Mourning Raga

II

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I was here, once,’ said Anjli, unfolding the coloured brochure of Delhi across her lap with desultory interest. ‘In India, I mean. But I can’t remember much about it now, it’s so long ago.’

‘Your mother didn’t tell us that,’ Tossa said. ‘Was she with you?’

‘No, only my father. She didn’t want to come, she was filming. It was the year before she divorced him. I was only just five. I used to know a little Hindi, too, but I’ve forgotten it all now.’

Her voice was quite matter-of-fact; she felt, as far as they could detect, no regrets over America, and no qualms or anticipation at the prospect of India. She had been brought up largely by competent people paid to do the job, and she was under no illusions about her own position or theirs. A child in her situation, intelligent and alert as she was, would have to acquire a protective shell of cynicism in order to survive, thought Tossa. Anjli knew that there was money on both sides of her family, and that however she might be pushed around from one parent to the other, that money would have to maintain her in the style to which she was accustomed. As for the cool equanimity with which she had parted from her mother at London Airport, who could be surprised by it, when she had spent most of her young life as isolated from her mother as from her distant and forgotten father?

‘He brought me to see his mother, I think, but I don’t remember her at all. I guess she must have been pretty upset at his marrying in America, like that, and staying away all that time. They’re very clannish, aren’t they?’

‘Very much like the rest of us, I expect,’ said Tossa. ‘She’ll be pleased enough when she has you on a more permanent basis, I bet.’

The Indian Airlines plane hummed steadily towards Delhi, half its passengers dozing, like Dominic in the seat across the gangway from them. Strange, thought Anjli, without resentment, almost with appreciation, how neatly Tossa had steered him into that place, though Anjli had designed that he should sit beside her, as on the long flight over. This small reverse she could afford to take in her stride; she had time enough, she calculated optimistically, to detach him from his Tossa before they left Delhi again. As yet they were only one hour inland from Bombay. The adventure had hardly begun.

‘Oh, I haven’t made up my mind yet about staying,’ she said firmly. ‘I don’t know whether I’m going to like it here. It’s kind of a corny country, don’t you think?’ She frowned down at the coloured pictures of the Red Fort and the Qutb Minar. ‘All this old stuff, I mean, what’s the point? In the States we’ve got everything new, and after all, I’ve grown up there. This will be an experience, but I don’t figure I’m going to want to stay here too long.’

She was quite firm about it; and on reflection, Tossa thought, she was quite capable of demanding to be taken back again when India palled, and getting her own way, too. Dorette had made her plans; but so might Anjli, and there was a good deal of Dorette in Anjli, enough to make the struggle a dangerously even one if it ever came to that. And yet…

‘Do you really think,’ said Anjli suddenly, her cheek turned to the window, where the blinding light clung and quivered as it touched her lips, ‘she’ll be glad to have me? She’s old, and she hated it when he married Mommy.’

‘But you’re not Dorette, you’re you… partly her son. You’re her only grandchild. She’ll be glad,’ said Tossa with certainty.

It was the nearest they had come, in all that long and tedious journey, to asking and giving sympathy; and even now Tossa felt herself to be on thin ice. Very aloof, very independent, this child; she’d be infuriated if you tried to mother her, when she’d managed for so long without any mothering. Not the clinging kind, Anjli; except, of course, in a predatory fashion to Dominic’s arm when the slimmest chance offered. Inscrutable, dangerous and to be respected, that was Satyavan Kumar’s daughter. Tossa didn’t know whether to be sorrier for the grandchild or the grandmother. Somehow, between these two, the face of the father eluded her imagination; for it had never entered Dorette’s head to show her a photograph of Satyavan. Probably she hadn’t even kept one, once the man himself was out of her life.

Anjli, her cheek against the sun-warmed glass, watched the baked, thirsty land revolve beneath them, presenting a changing, circling pattern of white buildings, radiating roads, scattered green trees dispersed in a rose-red landscape. The palette of North India, apart from the hills, is a wonderful range of reds and oranges and browns, glittering with drought. In winter the green of foliage looks faded and silvery against it, and the violent crimsons and purples of early flowering trees explode like fireworks.

‘Look, Delhi!’

