The Glass Palace

twenty

At the other end of the Bay of Bengal, in Calcutta, Uma’s brother and his family were waiting to receive her at the Dum Dum airstrip.

Her brother was a quiet and somewhat colourless man who worked in the accounts department of a shipping company. His wife was a severe asthmatic who rarely left the house. Of their children, Bela, a girl, was the youngest, at six. Her siblings were twins and they were a full seven years older. The older twin was a boy, Arjun; the younger was a girl and she went by her family nickname, Manju. Her given name — marvellous to recount — was ‘Brihannala’, which proved obdurately resistant to everyday use.

For the twins, Uma’s arrival in Calcutta was an event of unparalleled significance. This was not just because of who she was: it was at least partly because no one in the family had ever had occasion to go to Dum Dum before. It was just ten years since an aeroplane was first seen in Calcutta: in 1920, a Handley Page had been received at the racecourse by cheering crowds. Since then, planes belonging to Imperial Airways and Air France had also touched down in the city. But it was KLM that had started the first regular passenger service and the drama of its recently instituted comings and goings had held the city in thrall for months.

On the day of Uma’s arrival the excitement in the house was such that the family went to the unprecedented step of hiring a car, a new 1930 Austin Chummy. But the twins’ expectations were dashed on their arrival at the Dum Dum airstrip: there was nothing there but a stretch of tarmac, bordered by rice fields and coconut palms. This was too new a means of travel to have developed the trappings of ceremony. There was none of the pomp that accompanied an expedition to the docks: no uniformed sailors or peaked caps or beribboned harbourmasters. The terminal was a tin-roofed shed and the personnel consisted of foul-mouthed mechanics in grease-blackened overalls. What there was of a sense of occasion derived from the presence of the crowd of supporters who’d come to welcome Uma.

The waiting area consisted of a small, unroofed pen, fenced in with wire. The family, thoroughly intimidated, found itself pushed further and further back by Uma’s exuberant well-wishers. They heard the Fokker F-VIII while it was still hidden by clouds. Arjun was the first to spot it when it broke through, its squat silver body glinting between its double wings. Its silver fuselage wobbled above the palm trees as it came in to land.

There was a long wait in the sun before Uma was cleared. When the people ahead began to cheer they knew Uma was through. And then, suddenly, there she was, in person, very simply dressed, in a white cotton sari.

To the twins Uma was a creature of legend: the firebrand aunt who had dedicated herself to a life of politics instead of accepting the usual lot of the Hindu widow. On finding themselves in her presence they were awed into silence: it seemed incredible that their heroine should be a frail-looking woman, with greying hair and a haggard face.

On the way back to Lankasuka, they sat crowded together in the Austin, exchanging news, catching up. Then Uma did something that took her relatives completely by surprise: unaccountably, for no reason that they could understand, she began to cry. They stared in horror as she sobbed into her sari. Intimidated by her legend, they could not bring themselves to reach out to her. They sat in silence, fidgeting, no one daring to say a word.

When the ride was almost over, Uma collected herself. ‘I don’t know what came over me,’ she said, addressing no one in particular. ‘These last few months have been very hard. I feel as if I’m waking from a terrible dream. In Rangoon, just before I left there was a terrible quarrel. I must try to forget some of these things. .’

It was a while before the family saw anything of Uma again. In the following months, she devoted all her energies to bringing the Burmese rebellion to the knowledge of the Indian public. She sent articles to Calcutta’s Modern Review and wrote letters to major newspapers; she made every effort to alert her compatriots to the part that Indian soldiers were being made to play in the suppression of the uprising. Her writings had no perceptible effect. The Indian public was consumed with the preoccupations of local politics and had little time to spare for Burma.

One day, opening a Bengali newspaper, she saw a grisly illustration of sixteen decapitated heads lined up on a table. The accompanying article said: These are the heads of Burmese rebels who fell in an encounter with Imperial troops in Prome District in Burma. It was believed that they were displayed at the military headquarters at Prome for the purpose of striking terror into the hearts of those who might be rebelliously inclined.

Uma tore the article out with shaking hands. She took it to her desk, intending to put it in the file where she kept her clippings. As she was putting it away, her eyes fell on the folder that held the remains of her KLM ticket: it had been lying forgotten on a corner of her desk ever since her arrival.

Looking at it now, she thought of the city she had flown out of in the silver Fokker; she thought of the businessmen— the timber merchants and oilmen — who were her fellow-passengers; she thought of how they had all congratulated themselves on being present at the dawn of a new era, an age when aviation would make the world so small that the divisions of the past would disappear. She too had joined in: looking down from above, on the foaming waves of the Bay of Bengal, it seemed impossible not to believe that the shrunken world that had built this aircraft was a better one than those that preceded it.

And now, a few months later, here was this picture — of sixteen severed heads, put on display by the ruling power — as starkly medieval an image as could be imagined. She recalled that Prome was the site of the Shwe Sandaw Pagoda, almost equal in veneration to Rangoon’s Shwe Dagon: she remembered a story that one of her fellow-passengers, a big, swarthy oilman, had told her. On the day of the earthquake he’d been sitting in the English Club at Prome, right beside the Shwe Sandaw Pagoda. Right before his eyes, the pagoda had been rent by the movement of the earth. A great part of it had come crashing down in the grounds of the club.

Uma’s eyes filled with remembered images: of the terrible sight she’d witnessed, framed in the windscreen of Dolly’s Packard; of Rajkumar and his chain of betrayals; of the quarrel in the car on the way to the airport; and now of the deaths of those sixteen rebels and their gruesome decapitation.

That day marked the beginning of a change in Uma that was no less profound than the upheaval that had followed upon the death of the Collector. With the defeat of Burma’s Saya San rebellion, she started to rethink her political ideas in their entirety. It was precisely on an uprising such as this that she and her political associates in the Ghadar Party had once pinned their hopes. But she saw now that a popular insurrection, inspired by legend and myth, stood no chance of prevailing against a force such as the Empire — so skilful and ruthless in its deployment of its overwhelming power; so expert in the management of opinion. In retrospect it became clear that disarmed, technologically backward populations such as those of India and Burma could not hope to defeat by force a well-organised and thoroughly modern military power; that even if such an effort were to succeed it would be at the cost of unimaginable bloodshed — a Saya San rebellion magnified many hundreds of times — that it would pit Indians against one another in such a way as to make victory just as undesirable as defeat.

In the past, she had been dismissive of Mahatma Gandhi’s political thinking: non-violence, she had thought, was a philosophy of wish-fulfilment. She saw now that the Mahatma had been decades ahead of her in his thinking. It was rather the romantic ideas of rebellion that she had nurtured in New York that were pipe dreams. She remembered the words of the Mahatma, which she had often read and always disregarded: that the movement against colonialism was an uprising of unarmed Indians against those who bore arms — both Indians and British — and that its chosen instruments were the weapons of the weaponless, its very weakness its source of strength.

Once she had made up her mind, she was quick to act. She wrote to the Mahatma offering her services, and he, in return, invited her to his ashram at Wardha.

twenty-one

Even when they were very young, Uma’s nephew and older niece, the twins, were celebrated for their good looks. Manju and Arjun shared a feature that gave them an unusual charm: a dimple that appeared when they smiled, but only on one cheek, the left for Manju and the right for Arjun. When they were together it was as though a circuit had been completed, a symmetry restored.

The attention that her looks brought her made Manju self-conscious about her appearance from an early age. She grew up with a keen awareness of the impression she made on people. In this one regard Arjun was her opposite: he was easy-going to the point of slovenliness and liked nothing better than to lounge around the house in a threadbare vest, with a longyi knotted around his waist.

Arjun was the kind of boy of whom teachers complain that their performance is incorrigibly below their potential. Everybody knew that he had the intelligence and ability to do well in school but his interests appeared to be directed only towards ogling girls and reading novels. At mealtimes, long after everyone else was done, he would linger lazily over his plate, chewing on fish bones and sucking the last bits of dal-sodden rice from his fingers. As he grew older, Arjun became a cause of increasing concern to everyone in the family. People began to shake their heads, saying, ‘Is that boy ever going to make anything of himself?’

Then one hot April day, Lankasuka’s afternoon torpor was shattered by the sound of Arjun’s voice uttering wild whoops and cries. Everyone in the house went running to the back balcony to look down into the courtyard.

‘Arjun, what do you think you’re doing?’ his mother said.

‘I’ve got in! I’ve got in!’ Arjun was dancing around the courtyard, dressed in his usual dirty vest and torn longyi, waving a letter in one hand.

‘Got into what?’

‘The Indian Military Academy in Dehra Dun.’

‘Idiot boy. What are you talking about?’

‘Yes; it’s true.’ Arjun came running up the stairs, his face flushed, his hair falling over his eyes. ‘They’ve accepted me as an officer cadet.’

‘But how could this happen? How did they even know who you are?’

‘I sat for an examination, Ma. I went with—’ he named a school-friend—‘and I didn’t tell you because I didn’t think I’d get in.’

‘But it’s impossible.’

‘Look.’

They passed the letter from hand to hand, marvelling at the fine stiff notepaper and the embossed emblem in the top right-hand corner. They could not have been more astonished if he’d announced that he’d sprouted wings or grown a tail. In Calcutta at that time, to join the army was almost unheard of. For generations, recruitment into the British Indian army had been ruled by racial policies that excluded most men in the country, including those from Bengal. Nor was it possible, until quite recently, for Indians to enter the army as commissioned officers. The founding of the Indian Military Academy in Dehra Dun dated back only five years and the fact that some of its seats were open to public examination had gone largely unnoticed.

‘How could you do this, Arjun? And without saying anything to us?’

‘I’m telling you, I never thought I’d get in. Besides, everyone’s always saying that I’ll never amount to anything — so I thought all right, let’s see.’

‘You wait till your father gets home.’

But Arjun’s father was not at all displeased by the news: on the contrary, he was so glad that he immediately organised an expedition of thanksgiving to the temple at Kalighat.

‘The boy’s settled now and there’s nothing more for us to worry about. .’ Relief was plainly visible on his face. ‘This is a ready-made career: whether he does well or not he’ll be pushed up the ladder. At the end, there’ll be an excellent pension. So long as he makes it through the academy, he’s taken care of for the rest of his life.’

‘But he’s just a boy, and what if he gets injured? Or worse still?’

‘Nonsense. The chances are very slight. It’s just a job like any other. Besides, think of the status, the prestige. .’

Uma’s response came as even more of a surprise. Since the time when she’d visited Mahatma Gandhi, at his ashram in Wardha, she had changed her political affiliations. She had joined the Congress Party and had started working with the women’s wing. Arjun had expected that she would try to argue him out of signing up. But what she said instead was: ‘The Mahatma thinks that the country can only benefit from having men of conscience in the army. India needs soldiers who won’t blindly obey their superiors. .’

