Prayers in Remembrance of Salman Mustan bring Lin and the surviving members of his circle together at Haji Ali Mosque, the first time they have gathered as a group since Salman was killed in the battle at Chuha’s house. The memorial is both a communal act of grief and a portrait of the life the men resume afterward: they pray for their friend, then return to a criminal organization tolerated by the police in exchange for money and a measure of order. Lin’s silence during the prayers makes that contradiction personal; he cannot separate the religious act from the criminal world in which he and Salman lived.

Setting and return

The gathering takes place at the mosque on its white marble island, reached by a flat stone path from shore that the incoming tide will submerge. As daylight fades, pilgrims and local residents leave the shrine, while flowers cast upon the receding water drift back toward the path. The setting places the gang’s private bereavement within a public space of prayer and pilgrimage, where grief and repentance are already part of the daily passage between island and shore.

The men have been apart for weeks after the fight at Chuha’s house, hiding and recovering from their wounds. The press has called the violence carnage and massacre and demanded justice and punishment. Yet the police do not arrest the group. No one is willing to testify; the battle has eliminated the Sapna killers; Chuha’s gang had previously killed a policeman, a crime the police could not bring to court; and money taken from Chuha’s operations has been used to bribe officers. The memorial therefore follows not a public reckoning but the gang’s return to the city and its work.

The police privately warn Sanjay, now leader of the Khader Khan council, that the gang has exhausted its chances: they expect peace and continued prosperity, and threaten that they will impose discipline if Sanjay cannot. They also tell him that Abdullah must not be seen in Bombay again. This warning shadows the reunion with the knowledge that the same authorities who have allowed the gang to escape prosecution can still dictate who may remain in the city.

The gathering and prayer

After weeks in hiding, the men return to their former jobs in Sanjay’s organization. Lin comes back from Goa and resumes work in the passport operation with Villu and Krishna. When the call goes out to gather at Haji Ali, he rides his Enfield bike to the shrine and crosses the bay on foot with Abdullah and Mahmoud Melbaaf. The memorial is thus not an isolated religious observance: it reunites people who have been dispersed by the violence and draws them back into the organization’s everyday operations.

Mahmoud leads the prayers from a small balcony reserved for the group. Facing Mecca, he speaks for those kneeling or standing behind him. The Muslim members of the council kneel; Sanjay, a Hindu, and Andrew, a Christian, kneel beside them. Lin knows the words and the movements of the prayer and believes the others would welcome his joining them. He nevertheless remains standing, unable to divide his criminal life from his religious life as the others seem able to do. He offers Salman a quiet hope for peace, but feels that his own compromised state allows no more than this small prayer.

The prayer’s language of compassion and mercy also includes those who have incurred wrath and gone astray. Lin hears in it a fitting reflection of his diminished sense of honour and pride. Rather than resolving the conflict between faith and crime, the ritual makes his discomfort legible: the men can gather in devotion, but Lin cannot experience that devotion as separate from the violence and dishonesty around them.

Mourning and its aftermath

At the end of the prayers, the men embrace according to custom and walk back toward shore. Their appearance complicates the solemnity of the occasion. They wear sunglasses and new clothes; most display the gold chains, watches, rings, and bracelets bought with a year or more of smuggler’s wages. Their confident, armed-gangster swagger makes the procession look menacing, so they have to work to persuade the professional beggars along the island path to accept the rupee notes they have brought as alms. The juxtaposition does not cancel the mourning: they have prayed in their own ways and cried for Salman. It instead holds charity, grief, display, and criminal power together in one return from the shrine.

Three cars wait by the sea wall, near the place where Lin once stood with Abdullah on the night he met Khaderbhai. Lin pauses there to say goodbye, and Sanjay invites him to share a meal with the group. The gathering therefore ends not with the dissolution of the council but with an offer of renewed fellowship. For Lin, however, the prayer has left the gap between the group’s religious observance and its criminal life unresolved. The men can mourn Salman together; Lin remains apart in the very moment when the others are closest in ritual.