Page:Broken Ties and Other Stories.pdf/12

 adequate to say that he did not believe in God. One ought rather to say that he vehemently believed in no God. As the business of a captain in the navy is rather to sink ships than to steer, so it was Jagamohan’s business to sink the creed of theism, wherever it put its head above the water.

The order of his arguments ran like this:
 * 1) If there be a God, then we must owe our intelligence to Him.
 * 2) But our intelligence clearly tells us that there is no God.
 * 3) Therefore God Himself tells us that there is no God.

‘Yet you Hindus,’ he would continue, ‘have the effrontery to say that God exists. For this sin thirty-three million gods and goddesses exact penalties from you people, pulling your ears hard for your disobedience.’

Jagamohan was married when he was a mere boy. Before his wife died he had read Malthus. He never married again.

His younger brother, Harimohan, was the father of Satish. Harimohan’s nature was so exactly the opposite of his elder brother’s that people might suspect me of fabricating it for the purpose of