Summary

As Deven boards the bus that will take him to Delhi to seek out Nur, the narration goes into significant detail about Mirpore’s history of being a place that people pass through on their way someplace else. The narration also describes the pervasiveness and constant presence of dust and dirt in the town, and how its temples, and mosques were all run-down and poorly attended. The narration also comments on the general poor state of repair of the town in general, commenting that it had been that way for a long time. “Those shacks of tin and rags,” the narration suggests, “however precarious and impermanent they looked, must have existed always, repetitively and in succeeding generations, but never fundamentally changing and in that sense enduring” (19).

Almost as soon as Deven gets on the bus it leaves, making its way out into the countryside...