SAPNA

People of Bombay, listen to the voice of your King. Your dream is come to you and I am he, Sapna, King of Dreams, King of Blood. Your time is come, my children, and your chains of suffering will be lifted from you.

I am come. I am the law. My first commandment is to open your eyes. I want you to see your hunger while they waste food. I want you to see your rags while they wear silk. See that you live in the gutter while they live in palaces of marble and gold. My second commandment is to kill them all. Do this with cruel violence.

Do this in memory of me, Sapna. I am the law.

There was more, a lot more, all of it in the same vein. It struck me as absurd at first, and I started to smile. The silence in the room and the stares of tense concentration they turned on me stifled the smile to a grimace. They took it very seriously, I realised. Stalling for time, because I didn't know what Ghani wanted from me, I read through the ranting, insane tract again.

While I read the words, I remembered that someone had painted the name Sapna on the wall at the Village in the Sky, twenty-three floors off the ground. I remembered what Prabaker and Johnny Cigar had said about brutal murders done in Sapna's name. The continuing silence and expectant seriousness in the room filled me with a chill of menace. The hairs on my arms tingled with it, and a caterpillar of sweat inched down the groove of my spine.

"Well, Lin?"

"Sorry?"

"What do you make of it?"

The stillness was so complete that I could hear myself swallowing. They wanted me to give them something, and they expected it to be good.

"I don't know what to say. I mean, it's so ridiculous, so fatuous, it's hard to take it seriously."

Madjid grunted, and cleared his throat loudly. He drew his thick black eyebrows down over a thick black scowl.

"If you call cutting a man from the groin to the throat, and then leaving his organs and his life's blood all around his house serious, then it is a serious matter."

"Sapna did that?"

"His followers did it, Lin," Abdul Ghani answered for him. "That, and at least six more murders like it, in the last month. Some were even more hideous killings."

"I've heard people talking about Sapna, but I thought it was just a story, like an urban legend. I haven't read anything about it in any of the newspapers, and I read them every day."

"This matter is being handled in the most careful way,"

Khaderbhai explained. "The government and the police have asked for co-operation from the newspapers. They have been reported as unrelated things, as deaths that happened during simple, unconnected robberies. But we know that Sapna's followers have committed them, because the blood of the victims was used to write the word Sapna on the walls and the floors. And despite the terrible violence of the attacks, not much of any real value was stolen from the victims. For now, this Sapna does not officially exist. But it is only a matter of time before everyone knows of him, and of what has been done in his name."

"And you... you don't know who he is?"

"We are very interested in him, Lin," Khaderbhai answered. "What do you think about this poster? It has been seen in many markets and hutments, and it is written in English, as you see. Your language."

I sensed a vague hint of accusation in those last two words.

Although I had nothing whatsoever to do with Sapna and knew almost nothing about him, my face reddened with that special guilty blush of the completely innocent man.

"I don't know. I don't think I can help you with this."

"Come now, Lin," Abdul Ghani chided. "There must be some impressions, some thoughts, that occur to you. There is no commitment here. Don't be shy. Just say the first things that come to your mind."

"Well," I began reluctantly, "the first thing is, I think that this Sapna-or whoever wrote this poster-may be a Christian."

"A Christian!" Khaled laughed. He was a young man, perhaps thirty-five, with short dark hair and soft green eyes. A thick scar swept in a " smooth curve from his left ear to the corner of his mouth, stiffening that side of his face. His dark hair was streaked with premature white and grey. It was an intelligent, sensitive face, more scarred by its anger and hatreds than it was by the knife-wound on his cheek. "They're supposed to _love their enemies, not disembowel them!"

"Let him finish," Khaderbhai smiled. "Go on, Lin. What makes you think Sapna is a Christian fellow?"

"I didn't say Sapna is a Christian-just that whoever wrote this stuff is using Christian words and phrases. See, here, in the first part, where he says I am come... and...Do this in memory of me-those words can be found in the Bible. And here, in the third paragraph... I am the truth in their world of lies, I am the light in their darkness of greed, my way of blood is your freedom-he's paraphrasing something... I am the Way and the Truth and the _Light... and it's also in the Bible. Then in the last lines, he says...

Blessed are the killers, for they shall steal lives in my name- that's from the Sermon on the Mount. It's all been taken from the Bible, and there's probably more in here that I don't recognise.

But it's all been changed around, it's as though this guy, whoever wrote this stuff, has taken bits of the Bible, and written it upside down."

"Upside down? Explain please?" Madjid asked.

"I mean, it's against the ideas of the words in the Bible, but uses the same kind of language. He's written it to have exactly the opposite meaning and intention of the original. He's kind of turned the Bible on its head."

I might've said more, but Abdul Ghani ended the discussion abruptly.

"Thank you, Lin. You've been a big help. But let's change the subject. I, for one, do sincerely dislike talking about such unpleasantness as this Sapna lunatic. I only brought it up because Khader asked me to-and Khader Khan's wish is my command.

But we really should move on now. If we don't get started on our theme for tonight, we'll miss out altogether. So, let's have a smoke, and talk of other things. It's our custom for the guest to start, so will you be so kind?"

Farid rose and placed a huge, ornate hookah, with six snaking lines, on the floor between us next to the table. He passed the smoking tubes out, and squatted next to the hookah with several matches held ready to strike. The others closed off their smoking tubes with their thumbs and, as Farid played a flame over the tulip-shaped bowl, I puffed it alight. It was the mix of hashish and marijuana known as ganga-jamuna, named after the two holy rivers, Ganges and Jamner. It was so potent, and came with such force from the water-pipe, that almost at once my bloodshot eyes failed in focus and I experienced a mild, hallucinatory effect: the blurring at the edges of other people's faces, and a minuscule time-delay in their movements. The Lewis Carrolls, Karla called it. I'm so stoned, she used to say, I'm getting the Lewis Carrolls. So much smoke passed from the tube that I swallowed it and belched it out again. I closed off the pipe, and watched in slow motion as the others smoked, one after another.

I'd just begun to master the sloppy grin that dumped itself on the plasticine muscles of my face when it was my turn to smoke again. It was a serious business. There was no laughing or smiling.

There was no conversation, and no man met another's eye. The men smoked with the same mirthless, earnest impassiveness I might've found on a long ride in an elevator full of strangers.

"Now, Mr. Lin," Khaderbhai said, smiling graciously as Farid removed the hookah and set about cleaning the ash-filled bowl.

"It is also our custom for the guest to give us the theme for discussion. This is usually a religious theme, but it need not be so. What would you like to talk about?"