Part 3, Chapter 16 Summary

Part 3, entitled, "Bombay Central," opens in the city prison. The narrator tells of his spirit-shattering descent into a life of cockroaches, rats, adjacent bowls of gruel and excrement, verbal abuse, and resignation. He meditates about abandonment by mother and lover, about his tragic family history, about the canvas of life. Not knowing whether it is reality or a dream, he sees a one-legged man appear with a parrot on his shoulder.

Lambajan Chandiwala does, indeed, spirit him out of jail, and as they drive away, Moor mulls over the details of his arrest: the police had strip searched him and found the second suicide pill. He is forced to swallow half of it, and discovers it holds not cyanide but a hallucinogen. What had Uma's intention been: which of them had she intended to die, before the scuffle? She had taken...