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Prasad to overlook the awkwardness of meeting Ash Chaturvedi’s father during the various wedding formalities – the engagement, by way of example – for in the scheme of things, what was the exchange of polite greetings, weighed against the glory that was soon to accrue to Shiva Prasad Sharma’s name? Now, whenever he felt irked by Vyasa, or concerned at being humiliated a second time by this unscrupulous anti-national leftist with his preposterous Ganesh theories, one thought went through his head like a soothing forest breeze: the career of his prospective son-in-law, and the use this would be put to by a party eager to advance its ideologies in the areas of education, science and history. All he had to do, as father of the bride, was smile, say something asinine to his great nemesis, and behave, as every Indian knew how, with due decorum.
    As it happened, there had not yet been an opportunity for anything more than the most superficial exchange of pleasantries – all other arrangements had been negotiated via their children, or through Manoj. The really important meeting – the union of the two families – would come tomorrow night at the wedding. In Shiva Prasad’s dream scenario, three things occurred at this juncture. First, Shiva Prasad upbraided the quisling Vyasa, making him repent of his faulty conclusions about the sacred Mahabharata and its reverend and holy scribe. Then, Shiva Prasad forgave him, saying, ‘My dear Brother, do let me introduce you to one or two of India’s most treasured businessmen/prime ministers/ charitable benefactors’; and as the women in his family caught their breath, as the garden full of wedding guests quivered in expectation, as the stars in the sky held back their blinks in awe, Vyasa-I-am-so-special-Chaturvedi would put his hands together and humbly intone: ‘How utterly delightful to meet you again, Shiva Prasad Sharma. How much I have benefited from your incisive commentary over the years, dear sir!’ Thirdly, Shiva Prasad would tell Vyasa exactly what his own son Ash thought on the burning issue of the—
    But Shiva Prasad’s reverie was interrupted at this point by his wife and daughter, calling to him from the kitchen.
    ‘Yes?’ he answered.
    ‘Didn’t you hear the bell?’ one shouted.
    ‘It will be Ram,’ called the other. ‘Open the door.’
    Stirring reluctantly, Shiva Prasad removed his (portly but stately) figure from his carved-wood armchair, and progressed to the front door. He pulled it open.
    Three figures stood in the doorway. He saw his son Ram, wearing an idiotic grin. He saw his brother Hari, very bald these days, clad in a badly cut silk kurta. He noticed his brother’s dark-skinned, childless Bengali wife standing in the shadows behind them both and holding a box of expensive-looking sweets. Instead of shutting the door in their faces, as they so clearly expected, Shiva Prasad smiled, bowed his head in a grandiose namaskar and said, almost jovially: ‘Come in, do come in!’
    Then he stood back from the doorway (exactly in the manner of the Prime Minister inaugurating a function, or the President opening a new military training centre) as they took off their shoes and filed obediently past him. ‘Sit down, sit down,’ he urged his timid guests, still smiling graciously upon them as they settled themselves cautiously on his Maharashtrian sofa. And finally he called through to his wife in the kitchen: ‘Our brother is here!’ And turning to the party of three, he said: ‘Dinner is ready. Shall we eat?’
    During dinner, after Hari made his little announcement – he was asking to waive the small matter of the loan for Sunita’s wedding – Shiva Prasad’s thoughts actually began to crystallise into triumph. Hari had come to plead for his forgiveness. Not only that, he was offering to take unwieldy, sulky, materialistic Ram off his father’s hands. Repentant Hari was perfect Autobiographical timing. For the second time that day, Shiva