“Yes, sir,” Shankara said, not knowing why he said it.

“Today, there is no such thing as caste,” the man said with regret. “Brahmins eat meat. Kshatriyas get educated and write books. And lower castes convert to Christianity and Islam. You heard what happened at Meenakshipuram, didn’t you? Colonel Gaddafi is trying to destroy Hinduism, and the Christian priests are hand in glove with him.”

They walked along for a while, until they came to the bus stand.

“You must find your own caste,” said the man. “You must find your people.” He lightly embraced Shankara and boarded the bus, where he began to jostle with young men for a seat. Shankara felt sorry for this old Brahmin. He had never in his life had to catch a bus; there was always the chauffeur.

Shankara thought, He is of a higher caste than me, but he is poor. What does this thing mean, then, caste?

Is it just a fable for old men like him? If you just said to yourself, “Caste is a fiction,” would it vanish like smoke; if you said, “I am free,” would you realize you had always been free?

He had finished his fourth chikoo milk shake. He felt sick.

As he left the ice-cream shop, all he wanted to do was to go visit Old Court Road. To sit by that statue of the dark Jesus.

He looked around to see if the police were following him. Of course, on a day like this he could not go anywhere near the Jesus statue. It was suicide. They would be watching all routes into the school.

He thought of Daryl D’Souza. That was the man to go see! In twelve years in the schooling system, Daryl D’Souza was the only one who had been decent to Shankara.

Shankara had first seen the professor at a political rally. This was the Hoyka Pride and Self-Expression Day Rally held at the Nehru Maidan-the greatest political event in the history of Kittur, the newspaper would say the following day. Ten thousand Hoykas had filled the maidan to demand their rights as a full-fledged community, and to ask retribution for the five millennia of injustice done to them.

The warm-up speaker talked about the language issue. The official language of the town should be declared Tulu, the language of the common man, and not Kannada, which was the Brahmin language.

A thunderclap of applause followed.

The professor, although not himself a Hoyka, had been invited as a sympathetic outsider; he was sitting next to the guest of honor, Kittur’s member of Parliament, who was a Hoyka, the pride of his community. A three-time MP, and also a junior member of the Cabinet of India-a sign to the entire community of how high they could aim.

Eventually, after many more preliminary speakers, the member of Parliament got up. He began to shout:

“We, brother and sister Hoykas, were not even allowed into the temple in the old days, did you know? The priest stood at the door, saying, ‘You low-caste!’”

He paused, to let the insult reverberate among his listeners.

“‘Low-caste! Go back!’ But ever since I was elected to Parliament-by you, my people-do the Brahmins dare do that to you? Do they dare call you ‘low-caste’? We are ninety percent of this town! We are Kittur! If they hit us, we will hit them back! If they shame us, we will…”

After the speech, someone recognized Shankara. He was led into a small tent where the member of Parliament was relaxing after the speech, and introduced as the plastic surgeon Kinni’s son. The great man, who was sitting on a wooden chair, a drink in his hand, set his glass down firmly, spilling his drink. He took Shankara’s hand in his hand and gestured for him to squat down on the ground beside him.

“In the light of your family situation, your high status in society, you are the future of the Hoyka community,” the MP said. He paused, and belched.

“Yes, sir.”

“You understand what I said?” asked the great man.

“Yes, sir.”

“The future is ours. We are ninety percent of this town. All that Brahmin shit is finished,” he said-flicking his wrist.

“Yes, sir.”

“If they hit you, you hit them back. If they…if they…” The great man made circles with his hand, to complete the slurred statement.

Shankara wanted to shout out in joy. “Brahmin shit!” Yes, that was exactly how he would put it himself; and here was a member of Parliament, a cabinet minister in the government of Rajiv Gandhi, talking just as he would!

Then an aide led Shankara from the tent. “Mr. Kinni”-the aide squeezed Shankara’s arm-“if you could make a small donation towards this evening’s function. Just a small amount…”

Shankara emptied his pockets. Fifty rupees. He gave it all to the aide, who bowed deeply and told him once more that he was the future of the Hoyka community.

Shankara watched. Already hundreds of men were getting into lines, where beer and quarter-liter bottles of rum were being distributed to them, as a bribe for having attended the rally and cheered the speakers. He shook his head with disapproval. He didn’t like the idea that he was part of ninety percent of his town. Now it seemed to him that the Brahmins were defenseless-a former elite of Kittur who now lived in constant fear of being robbed of their homes and their wealth by the Hoykas, the Bunts, the Konkanas, and everyone else in town. The sheer averageness of the Hoykas-whatever they did became the average at once, by definition-repulsed him.

The following morning, he read the newspaper, and thought he had been too harsh on the Hoykas. He remembered the professor who had been up onstage, and found out from his chauffeur where he lived. He paced backward and forward outside the front gate of the professor’s house for a while. Finally he opened the gate, approached the house, and pressed the front doorbell.

The professor opened the door. Shankara said, “Sir, I am a Hoyka. You are the only man in this town whom I trust. I wish to talk with you.”

“I know who you are,” Professor D’Souza said. “Come in.”

Professor D’Souza and Shankara sat in the living room and had a long talk.

“Who is that member of Parliament? What is his caste?” the professor asked.

The question confused Shankara.

“He is one of us, sir. A Hoyka.”

“Not quite,” the professor said. “He is a Kollaba. Have you heard the term? There is no such thing as a Hoyka, my dear fellow. The caste is subdivided into seven subcastes. You understand the term? Subcaste? Good. The member of Parliament is a Kollaba, the top of the seven subcastes. The Kollabas have always been millionaires. The British anthropologists of Kittur noted this fact with interest even in the nineteenth century. The Kollabas have exploited the other six Hoyka castes for years. And now once again, this man is playing the Hoyka card to get himself reelected, so he can sit in an office in New Delhi and accept large envelopes filled with cash from businessmen who want to set up garment factories in the Bunder.”

Seven subcastes? The Kollabas? Shankara had never heard any of this. He gaped.

“This is the big problem with you Hindus,” the professor said. “You are mysteries to yourselves!”

Shankara felt ashamed to be a Hindu; what a repulsive thing, this caste system that his ancestors had devised. But at the same time he was annoyed with Daryl D’Souza. Who was this man, to lecture him on caste? How dare the Christians do this? Hadn’t they been Hindus too, at some point? Shouldn’t they have remained Hindus and defeated the Brah mins from within, instead of taking the easy way out by converting?

He crushed his annoyance into a smile.

“What do we do about the caste system, sir? How do we get rid of it?”

“One solution is what the Naxalites have done, just to blow up the upper castes entirely,” said the professor. He had a quaint, womanlike habit of dipping his large round biscuit in milk, and then hurrying to eat it before it got too soggy. “They blow up the entire system; that way you can start from scratch.”