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shoe pinches, does it?'
    'No, it's just that it's impossible to walk with these on.'
    'What brought you to Monda after dark?' she asked. 'Is your father with you?'
    'I was delayed at college,' I said.
    'You'd better hurry home now. There are plenty of thugs around.'
    With that, she suddenly became suspicious. 'Why, were you beaten up by any chance?'
    Chandru looked up at her, boots in hand. 'Yes.'
    She started to shout, and a young man appeared when he heard the noise. 'Calm down, Mother, calm down,' he said.
    The woman gripped Chandru and asked him, 'Where? Where did they hit you?'
    'On the back. Just a couple of times. By then some people ran by that way. The men saw them and bolted.'
    'But who were these people?'
    'Why, the Arya Samajis, of course.' It was the young man who had spoken.
    The woman now shifted her attention from Chandru to him, her older son. 'Go in. At once. Get in now.'
    'Stop it, Mother,' he said. Then he asked Chandru, 'Where did they attack you?'
    'Near the High School.'
    'Are they people you know?'
    'No.'
    The woman screamed at her son. 'Go
in.
Now go!' To Chandru she said, 'Please leave at once. Don't get us into trouble. Go, get away from here.' She began to haul the oil tins into the shop.
    Chandru tied his boots together and hung them on his biycle. This was the shop where his father always bought the cooking oil the family needed. Even in those days when the railways had taken it upon themselves to supply them with groundnut oil along with their rationed cereal, they had depended on this shop for their sesame oil. They never needed more than two seers of oil, but Father, fastidious as ever, always bought it from this Rajasthani shop, patiently waiting at the mill for the freshly crushed oil. Chandru and his younger brother who used to sit along with Father on these occasions, used to get a bit of jaggery to eat from this woman. Ever since her husband's death several years before this, she had run the oil mill herself. Her son had now grown old enough to join the Arya Samaj and was receiving training in weilding sticks. Certain people were sure to have their eye on this young man and his shop, though nothing untoward had happened yet.
    It was so much easier to walk barefoot. Chandru went on a circuitous route to avoid Station Road which was packed with refugees. The playground of the SPG school with St Thomas' Church at one end seemed to move along with him. He never could figure out how the school attached to this church got its name. Until a few years ago, people used to walk across its grounds, but now there were high walls on all sides and a locked gate.
    Manohar Talkies marked the westernmost point of the Regimental Bazaar. The cinema hall was on the first floor of the building. The ground floor was let for shops and houses. A lot of people lived there. A film was playing. Soon it would be the interval and half the audience would get 'out passes' and come out to have a cup of tea, or a betelnut bida or a glass of sweetened buttermilk from Govardhan's shop. The place hadn't changed much. Not yet. The shops wore a drowsy look all day but woke up to work in the evening. Even the whir of the tailors' sewing machines could be heard only during the evening and night. The area round the Manohar Talkies building was full of clumps of people talking. Harigopal was sure to be somewhere here with his friends even now. But then Harigopal's house was near, he could afford to stay out talking till eight-thirty at night. Not everyone was as lucky. Lancer Barracks was still at least a mile away. It wouldn't do to get spotted by Harigopal now.
    An unmetalled road branched off ahead, poorly lit. Chandru took the road. Some of the many houses on either side of the street had electric lights, but the majority were lit only with hurricane lanterns. The street itself was neither dark nor deserted. The chatter that filled the air at all hours of the day came from the girls in green skirts and blouses who stayed in