Manju’s career took a very different turn from her twin’s. At the age of twenty-one she came to the attention of a prominent film personality — a director whose niece happened to be her classmate in college. A man of formidable reputation, the director was then engaged in a very public search for a lead actress. The story of his hunt had caused huge excitement in Calcutta.

Manju was spotted, unbeknownst to herself, while at college: the first she knew of it was when she was handed an invitation to a screen test. Manju’s instinct was to refuse: she knew herself to be shy and self-conscious and it was hard for her to imagine that she could ever enjoy acting. But when she returned to Lankasuka that afternoon, she found that the invitation was not quite so easily disposed of as she had imagined. She began to have doubts.

Manju’s bedroom had a large window: it was usually while sitting on the sill that she and Arjun had talked in the past. She’d never before had to decide on anything entirely on her own; she had always had Arjun to confer with. But Arjun was now many hundreds of miles away, at his battalion headquarters in Saharanpur, in northern India.

She sat on the sill alone, braiding and unbraiding her hair and watching the afternoon’s bathers splashing in the nearby lake. Presently she rose and went to fetch the Huntley and Palmer’s biscuit tin in which she kept Arjun’s letters. The earliest ones dated back to his days as a ‘gentleman-cadet’ and the notepaper was embossed with the emblem of the Indian Military Academy. The pages crackled between her fingers. How well he wrote — in proper sentences and paragraphs. When they were together they always spoke Bengali, but the letters were in English — an unfamiliar, idiomatic English, with words of slang that she didn’t recognise and couldn’t find in the dictionary. He’d gone to a restaurant ‘in town’ with another cadet, Hardayal Singh — known as ‘Hardy’ to his friends — and they’d eaten ‘lashings’ of sandwiches and drunk ‘oodles’ of beer.

His latest letter had arrived just a few days ago. The notepaper was different now and it bore the insignia of his new regiment, the 1st Jat Light Infantry.

It’s quiet here, because we’re at our home station in Saharanpur. You probably think we spend all our time marching about in the sun. But it’s nothing like that. The only difficult thing is getting up early to go to the parade ground for P.T. with the men. After that it’s pretty quiet; we stroll around taking salutes and watching the NCOs as they put the men through their drills and their weapons training. But this takes only a couple of hours, and then we change for breakfast, which is at nine (stacks of eggs, bacon and ham). Then some of us go off to wait in the orderly room just in case any of the men are brought in. Once in a while the signals officers take us through the latest field codes, or else we get lessons in map-reading or double-entry book-keeping — that kind of thing. Then there’s lunch — and beer and gin if you want it (but no whisky!) — and after that you’re free to go off to your room. Later there’s usually time for a game of football with the men. At about 7.30 we drift off towards the mess lawn for a few whiskies before dinner. We call the mess the Nursery, as a joke, because potted plants die the moment they’re brought in — no one knows why. Some of the chaps say it’s because of the Dust of Colonels Past. We laugh about the Nursery but I tell you, sometimes halfway through dinner, or when we’re drinking a toast, I look around and even now, after all these months here, I just can’t believe my luck. .

The last time Manju had had a long talk with Arjun was on this very windowsill. It was a little more than a year ago, just after he graduated from the academy. She’d kept wanting to call him Second Lieutenant Arjun — partly to tease him, but also because she’d liked the sound of the words. She’d been disappointed that he didn’t wear his uniform more but he’d laughed at her when she told him this.

‘Why can’t you show me off to your friends as I am?’

The truth was that most of her friends at college were in love with him already. They’d badger her for news of him, and when they were over at the house they’d go to amazing lengths to ingratiate themselves with the family — hoping, of course, that someone would remember them when it came time to find a bride for Arjun.

Before he left for the academy, she’d never quite understood why her friends thought him so good-looking: to her he was just Arjun, his face a brother’s. Then he came back for that visit and it was as though she were seeing him for the first time. She’d had to admit that he’d made quite an impression, with his moustache coming along nicely and his hair cut short. She’d been jealous, afraid that he wouldn’t want to spend time with her. But he’d been quick to put her fears at rest. He’d sat on the sill every day, dressed in his usual vest and scruffy old longyi. They’d chatted for hours and she’d peeled him oranges or mangoes or lychees — he was just as hungry as he’d ever been.

He’d talked endlessly about the 1st Jat Light Infantry. He’d applied to half a dozen other regiments but right from the start there was only one that he really wanted — and that was the 1st Jats. Part of the reason was that his friend Hardy had applied to the 1st Jats too, and was almost certain to get in. He came from an old army family and his father and grandfather had both served in the regiment. But, of course, it was different for Arjun — he had no army connections — and he had prepared himself for a disappointment. As a result he was overjoyed when he heard that the regiment had accepted him:

The night when I was formally dined into the regiment was probably the happiest of my life. Even as I’m writing this, I realize that this will probably seem strange to you, Manju. But the thing of it is that it’s true: you have to remember that the regiment is going to be my home for the next fifteen to twenty years — perhaps even more, if things don’t go too well with my career and I never get a staff appointment (God forbid!).

What I’m really chuffed about, though, is my battalion. This’ll probably surprise you, for civilians always think that the regiment is the most important thing about the army. But actually, in the Indian army, a regiment is just a collection of symbols — colours, flags, and so on. We’re proud of our regiments of course, but they’re not operational units and just about the only time when all the battalions of a regiment get together is when there’s a Changing of the Colours — and it takes donkey’s years for that to happen.

The rest of the time you live and work with your battalion and that’s what really matters: your life can be hell if you find yourself thrown in with the wrong sort of crowd. But once again I’ve been hellishly lucky— Hardy pulled a couple of his ‘fauji’ strings and made sure we were both in the same battalion — the First. Officially, we’re the 1/1 Jat Light Infantry, but everyone just calls us the 1/1 Jats — except that every now and again you’ll come across some ancient Colonel Walrus who’ll still use our old name, which was ‘the Royal’. The story is that the battalion fought so well in the Mahratta Wars that when Lord Lake reached the coast, he honoured us with a special title: The Royal Battalion. Yesterday Hardy and I were looking at the battalion’s battle honours, and I swear to you, Manju, the list was as long as my arm. During the Mutiny our troops stayed loyal — one of our companies was in the column that captured the old Emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, at his hidy-hole at Humayun’s tomb. I noticed something that I bet would interest Dinu and Neel — the Royal was in Burma during General Prendergast’s advance on Mandalay and it fought so well that it came to be known as ‘Jamail-sahib ki dyni haat hi paltan’—the general’s right-hand battalion.

To tell you the truth, Manju, it’s just a little overwhelming even to think of all this. You should see the list of our medals: a Victoria Cross from the Somme; two Military Crosses for putting down the Arab rebellion in Mesopotamia in ’18; a half-dozen DSOs and OBEs from when we fought the Boxer rebels in China. Sometimes when I wake up in the morning, I still find it hard to believe that I really belong with these men. It makes one so proud, but also humble, to think that one has all this to live up to. What makes me prouder still is the thought that Hardy and I are going to be the first Indian officers in the 1/1 Jats: it seems like such a huge responsibility — as though we’re representing the whole of the country!

To top it all, we have an absolutely spiffing CO— Lieutenant-Colonel Buckland — whom everybody calls Bucky. To look at you’d think he’s not a soldier at all, more like a professor. He came to lecture at the academy a couple of times: he was so good that he even managed to make Military History interesting. He’s also an operations wizard and the men love him. His family’s been with the 1/1 Jats since the time when we were called the Royal Battalion, and I don’t think there’s a man on the base whose name he doesn’t know. And it’s not just their names either — he knows which village they’re from and who’s married to whose daughter and how much dowry they paid. Of course, I’m so junior I can’t be sure he even knows I exist.

It’s Guest Night at the Nursery tonight, so I’d better go. My new batman is busy ironing my cummerbund, and I can tell from the way he’s looking at me that it’s time to get into my dinner jacket. His name is Kishan Singh and I just got him a few weeks ago. He’s a weedy, earnest-looking fellow and at first I didn’t think he’d do, but he’s turned out quite well. Do you remember that book Uma-pishi sent me — the O. Henry stories? You’ll never believe it, but I’d left it by my bed and one night I walked in and found him with his nose stuck in it. He had a puzzled frown on his face, like a bear clawing at a wireless set. He was scared half out of his mind at being found looking into my book — just stood there like a statue. So I told him the story about the lost necklace. You should have seen him, standing there as though he were at a court-martial, staring at the wall, while I went through the pages, translating into Hindustani. At the end of it, I barked at him, in my best parade-ground voice: ‘Kishan Singh! What do you think of this kahani?’

And he said: ‘Sahib, it’s a very sad story. .’ I could have sworn there were tears in his eyes. They’re very sentimental, these faujis, despite their moustaches and bloodshot eyes. It’s true what the Britishers say: at heart they’re very unspoilt; the salt of the earth — you can depend on them to be faithful. Just the kind of men you’d want by your side in a tight spot.

It was Arjun’s letter that made Manju reconsider the idea of a screen test. There was her twin, hundreds of miles away, drinking whisky, eating at the officers’ mess and getting his batman to iron his dinner jacket. And here she was in Calcutta, in the same room she’d been in all her life, braiding her hair into pigtails as she’d done since she was seven. The awful thing was that he hadn’t even made a pretence of missing home.

She was on her own now, and she would have to think about what she was going to do with herself. So far as her mother was concerned, Manju knew, her future had already been decided: she would leave the house as someone’s wife and not a day sooner. The mothers of two prospective grooms had already come calling to ‘see’ Manju. One of them had given her hair a discreet tug to make sure she wasn’t wearing a wig; the other had made her bare her teeth as though she were a horse, pushing apart her lips with her fingers, and making faint clucking sounds. Her mother had been apologetic afterwards, but she’d made it clear that it wasn’t in her power to ensure that these incidents would not be repeated: this was a part of the process. Manju knew that many more such ordeals probably lay ahead.

Manju looked again at the director’s invitation. The studio was in Tollygunge, at the end of the number 4 tram line, which she took to college every day. All she’d have to do was head in the other direction. It wouldn’t take long to get there. She decided to go — just to see what it was like.

But now a host of practical problems came suddenly to the surface. What was she to wear, for instance? Her ‘good’ Benarasi silk, the sari she wore to weddings, was locked in her mother’s almirah. If she were to ask for it her mother would wring the truth out of her in a matter of minutes and that would be the end of the screen test. Besides, what would people say if she stepped out of the house bedecked in a crimson and gold Benarasi at eleven in the morning? Even if she succeeded in slipping past her mother, the whole neighbourhood would be in an uproar before she got to the end of the street.

