Often, from behind the house and from the dirty seashore, the smell of rotting fish would enter our back verandah, from which I watched a municipal school's children parade in the morning, singing a patriotic song and the huts of the bootleggers who buried their wares in tins at night and slept on charpoys in the day, while the sun climbing over them, burnt their skin black. The bootleggers were full of distrust for strangers and once or twice when 1 went strolling past their colony, they turned their hostile eyes towards me.

On the many huts, one was bigger and its occupants were better dressed. The man was short and handsome with a yellow skin. His dress was a white singlet and a pair of khaki shorts but they were washed every day by his wife who seemed to love working for him. She used to bring for him glasses of milk while he lay on a charpoy under a tree, dozing. She fed him well and although from my height, I could not hear what she was telling him, by the look on her face, I could make out they were lovewords. I Ie was silent and sullen, as all men are when (hey are being loved too deeply by a woman. He used to gaze at her indifferently while she turned her back on him and walked back to their hut.

Everybody in that colony showed him respect, even the police constables who used to come in trucks off and on to poke the ground with long iron rods to see if anything had been buried there. He would laugh aloud, seeing them at it. On some days when he was not very sleepy, he would play with his little sons throwing them in the air and catching them while they chortled with joy. He liked to watch his wife wash their rounded bodies near the hydrant, soaping them and rubbing them hard until they turned a burnished copper. He was obviously proud of his progeny. One day while I stood leaning over the railings of my verandah watching him sleep, he opened his eyes all of a sudden and looked at me. They were eyes reddened with sleep and desire. I felt uneasy while they grazed my limbs and withdrew to my room in a hurry. One morning we woke up hearing a commotion in the backyard and saw the police lake him away in their truck. They had at last found the liquor which he made at night in his hut and stored in two wooden barrels. His wife ran behind the truck with the end of her pink sari flying for a few yards, but he did not once look at her. He sat on one of the barrels looking like a king, his handsome face impassive and cold...