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however, it was as hot as in the room below. The moon was pale and mildew-like, just a lifeless smudge against the night. Not one of the streetlights worked, and they wouldn’t work, everyone knew, until the next local election. Then there would be a flurry of excitement, with five – and ten-point plans for the improvement of electricity supplies, and enough modern technology, they always promised, to send Shahkot and its residents bounding into the twenty-first century. Sampath walked up and down, the pale glow of his white pyjama kurta the only moving thing in this night so still, it seemed to be moulding itself perfectly against his body, so he knew it would be impossible to shake off; that there it would be, clinging to him even if he jumped or beat around him with a stick.
    Up and down, back and forth. He walked to calm himself, as you would walk with a baby who cries and cries and cannot sleep. Above, there weren’t any stars, only the lights now and then of planes, flying on their way to who knows where. To Calcutta? Madras? Madurai? To England or America? It was a terrible thing to be awake while some people flew, carrying the world over his head, and others slept, claiming it from under his feet. He was grateful, though, for the feel, rough and sandy, of the bricks beneath him, the uneven surfaces and the thin-ridged crisscross of lines. For the cool smoothness, now and then, of a fallenleaf. He picked them up one by one and held them against his lips to imitate the dull brrrrrr of a cricket; rolled them against his cheek and in his hot, sticky fingers, until they too became damp and warm. He sampled some ginger pickle from a jar set out to mature on the roof along with a whole row of mango, lime and pumpkin pickle jars. As the night wore on, he sampled a bit from every jar so as to decide on which kind, if any, he liked best. And by and by, between mouthfuls, without even knowing it, he started to sing: ‘Sooner or later,’ he sang softly, ‘there will come a magic hour, when I spot a princess from the kingdom of Cooch Behar.’
    A passing car sent its searchlight-glare crazy and liquid over the sides of the buildings and into the trees, revealing not the colours, the daylight solidity of things, but a world of dark gaps cut from an empty skin of light.
    ‘When my mouth I’ll open, I’ll think of nothing to say, and this lady so fine and beautiful will continue on her way. Goodbye, my princess of Cooch Behar, may we meet again –’
    The sound of his small voice, so bravely singing, cheered him up a little.
    By the time the night watchman cycled past on his way home from the wealthy neighbourhood where he worked, Sampath was shaky on his feet from lack of sleep. Phee … pheee … phee – the watchman blew his whistle as if in a nasty attempt to awaken all those who might still be sleeping.
    Sampath watched as the shadows retreated, as Shahkot was offered up once again, whole and intact, with its overflowing rubbish heaps and its maze of streets. Bit by bit he saw the jumble of wires spilling out at the top of the electricity pole and the dirty, stained walls of the houses thatrose high all about him, with their complications of rooftops and verandas; their clutter of television aerials, washing lines and courtyards filled with bicycles and raggedy plants and all the paraphernalia of loud and large families. The municipal water supply was turned on. From every kitchen and bathroom in Shahkot there was the sound of water pumps, thin streams of water dribbling into the first in a long line of buckets and pots and pans waiting to be filled. Sampath’s father appeared down below with his yoga mat. Women emerged from different houses, converging in their walk to the Mother Dairy booth, and the priests in the temple at the end of the road launched into song, their voices richer and stronger than Sampath’s, their hymns rising, undulating, soaring over the rooftops.
    Sampath wondered if the cloudiness in his