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vegetarian, and ate only one meal a day; how he spent months on pilgrimages; how he was constantly donating money to temples. He was held up to be a model and admired by many, including Bhabo.
    For this reason Bauji knew that he had a delicate problem on his hands. The conservative side of the family would certainly condemn him, if he publicly defended the widow in court against his own nephew. They would regard it as a betrayal. Yet Bauji was determined not to let this insincere man get away. He would have to be careful with his family. And the opinion and the esteem of his family mattered to Bauji. As he was a successful man, Bauji too could count on the support of many family members whom he had fed and looked after all these years. As a man of the world he had also learned to manipulate opinion in his favour. Bauji knew that he had a formidable adversary, and he never underestimated an opponent.
    Bauji felt disgusted with a religion that could not only condone but praise evil men like Megh Nath, who brought incalculable suffering to poor vulnerable widows. What kind of religion was it, he questioned, that not only accepted the wicked gains of such men, but held them up as models of social behaviour? It was people like Megh Nath and their supporters, who gave a bad name to all Indians in the eyes of the English. It was no wonder that English magistrates distrusted the testimony of all Indian witnesses. When every second witness was willing to give false testimony without any moral compunction, the English were not wrong in believing that Indians were liars. Honesty was probably a less important virtue to a Hindu than loyalty and piety, he concluded.
    After lun+ch Bauji returned to his study for a nap. He lay down on the white diwan and his mind wandered again to Tara. Despite Megh Nath, the meal had revived his spirits and he felt generous and kindly towards the world. He had by now forgiven Tara her display with Karan in the morning. He felt it was a passing fancy which Karan aroused in all women, who would always fall for him like ripe mangoes. Yes, he liked his daughter. She had zest. He enjoyed her company more than any of his children. She was the only one he could talk to, and he would be sad to lose her.
    He recalled the hot June day two years ago, when Tara had returned home from Lahore and had calmly announced that she was going to work. While sipping a glass of cold fresh lime, she had matter-of-factly recounted how she had got the job of a school teacher in Lyallpur.
    After Tara had finished school, he had agreed to let her go to Lahore to attend college. After completing her BA, she had trained to be a teacher; then one day she had quietly gone to the Department of Education in Lahore and applied for a job. They had offered her one in a distant village. Tara had known that it would be a battle to persuade her family to be permitted to work. Women teachers were still a novelty: the few that were there tended to come from lower caste converts to Christianity ‘who needed the money’. Thus to work outside her home town was out of the question. With great difficulty she had persuaded the Department to let her have a post in Lyallpur instead. The Department at first was reluctant to agree, since she had a mediocre academic record, but she seemed to have a strong will which counted in her favour. Thus she had arrived in Lyallpur with a job and had immediately created a sensation.
    ‘Tara is going to work, Tara is going to work,’ the whole town had whispered. Even Bauji, who was more progressive than the others, had found this hard to stomach. He had regarded the education of his daughters as a respectable and leisurely way for them to kill time before they got married. That education also increased their prospects in the marriage market was not lost on him.
    In any case, Tara’s demand was the subject of heated discussion in the family for weeks. Chachi disapproved. Big Uncle sided with Tara and put up a