The Mystic Masseur

3. Leela

ALTHOUGH IT WAS nearly half past eleven when his taxi got to Fourways that night, the village was alive and Ganesh knew that Mrs Cooper was right. Someone had died. He sensed the excitement and recognized all the signs. Lights were on in most of the houses and huts, there was much activity on the road, and his ears caught the faint hum, as of distant revelry. It wasn’t long before he realized that it was his father who had died. Fourways seemed to be waiting for the taxi and the moment people saw Ganesh sitting in the back they began to wail.

The house itself was chaos. He had hardly opened the taxi doors when scores of people he didn’t know scrambled towards him with outstretched arms, bawling; and led, almost carried, him into the house which was full of even more mourners he didn’t know or remember.

He could hear the taxi-driver saying over and over, ‘Man, I guess long time what the case was. We stepping on the gas all the way from Port of Spain, driving like madness all in the dark. And the boy so mash up inside he not even crying.’

A fat, sobbing man embraced Ganesh and said, ‘You get my telegram? Fust telegram I send. I is Ramlogan. You don’t know me but I know your father. Just yesterday, just yesterday’ — Ramlogan broke down and wept afresh — ‘just yesterday I meet him and I say, “Baba” — I does always call him that — “Baba,” I say, “come inside and have something to eat.” I take over Dookhie shop now, you know. Yes, Dookhie dead nearly seven months now and I take over the shop.’

Ramlogan’s eyes were red and small with weeping. ‘ “Baba,” I say, “come inside and have something to eat.” And you know what he say?’

A woman put her arms around Ganesh and asked, ‘What he say?’

‘You want to know what he say?’ Ramlogan embraced the woman. ‘He say, “No, Ramlogan. I don’t want to eat today.” ’

He could hardly finish the sentence.

The woman removed her hands from Ganesh and put them on her head. She shrieked, twice, then dropped into a wail: ‘ “No, Ramlogan, I don’t want to eat today.” ’

Ramlogan wiped his eyes with a thick hairy finger. ‘Today,’ he sobbed, holding out both hands towards the bedroom, ‘today he can’t eat at all.’

The woman shrieked again. ‘Today he can’t eat at all.’

In her distress she tore the veil off her face and Ganesh recognized an aunt. He put his hand on her shoulder.

‘You think I could see Pa?’ he asked.

‘Go and see your Pa, before he go for good,’ Ramlogan said, the tears running down his fat cheeks to his unshaved chin. ‘We wash the body and dress it and everything already.’

‘Don’t come with me,’ Ganesh said. ‘I want to be alone.’

When he had closed the door behind him the wailing sounded far away. The coffin rested on a table in the centre of the room and he couldn’t see the body from where he was. To his left a small oil lamp burned low and threw monstrous shadows on the walls and the galvanized-iron ceiling. When he walked nearer the table his footsteps resounded on the floor-planks and the oil lamp shivered. The old man’s moustache still bristled fiercely but the face had fallen and looked weak and tired. The air around the table felt cool and he saw that it came from the casing of ice around the coffin. It was a room of the dead, strange with the smell of camphor balls, and there was nothing alive in it except himself and the squat yellow flame of the oil lamp, and they were both silent. Only, from time to time, the water from the melting ice plopped into the four pans at the feet of the table and punctured the silence.

He didn’t know what he thought or felt but he didn’t want to cry and left the room. They were waiting for him to come out and quickly encircled him. He heard Ramlogan saying, ‘Come on, man, give the boy air. Is his father dead, you know. His only father.’ And the wailing began again.

No one asked him about plans for the cremation. Everything seemed arranged already and Ganesh was content that it should be so. He allowed Ramlogan to take him away from the house, with its sobs and shrieks and lamentations, its gas lamps, oil lamps, bottle flambeaux, bright lights everywhere except in the small bedroom.

‘No cooking here tonight,’ Ramlogan said. ‘Come and eat at the shop.’

Ganesh didn’t sleep that night and everything he did seemed unreal. Afterwards he remembered the solicitude of Ramlogan — and his daughter; remembered returning to the house where no fire could be lit, remembered the sad songs of the women lengthening out the night; then, in the early morning, the preparations for the cremation. He had to do many things, and he did without thought or question everything the pundit, his aunt, and Ramlogan asked him. He remembered having to walk round the body of his father, remembered applying the last caste-marks to the old man’s forehead, and doing many more things until it seemed that ritual had replaced grief.