She decided that the director wouldn’t have gone looking for a college girl if he wanted a fancily dressed-up actress. She settled upon the best of her white cottons, the one with small green checks. But as soon as this was resolved, a dozen new dilemmas seemed to follow. What about make-up? Powder? Lipstick? Perfume?

The morning came and predictably everything went wrong. The sari she’d decided on wasn’t back from the dhobi’s; she had to choose another one, much older, with a sewn-over tear in the anchal. Her hair wouldn’t stay in place, and no matter how hard she tucked in her sari, the hem kept creeping down and tripping her. On her way out, she stepped into the puja room to say a prayer — not because she so badly wanted to be chosen, but just so that she would be able to get through the next few hours without making a fool of herself.

Sure enough, her mother spotted her coming out of the puja room. ‘Manju, is that you? What were you doing in the puja room? Are you in some kind of trouble?’ She peered suspiciously into Manju’s face: ‘And why’ve you got powder all over you? Is that any way to dress when you’re going to college?’

Manju slipped away under the pretence of going to the bathroom to wipe her face. She walked quickly down the road to the tram stop. Keeping her face down, she looped her sari over her head, hoping that the neighbours wouldn’t notice that she was waiting for the wrong tram. Just when she thought she’d managed to get by without drawing attention to herself, old Nidhu-babu came running out of the Lake Road Pharmacy.

‘Is that really you, Manju-didimoni?’ He hitched up his dhoti and bent double so that he could look up into her sari-shrouded face. ‘But why are you waiting on the wrong side of the street? This way you’ll end up in Tollygunge.’

Quelling her panic, she managed to invent a story about going to visit an aunt.

‘Oh?’ said the pharmacist, scratching his head. ‘But then, you must come and wait in the shop. You shouldn’t be standing out in the sun.’

‘I’m all right, really,’ she pleaded. ‘Don’t worry about me. I’ll be all right. You should go back to your shop.’

‘As you say.’ He wandered off, scratching his head, but minutes later, he was back again, with an assistant who was carrying a chair. ‘If you must wait here,’ the old pharmacist said, ‘at least you should sit down.’ His assistant placed the chair at the tram stop and wiped it clean with a flourish.

It seemed easier to give in than to resist. Manju allowed herself to be enthroned on the chair, right beside the dusty tram stop. But within minutes, her worst fears were realised: a crowd gathered round to stare at her.

‘The Roys’ daughter,’ she heard the pharmacist explaining to the crowd. ‘Lives down the road — in that house over there. Going to visit her aunt in Tollygunge. Skipping college.’

Then, to her relief, the tram finally arrived. The pharmacist and his assistant held the others back so that Manju could be the first to step in. ‘I’ll send a note to your mother,’ the old man shouted after her, ‘to let her know that you got off safely to Tollygunge.’

‘No,’ pleaded Manju, wringing her hands and leaning out of the window. ‘There’s really no need. .’

‘What’s that?’ The pharmacist raised a hand to his ear. ‘Yes, I said I’ll send someone to your mother with a note. No, it’s no trouble, none at all. .’

Already shaken by this inauspicious start, Manju was even more put out when she arrived at the studio. She had expected something glamorous — like the Grand Hotel or the Metro Cinema, or the restaurants on Park Street, with their bright lights and red awnings. But instead she found herself walking into a building that looked like a warehouse or a factory, a big shed, with a roof of tin. Carpenters and mistries were hard at work inside, hoisting canvas backdrops and erecting bamboo scaffolding.

A chowkidar led her to a make-up room, a small, windowless cabin, with wooden walls made from sawn-up tea chests. Two women were lounging inside, sprawled in tilted chairs, chewing paan, their gauzy saris shining in the brightly lit mirrors behind them. Their eyes narrowed as they looked Manju over, their jaws moving in perfect unison.

‘Why’s this one dressed like a nurse?’ one of them muttered to the other.

‘Maybe she thinks she’s going into hospital.’

There were cackles of laughter and then a sari was thrust into Manju’s hands, a length of deep purple chiffon with a bright pink border.

‘Go on. Get changed.’

‘Why this?’ Manju ventured in protest.

‘Suits your colour,’ snapped one of the women, cryptically. ‘Put it on.’

Manju glanced around the room, looking for a place to change. There was none.

‘What are you waiting for?’ the women scolded. ‘Be quick. The director’s got an important guest coming today. Can’t be kept waiting.’

In all her adult life Manju had never undressed in front of anyone, not even her mother. When it dawned on her that she would have to strip under the appraising scrutiny of these two paan-chewing women, her legs went numb. The courage that had brought her thus far began to seep away.

‘Go on,’ the women hurried her. ‘The director’s bringing a businessman who’s going to put up money for the film. He can’t be kept waiting. Everything’s got to be tip-top today.’ One of them snatched the sari out of Manju’s hands and set about changing her clothes. Somewhere nearby a car drew up. This was followed by a patter of welcoming voices. ‘The guest’s arrived,’ someone shouted through the door. ‘Quick, quick, the director will want her any minute now.’

The two women ran to the door to peek at the newly arrived personage.

‘Doesn’t he look important, with that beard and all?’

‘And look at his suit — all dressed up like that. .’

The women came back giggling and thrust Manju into a chair. ‘Just one look and you can tell how rich he is. .’

‘Oh, if he’d only marry me. .’

‘You? Why not me?’

Manju stared into the mirror in an uncomprehending daze. The faces of the two women seemed monstrously large, their smirking lips grotesque in their size and shape. A sharp fingernail scraped her scalp, and she cried out in protest: ‘What are you doing?’

‘Just checking for lice.’

‘For lice?’ Manju cried in outrage. ‘I don’t have lice.’

‘The last one did. And not just on her head.’ This was followed by peals of laughter.

‘How do you know?’ Manju challenged them.

‘The sari was crawling after she’d worn it.’

‘The sari!’ With a shriek Manju leapt out of the chair, clawing at the sari they’d given her, trying to tear it off.

The two women were helpless with laughter. ‘Just a joke.’ They were almost choking on their giggles. ‘It was a different sari. Not this one.’

Manju began to sob. ‘I want to go home,’ she said. ‘Please let me go. Don’t send me out in front of them.’

‘Everyone who comes here says that,’ the women reassured her. ‘Then they stay for ever.’

They took hold of her arms and led her out on to the brilliantly lit studio floor. Manju was now completely distraught, her nerves frayed and on edge. To keep herself from crying, she kept her gaze fixed on the floor, with her sari slung over her head. Presently a pair of polished black shoes edged into her circle of vision. She heard herself being introduced to the director. She put her hands together and whispered a nomoshkar without looking up. Then she saw a second pair of shoes approaching her, across the floor.

‘And this here is my good friend,’ the director’s voice intoned. ‘Mr Neeladhri Raha of Rangoon. .’

She looked up. If she hadn’t heard the name she would not have known who it was. She’d met both Neel and Dinu many years ago. They were visiting with their mother, staying downstairs, in her aunt Uma’s flat. But he looked completely different now, with his trimmed black beard and his suit.

‘Neel?’

He was staring at her, his mouth agape, his tongue locked above an unuttered exclamation. It was not that he had recognised her: the reason he was unable to speak was because she was, without a doubt, the most beautiful woman he’d ever spoken to.

‘Neel, is that you?’ said Manju. ‘Don’t you remember me? I’m Manju — Uma Dey’s niece.’

He nodded, in slow disbelief, as though he’d forgotten the sound of his own name.

She flew at him and threw her arms round his chest. ‘Oh, Neel,’ she said, wiping her eyes on his jacket. ‘Take me home.’

The dressing room was a different place when Manju went back to reclaim her own clothes. The two make-up women were now almost worshipful in their attentiveness.

‘So you know him then?’

‘But why didn’t you tell us?’

Manju wasted no time on explanations. She changed quickly and went hurrying to the door. Neel was outside, waiting beside the passenger-side door of a new 1938 Delage D8 Drophead. He opened the door for her and she stepped in. The car smelt of chrome and new leather. ‘What a beautiful car,’ she said. ‘Is it yours?’

‘No.’ He laughed. ‘The dealer offered to let me borrow it for a few days. I couldn’t resist.’

Their eyes met for a moment and they both looked quickly away.

‘Where would you like to go?’ he said. He turned the ignition key and the Delage responded with a purr.

‘Let’s see. .’ Now that she was seated in the car, she no longer felt quite so pressed to get home.

He started to say something: ‘Well. .’

She could tell that they were both thinking along similar lines. ‘Perhaps. .’ A sentence that had begun promisingly in her head died unfinished on her tongue.

‘I see.’

‘Yes.’

Somehow this terse exchange succeeded in conveying everything they wanted to communicate. Neel started the car and they drove out of the studio. They both knew that they were going nowhere in particular, just enjoying the sensory pleasure of sitting in a moving car.

‘I was so surprised to see you in that studio,’ Neel said with a laugh. ‘Do you really want to be an actress?’

Manju felt herself changing colour. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I just wanted to see what it was like. Things are so dull at home. .’

Having said this much, she couldn’t stop. She found herself telling him things she hadn’t told anyone else: how much she missed Arjun; how his letters from the Military Academy had filled her with despair about her own future; about what a curse it was for a woman to live vicariously through a male twin. She even told him about the matches her mother had tried to arrange for her; about the mothers of the prospective grooms and how they had tugged her hair and inspected her teeth.

He didn’t say much but she understood that his silence was caused principally by a habitual lack of words. His face was hard to read behind the heavy black beard but she had a feeling that he was listening sympathetically, taking everything in.

‘And what about you?’ she said at last. ‘Are you really a big film producer?’

‘No!’ The word burst out of his mouth with the force of an expletive. ‘No. It wasn’t my idea at all. It was Apé—my father — who suggested it. .’

What he really wanted, he said, was to work in the timber trade. He’d asked to be allowed to join the family business— only to be turned down by his father. Rajkumar had suggested that he think of other lines of work: the timber business wasn’t for everyone, he’d said, especially a city-bred boy like Neel. When Neel persisted, he’d given him a sum of money and told him that he should come back after he’d doubled his capital. But how? Neel had asked. Rajkumar’s response was: Go and put it in films — anything. Neel had taken him at his word. He’d looked around for a film to invest in and hadn’t been able to find one in Rangoon. He had decided to travel to India instead.

‘How long have you been here then?’ Manju said. ‘And why didn’t you come to see us? You could have stayed with Uma-pishi, downstairs.’

Neel scratched awkwardly at his beard. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but you know, the trouble is. .’

‘What?’

‘My father doesn’t get along with your aunt.’

‘That doesn’t matter,’ Manju said. ‘Your mother often comes. I’m sure your father wouldn’t mind if you did too.’

‘Maybe not — but I wouldn’t want to anyway.’

