She was right, of course; no sooner had he resolved to set his face towards the future than he started mooning around and regretting childhood's end. ‘I'm off to meet George and Bhupen, you remember,’ she said. ‘Why don't you come along? You need to start plugging into the town.’ George Miranda had just completed a documentary film about communalism, interviewing Hindus and Muslims of all shades of opinion. Fundamentalists of both religions had instantly sought injunctions banning the film from being shown, and, although the Bombay courts had rejected this request, the case had gone up to the Supreme Court. George, even more stubbly of chin, lank of hair and sprawling of stomach than Salahuddin remembered, drank rum in a Dhobi Talao boozer and thumped the table with pessimistic fists. ‘This is the Supreme Court of Shah Bano fame,’ he cried, referring to the notorious case in which, under pressure from Islamic extremists, the Court had ruled that alimony payments were contrary to the will of Allah, thus making India's laws even more reactionary than, for example, Pakistan's. ‘So I don't have much hope.’ He twisted, disconsolately, the waxy points of his moustache. His new girlfriend, a tall, thin Bengali woman with cropped hair that reminded Salahuddin a little of Mishal Sufyan, chose this moment to attack Bhupen Gandhi for having published a volume of poems about his visit to the ‘little temple town’ of Gagari in the Western Ghats. The poems had been criticized by the Hindu right; one eminent South Indian professor had announced that Bhupen had ‘forfeited his right to be called an Indian poet’, but in the opinion of the young woman, Swatilekha, Bhupen had been seduced by religion into a dangerous ambiguity. Grey hair flopping earnestly, moon-face shining, Bhupen defended himself. ‘I have said that the only crop of Gagari is the stone gods being quarried from the hills. I have spoken of herds of legends, with sacred cowbells tinkling, grazing on the hillsides. These are not ambiguous images.’ Swatilekha wasn't convinced. ‘These days,’ she insisted, ‘our positions must be stated with crystal clarity. All metaphors are capable of misinterpretation.’ She offered her theory. Society was orchestrated by what she called grand narratives: history, economics, ethics. In India, the development of a corrupt and closed state apparatus had ‘excluded the masses of the people from the ethical project’. As a result, they sought ethical satisfactions in the oldest of the grand narratives, that is, religious faith. ‘But these narratives are being manipulated by the theocracy and various political elements in an entirely retrogressive way.’ Bhupen said: ‘We can't deny the ubiquity of faith. If we write in such a way as to pre-judge such belief as in some way deluded or false, then are we not guilty of elitism, of imposing our world-view on the masses?’ Swatilekha was scornful. ‘Battle lines are being drawn up in India today,’ she cried. ‘Secular versus rational, the light versus the dark. Better you choose which side you are on.’

Bhupen got up, angrily, to go. Zeeny pacified him: ‘We can't afford schisms. There's planning to be done.’ He sat down again, and Swatilekha kissed him on the cheek. Tm sorry,’ she said. ‘Too much college education, George always says. In fact, I loved the poems. I was only arguing a case.’ Bhupen, mollified, pretended to punch her on the nose; the crisis passed.

They had met, Salahuddin now gathered, to discuss their part in a remarkable political demonstration: the formation of a human chain, stretching from the Gateway of India to the outermost northern suburbs of the city, in support of ‘national integration’. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) had recently organized just such a human chain in Kerala, with great success. ‘But,’ George Miranda argued, ‘here in Bombay it will be totally another matter. In Kerala the CP(M) is in power. Here, with these Shiv Sena bastards in control, we can expect every type of harassment, from police obstructionism to out-and-out assaults by mobs on segments of the chain – especially when it passes, as it will have to, through the Sena's fortresses, in Mazagaon, etc.’ In spite of these dangers, Zeeny explained to Salahuddin, such public demonstrations were essential. As communal violence escalated – and Meerut was only the latest in a long line of murderous incidents – it was imperative that the forces of disintegration weren't permitted to have things all their own way. ‘We must show that there are also counterforces at work.’ Salahuddin was somewhat bemused at the rapidity with which, once again, his life had begun to change. Me, taking part in a CP(M) event. Wonders will never cease; I really must be in love.