When it was all over — his father burnt, the ashes scattered, and everybody, including his aunt, gone away — Ramlogan said, ‘Well, Ganesh, you is a man now.’

Ganesh took stock of his position. First he considered money. He owed Mrs Cooper eleven dollars for two weeks board and lodging, and he found that of his own money he had no more than sixteen dollars and thirty-seven cents. He had about twenty dollars to collect from the school, but he had made up his mind not to ask for it and to return it if it were sent him. He had not stopped at the time to think who had paid for the cremation; it was only later, just before his marriage, he found that his aunt had paid for it. Money was not an immediate problem, now that he had the oil royalties — nearly sixty dollars a month — which made him practically a rich man in a place like Fourways. Still, the royalties could dry up at any moment; and although he was twenty-one, and educated, he had no means of earning a living.

One thing gave him hope. As he wrote afterwards in The Years of Guilt: ‘In conversation with Shri Ramlogan I learnt a curious fact. My father had died that Monday morning between five minutes past ten and a quarter past ten — just about the time, in short, when I had the dispute with Miller, and was deciding to give up my teaching job. I was much struck by the coincidence, and it was only then, for the first time, I felt I had something big ahead of me. For it was indeed a singular conspiracy of events that pulled me away from the emptiness of urban life back into the stimulating peace and quiet of the country.’

Ganesh was happy to get away from Port of Spain. He had spent five years there but he had never become used to it or felt part of it. It was too big, too noisy, too alien. It was better to be back in Fourways, where he was known and respected and had the double glamour of a college education and a father recently dead. They called him ‘sahib’, and some parents encouraged their children to call him ‘Teacher Ganesh’, but this brought back unhappy memories and Ganesh made them stop it.

‘It wrong to call me that,’ he said, adding cryptically, ‘I feel I was teaching the wrong things to the wrong people.’

For more than two months he loafed. He didn’t know what he wanted to do or what he could do, and he was beginning to doubt the value of doing anything at all. He ate at the houses of people he knew and, for the rest, merely wandered around. He bought a second-hand bicycle and went for long rides in the hilly lanes near Fourways.

People said, ‘He doing a lot of thinking, that boy Ganesh. He full with worries, but still he thinking thinking all the time.’

Ganesh would have liked his thoughts to be deep and it disturbed him that they were simple things, concerned with passing trifles. He began to feel a little strange and feared he was going mad. He knew the Fourways people, and they knew him and liked him, but now he sometimes felt cut off from them.

But he couldn’t escape Ramlogan. Ramlogan had a sixteen-year-old daughter he wanted married, and wanted married to Ganesh. It was an open secret in the village. Ganesh was always getting little gifts from Ramlogan — a special avocado pear, a tin of Canadian salmon or Australian butter — and whenever he passed the shop Ramlogan was sure to call him in.

‘Eh, eh, sahib. What happening that you passing without saying a word? People go think we vex.’

Ganesh could not find it in his heart to refuse Ramlogan’s invitation, though he knew that whenever he looked at the doorway leading to the room at the back of the shop he was going to see Ramlogan’s daughter peering through the grimy lace curtains. He had seen her on the night of his father’s death, but he hadn’t paid much attention to her then. Now he saw that the girl behind the curtains was tall; sometimes, when she peered too closely, he could see her eyes wide with mischief, simplicity, and awe, all at once.

He couldn’t link the girl with her father. She was thin and fair, Ramlogan fat and almost black. He seemed to have only one shirt, a dirty striped blue thing which he wore collarless and open down his hairy chest to just where his round and big belly began. He looked of a piece with his shop. Ganesh got the impression that every morning someone went over everything in it — scales, Ramlogan, and all — with a greased rag.

‘It ain’t dirty,’ Ramlogan said. ‘It just look dirty. Sit down, sahib, sit down. You ain’t have to blow any dust or anything away. You just sit down on that bench against the wall and let we have a good chat. I is not a educated man, but I like to hear educated people talk.’

Ganesh, reluctantly seated, did not at once respond.

‘It have nothing like a good chat,’ Ramlogan began, slipping off his stool and dusting the counter with his fat hands. ‘I like hearing educated people giving off ideas.’

Meeting with further silence, Ramlogan remounted his stool and spoke about the death. ‘Your father, sahib, was a good man.’ His voice was heavy with grief. ‘Still, we give him a good funeral. Fust funeral I attend in Fourways, you know, sahib. I see a lot of funeral in my time, but I go say now and I don’t care who hear me say it, that your father funeral was the best I see. Smatterer fact, Leela — my daughter, you know, second and best — Leela say is the best funeral she see. She say she count more than five hundred people from all over Trinidad at the funeral, and it had a lot of cars following the body. People did like your father, sahib.’

