John Singer Sargent Venetian Canal painting

John Singer Sargent Venetian Canal paintingJohn Singer Sargent The Rialto paintingJohn Singer Sargent The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit painting
being Indian, understood that actors were cheap-type persons; and behaving, in short, with normal thespian impropriety. The woman holding the baby had a way of looking through the paleface players, of turning them into wisps of smoke, heat-mirages, ghosts. For a man like Saladin Chamcha the debasing of Englishness by the English was a thing too painful to contemplate. He turned to his newspaper in which a Bombay "rail roko" demonstration was being broken up by police lathicharges. The newspaper's reporter suffered a broken arm; his camera, too, was smashed. The police had issued a "note". _Neither the reporter nor any other person was assaulted intentionally_. Chamcha drifted into airline sleep. The city of lost histories, felled trees and unintentional assaults faded from his thoughts. When he opened his eyes a little later he had his second. surprise of that macabre journey. A man was passing him on the way to the toilet. He was bearded and wore cheap tinted spectacles, but Chamcha recognized him anyway: here, travelling incognito in the economy class of Flight A 1--420, was the vanished superstar, the living legend, Gibreel Farishta himself.
"Sleep okay?" He realized the question