by Helen Harris
‘Attention, please! Your attention is solicited. Here you see gateway to mausoleum of Emperor Akbar, built by Akbar’s son Jahangir in 1613. Within, we shall see splendours of mausoleum itself. Sadly, some splendours have faded. Restoration work has begun, but does not proceed apace. Ah well, your fantasy must fill missing sections. Rome was not built in a day. What can’t be cured must be endured!’
It was very hot in Agra, but they stayed in a nice old colonial hotel with rotating fans and went to see the Taj Mahal three times. It was every bit as beautiful as Sarah had hoped and she tried hard to memorise it against future ugliness. They also visited Agra Fort and the enchanted ghost city of Fatehpur Sikri. Ravi bought Sarah a garland of orange flowers to lay at a shrine. Holding his hand as they watched green parrots dive through the sunset over the old red turrets, Sarah thought that she had been exaggerating the problems of adjusting to India.
When they came back to Delhi, they moved to Birendra’s flat. Sarah did not really want to go there, but even the grubby little hotel was working out expensive, especially after their trip to Agra which of course she had paid for. They had discussed the pros and cons, but actually they did not have much of a choice; Ravi still had no job and so no money to speak of and after a fortnight, Sarah told him that if she was to stay in India as long as she wanted to, she could not afford the hotel any more.
It was pretty dreadful at Birendra’s. They had a simple bed roll on the floor which they had to put away every morning. The racket from the surrounding flats was unbelievable; the walls must have been made of cardboard. The din out in the street began at 5 or 6 am every day and, most offensive of all, Sarah found, the lavatory was out on the landing.
But she pretended not to care. Ravi and Birendra slept through the racket and she pretended that she thought roughing it was a laugh. She learnt to say good morning in Hindi to the astonished neighbours. She even went shopping for their evening meal down at the little street market. When she came back Birendra told her, chuckling, that she had paid exactly twice as much for their shopping as he would have done.
Ravi seemed elusive. During the day he was preoccupied with his interviews; at night, next to each other, they could only whisper because Birendra lay on the other side of a translucent curtain. He snubbed her once when she suggested that now the congress was over, perhaps his uncle might have a modest room for them somewhere after all. It seemed to Sarah that the real reason for her journey was being obscured by a hundred individually unimportant but collectively insurmountable obstacles. One night as they lay in the stuffy room, the sound of two people making love next door became painfully audible through the thin partition wall. For a while they pretended not to hear it, but then at last Birendra behind his curtain gave a snort of laughter and Ravi and Sarah joined in. The three of them lay giggling in the dark and Sarah did not realise straight away why there were tears running down her face. In the end, even though she knew that Ravi was not looking forward to it, she was glad when the time came to leave for Lucknow.
Two days before they left, they went to a magnificent party at his uncle’s house. Ravi had eventually let him know that he was in Delhi, had gone off alone to pay him a formal visit and come back with the invitation. It was for all three of them: Ravi, Sarah and Birendra too. There was quite a lot of friendly sparring between Ravi and Birendra over this, since it turned out that Ravi’s uncle did not exactly approve of Birendra’s politics so he was in two minds as to whether or not he should go. But Ravi insisted he wanted Birendra to come; all sorts of important people would be there, it was going to be a really big do and Birendra would be a fool to pass up an invitation like that for some sort of half-baked principles. In the end, Birendra agreed to come and Sarah, who had been meanly hoping that he would not, had to hide her pique.
They went most of the way on the bus, but changed over to a scooter rickshaw when they were near the uncle’s house because, Ravi said jokingly, it would never do to turn up there on foot.
The house was wonderful, Sarah thought. They bowled in at a pair of lovely old yellow gates, where a man in uniform was standing stiffly at attention, and bounced up to a neoclassical porch. It was part of a colonnaded verandah which ran the whole way round the house and where there hung a string of little multi-coloured light bulbs, looped from one pillar to the next. The house was not enormous, she considered, but it presented a picture of wealthy serenity. It looked, in fact, like the entrance to the version of India which she had once imagined – a place of elegance and glamour and extravagance.
