Connie’s appeal to Shibdas Debsharma begins as a search for help and becomes an encounter with the limits—and exploitation—of hope. She wants Harry to be taller, not richer or happier, but free from the humiliation of being called a dwarf. Shibdas offers a promise, a dangerous ritual, and finally an amulet; Connie leaves with neither the transformation she longs for nor her original hope intact.

The consultation

On an outing through Calcutta, Connie and Shankar reach Chowringhee before she shows him a paper from her handbag, directing their excursion away from the usual sights. Shankar asks whether she would rather visit the Victoria Memorial, the museum, the zoo, or the Governor’s House. Her chosen destination is instead Shibdas’s consulting room, in a small lane in a remote suburb. When they arrive, Shibdas is advising other clients, and his assistant ushers them into a waiting room.

Connie takes off her shoes at the entrance. In stockings, she approaches Shibdas, who blesses her with his sacred cord; she then arranges her skirt and sits on the floor. Her absorbed, devout expression makes her seem at home in the room, despite the contrast between her appearance and the setting. Shankar observes that the devotional posture would not have seemed out of place for mothers and aunts in skirts. The scene’s change of setting is also a change in Connie’s manner: the performer associated with the nightlife of the hotel presents herself here as a supplicant.

Shibdas studies Connie before answering her. His usual method, as Shankar explains it, is to ask no questions at first, but to infer a stranger’s past and future from their expression. That method depends on winning the client’s confidence through an initial reading, making it inherently risky. In Connie’s case, Shibdas appears to base his attempt on her age, manners, and clothing. He closes his eyes and thinks for a while; Connie places a ten-rupee note reverently at his feet.

Connie reveals what she wants

Shibdas tells Connie that her wish will be granted and that she will obtain what her heart desires. Her face lights up, as if those words were the reason she had come. He then studies her palms and tells her that she has suffered and will suffer more. Connie is unable at first to explain herself. Shankar recognizes that the woman who performs at night has become suddenly timid, and that she is about to disclose what she has so far kept back.

Connie finally asks Shibdas to make Harry taller. She says she would give everything she owns to serve his god if Harry could become a normal person. His height itself matters less to her than the name others call him: she wants people to stop calling him a dwarf. The request is therefore not simply for a bodily change. In Connie’s account, Harry’s height exposes him to social humiliation, and her imagined remedy is to remove the visible difference that provokes it.

Shibdas immediately claims to understand. He describes the proposed change as stretching Harry until he has normal proportions. Connie assents and offers to give Shibdas whatever he wants. Shankar sees the danger in the exchange: Shibdas’s eyes show the pleasure of having found an unsuspecting victim, and the narrator believes that the supposed cure is becoming an opportunity to extract money from a distressed woman.

The ritual and its price

Shibdas names the proposed ceremony the vamanavatar yagna and presents it as difficult work requiring a priest to perform rituals for seven days and seven nights. Connie is ready to suspend all her performances, remain there, and beg for Harry to join her. Her contract runs by the week, she says, and she will not renew it; Shankar will have to explain her decision to Marco Polo. Her offer makes the stakes immediate: she is prepared to abandon her work and reorganize her life around the promise of a cure.

Shibdas then introduces an unwanted consequence. At first he says that, after the sacrifice, there would be no difference between Harry and a normal man. Connie interrupts the qualification, convinced that Harry’s problems would end if he grew taller. Shibdas finally states the cost plainly: he has never seen anyone survive the sacrifice for more than six months. Connie loses color and recoils at the thought of Harry’s death. She had come hoping to save him from one kind of suffering; the proposed remedy now threatens to take his life.

Shibdas tells her that people are what God intends them to be and that attempts to alter God’s will provoke anger. Connie listens, bends down, and touches his foot. He produces an amulet and claims that it has extraordinary, atomic power. She is instructed to put it on her bare foot after bathing and to avoid drinking and debauchery on the day she wears it. Connie says she does not drink, gives Shibdas another ten rupees, and asks whether Harry will find peace if she uses the amulet. Shibdas assures her that he will. The amulet offers a consolation after the fatal ritual has become unacceptable, but the assurance remains part of Shibdas’s salesmanship rather than a demonstrated change in Harry’s condition.

Return without resolution

On the way back, Connie is gloomy and says nothing. The narrator understands that she has lost her last hope of making Harry normal. Her remaining remark is that perhaps she, too, will find peace now. It does not report that Harry has changed or that the amulet has worked; instead, it gives voice to Connie’s exhaustion after the consultation has converted hope into fear and then into a lesser promise.

The return to the hotel carries the encounter back into Connie’s working life. The atmosphere is tense. Sata Bose stands behind the reception counter and looks at Connie without seeing her; Shankar joins him while Connie takes the lift upstairs. The contrast between the quiet return and the earlier earnest appeal leaves the episode unresolved: Connie has refused the sacrifice, but the stigma she wanted to remove from Harry remains, and the amulet supplies no confirmed remedy. The consultation’s decisive revelation is the depth of her concern for her companion—and the ease with which Shibdas turns that concern into an opportunity to solicit payment.