Commander Sabarmati’s Baton

Commander Sabarmati’s Baton is the revolver Commander Vinoo Sabarmati uses first to shoot Lila Sabarmati and Homi Catrack, then to direct traffic from a policeman’s podium. Its transformation from weapon to baton gives the episode its defining image: the Commander’s surrender becomes a public performance, while Saleem Sinai recognizes that his own attempt to provoke a scandal has helped produce a far more consequential event.

The weapon and the killings

After receiving an anonymous note and waiting for private detective Dom Minto’s report, Commander Sabarmati went to the naval arsenal and signed out a long-nosed revolver and ammunition. He carried the detective’s address to an apartment on Colaba Causeway, where Lila answered the door. He shot her, then found Homi Catrack inside and shot him as well. The revolver was not silenced; the account marks the killings’ end with the silence that followed its firing.

From revolver to traffic baton

The Commander left the apartment carrying the smoking gun. He told a traffic policeman that he had killed his wife and her lover and was surrendering, but the officer fled after the Commander waved the weapon at him and dropped his traffic baton. Alone on the raised podium amid the confused traffic, the Commander began directing cars with the revolver. When twelve policemen arrived ten minutes later and arrested him, they removed the unusual baton with which he had been conducting traffic.

Saleem’s part and the public spectacle

Saleem recounts that he had arranged an alibi: during the shootings, six children watched a film at the Metro Cub Club. He presents himself as acting at a distance, like the moon affecting tides, and admits that the Commander was his puppet while the nation became the stage for a play he had not intended to bring about. Saleem had wanted a scandal and a warning about unfaithfulness, not the deaths that followed. The gun’s strange second use makes that unintended reversal visible: the instrument of the crime becomes the prop in the Commander’s surrender.

Consequences and significance

The episode’s consequences are sharply divided. Lila survives and is expected to recover, while Homi Catrack dies. Sonny Ibrahim identifies his father as the Commander’s defense lawyer, linking the public case to another family’s attempt to shape its outcome. The baton therefore carries the scene beyond its immediate violence: it joins crime, surrender, traffic, and spectacle in a single object, while Saleem’s confession exposes the gap between the effect he sought and the catastrophe he helped set in motion.