Summary

The short final section of Anil’s Ghost, which functions more as a brief coda to the action of the rest of the novel than a section like the others, ends with Ananda supervising the reconstruction of the 120-foot Buddha statue that stands in Buduruvagala, half a mile away from the famous rock wall of Bodhisattvas. He and his team work every day from five in the morning to two in the afternoon, constructing the body of the Buddha; after two p.m., Ananda gets drunk. He is the only one working on the face, for which he uses a system of fusing rock. Although they originally planned to fully fuse the rock together, Ananda likes the patchwork quality of the Buddha’s face.

At four-thirty the morning of the Netra Mangala ceremony, Ananda dressed in a fine robe and silk turban. He and...