Then they both fell silent, Ramlogan out of respect for the dead, Ganesh because he didn’t know what he was expected to say; and the conversation ended.

‘I like these little chats we does have, sahib,’ Ramlogan would say, walking to the door with Ganesh. ‘I ain’t educated meself but I like to hear educated people giving off ideas. Well, sahib, why you don’t drop in again? Let we say, tomorrow?’

Ramlogan later solved the conversation problem by pretending that he couldn’t read and getting Ganesh to read the newspapers for him; and he listened, elbows on the counter, his hands holding his greasy head, his eyes filling with tears.

‘This reading, sahib, is a great great thing,’ Ramlogan once said. ‘Just think. You take up this paper that to me just look like a dirty sheet with all sort of black mark and scrawl all over the place’ — he gave a little self-deprecating laugh — ‘you take this up and — eh! eh! — before I have time to even scratch my back, man, I hear you reading from it and making a lot of sense with it. A great thing, sahib.’

Another day he said, ‘You does read real sweet, sahib. I could just shut my eye and listen. You know what Leela tell me last night, after I close up the shop? Leela ask me, “Pa, who was the man talking in the shop this morning? He sound just like a radio I hear in San Fernando.” I tell she, “Girl, that wasn’t a radio you was hearing. That was Ganesh Ramsumair. Pundit Ganesh Ramsumair,” I tell she.’

‘You making joke.’

‘Ah, sahib. Why I should make joke with you, eh? You want me call Leela here self, and you could ask she?’

Ganesh heard a titter behind the lace curtain. He looked down quickly at the floor and saw it littered with empty cigarette boxes and discarded paper bags. ‘Nah, nah. Don’t bother the girl.’

A week after that Ramlogan told Ganesh, ‘Something happen to Leela foot, sahib. I wonder if you would mind having a look at it.’

‘I ain’t a doctor, man. I ain’t know anything about people foot.’

Ramlogan laughed and almost slapped Ganesh on the back. ‘Man, how you could say a thing like that, sahib? Ain’t you was learning learning all all the time at the town college? And too besides, don’t think I forgetting that your father was the best massager we had.’

For years old Mr Ramsumair had this reputation until, his luck running out, he massaged a young girl and killed her. The Princes Town doctor diagnosed appendicitis and Mr Ramsumair had to spend a lot of money to keep out of trouble. He never massaged afterwards.

‘Wasn’t his fault,’ Ramlogan said, leading Ganesh behind the counter to the curtained doorway. ‘He was still the best massager we ever had, and I too too proud that I know his one and only son.’

Leela was sitting in a hammock made from a sugar sack. She was wearing a clean cotton frock and her long black hair looked washed and combed.

‘Why you don’t have a look at Leela foot, sahib?’

Ganesh looked at Leela’s foot, and a curious thing happened. ‘I just seemed to touch it,’ he wrote, ‘and it was all right.’

Ramlogan did not hide his admiration. ‘Like I tell you, sahib. You is your father son. Is only special people who could do that sort of thing. I wonder why you don’t take up massaging.’

Ganesh remembered the queer feeling he had of being separated from the village people, and he felt that there was something in what Ramlogan said.

He didn’t know what Leela thought because as soon as he had fixed her foot she giggled and ran away.

Thereafter Ganesh was a more willing visitor at Ramlogan’s, and with every visit he noted improvements in the shop. The most spectacular of these was the introduction of a new glass case. It was given pride of place in the middle of the counter; it was so bright and clean it looked out of place.

‘Is really Leela idea,’ Ramlogan said. ‘It does keep out the flies from the cakes and it more modern.’

The flies now congregated inside the case. Presently a pane was broken and patched up again with brown paper. The glass case now belonged.

Ramlogan said, ‘I doing my best to make this Fourways a modern place — as you see — but is hard, man, sahib.’

Ganesh still went out cycling, his thoughts maundering between himself, his future, and life itself; and it was during one of his afternoon wanderings that he met the man who was to have a decisive influence on his life.

