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outer reception area before finally being admitted, as a special favor to an old friend. Sunil sat behind his desk and looked at the watch on his hairy wrist and said, “Ten minutes, Farid.” Although he was without charm or contacts or aesthetic sensibility, Sunil had become rich from the very handlooms and handicrafts that had broken Farid’s back and spirit. When they had all been students together in Delhi, Farid and Farida had laughed at Sunil, who was ridiculously in love with Farida. At that time, when Farid was slim and beautiful, Sunil was fat and ungainly. He hadn’t changed, but now he had the best tailors and shirtmakers to help him, and he exuded confidence and eau de cologne. Farid still addressed him in the condescending tone that he and Farida had always used toward him. Sunil was too busy to notice. He got rid of Farid within thescheduled ten minutes, though not without handing over the check to cover the air fare to India and expenses. Sunil had also heard about Farida, but he didn’t laugh at the news. As was his habit, he would wait and see.

    When Farid found her, Farida really was sitting under a tree. She was in a pure white sari, and she looked the way she always did: supremely elegant. Trust her, Farid thought bitterly. Apart from her astonishing situation, she really was the same Farida—God knew how she did it. She was now in her fifties, but sitting there in the lotus position she looked as slim, lithe, and upright as ever. Her hair—dyed, no doubt—was black; her skin was clear and shone with a radiance that could only be the result of the best cosmetics, applied, he knew, with consummate skill. She was surrounded by four or five handmaidens, as exquisitely draped in orange as she was in white, and pilgrims came and went, touching her feet in reverence. She sat on the deerskin traditional to holy people, and someone stood behind her waving a fly whisk. If a fly happened to land on her, Farida waited for it to be flicked off. Her hands were folded in her lap, and she fingered a string of prayer beads in the same way, it occurred to Farid, that she had once fingered her pieces of jewelry, before they were sold off, one by one, to cover her expenses in London.
    Farid regarded the scene from a distance. The tree—a huge banyan—spread its foliage over Farida and her handmaidens, but the people lining up to see her had to stand outside in the sun until it was their turn to be admitted into the shade of the tree. Farid watched her as she dealt with the pilgrims. To some she spoke at length, while others she only lightly touched as they bowed down to her; a few favored ones were handed some holy talisman by a handmaiden. But everyone appeared to come away fully satisfied, for Farida radiated blessing. Farid couldn’t help admiring her; he had often told her that she would have made a first-rate actress. At last he approached the tree and lined up with the other pilgrims. When it was his turn to be led up to her, he didn’t bow, like the others, but stood and looked down at her, one hand on his hip. She looked up at him and met his cynical smile with an ambiguous one of her own.She made it seem as if she had been expecting him, even after twenty years. They kept on looking at each other, and he felt the challenge that had always lain between them.
    She looked away first, turning around to a handmaiden to murmur some command. Straightaway, he was led off and installed in a whitewashed little cell in one of a chain of plain brick structures that rambled all over the mountainside. These constituted an ashram, and of course the accommodations were of the simplest, but everything was clean, pleasant, and orderly. He decided to stay on, at least for a while. There was little expense to him, he discovered—in fact, none at all—which was just as well, because Sunil’s money wasn’t going to last forever. He couldn’t say he was uncomfortable.