Reference to the police awakened the old man from his absent-minded listening. ‘So the police have come after all. I must go and see what they are doing. They must be at the moneylender’s house. He was murdered last night, just across from the gurudwara. The dacoits took a lot of cash and they say over five thousand rupees in silver and gold ornaments from his women.’

Meet Singh realized the interest he had created and slowly got up, repeating, ‘I should be going. All the village will be there. They will be taking the corpse for medical examination. If a man is killed he cannot be cremated till the doctor certifies him dead.’ The old man gave a wry smile.

‘A murder! Why, why was he murdered?’ stammered Iqbal, somewhat bewildered. He was surprised that Meet Singh had not mentioned the murder of a next-door neighbour all this time. ‘Was it communal? Is it all right for me to be here? I do not suppose I can do much if the village is all excited about a murder.’

‘Why, Babu Sahib, you have come to stop killing and you are upset by one murder?’ asked Meet Singh, smiling. ‘I thought you had come to stop such things, Babu Sahib. But you are quite safe in Mano Majra,’ he added. ‘Dacoits do not come to the same village more than once a year. There will be another dacoity in another village in a few days and people will forget about this one. We can have a meeting here one night after the evening prayer and you can tell them all you want. You had better rest. I will come back and tell you what happens.’

The old man hobbled out of the courtyard. Iqbal collected the empty tin, his knife and fork and tin plate, and took them to the well to wash.

In the afternoon, Iqbal stretched himself on the coarse string charpoy and tried to get some sleep. He had spent the night sitting on his bedroll in a crowded third-class compartment. Every time he had dozed off, the train had come to a halt at some wayside station and the door was forced open and more peasants poured in with their wives, bedding and tin trunks. Some child sleeping in its mother’s lap would start howling till its wails were smothered by a breast thrust into its mouth. The shouting and clamour would continue until long after the train had left the station. The same thing was repeated again and again, till the compartment meant for fifty had almost two hundred people in it, sitting on the floor, on seats, on luggage racks, on trunks, on bedrolls, and on each other, or standing in the corners. There were dozens outside perched precariously on footboards, holding onto the door handles. There were several people on the roof. The heat and smell were oppressive. Tempers were frayed and every few minutes an argument would start because someone had spread himself out too much or had trod on another’s foot on his way to the lavatory. The argument would be joined on either side by friends or relatives and then by all the others trying to patch it up. Iqbal had tried to read in the dim light speckled with shadows of moths that fluttered round the globe. He had hardly read a paragraph before his neighbour had observed: