‘Didn’t you kill Ram Lal?’

Jugga stopped pressing. He caught his ears with his hands and stuck out his tongue. ‘Toba, toba! Kill my own village bania? Babuji, who kills a hen which lays eggs? Besides, Ram Lal gave me money to pay lawyers when my father was in jail. I would not act like a bastard.’

‘I suppose they will let you off now.’

‘The police are the kings of the country. They will let me off when they feel like it. If they want to keep me in, they will trump up a case of keeping a spear without a license or going out of the village without permission—or just anything.’

‘But you were out of the village that night. Weren’t you?’

Jugga sat down on his haunches, took Iqbal’s feet in his lap, and started massaging his soles.

‘I was out of the village,’ he answered with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, ‘but I was not murdering anyone. I was being murdered.’

Iqbal knew the expression. He did not want to encourage Jugga to make further disclosure. But once the subject had been suggested, there was no keeping Jugga back. He began to press Iqbal’s feet with greater fervour.

‘You have been in Europe many years?’ asked Jugga lowering his voice.

‘Yes, many,’ answered Iqbal, vainly trying to evade the inevitable.

‘Then, Babuji,’ asked Jugga lowering his voice further, ‘you must have slept with many mem-sahibs. Yes?’

Iqbal felt irritated. It was not possible to keep Indians off the subject of sex for long. It obsessed their minds. It came out in their art, literature and religion. One saw it on the hoardings in the cities advertising aphrodisiacs and curatives for ill effects of masturbation. One saw it in the law courts and market places, where hawkers did a thriving trade selling oil made of the skin of sand lizards to put life into tired groins and increase the size of the phallus. One read it in the advertisements of quacks who claimed to possess remedies for barrenness and medicines to induce wombs to yield male children. One heard about it all the time. No people used incestuous abuse quite as casually as did the Indians. Terms like sala, wife’s brother (‘I would like to sleep with your sister’), and susra, father-in-law (‘I would like to sleep with your daughter’) were as often terms of affection for one’s friends and relatives as expressions of anger to insult one’s enemies. Conversation on any topic—politics, philosophy, sport—soon came down to sex, which everyone enjoyed with a lot of giggling and hand-slapping.

‘Yes, I have,’ Iqbal said, casually. ‘With many.’

‘Wah, wah,’ exclaimed Jugga with enthusiasm and vigorous pressing of Iqbal’s feet. ‘Wah, Babuji—great. You must have had lots of fun. The memsahibs are like houris from paradise—white and soft, like silk. All we have here are black buffaloes.’

‘There is no difference between women. As a matter of fact, white women are not very exciting. Are you married?’