Biff, meanwhile, was speaking in a low voice to his companions. "Let's spread out, so you two can watch to see if anyone is watching me," he suggested. "Then no one will know that we are together." To that, Li and Kamuka agreed. As they moved away, they each passed Chandra and added coins to the collection at the Hindu boy's urging. Then Chandra reached Biff and asked politely, "You have rupees, maybe, sahib?"
Biff pulled two rupee notes from his pocket and dropped them in the bowl. Chandra bowed and brushed past, taking the bowl to Jinnah Jad, who picked out the rupee notes and glowered his dissatisfaction at the rest. Two men were passing by, carrying a heavy basket that dangled by its handles from a long pole. Jinnah Jad told them to set down their burden and remove the bundles that it contained. Then:
"This boy is good for nothing," declared Jinnah Jad, indicating Chandra.
"So I make him go for good. You watch."
Before Chandra could dart away, Jinnah Jad grabbed him and thrust him into the basket, which was roundish and bulging at the sides. Jinnah Jad threw a cloth over the boy's head and shoulders and suddenly, Chandra's form collapsed beneath it. Triumphantly, Jinnah Jad jumped into the basket and trampled the cloth there.
Chandra had vanished from the basket, and to prove it, Jinnah Jad not only stamped his feet all around, he squatted down in the basket, filling it with his fat form, while he clucked like a happy hen seated on a nest. Then, emerging from the basket, Jinnah Jad snatched up a long sword, shouting, "I show you boy is really gone!" With that, he stabbed the sword through one side of the basket and out the other side.
While the crowd gasped, Jinnah Jad repeated the thrust again and again, one direction, then another. The jadoo wallah had worked himself into a frenzy when the men who owned the basket stopped him and babbled in a native dialect.
"They know the boy is gone," translated Jinnah Jad, for the benefit of the crowd. "They do not want me to spoil their basket." He waved to the basket and told the two bearers, "All right, take it."
Eagerly, the two natives piled their bundles into the basket, thrust the pole through its handles and hoisted it on their shoulders. By then, Jinnah Jad was in the midst of another miracle. He was pouring rice from a bowl into a square teakwood box that had a glass front, while he stated:
"One time, in India, there was great famine, with people everywhere needing rice. So a great yogi in the Himalayas fill a box with rice like this—"
The throng was hushed, for Calcutta itself had suffered from great famines, even in comparatively recent years.