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camera.
    “What does she do all day?”
    “She takes Mem-saab’s car and driver shopping. She likes to shop. I helped her unpack, and even her handbags and high-heeled shoes have saab-sounding names: Kochar, Fear-raga-mo, Hurmeez. Mem-saab gives Zahir Sheikh money for petrol and tells him to treat Kiran with respect, though after so many years of marriage Kiran still hasno sons.” Mem-saab even admonished Damini, though gently, when Kiran squealed that Damini broke the plastic half-circles in her brassieres when she washed them.
    “They must be meeting Mem-saab at chai-time?”
    “They are too busy to sit with Mem-saab and talk.” Amanjit is not too busy to sit in his room with a newly installed air conditioner and talk on the phone to Bombay. He’s not too busy to pay a Chinese yogi to tell him where to position his bed for maximum energy flow, or a Hindu jyotshi to draw up a horoscope for a new business. And he’s never too busy to entertain, buying whisky by the case on his mother’s account at Malcha Marg market. Bills come, but Mem-saab doesn’t give them to Aman. She takes a taxi to Punjab National Bank for money to pay them.
    Sometimes after dinner, Amanjit orders Khansama to bring Mem-saab’s best crystal and he and Kiran put their feet up on Mem-saab’s polished teak tables and her sofas. Sometimes he and Kiran sit in Mem-saab’s drawing-room with their raucous pink friends—he calls them “buyers”—long after decent people go to bed. They spend money on electricity the way rajas and ranis once did, keeping the air conditioner running all day and all night. Once he persuaded a buyer to stay two hours longer just because Kiran gave a bad luck sneeze as the man rose to leave.
    “Mem-saab doesn’t use the drawing-room unless they are out. She watches for their arrivals and departures. Whenever Aman-ji is home, they argue.”
    “What about?”
    Damini sighs. Mem-saab wouldn’t want her to tell anyone but it angered her so …
    “Yesterday Aman-ji said she hadn’t done anything useful her whole life. She said she brought him into the world, that she was a wife and mother and gave him love. But he said now that he’s in the world, he needs to live and she should give him the rent money.”
    “If he wants it, how can she stop him?”
    “I will stop him.”
    “You? Ha! So what does Mem-saab do all day?”
    “She watches TV and I tell her the story, the lines, and the songs. Today I sang ‘Chal, chal, chal mere haathi, o mere saathi …’ ” She claps, urging him to join.
    He sits silent, glowering.
    “You always loved this song,” she protests. “You used to play the elephant, remember?”
    “It reminds me of the new party for sweepers. The elephant is their symbol. Splitting the Hindu vote so that Muslims can take control of India.”
    “Suresh, what are you saying? An elephant is also Lord Ganesh, and Lord Ganesh is Brahma, Vishnu and Shiv together … come sing, sing!” Damini rises, covers her head with her dupatta, half-veiling her face. She steps in and out of an imaginary circle singing, “Chal le chal ghatara kheechke …” The song lifts her spirit and eventually lightens his expression of discontent.
    When she gives him her usual gift, he says, “I should be looking after you. If I still had my father’s land, I would be giving you money.”
    “Don’t worry, beta. More will come.” It’s a line from the movie of another woman’s life—Damini once heard a saab-woman say it on TV. But no god is manufacturing any more land for people in India. Besides, if Suresh still farmed Piara Singh’s land, it would be mortgaged for Leela’s dowry.
    It’s better this way
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    When Suresh is gone, Damini returns upstairs to find Mem-saab sitting before martyr’s pictures: of Guru Tegh Bahadur, the guru executed by that mad Mughal emperor Aurangzeb for defending the right of all Hindus to worship, and of Baba Deep Singh, who carries his severed head aloft in defiance as his