Dominic awoke, and came to lean across them both and peer down with them at the fabled city, older than Alexander, eight cities superimposed upon one another, overlapping, showing faintly through like a palimpsest. The radiant light picked out minarets, domes, pompous white office blocks, the superb sweep of the King’s Way, ruled across New Delhi in rose-pink, lined on either side with vivid grass and the embroidered mirror-glitter of water, clustering green of parks, the spinning wheel of Connaught Place with all its radial roads straight as arrows. For some moments they had a perfect sketch-map before them, then the plane settled lower and selected its way in to the international airport, and they were left with a narrowing circle of the south-western cantonment, ruled in rectangular blocks, gathering, solidifying, growing to lifesize.

Anjli, gazing dubiously down at the city of which she was mortally afraid, settled her brow artfully against Dominic’s arm and counted, shrewdly, her blessings. Never look too far ahead; now is what matters. Because there isn’t any tomorrow, and you can’t make much capital out of yesterday, it slips through your fingers; but now is something there’ll always be, even if it changes its shape.

Dominic saw the tense line of her mouth and cheek, and didn’t move his arm. They watched Delhi come up to meet them, a floating city, red and white, wonderful.

The touch-down was brisk and gentle and indifferently expert. And at Palam Ernest Felder was waiting for them.

He was fifty years old, but looked younger because of his springy step and dapper carriage. They said he had given Dorette her first chance in films, years ago, and stayed a close friend of hers ever since, though by all accounts at one time he would have liked to be more to her than a friend. He had been the minor celebrity then, and she the raw beginner; now she was the reigning star of the old, wholesome school of sweet family entertainment, and he was still a minor celebrity, perhaps a rung or two lower down the ladder than when they had met, but still a director of mild distinction. Or was it co-director this time? Dorette had mentioned an Indian director who was sharing the responsibility with him on this co-production.

He met them as soon as they crossed the apron of sand-brown earth and entered the airport buildings. A large, muscular hand reached for Dominic’s, acknowledging the male as automatically in charge. A shaggy, brindled grey head inclined punctiliously, a weathered, philosophical face, lined with humour and self-indulgence, beamed welcome at them all. A very well-kept body, athletic and lean, made the most of a beautifully-cut grey suit.

‘Mr Felse? I’m Felder. Dorrie wired me to look out for you. Miss Barber, you’re very welcome to India. I hope you’re not too tired after the journey?’ He turned to Anjli, and contemplated her long and fondly, while she stared back at him unblinkingly and let her small hand lie limply in his. ‘And you must be Dorrie’s little girl. Well, well, I haven’t seen you since you were knee-high to a kitten.’

Anjli, on her dignity, looked down her nose and said: ‘How do you do, Mr Felder!’ in her best party tones. But he looked kind and easy-going, and his voice recalled America in this alien land, and she could not help warming to him. ‘It’s sure nice to have somebody here who belongs,’ she said, for once without calculation, and her passive fingers stirred and gripped confidingly.

‘Girlie, you’re going to have no trouble at all that way, not while my bunch are here just outside town. Film people I bet you know, and film people are the same the world over, even when you’ve got ten sorts together, the way we have here. I’ve got ’em all laid on for you, a real party, so Delhi’s going to feel like home. I’ve got the boys outside with the truck, you don’t have to do a thing but just hand over to us, and we do everything.’

‘It’s really very kind of you,’ said Tossa, and meant it, ‘but I suppose we ought to contact Mr Kumar as soon as possible, oughtn’t we?’

‘So you ought, my dear, so you ought. But it’s coming on evening, and you’ve all three just been rushed across the world, and it’s my belief you need tonight to unwind and put your best moods and faces on ready for the moment of truth.’ Bless him, he wasn’t going to pretend for a moment that anything about this was easy or normal. He knew his Dorette from long since, and had learned to approach the crises she created with caution and philosophy. ‘Now I know she won’t have wired him exactly when to expect you, or why would she hand things over to me? Yes, I know she wrote him a warning, three, four weeks ago, but that’s the size of it. I know my girl! That cost her plenty. Now before you go to him you’ve got to have a roof over your heads that you don’t owe to him, and friends right there behind you, so you can say simply: “Look, here I am. Am I welcome?” and if not, well, all right, then, that’s that, goodbye. Sorry you’ve been troubled, and no hard feelings. We’re not beggars, are we, honey? We’ve got places of our own to go to, and feet of our own to stand on. Right?’

He was looking at Anjli. There was a bloom of colour flooding the honey of her cheeks, and she looked tall and grave and very independent. ‘Right!’

