The driver looked at him with large eyes, then looked at Eketi, and ran screaming from his vehicle.

Park Street was a modern, upmarket shopping area, full of designer clothes shops and trendy boutiques. Calcutta Antiques turned out to be a fairly big establishment next to a fancy Continental restaurant. Ashok Rajput entered through an ornate brass door to find extensive repair work being done inside the shop. The ceiling was blackened with soot and there was a strong smell of charring. A tall, fair man with an overly long nose looked at him enquiringly.

'What happened here?' Ashok asked.

'We had a devastating fire three days ago. Half our shop burned down. We lost a lot of antiques, but luckily no one was injured.'

'Are you Mr Sanjeev Kaul?'

'Yes. What can I do for you?'

'My name is Ashok Rajput. I am with the Tribal Welfare Agency in the Andamans,' he declared in an officious tone and produced his laminated ID card. 'I am here in connection with the theft of an ancient stone artefact belonging to the Onge tribe. Did Mr S. K. Banerjee sell a shivling to you?'

'Yes. About ten days ago.'

'Do you realize, Mr Kaul, that you are in violation of the Antiquities and Art Treasures Act 1972?'

'Banerjee did not tell me that it was an antiquity from the Andamans.' Kaul frowned. 'Look, I was not aware I was breaking any law. I thought it was just an old rock.'

'I would like to see it.'

'I am sorry, it is no longer with me. Last Monday I sold it to a client of mine from Chennai.'

'Chennai?'

'Yes.'

'Oh no!' said Ashok and balled his hands into fists. 'I want full details of this person to whom you sold the stone.'

Ten minutes later he emerged from the showroom with a slip of paper bearing yet another address. When he returned to the hotel room, Eketi was still sleeping.

'Get up, you bastard, and start packing,' he said.

'Where are we going now?'

'To Chennai,' Ashok replied. 'To meet one Mr S. P. Rajagopal.'

'And how will we go?'

'By train.'

Howrah station was busier than usual because of the festive season. Eketi gazed at the chaos on the platforms, the rows of passengers sprawled on the cold floor, the shrill vendors selling magazines and sodas, and especially the porters in red, their heads loaded with suitcases and boxes. He observed the sweat pouring down their faces and turned to Ashok. 'Why do you people work so hard?'

'Because we don't get free meals like your tribe,' Ashok said scornfully. 'Do you know how much these tickets to Chennai have cost me? This trip is becoming a nightmare.'

'But Eketi is loving it!'

As the train came hurtling towards the platform, Eketi tightened up in alarm. He cowered behind Ashok for a few moments before gingerly stepping inside the sleeper compartment. Women shrank back as soon as he entered, and clutched their handbags nervously. Children looked at him in fear and receded into their fathers. Eketi smiled. A dazzling, pearl-white smile. The train relaxed.

He grabbed a seat next to the window and didn't budge from it throughout the twenty-seven-hour journey, feeling the sun in his eyes, the wind in his face, watching the changing kaleidoscope of colours as dull brown cornfields gave way to lush green rice fields, marvelling at the vastness of this country where you could travel for hours, passing village after village, and still not reach your destination. As day dimmed to night, the relentless rhythm of the train became a lullaby which gently rocked him to sleep.

Everything was different about Chennai. The weather was hotter than Kolkata and more humid. The men were swarthier and wore moustaches. The women were dressed in colourful saris and had flowers in their hair. No one spoke Hindi.

As soon as they left the brick-red Gothic structure of Chennai Central, the tribal sniffed the air. The north-east monsoon was still active and the aroma of rain hung in the air like a moist perfume. 'Does this place have a sea?'

'Yes. How do you know?' asked Ashok.

'Eketi can smell it.'

They boarded one of the ubiquitous yellow-and-black autorickshaws and Ashok told the driver to take them straight to Rajagopal's residence on Sterling Road in Nungambakkam. As they entered the swirl of traffic outside the station, Eketi looked in wide-eyed wonderment at the imposing buildings and elegant showrooms lining the crowded boulevard. The city was full of hoardings, advertising the latest Tamil blockbusters, but what fascinated him most were the giant plywood images of politicians and film stars dotting the streets, some as tall as two-storey buildings. Chennai was a cut-out city. A giant smiling woman in a sari competed for votes with an old man in dark glasses. Lusty-eyed heroines and moustachioed heroes with exaggerated hair-dos towered over the traffic like colossi.

Sterling Road was a busy thoroughfare, full of commercial establishments, banks and offices, interspersed with large houses. The auto-rickshaw dropped them off directly in front of Rajagopal's The Curse of the Onkobowkwe 297 residence, which was an elegant green-and-yellow-painted villa. Two uniformed guards stood impassively on duty on either side of the high metal gates, which for some reason were open.

'Have you come for the prayer meeting?' a guard asked Ashok.

The welfare officer nodded blankly.

'Please go inside. It is in the main drawing room.'

'You wait here,' Ashok instructed Eketi, and entered the gate. He went along a curved driveway with well-kept lawns on both sides. The house had a solid teak door which was also open, and he stepped into a large drawing room from which all furniture had been removed. There were white sheets on the floor on which approximately fifty people were seated, mostly wearing lightcoloured clothes. Men sat on one side and women on the other. At the far end was a large framed picture of a young man with a crew-cut and a thick moustache, which was decorated with a garland of red roses. Incense sticks burnt in front of the picture, the smoke curling upwards in thin wisps. A good-looking, slightly overweight woman in her early thirties sat beside the picture. Clad in a plain white cotton sari with no frills and no ornaments, she looked every inch the grieving widow.

Ashok sat down in the last row of the men's section and put on a suitably solemn expression. Through discreet questioning of the other mourners he learnt that this was a condolence meeting for the industrialist Selvam Palani Rajagopal – known to friends as SP – who had died of a heart attack two days ago, caused by a sudden and unexpected business loss.

Ashok waited two hours for the assembly to be over. After the last of the mourners had left, he went up to the widow and folded his hands. 'My name is Amit Arora. So sorry to hear about SP's death, Bhabhiji, so sorry,' he mumbled. 'It is hard to imagine that a man of thirty-five can suffer a heart attack. I met him just ten days ago in Kolkata.'

'Yes. My husband had a lot of business in Kolkata,' she replied.

'How did you know Raja?' There was a strangled quality to her voice which he found oddly erotic.

'He was my senior in IIT Madras.'

'Oh, so you are also an alumni of IIT-M? It's strange Raja never mentioned you.'

'We sort of lost touch after graduation. You know how these things happen.' He spread his hands and fell silent. Somewhere inside the house a pressure cooker whistled.

'So are you also living in Chennai?' Mrs Rajagopal enquired.

'There are not too many North Indians here.'

'No. I now live in Kolkata. I left Chennai soon after graduating.'

A maid brought him tea in a bone-china cup.

'If you don't mind, there is one thing I wanted to ask you, Bhabhiji,' Ashok said in the oily tone of someone bringing up a delicate subject.

'Yes?' she responded warily.