On the balcony in the cold dawn, he watched the lightening of the sky and listened to the neighborhood muezzins. They had acquired competing loudspeakers, the mosques; one maulvi’s voice had a magical, haunting quality, the other squawked self-importantly. Behind them, like so many echoes, the sounds of prayer ebbed and flowed over the awakening city, the suprabathams from the temples and, when the sun strengthened, distant bells from the Catholic church. There was nothing left for him to do. He had fussed over the paperwork for a week. The demand drafts were ready and waiting in the safe. He went downstairs to fetch another cup of coffee and joined his father on the verandah, where the older man was working his way through a sudoku puzzle. “I am a little surprised,” said his father, on Anand’s appearance, for this had evidently been bothering him, “that he has still not come to visit me. Or invited me to their home. It is disrespectful, is it not?” Anand kept silent. He could not explain to his father why Harry Chinappa was maintaining an unusual distance from his daughter’s house.
