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physique. He was strong, without pronounced muscular definitions; he was curiously like one of the smooth marble figures of Jain sculpture. His eyes were serene; his face was squarish and well-defined, his skin smooth and unmarked.
    He thought that if the nature of trading changed, if the killer instinct entered it, Jains would have to fight or give up. From what he said, it seemed that so far Jains had preferred to give up. They had left the building industry. In Bombay, as in Delhi, they hadgiven up those trades which required them to carry cash or valuables.
    He began to speak again of his faith, and when – taking his own time to come back to my early question – he spoke of the goddess Durga, he didn’t speak of her as a deity with special attributes. He spoke of her simply as God.
    ‘I have to think of God whenever some things happen. I lost my father in the beginning of this year. My father died of a heart attack. At a time like that the feeling comes that there is some external factor I can’t do anything about.
    ‘I am now using computers, the way they are doing in the developed countries. There is a time that there is a feeling in me that if I’m able to beat the market, it’s because I’m able to take on these developments. But then – when something like this happens: my father, his death – I get the feeling that my intelligence or my aggression is worth nothing. Here I am, in this business. I forecast stock movements, price movements. There is an obsession about the work, as you know. And then suddenly this feeling – that I can’t foresee my life. That is the time I feel there is something like God, and I wish to have faith.
    ‘In the last year that feeling has been coming any time I’m excited or very sad. Earlier, if I had been excited, I would have expressed my excitement. You would have been able to see it. But now I know that at the end of the day, after the excitement, something sad might happen. So why get excited?’
    ‘I can understand older men having these thoughts. But you are not old.’
    ‘We have this saying on the Bombay stock exchange: “How many
Diwalis
have you seen?” ’ Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights. ‘Which is a way of saying, “How old are you?” The friend of mine who owns this firm is only thirty, and he’s been very successful these last five years. He’s encountered two income-tax raids, and several ups and downs. Things which my father would have taken a lifetime to experience, he’s done in five years. So we say it isn’t the number of Diwalis you’ve seen, it’s the number of crackers you’ve burst. For me the same is true, not only in business, but in life. I go to the temple every morning. I basically pray to have control over certain feelings.’
    ‘Grief?’ I was thinking of his father.
    He misheard me. He thought I had said ‘greed’, and he said,‘Greed and fear. The two feelings associated with my business. I walk into the temple, hold my hands together, and wait there for five minutes.’
    ‘Who do you address when you do that?’
    ‘Something you think of who’s controlling the world.’
    ‘You don’t think of a particular deity?’
    ‘If you’re doing business, the picture you would have would be of the goddess Lakshmi. On other occasions it would be Saraswati. Lakshmi is the goddess of wealth, Saraswati is the goddess of wisdom. And when I think of the children in the slums, I have to think of God. That is the time I think there is a certain womb I came out of – which is why I’m here today, and not there. Now, why am I here, and not there, in the slums? Nowhere in the organized learning I received at school and college do I get an answer to this question. The answer is: God. A couple of times a day I think these thoughts.’
    ‘Did your father think these thoughts as well?’
    ‘My father was a self-made man. He was only a matriculate. He had to be more involved with his work. Basically, a man thinks of these other