‘So I reckon tomorrow morning will be time enough for Mr Kumar. Mornings are the time for starting enterprises. Right?’

‘Right! And we can have this evening! We haven’t seen anything yet. All we did at Bombay was get out of one plane at Santacruz and into another.’

‘Miss Lester did say,’ agreed Dominic hopefully, ‘that she would arrange a hotel for us. We took it for granted that Tossa and I would need one, of course…’

‘Don’t say another word, it’s all taken care of. I’ve booked you all in at Keen’s Hotel. It’s south of town, off the Lodi Road, but it’s cheaper than most and just as good, and I reckoned you might want to stay around town a while, since you are here on Dorrie’s errand. Shame to waste that air fare, who knows if it may not be once in a lifetime? How’s that? Sound OK?’

‘Sounds wonderful!’ said Tossa with heartfelt gratitude. You didn’t find a thoughtful host of this kind every day. ‘It’s terribly good of you.’

‘Come on, then, and let’s pick up your luggage, they should have turfed it out by now.’ He took Anjli by the hand as naturally as a tried and trusted uncle, and surprisingly she let him. They might all get a little dizzy and confused later, if Mr Felder kept up this pace and all his unit matched up, but at the moment he was certainly a huge relief.

In through the teeming halls of Palam, as loud and busy and stunning as any other international airport, but peacock-hued with glorious saris and bleached white with invading sunlight; and out to the stands where the luggage was deposited, and the porters waited bright-eyed, heads swathed in red cloths, ready to pounce on whatever cases were claimed. Two of them secured the items Dominic indicated, and hoisted them to their padded heads. Dominic would have lifted one case himself, but Felder nudged him good-humouredly aside.

‘Don’t! It doesn’t cost much, even if you over-tip, and these boys have to make a living. This country sure has a lot of people to feed.’

Anjli stood on the steps, and looked at the barren, parched, russet and gold land from which her father had sprung, a waste of reds, dead-rose-petal browns, tawny sand, punctuated with patches of vivid green grass and frail, newly-budding trees. A pallid forecourt, a circle of gardens, a silver-grey road winding away towards the distant white walls of the town. But mostly one level of dust-fine soil, drowned in sunlight so sharp and thin that it seemed there must be frost in the air. In her fine woollen cardigan suit she felt warm enough, and yet there was a clarity that cut like knives when she breathed. And this was Delhi in December.

She didn’t remember anything, or at least, not with any part of mind or memory. Only her blood stirred strangely, recapturing some ancestral rapport. Not necessarily in affection; rather with a raising of hackles, aware of compulsions not altogether congenial. It was too bright, too dry, too clear, too open; there was nowhere to hide.

‘This way. We’re not supposed to park private stuff round here, but what can you do? These foreigners!’ Felder led the way briskly round the corner of the buildings to the blinding white concrete where the airport bus was filling up with plump ladies in saris and ponderous gentlemen in white cottons and European overcoats. The truck turned out to be a minibus, from which two unmistakable young Americans leaned to grin at them hospitably and offer large, amiable hands.

‘Tom Hoskins is our driver-cum-handyman. There isn’t much Tom can’t do. And this is Joe Salt, assistant cameramen. We’ve got it dead easy here, mostly we’re playing second-fiddle to the Indians, and believe me, Ganesh Rao knows exactly what he wants, and nine-tenths of the time he’s dead right, so ours is a sinecure. Get aboard, ladies, choose your seats, we’ll take you round through the city for a ride.’

They climbed aboard willingly, eyes round and attentive at the windows, intent on missing nothing.

‘Shouldn’t we at least check in at the hotel?’ asked Dominic.

‘So we will, laddie, so we will, on our way out to Mehrauli. Don’t want to haul this luggage around, do we? This will be a lightning tour specially for you, because we’ve got to go right in to the shopping centre at Connaught Circus to pick up one of the gang, and then we’re bound due south for the edge of the town, where we’re filming. We’ll be quite close to Keen’s on the way out, and drop your stuff off there. Straight to the town office, Tom, Ashok will be there by now, we’re a mite late.’

Tom drove with the verve and aplomb which they were later to associate with Sikh taxi-drivers, and in particular with the devoted virtuosi, also mostly Sikhs and invariably young, who drove the wappish little scooter-rickshaws around the town. Clearly he had been here long enough to know his way around and to have bettered the impetuous elan of the native motorists. They clung to their seats (though Anjli tended rather to cling to Dominic) and stared their fill; and Mr Felder, with wide shoulders braced easily against the panelling and long legs stretched across the gangway, commented spasmodically on the unfolding scene of Delhi.

