Muslims in Mumbai: they had become real to me on my last night in Bangalore. I was sitting in an auto-rickshaw with Sai and Khan and was going, after eating my first dosa in a crowded street, to have a special kind of chai at a place called the Makkah Cafe
“And how does it feel?” said Mr Singh, the short, plump man who had shown me into my room at the hotel. I said, “It’s a lot like Lahore.” But that was only partly true. The way the leaves of trees hung above the roads of Delhi, obscuring the sky, and the meringue-like buildings on Connaught Place — these were like bits of Lahore. But there had also been temples on the way from the airport, and signboards that gave the names of streets in three different scripts. A woman was standing at the hotel entrance in a blue-and-red uniform, which was like the uniform worn by Lahore’s recently inducted female traffic wardens, but most of them had been quickly chased away by whistling car-drivers. Continue reading »
