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Papu, at the age of twenty-nine, lived in dread of revolution and anarchy. The fear was partly a fear of personal loss; but it was also an extension of Papu’s religious concerns.
    Papu came of a Jain family. The Jains are an ancient, pre-Buddhist offshoot of Hinduism, and they aim at what they see as absolute purity. They don’t eat meat; they don’t eat eggs; they avoid taking life. Every morning a Jain should bathe, put on an unstitched cloth, and walk barefooted to his temple to pray. And yet the Jains are famous in India for their skill as businessmen.
    Papu’s office was in the stock market area of Bombay. At road level it was not easy for the visitor to distinguish this area from other areas in central Bombay. The lobby of the tall building where Papu’s office was had a special Indian quality: you felt that every day, in the name of cleaning, someone had rubbed the place down with a lightly grimed rag, and – in the way that a fresh mark of sandalwood paste is given every day to an image – given a touch of black grease to the folding metal gates of the elevators. Roughly painted little boards gave each elevator a number; and there was a little zigzag line for each elevator, so that in the lobby people created a floral pattern.
    On the upper floor where we got off the walls still hinted at the lightly grimed rag. But in this upper lobby, which was much quieter, people clearly didn’t have the anxiety they had downstairs about being seen or about giving offence, and they had spat out gritty red mouthfuls of pan-juice, sometimes in a corner, sometimes broadside, in great splashing arcs, on the walls.
    After this informality there was an office. Desks, clerks, office equipment. There were framed colour pictures of Hindu deities on the walls, and some of the pictures were garlanded. Papu’s chamber was a small inner room. Computer screens blinked green. On one wall were three pictures of deities side by side. The goddess Durga, riding on her tiger, was on the right; a garland of marigolds hung over the glass.
    I asked Papu about Durga. He didn’t answer directly. He began to talk about his Jain faith and its application to what he did.
    He said, ‘Basically, we are without the killer instinct, which is what businessmen should have.’
    I said, ‘But you do so well.’
    ‘We are traders.’ The distinction was important to him. ‘The killer instinct is required in industry, not in trading. Which is why the Jain community is not involved in industry. If I’m trading on the stock exchange now, and I cannot get some money out of a guy, I wouldn’t hire a mafia guy to get it out of him. Which is what happens here in something like the building industry – if I’m a builder, I have to have my own mafia connections.’
    ‘How long has it been so?’
    ‘It’s growing in the cities. After 1975’ – the time of Mrs Gandhi’s Emergency – ‘all the mafia dons gave up smuggling and took up building. They will “encourage” people, for instance, to vacate land, so that the land can be used for building.’
    It was what many people spoke about. It was part of the ‘criminalization’ of Indian business and politics.
    Papu said, ‘It is a problem. I don’t know how long this’ – he indicated his own room, with the computers, and the outer office – ‘is going to continue. We’re doing well right now. We’re vegetarians, but I don’t know how long we can go on without going out there to fight.’
    It was strange, this stress on vegetarianism just there. But vegetarianism was fundamental to Papu’s faith. In the mess and flux and uncertainty of life, vegetarianism, the refusal to be impure, was something one could anchor oneself to. It was an exercise of will and virtue that saved one from other kinds of excess, including the excess of ‘going out there to fight’.
    Papu was of middle height. His vegetarianism and his sport – which, unexpectedly, was basketball – had given him a fine, slender