Maps for Lost Lovers

them, and what he had mistaken for a butterfly was not a paper aeroplane—as he had claimed to his wife on returning to her, having backed away from the boys in shock and embarrassment—but a coloured scrap from a page that the wind had snatched from a hand.
    The bus driver lives not far from the shop; his wife had told Chanda’s mother that Chanda’s father had said to him his daughter had died for him the day she moved in with Jugnu, that he would allow no sinner near him were she hundred-fold his daughter, that she—shameless baggage— may have gone missing but she was not missing from his home, and that he was proud of his boys for what they had done. She has not confronted him with this. The neighbourhood is a place of Byzantine intrigue and emotional espionage, where when two people stop to talk on the street their tongues are like the two halves of a scissor coming together, cutting reputations and good names to shreds. And so it is possible that the bus driver had lied, that his wife had, and also that Chanda’s father had actually said those words or something similar, helplessly, to save face in judgemental or belligerent company, implied these words with expressions or uttered them explicitly with the tongue, feeling himself encircled; “Yes, yes, what had to be done was done. Now leave me in peace.”
    There are times in this life when a person must do or say things he doesn’t want to. Human beings and chains, it is the oldest acquaintanceship in the world.
    She rubs the glass of the window, and it seems to him that she is trying to erase the outside world. He begins to read the Urdu newspaper, and therefore they are both occupied when the bus stops and two new passengers come on board and begin to make their way to the upper deck.
    “That was Shamas!” Chanda’s mother whispers, tugging at her husband’s sleeve. “And there was a woman with him!”
    He lowers the paper. “Where? Do you think it could be one of his secretaries. A white woman?”
    “No: one of ours. The very one you must’ve seen. What would he be doing out here with his secretary? They’ve gone upstairs. She was wearing a Kashmiri jacket, and he was holding a green feather. Looked like a parakeet’s.”
    “Are all the sons of that family like that—defying conventions, doing what they please?” Chanda’s father says with quiet indignation. “They can do what they like with white women—we all know the morals they have— but at least leave our own women alone. You would think it was their mission to corrupt every Pakistani woman they come across.” And he adds decisively, “In my opinion they are still infected with their father’s Hinduism. Lord Krishna and his thousand girlfriends, indeed! And they jeer at our Prophet, peace be upon him, for having just nine wives!”
    She sighs: “Maybe we are both mistaken. May Allah forgive me for thinking badly of others. Perhaps they were not together. I didn’t see any contact between them; did you, earlier?”
    He shakes his head in a quick no, because he is still angry: “I am not sure I would accept his help even if he offered it. His brother corrupted my daughter! All this mess—it’s their fault.”
    The bus stops after twenty minutes and the driver, leaning out of his seat, asks the young anglers at the back to disembark. The amount they paid on boarding doesn’t buy them the distance beyond this stop.
    Every other passenger looks back briefly, including the man who had got up to leave at this stop.
    With their riverbank-odour of moss, soil, young leaves, and the smell of the river water in which two of them had been swimming earlier, all five of the children have fallen silent and are frozen in the attitudes in which they had been caught by the driver’s demand.
    The driver unbolts the little metal door next to his seat and comes out into the aisle that is littered with used tickets bearing marks of footprints, like cancelled stamps on a letter. “Get out, please, or give more money if you want to go more. I remember how much you paid.”
    The boys, their clothes a fruit-bowl of colours, protest ecstatically and state their destination. They are testing life to see what they can get away with, and how.
    “Show tickets, please.” He walks past the man standing before the open door and goes down the aisle towards them, their voices becoming louder. The stationary vehicle is slashed by the sun’s rays and it is like being inside a diamond.
    The tickets