The first meeting was not happy. It happened on the dusty road that begins at Princes Town and wriggles like a black snake through the green of sugar-cane to Debe. He was not expecting to see anyone on the road at that dead time of day when the sun was almost directly overhead and the wind had ceased to rustle the sugar-cane. He had passed the level-crossing and was freewheeling down the incline just before the small village of Parrot Trace when a man ran into the middle of the road at the bottom of the incline and waved to him to stop. He was a tall man and looked altogether odd, even for Parrot Trace. He was covered here and there in a yellow cotton robe like a Buddhist monk and he had a staff and a bundle.

‘My brother!’ the man shouted in Hindi.

Ganesh stopped because he couldn’t do anything else; and, because he was afraid of the man, he was rude. ‘Who you is, eh?’

‘Indian,’ the man said in English, with an accent Ganesh had never heard before. His long thin face was fairer than any Indian’s and his teeth were bad.

‘You only lying,’ Ganesh said. ‘Go away and let me go.’

The man tightened his face into a smile. ‘I am Indian. Kashmiri. Hindu too.’

‘So why for you wearing this yellow thing, then?’

The man fidgeted with his staff and looked down at his robe. ‘It isn’t the right thing, you mean?’

‘Perhaps in Kashmir. Not here.’

‘But the pictures — they look like this. I would very much like to talk with you,’ he added, with sudden warmth.

‘All right, all right,’ Ganesh said soothingly, and before the man could say anything he was on his bicycle saddle and pedalling away.

When Ramlogan heard about the encounter he said, ‘That was Mr Stewart.’

‘He just did look crazy crazy to me. He had funny cateyes that frighten me, and you shoulda see the way the sweat was running down his red face. Like he not used to the heat.’

‘I did meet him in Penal,’ Ramlogan said. ‘Just before I move here. Eight nine months back. Everybody say he mad.’

Ganesh learnt that Mr Stewart had recently appeared in South Trinidad dressed as a Hindu mendicant. He claimed that he was Kashmiri. Nobody knew where he came from or how he lived, but it was generally assumed that he was English, a millionaire, and a little mad.

‘He a little bit like you, you know, sahib. He does think a lot. But I say, when you have so much money you could damn well afford to do a lot of thinking. Sahib, my people make me shame the way they does rob the man just because he have a lot of money and like to give it away. He does stay in one village, give away money, and then he does move somewhere else and start giving there.’

When Ganesh next saw Mr Stewart, in the village of Swampland, Mr Stewart was in distress, the object of a scrimmage of little boys who were doing their best to unwind his yellow robe. Mr Stewart was not resisting or protesting. He was simply looking about him in a bemused way. Ganesh quickly got off his cycle and picked up a handful of blue-metal stone from a pile left on the verge by the Public Works Department and no doubt given up for lost.

‘Don’t hurt them,’ Mr Stewart shouted, as Ganesh pursued the boys. ‘They are only children. Put down the stones.’

The boys routed, Ganesh came up to Mr Stewart. ‘You all right?’

‘My dress is a little dusty,’ Mr Stewart admitted, ‘but I am still sound in wind and limb.’ He brightened. ‘I knew I was going to meet you again. Do you remember our first meeting?’

‘I really sorry about that.’

‘Oh, I understand. But we must have a talk soon. I feel I can talk to you. The vibrations are right. No, don’t deny it. The vibrations are there all right.’

Ganesh smiled at the compliment and in the end accepted an invitation to tea. He did so only out of politeness and had no intention of going, but a talk with Ramlogan made him change his mind.

‘He is a lonely man, sahib,’ Ramlogan said. ‘It have nobody here who really like him and, believe me, I don’t think he half as mad as people say. I would go if I was you. You go get on all right with him, seeing that both of you is educated people.’

So Ganesh went to the thatched hut outside Parrot Trace where Mr Stewart now lived. From the outside it looked like any other hut, grass roof and mud walls, but inside it was all order and simplicity. There was a small bed, a small table, and a small chair.

‘A man needs no more,’ Mr Stewart said.

Ganesh was about to sit in the chair without being asked when Mr Stewart said, ‘Nooh! Not that one.’ He lifted up the chair and showed it. ‘Something I made myself, but I fear it is a trifle unreliable. Made from local materials, you know.’

Ganesh was more interested in Mr Stewart’s clothes. He was dressed conventionally, khaki trousers and white shirt, and there was no sign anywhere of the yellow robe.

Mr Stewart divined Ganesh’s interest. ‘It doesn’t matter what you wear. No spiritual significance, I’ve decided.’

Mr Stewart showed Ganesh some day statuettes he had made of Hindu gods and goddesses and Ganesh was astonished, not by the artistry, but by the fact that Mr Stewart had made them at all.