On either side the steel-grey road the overwhelming brownness of North India, at first a monotone, dissolved, as they penetrated it, into a marvellous spectrum of shades and textures, which yet were all brown. Even the grass was brown, a dry, subtle shade with tints of green breathing through it, to indicate that against first appearances it still lived. Beyond all question the air was alive, the light was alive, the incredibly brilliant sky was alive, radiantly blue and flecked with a few sailing feathers of cloud to emphasize its depth of colour. At first they drove across the barren brown earth as over a dead calm sea, the steely road now growing russet with the reflected glow, its dusty fringes lined with curious crude baskets of rust-coloured iron, like fireless braziers. ‘Newly-planted trees,’ said Felder, forestalling the question; and then they could glimpse the tender green saplings just peering over their bars. ‘You’ll see ’em all over the new suburbs. They won’t always be eyesores.’ Then they were among scattered small houses, dropped almost accidentally about the dun-coloured plain, and abruptly the white buildings congealed into a residential road. On their left rose the heaving brown flank of the Ridge, on their right, from clustering trees, soared a phantasmagoria of imposing buildings of every possible design and style, regularly spaced like huge summer-houses in a giant’s garden. ‘The Diplomatic Enclave. They suggested every country should build its embassy in its own national style. See those dark-blue domes? Pakistan did that! You ought to walk through, some time, you won’t believe your eyes. And that huge palace beyond, that’s the Ashoka Hotel. Prestige job. You won’t believe that, either…’

From Willingdon Crescent they caught glimpses of the dome of Rashtrapati Bhavan and the twin blocks of the government secretariat, a brief rear view of the spacious buildings of the new city; then they were careering up Irwin Road, head over ears into the pandemonium of modern Delhi’s street life at last, between banks and restaurants and cinemas plastered with posters tall as towers and vivid as the rainbow, caught in a whirling current of cars, buses, bicycles, pedestrians and motorbikes and scooters towing canopied rickshaws, extravagantly painted with flowers, birds and garlands, like some wonderful hybrid between an old-fashioned hansom cab and the cabin of a canal-boat. This brilliant river brought them suddenly to the whirlpool of New Delhi’s shopping centre, the wheel of radiating streets they had seen from the air.

‘Drive round Connaught Place, Tom, just once, let them have a look at the nearest thing we’ve got to Piccadilly.’

It was much more spacious than Piccadilly, a large, regular circle of park in the centre, ringed with a broad road and a colonnade of white shops, and eight radial roads lancing away from the centre like the spokes of a wheel.

Tom made the circuit of it at speed, for here there was less traffic and more space, and the pedestrians had withdrawn to the raised sidewalk that was sheltered by the colonnade.

‘The outer ring is where we’re going… Connaught Circus. If you ever want to shop, you could do worse than start here. OK, Tom, make for the office.’

Tom took the nearest radial road, and turned left into Connaught Circus, the rim of the wheel. Banks, garages, restaurants, shops flickered past them in procession, then intervals of trees and grass, and curious quiet islands of older buildings cheek by jowl with the new. They halted before a low green hedge, a narrow strip of garden, and a tall, plain, Victorian colonial house.

‘Temporary headquarters. Down south, near Mehrauli, we’ve got a couple of villas for living quarters, but we shall only be there a few days, then we’re headed for Benares to do the Deer Park scenes at Sarnath, right where they happened. But this is where we keep our gear and do the office work.’

‘What is the film you’re making?’ Tossa asked curiously.

‘Didn’t Dorrie tell you? It’s an epic about the life of the Buddha. Time was when it would have been called: World, Farewell! or some such title. Nowadays we do these things straight, and simply call it The Buddha. After all, if you can have a film called The Bible you can have one called The Buddha, can’t you? That’s what the producer wants. But Ganesh Rao says the accent is on the man, and it ought really to be called Siddhartha. So my guess is, that’s what it’ll be called in the end.’

‘I’ve heard of the Buddha,’ Anjli said delicately, not committing herself to total ignorance, ‘but I don’t really know the story. Could you tell it to me?’

‘Ashok is the man you want, he’ll tell you everything you need to know. Give him a blast, Tom, he can’t have heard us come.’