Once they had settled matters – how many friends each of them might manage to bring along, where to assemble, what to carry in the way of food, drink and first-aid equipment – they relaxed, drank down the cheap, dark rum, and chattered inconsequentially, and that was when Salahuddin heard, for the first time, the rumours about the odd behaviour of the film star Gibreel Farishta that had started circulating in the city, and felt his old life prick him like a hidden thorn; – heard the past, like a distant trumpet, ringing in his ears.

The Gibreel Farishta who returned to Bombay from London to pick up the threads of his film career was not, by general consensus, the old, irresistible Gibreel. ‘Guy seems hell-bent on a suicide course,’ George Miranda, who knew all the filmi gossip, declared. ‘Who knows why? They say because he was unlucky in love he's gone a little wild.’ Salahuddin kept his mouth shut, but felt his face heating up. Allie Cone had refused to have Gibreel back after the fires of Brickhall. In the matter of forgiveness, Salahuddin reflected, nobody had thought to consult the entirely innocent and greatly injured Alleluia; once again, we made her life peripheral to our own. No wonder she's still hopping mad. Gibreel had told Salahuddin, in a final and somewhat strained telephone call, that he was returning to Bombay ‘in the hope that I never have to see her, or you, or this damn cold city, again in what remains of my life’. And now here he was, by all accounts, shipwrecking himself again, and on home ground, too. ‘He's making some weird movies,’ George went on. ‘And this time he's had to put in his own cash. After the two flops, producers have been pulling out fast. So if this one goes down, he's broke, done for, funtoosh.’ Gibreel had embarked on a modern-dress remake of the Ramayana story in which the heroes and heroines had become corrupt and evil instead of pure and free from sin. Here was a lecherous, drunken Rama and a flighty Sita; while Ravana, the demon-king, was depicted as an upright and honest man. ‘Gibreel is playing Ravana,’ George explained in fascinated horror. ‘Looks like he's trying deliberately to set up a final confrontation with religious sectarians, knowing he can't win, that he'll be broken into bits,’ Several members of the cast had already walked off the production, and given lurid interviews accusing Gibreel of ‘blasphemy’, ‘satanism’ and other misdemeanours. His most recent mistress, Pimple Billimoria, was seen on the cover of Ciné-Blitz, saying: ‘It was like kissing the Devil.’ Gibreel's old problem of sulphurous halitosis had evidently returned with a vengeance.

His erratic behaviour had been causing tongues to wag even more than his choice of subjects to film. ‘Some days he's sweetness and light,’ George said. ‘On others, he conies to work like lord god almighty and actually insists that people get down and kneel. Personally I don't believe the film will be finished unless and until he sorts out his mental health which, I genuinely feel, is affected. First the illness, then the plane crash, then the unhappy love affair: you can understand the guy's problems.’ And there were worse rumours: his tax affairs were under investigation; police officers had visited him to ask questions about the death of Rekha Merchant, and Rekha's husband, the ball-bearings king, had threatened to ‘break every bone in the bastard's body’, so that for a few days Gibreel had to be accompanied by bodyguards when he used the Everest Vilas lifts; and worst of all were the suggestions of his nocturnal visits to the city's red-light district where, it was hinted, he had frequented certain Foras Road establishments until the dadas threw him out because the women were getting hurt. ‘They say some of them were very badly damaged,’ George said. ‘That big hush-money had to be paid. I don't know. People say any damn thing. That Pimple of course jumped right on the bandwagon. The Man that Hates Women. She's making herself a femme fatale star out of all this. But there is something badly wrong with Farishta. You know the fellow, I hear,’ George finished, looking at Salahuddin; who blushed.