Salman Rushdie Midnight's children Salman Rushdie Midnight's ...

WHY DOES YOUR WIFE GO TO COLABA
CAUSEWAY ON SUNDAY MORNING?
No, I am no longer proud of what I did; but remember that my demon of reve
nge had two heads. By unmasking the perfidy of Lila Sabarmati, I hoped als
o to administer a salutary shock to my own mother. Two birds with one ston
e; there were to be two punished women, one impaled on each fang of my for
ked snake's tongue. It is not untrue to say that what came to be known as
the Sabarmati affair had its real beginnings at a dingy cafe in the north
of the city, when a stowaway watched a ballet of circling hands.
I was secret; I struck from the cover of a bush. What drove me? Hands at th
e Pioneer Cafe; wrong number telephone calls; notes slipped to me on balcon
ies, and passed under cover of bedsheets; my mother's hypocrisy and Pia's i
nconsolable grief: 'Hai! Ai hai! Ai hai hai!'… Mine was a slow poison; but
three weeks later, it had its effect.
It emerged, afterwards, that after receiving my anonymous note Commander S
abarmati had engaged the services of the illustrious Dom Minto, Bombay's b
est known private detective. (Minto, old and almost lame, had lowered his
rates by then.) He waited until he received Minto's report. And then:
That Sunday morning, six children sat in a row at the Metro Cub Club, watc
hing Francis The Talking Mule And The Haunted House. You see, I had my ali
bi; I was nowhere near the scene of the crime. Like Sin, the crescent moon
, I acted from a distance upon the tides of the world … while a mule talke
d on a screen, Commander Sabarmati visited the naval arsenal. He signed ou
t a good, long nosed revolver; also ammunition. He held, in his left hand,
a piece of paper on which an address had been written in a private detect
ive's tidy hand; in his right hand, he grasped the un holstered gun. By ta
xi, the Commander arrived at Colaba Causeway. He paid off the cab, walked
gun in hand down a narrow gully past shirt stalls and toyshops, and ascend
ed the staircase of an apartment block set back from the gully at the rear
of a concrete courtyard. He rang the doorbell of apartment 18c; it was he
ard in 18b by an Anglo Indian teacher giving private Latin tuition. When C
ommander Sabarmati's wife Lila answered the door, he shot her twice in the
stomach at point blank range. She fell backwards; he marched past her, an
d found Mr Homi Catrack rising from the toilet, his bottom unwiped, pullin
g frantically at his trousers. Commander Vinoo Sabarmati shot him once in
the genitals, once in the heart and once through the right eye. The gun wa
s not silenced; but when it had finished speaking, there was an enormous s
ilence in the apartment. Mr Catrack sat down on the toilet after he was sh
ot and seemed to be smiling.
Commander Sabarmati walked out of the apartment block with the smoking gun
in his hand (he was seen, through the crack of a door, by a terrified Lat
in tutor); he strolled along Colaba Causeway until he saw a traffic police