Tom obliged. The fan-lighted door of the house opened promptly, and a small, slender man in close-fitting trousers and a grey achkan came dancing down the steps with a music-case tucked under his arm. His eyes were black and long-lashed, his smile aloof and courteous, and his colour palest bronze. Surprisingly the rest of his features, full, mobile lips, hooked nose and jutting cheek-bones, were so jagged that he looked like a head by Epstein, and a good one, at that.

He said: ‘Welcome to Delhi!’ in a soft, shy voice, and clambered nimbly into the minibus, where he dumped his music-case between his feet and clasped fine, broad-jointed hands across his stomach. The first two fingers of his left hand were scored at the tips with deep, stained grooves, many-times-healed and many-times-re-opened wounds, smeared with cream that glistened when the light caught it.

‘Meet Ashok Kabir,’ said Felder, ‘our musical director. You ask him nicely, Anjli, and he’ll play you some of his music for Siddhartha presently, when we get him warmed up. Ashok, the little lady wants you to tell her all about this film of ours.’

Anjli Kumar and Ashok Kabir looked at each other suddenly, attentively, at a range of about one foot, and in their own personal ways fell in love at first sight. Dominic, watching with sharpened senses, thought, good lord, I never dreamed it would be that easy. I needn’t have worried, I was just standing in for whoever it was going to be. Anjli saw the native, the initiate, the authority, whose grace was such that he was willing to share what he knew with whoever went to meet him in the right spirit. Ashok, the artist, and himself complete, saw the homing exile unaware of her wishes or her needs, a fragmented child unable to recognise her fractures, much less repair them. They looked at each other with wonder, interest and respect, and had nothing yet to say.

‘Now down Janpath, fast as you like,’ said Felder contentedly, ‘but take it easy where it crosses Rajpath – did I tell you that’s the King’s Way, you folks? Janpath is the Queen’s Way! – so they can get a look right along to the government buildings. You think you’ve seen something when you’ve seen the Mall, in London? Wait till you get a load of this! And then go round the back of the Lodi Park to Keen’s, and we’ll drop the bags off and sign in…’

Keen’s was an old-fashioned but English-run hotel, in an ancient white Indian house that turned a blank face to the street on all sides, and lived a full life about its internal courtyard and gardens, with a balcony for every room – every suite, if the truth be told – on its first and second floors, where the guests were housed. There was but one way in, masked by a tall green hedge; and inside, there was peace and almost silence, all street noises excluded. Room-boys dressed as rajas made off with the baggage, but they turned out to be one of the trimmings of every hotel, even the most modest, and were amiable enough at very low cost. The new arrivals lingered only long enough to stop feeling stunned, and to extract from their bags the coats which Felder insisted they would need in an hour or so. Then they were borne away to the two villas near Hauz Khas, on the most southerly fringe of the city, where a couple of trucks and a large saloon car had just unloaded the exhausted company from Mehrauli.

The din of voices was deafening but reassuring; who could feel inhibited or a stranger where the general babel made it possible to talk nonsense and not be brought to answer for it? And the array of faces, several of them still in make-up, baffled memory and withdrew names, making it necessary, after a while, to enquire discreetly about the dominant members of the collective; but that was taken for granted, and everyone answered cheerfully for himself. In a large, charming, rather bare room, with tall windows looking out on a neglected garden, they circulated and ate and drank, and in an unexpected fashion were at home. The girls – there seemed to be several girls – kept disappearing, and coming back with something freshly cooked. Everything was improvised, but everything worked. It might not be Indian – how could they judge? – but it was calming and reassuring and just what they needed.

Ashok Kabir sat cross-legged on a cushion, and cradled his sitar in his arms, its long, beautiful, polished body reclined upon his shoulder, the twenty moveable frets gleaming and quivering like nerves along its slender teak neck, the larger sounding gourd at the base of the throat nuzzling his heart. Six main strings, so they said, and nineteen sympathetic ones! And those strings were the reason why the fingers with which he controlled them were gashed deep, and never could be healed. And we think western music is a hard apprenticeship!

