- Flashback time: Lin tells the tale of his daring escape from an Australian prison.
- He and a friend made the plan and, accepting their duties as maintenance gardeners, used the chance to get up into a construction area on the prison wall and break on through to the other side.
- Because he's on the lam, Lin is nervous around cops and other authority types in Bombay.
- Even so, he goes walking (after midnight) around the city.
- One night, as he thinks about committing suicide from a sea wall, someone interrupts his morbid contemplation. That someone is Abdullah, the guy who saved him in the Standing Babas attack.
- Abdullah asks Lin to come to a parked car to meet someone.
- It's a famous Mafioso named Abdel Khader Khan who wants to meet the fugitive.
- Khaderbhai, as he's known, has heard of Lin's doctoring exploits in the slum. He invites Lin to get into the car and have a chillum, or smoke a pipe.
- They drive off to Haji Ali Restaurant, the only restaurant in town that's open past curfew, thanks to a healthy bribing relationship with the cops.
- The waiter tells Khaderbhai that he's having troubles with his landlord, and Khaderbhai promises to see what he can do.
- Abdullah pays a cop a bribe and then asks Lin to join him for a walk. They talk about the day that Abdullah saved Lin's life in the Standing Babas' den.
- Lin asks Abdullah if he is Khaderbhai's bodyguard, and he says that he isn't, but that he would die for him if necessary.
- When they get back to the car, Khaderbhai says that Abdullah and Lin look like brothers, which is kind of funny because they are very different, racially speaking, but they do have some similarities.
- The chauffeur, Nazeer, drives for an hour, and Khaderbhai tells Lin and Abdullah to get out.
- They enter a private club full of people and music.
- Khaderbhai invites Lin to drink some Persian tea with him and Abdullah, and they listen to the music, which is religious music.
- Lin says he doesn't believe in God. Khaderbhai says that there is no such thing as not believing in God, just not knowing God.
- They enter into a philosophical discussion on the existence and impossibility of God.
- An old man brings a chillum for them to smoke, and they eat fruit.
- Abdullah tells Lin that his two brothers were killed in Iran in the war against Iraq. He is happy that Khaderbhai thinks that he and Lin are brothers.
- The singers are back and Abdullah tells Lin that they are the famous Blind Singers of Nagpur. They had all lived in a village that had helped some rebels that were hiding in the mountains nearby. When the police found out, they decided to blind 20 villagers to teach them a lesson.
- This is a very important night for Lin, because it marks the beginning of his relationships with Khaderbhai and Abdullah.