Mr Stewart pointed to a water-colour on the wall. ‘I’ve been working on that picture for years. Once or twice a year I get a new idea for it and it has to be drawn all over again.’

The water-colour, done in blues and yellows and browns, depicted a number of brown hands reaching out for a yellow light in the top left-hand corner.

‘This, I think, is rather interesting.’ Ganesh followed Mr Stewart’s finger and saw a blue shrunk hand curling backwards from the yellow light. ‘Some see Illumination,’ Mr Stewart explained. ‘But they do sometimes get burnt and withdraw.’

‘Why all the hands brown?’

‘Hindu hands. Only people really striving after the indefinite today. You look worried.’

‘Yes, I worried.’

‘About life?’

‘I think so,’ Ganesh said. ‘Yes, I think I worried about life.’

‘Doubts?’ Mr Stewart probed.

Ganesh only smiled because he didn’t know what Mr Stewart meant.

Mr Stewart sat down on the bed next to him and said, ‘What do you do?’

Ganesh laughed. ‘Nothing at all. I guess I just doing a lot of thinking.’

‘Meditating?’

‘Yes, meditating.’

Mr Stewart jumped up and clasped his hands before the water-colour. ‘Typical!’ he said, and closed his eyes as if in ecstasy. ‘Typical!’

Then he opened his eyes and said, ‘But now — tea.’

He had taken a lot of trouble to prepare tea. There were sandwiches of three sorts, biscuits, and cakes. And although Ganesh was beginning to like Mr Stewart and wanted to eat his food, all his Hindu instincts rose high and he was nauseated to bite into a cold egg-and-cress sandwich.

Mr Stewart saw. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘It’s too hot, anyway.’

‘Oh, I like it. But I more thirsty than hungry, that’s all.’

They talked, and talked. Mr Stewart was anxious to learn all of Ganesh’s problems.

‘Don’t think you are wasting your time meditating,’ he said. ‘I know the things that are worrying you, and I think one day you may find the answer. One day you may even bring it all out in a book. If I weren’t so terribly afraid of getting involved I might have written a book myself. But you must find your own spiritual rhythm before you start doing anything. You must stop being worried about life.’

‘All right,’ Ganesh said.

Mr Stewart talked like a man who had saved up conversation for years. He told Ganesh all about his life, his experiences in the First World War, his disillusionment, his rejection of Christianity. Ganesh was entranced. Apart from the insistence that he was a Kashmiri Hindu, Mr Stewart was as sane as any of the masters at the Queen’s Royal College; and as the afternoon wore on, his blue eyes ceased to be frightening and looked sad.

‘Why you don’t go to India then?’ Ganesh asked.

‘Politics. Don’t want to get involved in any way. You can’t imagine how soothing it is here. One day you may go to London — I pray not — and you will see how sick you can get gazing from your taxi at the stupid, cruel faces of the mob on the pavements. You can’t help being involved there. Here there is no such need.’

The tropical night fell suddenly and Mr Stewart lit an oil lamp. The hut felt very small and very sad, and Ganesh was sorry that soon he had to go and leave Mr Stewart to his loneliness.

‘You must write your thoughts,’ Mr Stewart said. ‘They may help other people. You know, I felt all along that I was going to meet someone like you.’

Before Ganesh left, Mr Stewart presented him with twenty copies of The Science of Thought Review.

‘They have given me a great deal of comfort,’ he said. ‘And you may find them useful.’

Ganesh said in surprise, ‘But is not an Indian magazine, Mr Stewart. It say here that it print in England.’

‘Yes, in England,’ Mr Stewart said sadly. ‘But in one of the prettier parts. In Chichester, in Sussex.’

That was the end of their conversation and Ganesh saw no more of Mr Stewart. When he called at the hut some three weeks later, he found it occupied by a young labourer and his wife. Many years afterwards Ganesh learnt what had happened to Mr Stewart. About six months after their conversation he had returned to England and joined the army. He died in Italy.

This was the man whose memory Ganesh so handsomely honoured in the dedication of his autobiography:

TO LORD STEWART OF CHICHESTER

Friend and Counsellor

of Many Years

Ganesh had become more than a regular visitor at Ramlogan’s. He was eating there every day now; and when he called, Ramlogan no longer allowed him to remain in the shop, but invited him in immediately to the room at the back. This caused Leela to retreat to the bedroom or the kitchen.

