The cinema audience (which would, nowadays, cheer raucously at the sight of a young couple diving behind a bush, which would then begin to shake ridiculously — so low have we sunk in our ability to suggest) watched, riveted to the screen, as the love of Pia and Nayyar, against a background of Dal Lake and ice-blue Kashmiri sky, expressed itself in kisses applied to cups of pink Kashmiri tea; by the fountains of Shalimar they pressed their lips to a sword … but now, at the height of Hanif Aziz’s triumph, the serpent refused to wait; under its influence, the house-lights came up.