ABSTRACT
Recognising the importance of play/lila in Rao’s narratives, this chapter investigates both Indian and western analyses of play, preliminary to illuminating The Chessmaster and His Moves and The Cat and Shakespeare as chess games, brilliantly played by characters advocating Vedanta on the one hand and Viśiṣthādvaita Vedanta on the other. The chapter contends that Rao failed in his intent to expiate the Holocaust through ritual in the latter novel while fully succeeding at dramatising ration-shop fraud in the former.
