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By Root 20333 0

—just as he, who had fought with Mian Abdullah against Pakistan, no longer argued with her when she praised the country, retaining just enough strength to dig in his heels and refuse to emigrate; but Ahmed Sinai, revived by his mother-in-law’s cookery, but resentful of her continued presence, got to his feet and accompanied his wife. They took their seats, next to Hanif and Pia and the male star of the film, one of India’s most successful “lover-boys,” I. S. Nayyar. And, although they didn’t know it, a serpent waited in the wings … but in the meanwhile, let us permit Hanif Aziz to have his moment; because The Lovers of Kashmir contained a notion which was to provide my uncle with a spectacular, though brief, period of triumph. In those days it was not permitted for lover-boys and their leading ladies to touch one another on screen, for fear that their osculations might corrupt the nation’s youth … but thirty-three minutes after the beginning of The Lovers, the première audience began to give off a low buzz of shock, because Pia and Nayyar had begun to kiss—not one another—but things.

Pia kissed an apple, sensuously, with all the rich fullness of her painted lips; then passed it to Nayyar; who planted, upon its opposite face, a virilely passionate mouth. This was the birth of what came to be known as the indirect kiss—and how much more sophisticated a notion it was than anything in our current cinema; how pregnant with longing and eroticism! The cinema audience (which would, nowadays, cheer raucously at the sight of a young couple diving behind a bush, which would then begin to shake ridiculously—so low have we sunk in our ability to suggest) watched, riveted to the screen, as the love of Pia and Nayyar, against a background of Dal Lake and ice-blue Kashmiri sky, expressed itself in kisses applied to cups of pink Kashmiri tea; by the foundations of Shalimar they pressed their lips to a sword … but now, at the height of Hanif Aziz’s triumph, the serpent refused to wait; under its influence, the house-lights came up. Against the larger-than-life figures of Pia and Nayyar, kissing mangoes as they mouthed to playback music, the figure of a timorous, inadequately bearded man was seen, marching on to the stage beneath the screen, microphone in hand. The Serpent can take most unexpected forms; now, in the guise of this ineffectual house-manager, it unleashed its venom. Pia and Nayyar faded and died; and the amplified voice of the bearded man said: “Ladies and gents, your pardon; but there is terrible news.” His voice broke—a sob from the Serpent, to lend power to its teeth!—and then continued. “This afternoon, at Birla House in Delhi, our beloved Mahatma was killed. Some madman shot him in the stomach, ladies and gentlemen—our Bapu is gone!”

The audience had begun to scream before he finished; the poison of his words entered their veins—there were grown men rolling in the aisles clutching their bellies, not laughing but crying, Hai Ram! Hai Ram!—and women tearing their hair: the city’s finest coiffures tumbling around the ears of the poisoned ladies—there were film-stars yelling like fishwives and something terrible to smell in the air—and Hanif whispered, “Get out of here, big sister—if a Muslim did this thing there will be hell to pay.”

For every ladder, there is a snake … and for forty-eight hours after the abortive end of The Lovers of Kashmir, our family remained within the walls of Buckingham Villa (“Put furniture against the doors, whatsitsname!” Reverend Mother ordered. “If there are Hindu servants, let them go home!”); and Amina did not dare to visit the racetrack.

But for every snake, there is a ladder: and finally the radio gave us a name. Nathuram Godse. “Thank God,” Amina burst out, “it’s not a Muslim name!”

And Aadam, upon whom the news of Gandhi’s death had placed a new burden of age: “This Godse is nothing to be grateful for!”

Amina, however, was full of the light-headedness of relief, she was rushing dizzily up the long ladder of relief … “Why not, after all? By being Godse he has saved our lives!”

Ahmed Sinai, after rising from his supposed sickbed, continued to behave like an invalid. In a voice like cloudy glass he told Amina,