‘… so Prince Siddhartha was born to the King Suddhodana and his Queen Maya,’ said Ashok in his soft voice, ‘and all the auguries were auspicious, though a little puzzling. The wise men told the king that his son would certainly be a very great leader, there was only some doubt as to what kind. They said that if ever the prince was allowed to set eyes on an old man, a sick man, a dead man and a holy monk, then he would be the lord of a very great kingdom, but not of this world. And as the king preferred that his son should go on ruling after him in the normal and profitable way of this world, he took good care to bring up Siddhartha in a kind of benevolent imprisonment, surrounded by every kind of pleasant diversion, and excluded from him all sickness and ugliness and pain. And when he grew up they married him successfully to the most beautiful of all the noblewomen of the land…’

‘Thank you, darling!’ said Kamala sweetly, and bowed her acknowledgements with hands prayerfully pressed together and head inclined. She wore a white silk sari embroidered with green and silver thread, and looked rather like the Indian Miss World, only more so. She was, according to Felder, as clever as she was beautiful, and nearly as acquisitive, and it had cost plenty to get her to play the heroine.

‘… the sweet Yashodhara… with whom in any case he was already in love, and she with him…’

‘Naturally!’ murmured Kamala, with a glance at the statuesque figure and consciously splendid countenance of her lord Siddhartha, holding court on the other side of the room with a fresh lime soda in one hand. ‘Who could help it?’

They had seen that face on one of the outsize posters in Janpath or Irwin Road, early that evening. There was no mistaking it. Felder had translated the lettering of the name for them; Barindra Mitra, one of the popular demi-gods, for top-flight film stars in India are little less than deities. Barindra Mitra sat cross-legged on his couch as on a throne, all the more devastating in majesty because he was still in costume, swathed in short gold tunic and white silk robe, with one bronze shoulder naked, and on his head a tower-like crown studded with property jewels.

‘But the prince grew restive with being cooped up, and soon outgrew all his pleasure-gardens and palaces, and would go out into the city of Kapilavastu. And when he couldn’t dissuade him, the king sent out orders through the city that everyone who was sick or ugly or maimed or old should be kept out of the way for the occasion. All the same, when the prince drove through the town with his faithful charioteer Channa, he was suddenly confronted by something he had never seen before in his life, and had never realised existed… an aged, senile decrepit, miserable relic of a man at the end of his span. Old Age in person!’

‘At your service!’ said the jaunty young man who was just handing round a tray of savoury patties. His arms and legs still bore the traces of the old man’s artful make-up, and he was still draped in picturesque rags, but he had shed the wig and beard, huddled shaggily at this moment in a corner of the long couch like a sleeping Yorkshire terrier, and his face, but for two painted patches of grained greyness on the cheeks, was in its smooth, high-coloured prime.

‘Naturally he asked whatever this creature could be, and if it was really a man at all, and whether it had been born so, or this was a visitation from the gods. And Channa had to tell him at last that what he saw was the common lot of all men at the end, that this poor wreck had once been as young and ardent as the prince himself, and that some day the prince himself would be as was this old man. And Siddhartha drove back to the palace terribly shaken. And that’s the scene they’ve been shooting in Mehrauli this afternoon.’

‘Mehrauli being only a village, properly speaking,’ said the director Ganesh Rao, in his immaculate and unaccented English, ‘but perhaps nearer to Kapilavastu than anything one could fake up in the city. And if you want an excitable but manageable crowd laid on in moments, it’s just the place.’

So that was why three of them were still so fresh from the cameras that they had not got rid of make-up and costumes yet. Old Age, Channa the charioteer, and Prince Siddhartha: Govind Das and Subhash Ghose, two professional Bengali character actors, and Barindra Mitra, the star. Anjli sat cross-legged on a cushion on the floor, squarely facing Ashok, and copying his pose to the last finger-curve of the relaxed hand that lay in his lap, the hand with the plectrum strapped to the index finger. She took her dark, disconcerting gaze from his face long enough to look round them all, and enjoy the attention she was getting as Dorette Lester’s little girl. Felder had been right, the film world is one the world over.

‘Tomorrow,’ said Ganesh Rao, digging thick, strong fingers into his thatch of black hair, ‘we’re going to finish the other two scenes there, the encounters with disease and death.’

‘So he did go again,’ Anjli said, and her grave eyes came back to Ashok’s face.

‘Twice, and he saw what really happens to men. And in the meantime Yashodhara had a son, but it was too late to deflect her husband, however much he loved them both. He saw that age and sickness and death were waiting for them, as well as for him, and that nobody had ever found a way of triumphing over these evils. So he named the child Rahula… that means a fetter, because the child bound him like a chain. And the prince rode out one more time, and he met an ascetic monk, who had forsaken the world for solitude, in search of the ultimate peace that no one knows. And after this Siddhartha brooded on the need to find this transcendent peace, this freedom from the wheel of recurring sufferings, not only for himself, not first for himself, but for his dearest, and after them for all men. And one night after the pleasures and entertainments of the palace were over, and all the court lay asleep, he got up in the small hours and looked at his sleeping wife and son, and went out from them silently in search of the way. The king had every gate guarded, being afraid of this, but all the guards slept, and all the gates opened of themselves to let Siddartha go free.’