‘Why not?’

‘Well,’ Neel scratched his beard again. ‘It wouldn’t be right.’ ‘What wouldn’t be right?’

‘I don’t know if I can explain.’ He gave her a bemused glance and she saw that he was struggling to find words for a thought that he’d never articulated before, even to himself.

‘Go on.’

‘You see,’ he said, almost apologetically, ‘it’s just that I’m the only one who’s on his side.’

Manju was startled. ‘What do you mean?’

‘That’s just how I feel,’ Neel said. ‘That I’m the only one on his side. Take my brother Dinu, for example — I sometimes think he really hates Apé.’

‘Why?’

‘Maybe — because they’re opposites.’

‘And you’re alike?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘At least, that’s what I would like to think.’

He turned his eyes away from the road to grin at her.

‘I don’t know why I’m telling you all this,’ he said. ‘I feel like an idiot.’

‘You’re not — I know what you’re trying to say. .’

They went on driving, more or less at random, down one street and another, backing out of blind alleys, and making U-turns on the wider avenues. It was almost dark by the time he dropped her off. They agreed that it would be better if he didn’t come in.

They met again the next day and the day after that. He extended his stay and after a month had gone by he sent a telegram to Burma.

One day Dolly presented herself at Uma’s office door.

‘Dolly? You here?’

‘Yes. And you’ll never believe why. .’

twenty-two

The wedding was like a force of nature, changing everything it touched. In a matter of days Lankasuka was transformed into a huge, noisy fairground. Up on the roof a team of pandal-makers was at work, erecting an immense awning of coloured cloth and bamboo. In the tree-shaded yard at the back, a small army of hired cooks had pitched tents and dug pits for cooking fires. It was as though a carnival had moved in.

Bela was the youngest in the house: at fifteen, she was a thin, gawky girl, blossoming into a late and awkward adolescence. She was alternately apprehensive and exhilarated, unsure of whether to throw herself into the festivities or to hide in her bed.

As the wedding approached a whirlwind of telegrams— until then so rare and so dreaded — blew through Lankasuka, rattling its shuttered doors and windows. Not a day went by without Bela spotting a postman, running up the stairs with a pink envelope. Arjun was to arrive by rail, accompanied by his batman, Kishan Singh. Dolly, Dinu and Rajkumar were flying in two days before, on one of KLM’s brand-new DC3s.

The excitement reached its pitch the day the Rangoon party was to arrive. Providentially, the family had just that year decided to buy a car, with the expenses shared equally between Uma and her brother. The car was delivered just as the arrangements were getting under way, a brand new 1939 model, a modest, 8 horse-power Jowett, with a long bonnet and beautiful oval grille. In addition to this, the wedding party also had the use of the Delage Drophead, which Neel had once again succeeded in borrowing from the dealer.

They arrived at Dum Dum airport to find it completely changed since the time of Uma’s return to India. The old airstrip was now a fully-fledged airport, with customs facilities of its own. A hundred and fifty acres of land had been cleared and three new runways built. There was a fine three-storeyed administration building with a glass-paned control tower and radio room. The visitors’ area had changed too: they found themselves entering a large, brightly lit gallery with fans whirring energetically overhead. At one end of the gallery there was a radio tuned in to the news; at the other there was a counter selling tea and snacks.

‘Look!’ Bela went running to the windows and pointed to a plane that was circling above. They watched the DC3 as it came in to land. The first to come out was Dinu. He was wearing a longyi and a loose shirt, and his clothes flapped against his lean, compact frame as he stood on the tarmac, waiting for his parents.

Dolly and Rajkumar were among the last to emerge. Dolly was wearing a striped green longyi and as always there was a white flower in her hair. Rajkumar was walking very slowly, leaning on Dolly a little. His hair was covered with a thick frosting of white and the lines of his face had sagged into tired, drooping curves.

Rajkumar was now in his mid-sixties. He had recently suffered a minor stroke and had left his bed against his doctor’s wishes. His business, wounded by the Depression, was no longer as profitable as it had once been. The teak industry had changed over the last decade, and old-fashioned timbermen like Rajkumar had become anachronisms. Rajkumar was saddled with huge debts and had been forced to sell off many of his properties.

But so far as the arrangements for Neel’s wedding were concerned, Rajkumar was determined to put aside his financial difficulties. Everything that everybody else did he wanted to do on a larger and grander scale. Neel was his favourite and he was determined to make his boy’s wedding an occasion to compensate for all the missed celebrations of his own life.

Dinu was a favourite of Bela’s: she liked the way he looked, with his thin, bony cheeks and his wide forehead; she liked his seriousness and his manner of listening to people with an attentive frown, as though he were worrying about what they’d said; she even liked the way he talked, in explosive little bursts, as though his thoughts were spurting out of him in jets.

The day they went to Howrah station to get Arjun, Bela made sure that she was sitting next to Dinu. She noticed that he had a leather bag in his lap.

‘What have you got in there?’ she asked.

He opened the bag and showed her. It was a new camera, a kind she’d never seen before.

‘It’s a Rolleiflex,’ he said. ‘A twin-lens reflex. .’ He took it out of the bag and showed her how it worked; it opened like a hinged box, with its hood flipping back so that you had to look down on it from above.

‘I’ve got a tripod for it,’ he said. ‘You can look through it. . when I set it up. .’

‘Why’re you taking it to the station?’ she asked.

He shrugged vaguely. ‘I saw some pictures recently,’ he said. ‘Railyard shots by Alfred Stieglitz. . they made me wonder. .’

The camera caused a stir when Dinu set it up at Howrah. The station was crowded and many people gathered round to stare. Dinu adjusted the tripod’s height to suit Bela. ‘Here, come. . look.’

The platform was a long one, and it was topped with a steepled roof of corrugated steel. The late afternoon sunlight was filtering in from under the roof’s scalloped skirt, creating a stark, back-lit effect. In the foreground there were great numbers of people: red-jacketed porters, hurrying tea-boys, and waiting passengers with mountains of luggage.

Dinu pointed out the details to Bela. ‘I think this is even better than the pictures I had in mind,’ he said, ‘because of all the people. . and the movement. .’

Bela looked in again, and suddenly, as if by magic, Arjun appeared in the frame. He was hanging out of a carriage, holding on to the steel bar of the open doorway. He jumped off when he spotted them and the momentum of the still-moving train gave him a running start. He came racing out of the opaque white fog that was pouring from the engine’s steaming smoke-stack, laughing as he dodged the vendors and porters who were swarming across the platform. The tunic of his khaki uniform was drawn tight around his waist and his cap was tilted back on his head. He swept down on them with his arms outspread, laughing, and lifted Manju off her feet and swung her round and round.

Bela stepped away from the camera, hoping to conceal herself until the first flush of Arjun’s homecoming exuberance was spent. But just then he spotted her. ‘Bela!’ He swooped down to fling her up, over his head, ignoring her cries of protest. As she flew upwards, with the tumult of the station whirling around her head, her eyes fastened on a soldier who had approached unseen and was standing just a step behind Arjun. He looked younger than Arjun and was smaller in build; she noticed that he was carrying Arjun’s luggage.

‘Who is that?’ she whispered into Arjun’s ear.

He threw a glance over his shoulder, to see whom she was looking at. ‘That’s Kishan Singh,’ he said, ‘my batman.’

He put her down and went on ahead, with the others, talking excitedly. Bela followed behind, keeping pace with Kishan Singh. She stole a glance: he was nice-looking, she thought; his skin had a sheen like dark velvet, and although his hair was very short she could tell that it was fine and straight; she liked the way it made a pattern along the edges of his forehead. His eyes were fixed ahead of him, as though he were a moving statue.

It was only when they were about to get into the car that she knew without a doubt that he was aware of her presence. His eyes met hers for an instant and there was a fleeting change in his expression, a slight smile. Bela’s head reeled: she had never known that a smile could have a physical impact— like a blow from a flying object.

As she was about to step into the car Bela heard Dinu say to Arjun: ‘Have you heard? Hitler’s signed a pact with Mussolini. . there could be another war.’

But her brother’s answer was lost to her. All the way home, she didn’t hear a word that anybody said.

twenty-three

Although Dinu and Arjun had known each other a long time they had never been friends. Dinu tended to think of Arjun on the analogy of a friendly and bumbling pet — a large dog perhaps, or a well-trained mule — a creature of unfailing, tail-wagging goodwill, but incurably indolent and barely capable of coherent utterance. But Dinu was not so arrogant as to be unwilling to correct himself. At Howrah station, on the day when he photographed Arjun running across the platform, he saw immediately that this was a significantly changed person from the boy he had known. Arjun had lost his somnolence, and his patterns of speech were no longer so garbled and indistinct as they had once been. This itself was an interesting paradox, for Arjun’s vocabulary seemed now to consist mainly of jargon intermixed with assorted bits of English and Punjabi slang — everyone was now either a ‘chap’ or a ‘yaar’.

But on the way home from the station Arjun did something that astonished Dinu. In reminiscing about a tactical exercise, he launched into a description of a feature of topography— a hill. He listed its ridges and outcrops, the exact nature of its vegetation and the cover it afforded, he quoted the angle of the slope’s incline and laughed about how his friend Hardy had got it wrong so that his results ‘wouldn’t play’.

Dinu understood words and images and the bridge of metaphor that linked the two — these were not languages with which he had ever thought to associate Arjun. Yet, by the end of Arjun’s description, Dinu felt that he could see the hill, in his head. Of those who listened to Arjun’s account, he alone was perhaps fully aware of the extreme difficulty of achieving such minuteness of recall and such vividness of description: he was awed, both by the precision of Arjun’s narrative and by the off-handed lack of self-consciousness with which it was presented.

‘Arjun,’ he said, fixing him with his dour, unblinking stare. ‘I’m amazed. . you described that hill as though you’d remembered every little bit of it.’

‘Of course,’ said Arjun. ‘My CO says that, under fire, you pay with a life for every missed detail.’

This too made Dinu take notice. He’d imagined that he knew the worth of observation, yet he’d never conceived that its value might be weighed in lives. There was something humbling about the thought of this. He’d regarded a soldier’s training as being, in the first instance, physical, a matter of the body. It took just that one conversation to show him that he had been wrong. Dinu’s friends were mainly writers and intellectuals: he had never met a serviceman in all his life. Now suddenly, in Calcutta, he found himself surrounded by soldiers. Within hours of his arrival, Arjun had filled the house with his friends. It turned out that he knew a couple of officers at the Fort William cantonment in Calcutta. Once he’d made contact, his friends began to turn up at all times of day, in jeeps and occasionally even in trucks, their arrival signalled by booming klaxons and noisy boots.

