About the Book: The Quarantine Papers
6 December 1992. That first Sunday in December, while the Prime Minister of
India dozed in Delhi, lesser things happened to lesser people in Bombay.
Mohammad Yunus doused his clothes with kerosene and struck a match. Balkrishna
More leaned out over the frenzied maha-aarti in the street below his balcony and
jumped to his death. In a shuttered room in Girgaum, three old men waited for an
answer.
Enraptured, Radhika and Anwar were oblivious to the nasal BBC monotone on the tv
screen. Who saw it first? It was there, happening right before them.
A saffron ant crawled up the black dome.