half lifting him down. The Minister was giving another sample of a film song—“I’m a vagabond, wandering in the woods of the heart”—so that everyone’s attention continued to be fixed on him. Only Sumitra was with Harry, along with several servants—some of them brought from his childhood home in Delhi—who had got him down from his chair and were edging him toward the door. He was trying to tell them something with all the earnestness of someone completely drunk, and when they didn’t understand, he appealed in frustration to Sumitra: “Dragging our poets in the mire—Ghalib and Faiz!” Then he shouted, “Degradation!” and tried to point at the Minister, who was still giving his audience a taste of Bombay film lyrics; but the servants quickly lowered Harry’s arm and kept it pinned to his side. Sumitra followed them through the door and stood at the foot of the stairs, watching them lead Harry up to his room. He was looking back at her and quoting something but slurring his words, so that she wasn’t sure whether it was about the rose and the nightingale, or Jamshed’s throne gone on a puff of wind.
When she returned to her party, it was still going splendidly. The Minister had finished his act and, pleased to have given pleasure, was laughing together with his audience. He had taken off his little boat-like cotton cap and was wiping the perspiration from his head. As he did so, for a brief second his eyes slid toward Sumitra, and she gave him the briefest nod to reassure him that Harry was being taken care of. From here on—according to the official report to New Delhi—the evening’s program proceeded as per schedule.
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