‘This is how it always happens in the army, yaar,’ one of them said, by way of apologetic explanation. ‘Where one fauji goes, the whole paltan follows. .’

In the past Dinu’s attitude towards the army had varied between outright hostility and amused indifference. Now he found himself more puzzled than antagonistic, increasingly interested in the mechanisms that made them tick. He was astonished by the communal nature of their lives; by the pleasure that Arjun, for instance, took in ‘mucking in’ with the others. This was a way of thinking and working that was the antithesis of everything that Dinu stood for and believed in. He himself was always happiest when he was on his own, His friends were few and even with the best of them there was always a residue of unease, an analytic guardedness. This was one of the reasons why he derived so much pleasure from photography. There was no place more solitary than a dark room, with its murky light and fetid closeness.

Arjun, on the other hand, seemed to find immense satisfaction in working on the details of plans that had been dictated by others — not necessarily people either, but manuals of procedure. Once, speaking of his battalion’s move from one cantonment to another, he described their ‘entrainment’ routines with as much pride as though he had personally guided every soldier into the station. But at the end it emerged that his part had consisted of nothing more than standing at the door of a carriage and filling in a roster. Dinu was astonished to note that it was precisely from this that his satisfaction derived: the slow accumulation of small tasks, a piling up of rosters that culminated in the movement of a platoon and then a battalion.

Arjun was often at pains to explain that in the army, it was a vital necessity for ‘the chaps’ to possess a thorough and exhaustive understanding of one another; to know exactly how each of them would respond in certain circumstances. Yet, there was a paradox here that did not escape Dinu: when Arjun and his friends spoke of one another, their assessments were so exaggerated that they seemed to be inventing versions of themselves for collective consumption. In the fantastic bestiary of their table-talk, Hardy was the Spit-and-Polish perfectionist, Arjun a Ladies’ Man, another a Pukka Sahib and so on. These paper-thin portraits were a part of the collective lore of their camaraderie — a fellowship in which they took immense pride, investing it with metaphors that sometimes extended even beyond mere kinship. Usually they were just ‘brothers’ but at times they were also much more, even the ‘First True Indians’. ‘Look at us—’ they would say, ‘—Punjabis, Marathas, Bengalis, Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims. Where else in India would you come across a group such as ours— where region and religion don’t matter — where we can all drink together and eat beef and pork and think nothing of it?’

Every meal at an officers’ mess, Arjun said, was an adventure, a glorious infringement of taboos. They ate foods that none of them had ever touched at home: bacon, ham and sausages at breakfast; roast beef and pork chops for dinner. They drank whisky, beer and wine, smoked cigars, cigarettes and cigarillos. Nor was this just a matter of satisfying appetites: every mouthful had a meaning — each represented an advance towards the evolution of a new, more complete kind of Indian. All of them had stories to tell about how their stomachs had turned the first time they had chewed upon a piece of beef or pork; they had struggled to keep the morsels down, fighting their revulsion. Yet they had persisted, for these were small but essential battles and they tested not just their manhood, but also their fitness to enter the class of officers. They had to prove, to themselves as well as to their superiors, that they were eligible to be rulers, to qualify as members of an elite: that they had vision enough to rise above the ties of their soil, to overcome the responses instilled in them by their upbringing.

‘Look at us!’ Arjun would say, after a whisky or two, ‘we’re the first modern Indians; the first Indians to be truly free. We eat what we like, we drink what we like, we’re the first Indians who’re not weighed down by the past.’

To Dinu this was profoundly offensive. ‘It’s not what you eat and drink that make you modern: it’s a way of looking at things. .’ He’d fetch reproductions that he’d cut out of magazines, of photographs by Stieglitz, Cunningham and Weston.

Arjun would shrug these off with a laughing retort: ‘To you the modern world is just something you read about. What you know of it you get from books and newspapers. We’re the ones who actually live with Westerners. .’

Dinu understood that it was through their association with Europeans that Arjun and his fellow-officers saw themselves as pioneers. They knew that to most of their compatriots the West was a distant abstraction: even though they might know themselves to be ruled by England, very few Indians had ever actually set eyes on an Englishman and fewer still had had occasion to speak to one. The English lived in their own enclaves and followed their own pursuits: most of the day-to-day tasks of ruling were performed by Indians. In the army, on the other hand, Indian officers were a band of the elect; they lived in a proximity with Westerners that was all but unknown to their compatriots. They shared the same quarters, ate the same food, did the same work: in this their situation was unlike that of any of the Empire’s other subjects.

‘We understand the West better than any of you civilians,’ Arjun liked to say. ‘We know how the minds of Westerners work. Only when every Indian is like us will the country become truly modern.’

Meals with Arjun’s friends were boisterous events, accompanied by ‘lashings’ of beer, loud laughter and a great deal of acerbic joke-making, mainly by the officers, at each other’s expense. This they described as ‘ragging’ and most of it was good-natured. But there was an occasion once when the flow of the meal was ruptured by an odd little incident. Seeing a dish of hot, steam-puffed chapatis, one of the officers said, in a loud, derisory ‘ragging’ voice: ‘Hardy should have been here: he’s the one who really loves chapatis . .’ These words, apparently innocuous, had a startling effect; the noise died abruptly and the officers’ faces turned suddenly grave. The lieutenant who’d spoken changed colour, as though in acknowledgement of a collective rebuke. Then, as if to remind his friends of the presence of outsiders — Dinu, Manju and Neel, in other words — Arjun loudly cleared his throat and the conversation turned instantly to another subject. The interruption lasted no longer than a moment and passed unnoticed by everyone but Dinu.

Later that night, Dinu stopped by Arjun’s room and found him sitting in bed, with a book against his knees and a brandy in his hand. Dinu lingered.

‘You want to tackle me, don’t you?’ Arjun said. ‘About what happened this evening?’

‘Yes.’

‘It was nothing really.’

‘All the more reason to tell me. .’

Arjun sighed: ‘It was about a good friend of mine, Hardy. Odd to think he wasn’t even here.’

‘What were they talking about?’

‘It’s a long story. You see Hardy was in a row last year. It’ll sound idiotic to you. .’

‘What happened?’

‘Are you sure you want to know?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hardy’s a sardar,’ Arjun said, ‘a Sikh — from a family that’s been in the army for generations. You’d be surprised how many of the chaps are from that kind of family. I call them the real faujis. Fellows like me, who have no army connections, are the exception. .’

Hardy had grown up at the battalion’s depot in Saharanpur, Arjun said. His father and grandfather had both served in the 1st Jats. They had joined as private soldiers and worked their way up to the rank of Viceroy’s Commissioned Officer — which was the highest an Indian could rise in those days, somewhere between an NCO and an officer. Hardy was the first in his family to join the army as a commissioned officer, and he’d set his heart on getting into the 1/1 Jats. He used to joke that his dream was to be called ‘Sahib’ by his father’s old colleagues.

But between the lives of officers and the other ranks there was a difference that Hardy had not reckoned with. The other ranks were served Indian food in their messes, prepared according to the precise dietary prescriptions of their various religions. The officers’ mess, on the other hand, served ‘English’ food — and the trouble with Hardy was that he was one of those chaps who, no matter how hard they tried, simply could not get by without his daily dal-roti. He dutifully ate whatever was served in the mess but at least once a day, he’d find a pretext to leave the cantonment so that he could eat his fill somewhere in town. This was a commonplace enough occurrence among Indian officers, but Hardy crossed an unseen line: he started visiting the other ranks’ messes. He enjoyed these little visits: he’d called some of the men ‘uncle’ as a child and he assumed that they would afford him the same indulgence and affection that he remembered from the past. They would keep his visits a secret, he thought. After all many of them were from the same village, the same extended family. Many had known his father.

It turned out that he could not have been more wrong. Far from being pleased at serving under Hardy, his father’s old colleagues were deeply offended by his presence in the battalion. They were of the first generation of Indian soldiers to serve under Indian officers. Many of them were uneasy about this: their relationship with their British officers was the source of their pride and prestige. To serve under Indians was a dilution of this privilege.

A day came when the battalion’s Commanding Officer, Lieutenant-Colonel ‘Bucky’ Buckland, recommended that Hardy be given command of C Company. So far as the company’s NCOs were concerned, this was the last straw. Some of them knew Lieutenant-Colonel Buckland well; they had served with him for many years and it was part of their job to keep him informed about the happenings in the unit. They formed a delegation and went to see him. They told him: this boy, Hardayal Singh, to whom you’ve given charge of C Company, his father is known to us, his sisters are married to our brothers, his home is in the village next to ours. How can you expect us to treat this boy as an officer? Why, he cannot even stomach the food that officers eat. He steals secretly into our messes to eat chapatis.

Lieutenant-Colonel Buckland was deeply disturbed by these complaints: it was impossible not to be repelled by the murkiness of these sentiments. If there was an implicit self-hatred in trusting only your own, then how much deeper was the self-loathing that led a group of men to distrust someone for no reason other than that he was one of them? Lieutenant-Colonel Buckland gave the NCOs a sharp reprimand: ‘You are living in the past. The time has come when you will have to learn to take orders from Indians. This man is the son of your former colleague: do you really want to shame him in public?’

The NCOs held fast, despite this berating. In the end, it was the Lieutenant-Colonel who had had to yield. There had always been an unspoken compact between the men and their English officers: on certain matters it was understood that their wishes had to be taken into account. The Lieutenant-Colonel was left with no choice but to send for Hardy — to tell him that his appointment couldn’t go through just yet. This proved to be the most difficult part of the whole affair. How were the charges to be explained to Hardy? How does a soldier defend himself against the accusation of being, as it were, a covert chapati-eater? What does this do to his self-respect?

Lieutenant-Colonel Buckland dealt with the situation as tactfully as anyone could have, and Hardy emerged from the interview without showing any visible signs of discomfiture. Only his closest friends knew how deeply he’d been wounded; how hard it had been for him to face those NCOs the next day. And, of course, the army being a small, tight institution, word always got around and from time to time even friends would say the wrong thing, just as they had that night.

‘Do all of you face this then?’ Dinu asked Arjun. ‘Is it hard for you to be accepted as officers by your own men?’

