,’ the embarrassment had nearly killed her. Her husband paid little attention to these anecdotes, and that evening he had matters of greater importance on his mind so he barely heard what she had to say.

‘You should not have stayed alone in the house all day; you should have come to the fair. What a turnout at my meeting! First we had a march-past of the Student Volunteer Corps. No one had seen such smartness from civilians before. The S.V.C. has come to mean something. Then I addressed the meeting. There was absolute pin-drop silence.’ ‘Pin-drop silence,’ was a favourite among his repertoire of clichés. ‘Packed to capacity’, ‘sacrifice our all’, ‘eschew all differences’ were some of the others which figured frequently.

‘Achha! Wonderful!’ she responded enthusiastically. ‘You will become a minister in the Government one day and we will have a flag on the top of our house; we will have an official car and peons in uniform. Then we can dismiss this useless Mundoo of yours. Really you’ve no idea what he is like?’

‘Oh, yes, I have,’ interrupted Sher Singh impatiently. ‘He is just a poor, underpaid boy. The condition of domestic servants is one of the most pressing problems of urban society. We work them twenty-four hours of the day, underpay, underfeed, and underclothe them. Their living quarters are filthy. They are abused and beaten at will. They are dismissed without notice after a disgraceful search of their belongings. It is scandalous. It must stop. I will stop it.’ Sher Singh found it hard to switch from oratory to multitudes to talking to individuals.

‘I am sure you will. But this Mundoo . . . really.’

‘What’s wrong with him? He’s no different from other servants. The trouble is we never can see our own faults. Whenever I have difficulty with people, I put myself in their shoes and see their point of view. It is a very good principle.’

Sher Singh and his wife were too full of themselves to listen to each other’s tales. They both abandoned the attempt.

It was hot. The ceiling fan only churned the air inside the room. Other members of the family slept on the roof in the cool of the moonlight. Even Dyer, who never left his master’s side when he was at home, refused to be in the room at night. Sher Singh had to suffer because of his wife. He looked at his watch. ‘It’s after eleven. I didn’t realize it was so late. I’ve had such a tiring day.’ He put up his arms and yawned.