‘Play some of the music,’ suggested Kamala, leaning over him from behind in a drift of pale silk and perfume. ‘Play my song, and then the theme of the departing, let Anjli hear how you can make a folk melody and a classical meditation out of the same notes. Do you know what is a raga, Anjli? They are the basic material for all our classical music, and there are thousands of them, the ragas, each for a special time and season, and a special mood, so that in a few rising and descending notes you have the mind’s first statement, the one thought out of which a work of art grows. Tell them, Ashok!’

Ashok explained with his fingers. The teak neck of the sitar leaned confidingly into his shoulder, his scarred fingers pressed the main strings, and with the plectrum he picked out a brief, rising phrase, and brought it sighing down again to dissolve where it had begun. A handful of notes tossed into the air and caught again. He repeated it slowly, to let them follow the sound, and then took it up in tentative chords and began to embroider. Not yet the form in which they had occasionally heard classical ragas, but turning the notes into a simple, folk melody, something even the western ear could accept readily and even memorise. Kamala took up the thread and began to sing wordlessly, in a sweet, forward, wailing voice, the gentle caterwauling of a deserted kitten.

‘But that’s something even we would find approachable,’ said Tossa, astonished. ‘I expected it to be much more difficult.’

‘It’s meant to be approachable, it must reach everybody in this form. If I do not hear it sung in the streets, once the film is shown, I shall be disappointed. And for that it must be grasped on the wing, it will be heard only once. It is the lullaby Yashodhara sings to Rahula after she discovers that her lord is gone. And this is how it will be heard at his going.’

This time the theme budded slowly, and began to uncurl in a meditative development. The plangent string tone of the sitar, no longer unfamiliar even in the West, swelled until from a curiously intimate and secret solo instrument it had become a full orchestra. Its sweetness and strangeness had a hypnotic effect, to which the nerves responded, and even though the expected acceleration did not come, or only in a strictly modified form, the usual mounting tension and excitement was present no less, drawing mind and senses taut in almost painful concentration. Some music lulls; this disturbed. And so it should, for it expressed the renunciation of the world and the assumption of the world’s burden in one symbolic act. They could almost see the solitary figure steal silently through the apartments of the palace, leaving the sleepers sleeping, and the gates one by one opening before him, until he bestowed his ornaments upon Channa, exchanged his rich garments for the plain yellow robe of a huntsman in the forest, cut off the princely knot of his hair, sent back in sorrow his charioteer and his white horse Kantaka, and walked forward alone into the darkness to do battle with life and death. And at the moment when he vanished the music died away in a shuddering sigh and broke off, unfinished.

Everyone stirred and drew breath, otherwise the silence lasted for a moment; then Anjli asked:

‘Do the ragas all have names?’

‘Yes, they have names. This is Raga Aheer Bhairab. It is a morning raga.’

‘And it has a special purpose? A special mood, Kamala said?’

‘It is to be played,’ said Ashok, stroking his still faintly vibrating strings, ‘in the early hours of the morning, when the guests are departing.’

Felder drove them back to Keen’s Hotel about nine o’clock in the evening, a little dazed, a little silent. Anjli was clutching the copy of The Life of the Buddha which Ashok had lent her. And again Felder had been quite right, they needed their coats; the air was sharp and very cold, the sky above crackling with stars.

‘Where is this place you’ve got to go? Rabindar Nagar? That’s one of the newish suburbs that are spreading out westwards, isn’t it? Will you find your way all right?’

‘I’ve got a town plan,’ said Dominic. ‘We’ll find it.’

‘I’d come with you, but we want to finish the Mehrauli shots tomorrow, and if we make it we’re off by air to Benares the next morning to do the Deer Park scenes. I don’t suppose you’ll have any trouble. But just in case you do need any help, give me a ring in the evening. You’ve got the villa number and the office, I’ll be one end or the other. Give me a ring anyhow. I’ll be glad to know how you get on.’

‘We’ll do that. And thanks for everything.’