‘Yes and no,’ Arjun replied. ‘You always have the feeling that they’re looking at you more closely than they would if you were a Britisher — especially me, I suppose, since I’m just about the only Bengali in sight. But you also have a sense that they’re identifying with you — that some of them are urging you on, while others are just waiting to see you fall. When I’m facing them I can tell that they’re putting themselves in my place, crossing a barrier that has become a great divide in their minds. The moment they imagine themselves past that line, something changes. It can’t be as it was before.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m not sure I can explain, Dinu. I’ll tell you a story. Once, an old English colonel visited our mess. He was full of tales about the Good Old Days. After dinner I happened to hear him talking to Bucky — our CO. He was huffing and puffing and blowing through his whiskers. His view was that this business of making officers out of Indians would destroy the army; everyone would be at each other’s throats and the whole thing would fall apart. Now Bucky’s just about as fair and decent as a man can be and he wasn’t going to put up with this. He defended us stoutly and said his Indian officers were doing a very good job and all the rest of it. But you know, the thing of it was that in my heart I knew that Bucky was wrong and the old codger was right.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s simple. Every institution has its own logic, and the British Indian army has always functioned on the understanding that there was to be a separation between Indians and Britishers. It was a straightforward system: they stayed apart, and obviously both sides felt that this was to their benefit. It’s no easy thing you know, to make men fight. The Britishers found a way of doing it, and they made it work. But now, with us being inside the officers’ mess, I don’t know that it can go on.’

‘Why not?’

Arjun got up to pour himself another brandy. ‘Because it’s true what the old codger said: we’re at each other’s throats.’ ‘Who?’

‘Indians and Britishers.’

‘Really? Why? What about?’

‘Most of it is just little things. In the mess for instance, if a Britisher turns the radio to a broadcast in English, you can be sure that minutes later an Indian will tune it to Hindi film songs. And then someone will turn it back, and so on until all you can do is hope that it gets switched off altogether. Things like that.’

‘You sound like. . squabbling schoolchildren.’

‘Yes. But there’s something important behind it, I think.’

‘What?’

‘You see we all do the same work, eat the same food and so on. But the chaps who’re trained in England get paid a lot more than we do. For myself I don’t mind so much, but chaps like Hardy care very much about these things. To them this is not just a job as it is for me. You see, they really believe in what they’re doing; they believe that the British stand for freedom and equality. Most of us when we hear big words like that tend to take them with a pinch of salt. They don’t. They’re deadly serious about these things, and that’s why it’s so hard for them when they discover that this equality they’ve been told about is a carrot on a stick — something that’s dangled in front of their noses to keep them going, but always kept just out of reach.’

‘Why don’t they complain?’

‘They do sometimes. But usually there’s nothing in particular to complain about. Take the case of Hardy’s appointment: who was to blame? Hardy himself? The men? It certainly wasn’t the CO. But that’s how it always is. Whenever one of us doesn’t get an appointment or a promotion, there’s always a mist of regulations that makes things unclear. On the surface everything in the army appears to be ruled by manuals, regulations, procedures: it seems very cut and dried. But actually, underneath there are all these murky shadows that you can never quite see: prejudice, distrust, suspicion.’

Arjun tossed his brandy back and paused to pour himself another. ‘I’ll tell you something,’ he said, ‘something that happened to me while I was at the academy. One day a group of us went into town — Hardy, me, a few others. It started to rain and we stepped into a shop. The shopkeeper offered to lend us umbrellas. Without thinking about it I said, yes, of course, that’ll be a help. The others looked at me as though I’d gone mad. “What are you thinking of?” Hardy said to me. “You can’t be seen with an umbrella.” I was puzzled. I said: “But why not? Why can’t I be seen with an umbrella?” Hardy’s answer was: “Have you ever seen an Indian soldier using an umbrella?” I thought about it and realised I hadn’t. I said: “No.”

‘“Do you know why not?”

‘“No.”

‘“Because in the old days in the East, umbrellas were a sign of sovereignty. The British didn’t want their sepoys to get over-ambitious. That’s why you’ll never see umbrellas at a cantonment.”

‘I was amazed. Could this possibly be true? I felt sure there were no regulations on the subject. Cans you imagine a rule that said: “Indians are not to keep umbrellas in their barracks”? It’s inconceivable. But at the same time, it was also true that you never saw anyone with an umbrella at a cantonment. One day I asked the adjutant, Captain Pearson. I said: “Sir, why do we never use umbrellas, even when it rains?” Captain Pearson is a short, tough, bull-necked fellow. He looked at me as though I were a worm. Nothing could have shut me up quicker than the answer he gave me. He said: “We don’t use umbrellas, Lieutenant, because we’re not women.”’

Arjun began to laugh. ‘And now,’ he said, ‘I would rather do anything than be seen with an umbrella — I’d rather drown in the rain.’

twenty-four

That year it seemed as though the monsoons had broken over Lankasuka well before the first clouds had appeared in the skies. Manju’s wedding was in late June, just before the coming of the rains. The days were very hot, and in the park in front of the house, the lake fell to a level where boats could no longer be taken out on the water. It was the time of year when even the rotation of the earth seem to slacken in speed, in anticipation of the coming deluge.

But within Lankasuka the wedding created the semblance of a strange climatic anomaly: it was as though the compound was awash in a flood, its inhabitants swirling hectically downriver, carried along by great tides of disparate things— people, gifts, anxiety, laughter, food. In the courtyard at the back, cooking fires burnt all day long and on the roof, under the bright tented awnings that had been erected for the wedding, there seemed never to be a moment when several dozen people were not sitting down to a meal.

The days went by in a storm of feasting and observances: the solemn familial commitments of the paka-dekha led inexorably to the yellowed turmeric-anointing of the gaye-holud. Slowly, much as the rising water of the monsoons overwhelms the chequerboard partitions of a paddy field, so did the steady progression of the wedding sweep away the embankments that divided the lives of the people in the house. Uma’s white-saried political associates pitched in to help, as did a great many khaki-clad Congress workers; Arjun’s friends at Fort William sent auxiliary detachments of cooks, mess-boys, waiters and even, on occasion, entire marching bands, complete with wrap-around brass and uniformed bandmasters; much of Manju’s college came pouring in, and so did a colourful throng of Neel’s acquaintances from the film studios of Tollygunge — directors, actors, students, playback singers, even the two terrifying make-up women who had dressed Manju on the day of her fateful audition.

Dolly too had a hand in stirring the mix. Through her years of visiting Uma in Calcutta, she had developed a close connection with the city’s Burmese temple. Small though this temple was, its past was not without lustre. Many great Burmese luminaries had spent time there, including the famous activist monk, U Wisara. By way of Dolly’s links, Manju’s wedding came to be attended by a substantial part of the city’s Burmese community — students, monks, lawyers and even a few hulking sergeants of Calcutta’s police force (many of whom were Anglo-Burmese in origin).

Considering how oddly assorted these groups were, disagreements were relatively few. But in the end it proved impossible to shut out the powerful winds that were sweeping the world. On one occasion a friend of Uma’s, an eminent Congressman, arrived dressed in the manner of Jawaharlal Nehru, in a khaki cap and a long black sherwani, with a rose in his buttonhole. The elegant politician found himself standing next to a friend of Arjun’s, a lieutenant dressed in the uniform of the 14th Punjab Regiment. ‘And how does it feel,’ the politician said, turning to the soldier with a sneer, ‘for an Indian to be wearing that uniform?’

‘If you must know, sir,’ Arjun’s friend snapped back, matching sneer for sneer, ‘this uniform feels rather warm — but I imagine the same could be said of yours?’

Another day, Arjun found himself facing off against a strangely assorted crowd of Buddhist monks, Burmese student-activists and Congress Party workers. The Congressmen had bitter memories of their confrontations with Indian soldiers and policemen. They began to berate Arjun for serving in an army of occupation.

Arjun recalled that it was his sister’s wedding and he managed to keep his temper. ‘We aren’t occupying the country,’ Arjun said, as lightly as he could. ‘We are here to defend you.’

‘From whom are you defending us? From ourselves? From other Indians? It’s your masters from whom the country needs to be defended.’

‘Look,’ said Arjun, ‘it’s a job and I’m trying to do it as best I can. .’

One of the Burmese students gave him a grim smile: ‘Do you know what we say in Burma when we see Indian soldiers? We say: there goes the army of slaves — marching off to catch some more slaves for their masters.’

It was with a great effort that Arjun succeeded in keeping control of himself: instead of getting into a fight, he turned round and marched away. Later, he went to complain to Uma and found her wholly unsympathetic. ‘They were just telling you what most people in the country think, Arjun,’ Uma said bluntly. ‘If you’re strong enough to face enemy bullets, you should be strong enough to hear them out.’

For the duration of his stay in Lankasuka, Kishan Singh had been allotted a small room that was tucked away at the rear of the house. At other times this room was generally used for storage, mainly food. Along the walls stood great, stone martabans, packed with pickles; in the corners were piles of ripening mangoes and guavas; hanging from the rafters, beyond the reach of ants and cats, were the rope-slung earthen pots in which the household’s butter and ghee were stored.

One afternoon, Bela was sent to the storeroom on an errand, to fetch some butter. The wooden door was slightly warped and could not be properly closed. Looking through the crack, Bela saw that Kishan Singh was inside, lying on a mat. He’d changed into a longyi for his siesta, and his khakis were hanging on a peg. He was sweating in the June heat, bare-bodied but for the ghostly shadow of the army singlet that was singed on to his chest.

From the pumping motion of his ribs Bela could tell that he was fast asleep. She slipped into the room and tiptoed around his mat. She was on her knees, undoing the strings of the earthen butter pot, when Kishan Singh suddenly woke up.

He jumped to his feet and pulled on his khaki tunic, his face turning red with embarrassment.

‘My mother sent me. .’ she said quickly, ‘to fetch this. .’ She pointed at the earthen pot.

With his tunic on, he seated himself cross-legged on the mat. He gave her a smile. Bela smiled shyly back. She felt no inclination to leave; she hadn’t spoken to him till then and it occurred to her now that there were many things she wanted to ask him.

The first question she blurted out was the one that was uppermost in her mind. ‘Kishan Singh,’ she said, ‘are you married?’

‘Yes,’ he said gravely. ‘And I have a little son. Just one year old.’

‘How old were you when you were married?’

‘It was four years ago,’ he said. ‘So I must have been sixteen.’

‘And your wife,’ she said, ‘what is she like?’

‘She’s from the village next to mine.’

‘And where is your village?’

‘It’s up north — a long way from here. It’s near Kurukshetra— where the great battle of the Mahabharata was fought. That is why the men of our district make good soldiers — that’s what people say.’

‘And did you always want to be a soldier?’

‘No.’ He laughed. ‘Not at all — but I had no choice.’

The men in his family had always lived by soldiering, he explained. His father, his grandfather, his uncles — they had all served in the 1/1 Jats. His grandfather had died at Passchendaele, in the Great War. The day before his death he had dictated a letter that was to be sent to his family, filled with instructions about the crops in the fields and what was to be planted and when they were to sow and when to harvest. They next day he had gone over the top of his trench, to save his wounded afsar, an English captain whose batman he had been for five years and whom he honoured above all men. For this he had been awarded, posthumously, the Indian Distinguished Service Medal, which his family had kept, in their haveli, in a glass box.