And even the back room began to undergo improvements. The table got an oilcloth cover; the unpainted, mildewed partitions became gay with huge Chinese calendars; the hammock made from a sugar sack was replaced by one made from a flour sack. A vase appeared one day on the oilcloth on the table; and less than a week later paper roses bloomed in the vase. Ganesh himself was treated with increasing honour. At first they fed him out of enamel dishes. Now they gave him earthenware ones. They knew no higher honour.

The table itself was to offer a further surprise. One day a whole series of booklets on The Art of Salesmanship appeared on it.

Ramlogan said, ‘I bet you does miss all the big books and thing you did have in Port of Spain, eh, sahib?’

Ganesh said he didn’t.

Ramlogan strove to be casual. ‘I have a few books myself. Leela put them out on the table.’

‘They look pretty and nice.’

‘Education, sahib, is one hell of a thing. Nobody did bother to send me to school, you know. When I was five they send me out to cut grass instead. But look at Leela and she sister. Both of them does read and write, you know, sahib. Although I don’t know what happening to Soomintra since she married that damn fool in San Fernando.’

Ganesh flipped through the pages of one of the booklets. ‘Yes, they look as really nice books.’

‘Is really for Leela I buy the book, sahib. I say, if the girl can read, we must give she something to read. Ain’t true, sahib?’

‘Is not true, Pa,’ a girl’s voice said, and they turned to see Leela at the kitchen door.

Ramlogan turned back quickly to Ganesh. ‘Is the sort of girl she is, sahib. She don’t like people to boast about she. She shy. And if it have one thing she hate, is to hear lies. I was just testing she, to show you.’

Leela, not looking at Ganesh, said to Ramlogan, ‘You buy those books from Bissoon. When he went away you get so vex you say that if you see him again you go do for him.’

Ramlogan laughed and slapped his thigh. ‘This Bissoon, sahib, is a real smart seller. He does talk just as a professor, not so good as you, but still good. But what really make me buy the books is that we did know one another when we was small and in the same grass-cutting gang. We was ambitious boys, sahib.’

Ganesh said again, ‘I think they is good books.’

‘Take them home, man. What book make for if not to read? Take them home and read them up, sahib.’

It was not long after that Ganesh saw a big new notice in the shop, painted on cardboard.

‘Is Leela self who write that,’ Ramlogan said. ‘I didn’t ask she to write it, mind you. She just sit down quiet quiet one morning after tea and write it off.’

It read:

NOTICE

NOTICE, IS. HEREBY; PROVIDED: THAT, SEATS!

ARE, PROVIDED. FOR; FEMALE: SHOP, ASSISTANTS!

Ganesh said, ‘Leela know a lot of punctuation marks.’

That is it, sahib. All day the girl just sitting down and talking about these puncturation marks. She is like that, sahib.’

‘But who is your shop assistants?’

‘Leela say is the law to have the sign up, sahib. But, smatterer fact, I don’t like the idea of having a girl in the shop.’

Ganesh had taken away the booklets on salesmanship and read them. The very covers, shining yellow and black, interested him; and what he read enthralled him. The writer had a strong feeling for colour and beauty and order. He spoke with relish about new paint, dazzling displays, and gleaming shelves.

‘These is first-class books,’ Ganesh told Ramlogan.

‘You must tell Leela so, sahib. Look, I go call she and you you go tell she and then perhaps she go want to read the books sheself.’

It was an important occasion and Leela acted as though she felt its full importance. When she came in she didn’t look up and when her father spoke she only lowered her head a bit more and sometimes she giggled, coyly.

Ramlogan said, ‘Leela, you hear what the sahib tell me. He like the books.’

Leela giggled, but decorously.

Ganesh asked, ‘Is you who write the sign?’

‘Yes, is me who write the sign.’

Ramlogan slapped his thigh and said, ‘What I did tell you, sahib? The girl can really read and really write.’ He laughed.

Then Leela did a thing so unexpected it killed Ramlogan’s laughter.

Leela spoke to Ganesh. She asked him a question!

‘You could write too, sahib?’

It took him off his guard. To cover up his surprise he began rearranging the booklets on the table.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I could write.’ And then, stupidly, almost without knowing what he was saying, ‘And one day I go write books like these. Just like these.’

Ramlogan’s mouth fell open.

‘You only joking, sahib.’

Ganesh slapped his hand down on the booklets, and heard himself saying, ‘Yes, just like these. Just like these.’

Leela’s wide eyes grew wider and Ramlogan shook his head in amazement and wonder.