A VIEW FROM THE BUND
The police snubbed Christopher and detained the driver; they interrogated him for about fifteen minutes and let him go. . . Christopher sauntered to the back of the wagon without a hand being laid on him. He peered through the bars, in a way no Indian would have been allowed to; we come and go as we like in this country. They're used to tourists and foreign residents. We're of no consequence. Christopher, an Australian, enrols at Suryanagar with other foreigners. Among them is Hero, an Armenian from London who claims to be in India only to spin out an inheritance. But her whitewashed room and the study of Sanskrit nouns cannot keep the world at bay for Hero: it pursues her there, in the form of her brother, a romantic nationalist, in India on a mission of his own.