‘And to this day the afsar’s family send us money — not because we ask, nor from charity, but out of love of my grandfather, and to honour what he did for their son. .’

Bela hung upon his words, drinking in every movement of the muscles of his face. ‘Go on.’

His father had served in the army too, he said. He had been wounded in Malaya, at the time of a rebellion. A stab wound had ripped open his side and pierced his colon. The army doctors had done what they could for him, but the wound had burdened him with chronic, crippling stomach pains. He’d travelled far afield, visiting experts in Ayurveda and other systems of medicine; the expense had forced him to barter away his share of the family land. He hadn’t wanted a fate like that for his Kishan Singh; he’d wanted his son to go to college and understand things; he himself had travelled the world — Malaya, Burma, China, East Africa — and had understood nothing.

Kishan Singh too would have liked to go to college, but when he was fourteen his father died. After that the option of school was no longer open: the family had needed money. His relatives urged him to report to the local recruitment office; they said that he was lucky to have been born into a caste that was allowed to enroll in the English sarkar’s army.

‘That was why you joined?’

He nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘And the women in your village,’ she said, ‘what are they like?’

‘Not like you.’

She was hurt by this. ‘Why? What do you mean?’

‘In a way,’ he said, ‘they are soldiers too. From the time they are little they begin to learn what it means to be widowed early; to bring up children without their men; to spend their lives with husbands who are maimed and crippled.’

Just then she heard her mother calling her name, and went running out of the room.

For the duration of the wedding, Rajkumar and his family were staying at the Great Eastern Hotel. (It was unthinkable, in light of their past hostilities, for Rajkumar to stay with Uma, as Dolly usually did.) It had been agreed upon, however, that Neel and Manju would spend their wedding night — their last in Calcutta — in Lankasuka, in Uma’s flat.

When the day came, Uma and Dolly prepared the bridal bedroom themselves. They went early to the flower market at Kalighat and came back with dozens of loaded baskets. They spent the morning draping the wedding bed with garlands of flowers — hundreds of them. While working, they reminisced about their own weddings and how very different they’d been. In the afternoon they were joined by the Second Princess, who’d made a special trip from Kalimpong: this completed the circle.

It was hot and they were quickly drenched in sweat. ‘I’ve had enough,’ said Dolly. ‘My wedding was easier.’

‘Remember Mrs Khambatta — with the camera?’

They sat on the floor, laughing at the memory.

As the day progressed, a hundred minor crises accumulated. Mainly they concerned odds and ends that someone had forgotten to buy: yet another dhoti for the purohit; a fresh handful of durba grass; a sari for a forgotten aunt — small but essential items. In the late afternoon Arjun was told to organise a quick shopping expedition in the family Jowett. Dinu, Uma and Bela were to go with him, each armed with a shopping list.

Arjun brought the Jowett into the courtyard and the others climbed in.

‘Where exactly are we going?’ Uma asked.

‘To the market at Kalighat,’ Arjun said.

‘Well, you’ll have to be quick then,’ said Uma.

‘Why?’

‘There’s a big demonstration today — we could get cut off.’

‘A demonstration?’ Arjun was taken by surprise. ‘What on earth is it about this time?’

This annoyed Uma. ‘Don’t you ever read the papers, Arjun?’ she said. ‘It’s an anti-war march. We in the Congress believe that in the event of another war Britain can’t expect our support unless they’re willing to provide a guarantee of Indian independence.’

‘Oh I see.’ Arjun shrugged. ‘Well, we’re safe then — it’ll take them a long time to get through all of that. .’

Dinu laughed.

It took just fifteen minutes to get to the market, and within half an hour their shopping was done. They were on their way back, when they turned into a wide avenue and spotted the first of the demonstrators, approaching from a distance.

‘Nothing to worry about,’ Arjun said calmly. ‘We’re a long way ahead. They won’t box us in.’ But even as he was speaking the Jowett’s engine had begun to splutter. And then suddenly the car went dead.

‘Do something, Arjun!’ Uma snapped. ‘We can’t stop here.’

‘The spark plug,’ Arjun muttered incredulously. ‘I knew I should have cleaned it this morning.’

‘Can’t you fix it?’

‘It’s going to take a few minutes.’

‘A few minutes!’ Uma said. ‘But they’ll be all around us. Arjun, how could you allow this?’

‘These things happen. .’

Dinu and Arjun went around to the front and propped the hood open. The Jowett had been idling a good while in the courtyard and the engine was very hot. By the time the plug was fixed, the demonstration had closed around them. Marchers were flowing past on every side, some of them breaking ranks to stare at the stalled car and the two men standing beside the open hood. Arjun and Dinu got back into the car: there was nothing to do but sit and wait until the last demonstrators were past.

A marcher dropped a pamphlet through the car window. Arjun picked it up and glanced down at the front page. There were quotations from Mahatma Gandhi and a passage that said: ‘Why should India, in the name of freedom, come to the defence of this Satanic Empire which is itself the greatest menace to liberty that the world has ever known?’

Arjun was extremely irritated by this time and he made an angry, spitting noise. ‘Idiots,’ he said. ‘I wish I could stuff this down their throats. You’d think they’d have better things to do than march about in the hot sun. .’

‘Watch what you say, Arjun,’ Uma said sharply, from the back seat. ‘I hope you know that I was meant to be in that march too. I don’t think you should be calling them idiots. After all what do you know about these things?’

‘Oh, well. .’ Arjun was about to shrug this off when Dinu spoke up, unexpectedly, in his defence.

‘I think Arjun’s right,’ he said. ‘Those people are idiots. .’

‘What?’ said Uma. ‘What are you talking about, Dinu?’

‘I’m talking about Fascism,’ Dinu said, ‘and why the most important thing right now is to fight it. Because if war does break out, it won’t be like any other war. . Hitler and Mussolini are among the most tyrannical and destructive leaders in all of human history. . They’re grotesque, they’re monsters. . If they succeed in imposing their will on the world, we’ll all be doomed. Look at what they believe in. . their whole ideology is about the superiority of certain races and the inferiority of others. . Look at what they’re doing to Jews. . And if they have their way they’ll destroy the working-class movement everywhere in the world. . Their rule will be the most violent and despotic you can imagine, with some races at the bottom and some at the top. . And don’t imagine for a moment that India and Burma will be better off if the British are defeated. . The Germans’ plan is simply to take over the Empire and rule in their place. . And think of what’ll happen in Asia. . The Japanese are already aspiring to an Empire, like the Nazis and Fascists. . Last year, in Nanking, they murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people. . The last we heard from Saya John, he said that many of his wife’s relatives had been killed. . Lined up against walls and shot. . Men, women, children. . Do you think that if the Japanese army reached India they wouldn’t do the same thing here? If you do, you’re wrong. . They would. . They’re imperialists and racialists of the worst order. . If they succeed, it’ll be the worst catastrophe in all of human history.’

Uma responded calmly. ‘Dinu,’ she said, ‘you must not think for one moment that I, or anyone in the Congress, has an iota of sympathy for the Nazis and Fascists. Absolutely not: they are exactly what you say — monstrous, grotesque. As Mahatma Gandhi has said, many times, they represent the exact opposite of everything we stand for. But as I see it, we are caught between two scourges: two sources of absolute evil. The question for us is, why should we pick one over the other? You say that Nazism will rule through violence and conquest, that it will institutionalize racialism, that it will commit unspeakable atrocities. All of this is true: I don’t dispute it for a moment. But think of the evils you have listed: racialism, rule through aggression and conquest. Is the Empire not guilty of all of this? How many tens of millions of people have perished in the process of this Empire’s conquest of the world— in its appropriation of entire continents? I don’t think there could ever be an accounting of the numbers. Worse still, the Empire has become the ideal of national success — a model for all nations to aspire to. Think of the Belgians, racing off to seize the Congo — they killed ten or eleven million people there. And what was it they wanted, other than to create a version of this Empire? Isn’t that what Japan and Germany want today — empires of their own?’

Bela leant over the seat, trying to break in. ‘We have to get back,’ she cried. ‘We can’t just sit here, arguing. It’s Manju’s wedding night.’

The last of the demonstrators were now past. Arjun started the car and turned it round. They went speeding down the road, towards Lankasuka.

But the argument was not over so far as Dinu was concerned. He turned round in his seat. ‘Aunt Uma,’ he said, ‘you’re always talking about the evils of Empire and what the British have done to India. . But do you think that terrible things weren’t happening here before they came? Look at the way women are treated even today, look at the caste system, untouchability, widow-burning. . all these terrible, terrible things.’

Uma retorted sharply: ‘Let me be the first to admit the horrors of our own society — as a woman I assure you that I am even more aware of them than you are. Mahatma Gandhi has always said that our struggle for independence cannot be separated from our struggle for reform. But having said this, let me add that we must not be deceived by the idea that imperialism is an enterprise of reform. Colonialists would like us to believe this, but there is a simple and clear refutation. It is true that India is riven with evils such as those you describe— caste, the mistreatment of women, ignorance, illiteracy. But take the example of your own country, Burma — they had no caste system there. On the contrary the Burmese were very egalitarian. Women had a high standing — probably more so than in the West. There was universal literacy. But Burma was conquered too, and subjugated. In some ways they fared even worse than we did at the hands of the Empire. It is simply mistaken to imagine that colonialists sit down and ponder the rights and wrongs of the societies they want to conquer: that is not why empires are built.’

Dinu gave a hoarse laugh. ‘Here you are, so full of indignation about the British. And yet you use the English language more often than not. .’

‘That’s neither here nor there,’ Uma shot back. ‘Many great Jewish writers write in German. Do you think that prevents them from recognising the truth?’ From the driver’s seat, Arjun gave a shout: ‘Hold on!’ He threw the car into a steep turn, taking it through the gates of Lankasuka. As they were getting out, they were met by the sound of ululations and the trumpeting of conch-shells. They went racing upstairs to find Neel and Manju walking around the fire, his dhoti joined to her sari by a knot.

From under the hood of her sari, Manju had been peering about the room, looking everywhere for Arjun. When she finally saw him walking in, dressed in his grease-blackened clothes, her head snapped up, throwing off the hood. Everyone in the room froze, astonished by the sight of an unveiled bride. Just then, a moment before Manju had pulled her sari back in place, Dinu’s flash went off. Later, everyone was to agree that this was by far the best picture of the wedding.

The night was unbearably hot. Bela’s bed was drenched with sweat, despite the whirring of the electric fan overhead. She couldn’t sleep; she kept smelling the scent of flowers — the heady fragrances of the last, hottest nights before the breaking of the rains. She thought of Manju, in her flower-strewn bed downstairs, with Neel. It was strange how heat had the effect of heightening the scent of flowers.

Her throat was dry, as parched as sand. She got out of bed and went into the hall outside. The house was dark and for the first time in weeks, there was no one about. The silence seemed almost unnatural, especially after the tumult of the last few days. She tiptoed through the hall to the veranda at the back of the house. There was a full moon, and its light lay on the floor glinting like silver foil. She glanced at the door of the room where Kishan Singh slept. It was, as always, slightly ajar. She wondered if she should shut the door. Stepping across the veranda, she went up to the door and looked in. She could see him lying on his mat, with his longyi tucked between his legs. A gust of wind blew the door a little further open. It seemed cooler inside. She slipped through and seated herself in a corner, with her chin on her knees.

Suddenly he stirred and sat up. ‘Who is it?’

‘It’s me — Bela.’

‘Bela?’

She heard a note of apprehension in his voice and she understood that it had more to do with Arjun than with herself; that he was afraid of what might happen if she was found in his room — an officer’s sister, a girl who’d just turned fifteen and was still unmarried. She didn’t want him to be afraid. She pushed herself across the floor and touched his hand. ‘It’s all right, Kishan Singh.’

‘And what if. .?’

‘Everyone’s asleep.’

‘But still. .’

She saw that he was still afraid, so she stretched out her legs and lay down beside him. ‘Tell me Kishan Singh,’ she said, ‘when you were married — what was it like, your first night with your wife?’

He laughed softly. ‘It was strange,’ he said. ‘I knew that my friends and relatives were at the door listening and laughing.’

‘And your wife? Was she scared?’

‘Yes, but I was too — even more than her in some ways. Later, when we talked of it with others, we learnt that that is how it always is. .’

He could have made love to her then and she would have let him, but she understood that he wouldn’t, not because he was afraid, but because of some kind of innate decency, and she was glad of this because it meant that it was all right to be there. She was happy just to be lying beside him, aware of his body, knowing that he was aware of hers. ‘And when your son was born,’ she said, ‘were you there?’

‘No. She was in the village and I was at the base.’

‘What did you do when you heard the news?’

‘I bought sweets from a halwai and I went to your brother and said: Sah’b, here is some mithai. He looked at me and asked: Why? So I said, Sah’b, I have a son.’

She tried to think of Arjun, in his uniform, talking to Kishan Singh. The picture wouldn’t come to life. ‘My brother— what is he like? As a soldier, I mean?’

‘He’s a good officer. The men, we like him.’

‘Is he hard on you?’

‘Sometimes. Of all the Indians in our battalion, he’s the one who’s the most English. We call him the “Angrez”.’

She laughed: ‘I must tell him.’

Suddenly he clapped a hand over her mouth. ‘Shh.’ There was a sound, of someone stirring downstairs. He sat up in alarm. ‘They’re flying to Rangoon today,’ he said. ‘They’ll all be up early. You must go.’

‘Just a little longer,’ she pleaded. ‘It’s still night.’

‘No.’

He pulled her to her feet and led her to the door. Just as she was about to slip out, he stopped her. ‘Wait.’ With a hand under her chin, he kissed her, very briefly, but full on the lips.

When Neel shook her awake, Manju could not believe that it was already time.

‘Just a little longer,’ she pleaded. ‘Just a few more minutes.’

He put his chin against her cheek and tickled her with his beard. ‘Manju, the plane leaves at 4 a.m.,’ he said. ‘We haven’t got time. .’

It was still dark when the chaos of departure got fully under way. Keyrings were found and forgotten; suitcases were sat upon and strapped with buckled belts; doors and windows were locked and checked and locked once again. A final round of tea was served and then, with the neighbourhood fast asleep, their luggage was loaded into a car. The family stood around the courtyard, waving: Uma, Bela, Arjun, their parents. Kishan Singh looked on from upstairs. Manju cried a little but there was no time for long goodbyes. Neel hurried her into the car and shut the door.

‘We’ll be back next year. .’

It was so early that the roads were empty and it took just half an hour to drive to the Willingdon Air Base, on the banks of the Hooghly river. A few minutes later, Dolly, Rajkumar and Dinu arrived. At exactly 4 a.m. they were led to a jetty, where a sleek, grey motor-launch was waiting. The launch’s engine started with a roar and they went shooting upriver, with the decks tilted backwards at a rakish angle. It was very dark, and all Manju could see of her surroundings was the muddy circle of water that was illuminated by the launch’s powerful spotlight.

The launch slowed and the roar of its engine dwindled to a gentle whine. Its bows dropped back into the water and its spotlight roamed the waters ahead. Suddenly two immense white pontoons loomed out of the water and then the light climbed higher, illuminating the aircraft that was to take them to Rangoon. The plane was enormous, an eighteen-and-a-half-ton flying boat. The logo of the airline was painted on the plane’s tail and a name was written in large letters across its nose—Centaurus.

‘It’s a Martin C-130 seaplane,’ Neel whispered into Manju’s ear. ‘It’s the kind that does the Pacific run for PanAm.’

‘Like Humphrey Bogart’s plane, in China Clipper?’

‘Yes.’ He laughed. ‘And there was one in Flying Down to Rio too, remember, with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers?’

It was when she stepped through the hatch that the full extent of the plane’s size became evident to Manju. The interior was as spacious as a ship’s lounge, with deep, well-padded seats and glowing brass light fixtures. Manju pressed her nose to the window and saw the propellers starting to spin. Flecks of white froth appeared on the churning brown water below and then the shuddering fuselage began to advance, and the wake of its bow wave fanned out towards the invisible shore, rocking the little islands of water hyacinth that were floating downriver. A gurgling, sucking sound issued from the pontoons as the plane fought the water’s grip, gathering speed. Suddenly the Centaurus shot forward, as though catapulted by the beat of wind upon water. Manju saw the wind-drummed waters of the Hooghly falling away as the aircraft rose slowly above the river’s steep embankments. Soon the lights of the city were gone and there was only darkness below: they were now flying over the mangrove swamps of the Sunderbans, heading towards the Bay of Bengal.

Shortly afterwards a steward took Manju and Neel on a tour of the plane. They went straight through to the navigating bridge, where the captain and the first officer sat side by side, behind identical controls. The first officer explained that the Calcutta — Rangoon flight was only one leg of a fortnightly, eleven-thousand-mile round trip that took the Centaurus from Southampton to Sydney and back.

Behind the bridge lay the cabins of the main deck. There was an area for the stewards, a midship cabin, a smoking cabin and a promenade deck — an area that was kept free of seats, so that passengers could stretch their legs in mid-flight. Well appointed as everything was, it was the ingenious design of the kitchen and pantry that took Manju’s breath away. In an area that was no larger than the average closet, space had somehow been found for all the amenities of a first-rate restaurant — crockery, linen, silverware and even fresh flowers.

With dawn approaching the steward advised Manju and Neel to go to the promenade deck to watch the sunrise. They stepped through the arched entrance just in time to see the dark expanse of the Sunderbans yielding to the metallic glint of the Bay of Bengal. In the distance a sliver of colour had appeared on the horizon, like light leaking through a doorway. The dark skies turned quickly mauve and then a shimmering translucent green, shot with streaks of crimson and yellow.

While Dinu was attempting to photograph the sunrise, Manju and Neel crossed the aisle to look in the other direction. Manju cried out loud: to the west lay a stupefying view. The horizon was obscured by a mass of darkness, a bank of cloud that was as vast as a mountain range. It was as though the Himalayas had been magically transported across the sea. So heavy were the cloudbanks that their flat bottoms seemed almost to touch the waves while their peaks towered far, far above the plane — great Everests of cloud reaching tens of thousands of feet into the sky.

‘The monsoons,’ Neel said incredulously. ‘We’ve run straight into the incoming rains.’

‘Is it going to be dangerous?’ Manju asked.

‘In some other aircraft perhaps,’ Neel said confidently. ‘But not in this one.’

They went back to their seats and soon sheets of rain were whiplashing against the windows with a force that made Manju flinch from the glass. Yet, the starkly visible violence of the weather had almost no effect upon the plane — the speedometer in the cabin showed the Centaurus to be flying at a steady 200 miles per hour. But a while later the captain announced that the Centaurus would make a change of altitude to ride out the storm. It would descend from its present cruising height of 3,000 feet to a few hundred feet above sea level.

Manju fell into a doze and was jolted awake only when a ripple of excitement ran through the plane. Land had been spotted on the starboard side: a picture-book island ringed with beaches. Huge waves were disintegrating into sheets of white foam on the sand. At the centre of the island there stood a striped black and white tower.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ the captain announced, ‘what we have here is the lighthouse of Oyster Reef. You should have your first glimpse of Burma very shortly. Watch out for the Arakan coast. .’

Then there it was — close enough to touch — a densely clotted carpet of mangrove, veined with thin creeks and silver rivulets. As Manju sat looking through the window, Neel whispered into her ear, telling her the story of how his grandmother— Rajkumar’s mother — had died somewhere below, on a sampan that was moored in one of those branching inlets.

The town of Akyab, the capital of the Arakan, was their first stop. ‘This,’ said Neel proudly, ‘was where my father was born.’ The airline’s base lay in a natural sea-lane, a good distance from the town. All they saw of Akyab as the Centaurus came down was a clock-tower in the far distance. After a quick refuelling the plane was in the air again. The rain stopped and in the bright daylight the waters of the coast were revealed to be lined with miles of reef and great floating forests of seaweed — all clearly visible from above, as stains on the sparkling sea. Rangoon now lay due east, and the Centaurus soon turned inland, flying over a stretch of uninhabited countryside. The steward came by, handing out voluminous leather-bound menus.

At the end of her breakfast, Manju found herself looking down on a vista of square paddy fields. Some were already green and others were in the process of becoming so, with lines of workers advancing through the mud, transplanting seedlings. The workers stood up as the plane flew over, throwing their heads back and waving huge conical hats.

Manju caught sight of a river, curving across the landscape. ‘Is that the Irrawaddy?’ she asked Neel.

‘No,’ said Neel. ‘That’s the Rangoon river — the Irrawaddy doesn’t flow past the city.’

Then a glint of sunlight drew her eye to an immense structure, far in the distance — a gilded mountain that tapered into a spire of gold. ‘What’s that?’

‘That’s the Shwe Dagon Pagoda,’ Neel whispered in her ear. ‘We’re home.’

Manju glanced at her watch and saw that the journey had lasted exactly five and a half hours. It seemed impossible that less than a day had passed since her wedding night, since the time when Neel had shut the door of their flower-bedecked bedroom. She thought of how frightened she’d been and she wanted to laugh. It was only now, circling above the city that was to be her home, that she acknowledged how completely she was in love. He was her present, her future, the entirety of her existence. Time and being held no meaning without him. She slipped her hand into his and looked down again on the great muddy river and the spire of gold. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m home.’