There were a few people behind the columns of the verandah, but the bulk of the party was at the back of the house. They paid the scooter driver, who threatened to make a scene because he thought the money they had given him was too little, and then climbed the steps to the porch. For a moment they hesitated, uncertain which way to go, but then Ravi said, ‘Come on, let’s find Auntie,’ and led them into the house.
Of course, they did not see much of it – they walked straight through the entrance hall into a living-room which opened on to the garden – but Sarah was still deeply impressed by what she saw. Those two rooms were decorated with hangings apparently as splendid as any she had seen in the National Museum and the few elaborate-looking pieces of furniture held ornate bronze sculptures and little bejewelled boxes. She just had time to take all that in and to appreciate the high, cool ceilings, before they reached the French windows and stepped out again on to the verandah.
Already, as they came into the living-room, a manservant had gone scurrying ahead to announce them and as they appeared at the windows, a voluminous woman in pink came forward to greet them.
Sarah was astounded by the speed with which Ravi changed – instantly, immediately. He had still been Ravi as they walked through the house, but before that outsize woman who was, for heaven’s sake, only his aunt, he was cringing and scraping like a toadying schoolboy. Sarah watched him, aghast. And in that instant she saw at last what she was up against; not the misery in the streets, not the blinding sunlight and the smells, but the imperious demands which his home made on Ravi.
‘Hello, Auntie,’ he was saying. ‘You do remember Birendra, don’t you? And this is Sarah Livingstone, a friend from university.’ And he and Birendra, who had both been perfectly derogatory about the foolish fat woman when on the bus, were now bobbing and fawning in front of her as though they were children over-acting servants in a school play.
The aunt gave Sarah the briefest of smiles and trilled flirtatiously at Birendra, ‘So you have spirited our Ravi away to your Old Delhi hideout? You exert such a fascination on him, you know.’
Ravi and Birendra shifted uncomfortably and Sarah wondered indignantly how anyone who had refused to put them up could be so outrageously hypocritical. Ravi had said he had hinted during his visit that they would like to come and stay, but the hint, he said, had been ignored. But meanwhile, Birendra was answering, ‘Oh, I assure you, it is nothing of the sort. I could not possibly dream of trying to compete with the attractions of your home.’ And the aunt, already busily aware of other guests arriving behind them in the hall, was gesturing them to move on into the garden and saying, ‘Make yourselves at home. Soon, we will eat.’
The crowd which filled the back verandah and spread out across the lawn was made up of kaleidoscopic groups of stately, well-dressed, confident-looking Indian men and women. Men outnumbered women quite noticeably, so that what women there were stood out in their strident silks. Sarah picked out two other white faces because they had both turned towards her as she came out. Everyone was chattering, laughing, sipping. Between the groups, lithe uniformed men were deftly making their way with trays of drinks. For a moment, it was quite intimidating.
They took drinks – there was a choice of everything – and stood together near the verandah steps while Ravi pointed out the important people to Birendra. There seemed to be quite a few of them. They stood there for a while, Sarah enjoying the change to an atmosphere in which she felt at
home. A little bent old man in a dhoti came up to speak to Ravi and praised him and ingratiated himself in a way she found quite embarrassing. He asked inquisitively who Sarah was and twinkled at her salaciously when they were introduced. As soon as he had gone, Ravi dismissed him rather arrogantly as ‘one of uncle’s hangers-on’.
Soon they were summoned indoors to an immense buffet spread. A whole side room had been lined with huge tables of elaborate dishes. Ravi and Birendra helped themselves eagerly and Sarah, overcoming momentary misgivings at the sight of so many unfamiliar dishes, followed suit. Some lesser female relatives, Ravi explained, had been instructed to help the guests and to make sure that everyone had plenty to eat. With heaped plates, they went back out into the garden where they joined a largish group sitting on rugs on the lawn around one of the dignitaries. As she ate, Sarah did her best to follow the puzzling conversation.
In the middle of the meal, Ravi’s uncle came up to their group. He was making the rounds of his guests spread over the lawn, stopping for a few minutes with each group.
He stood over them beaming and nodding, joined his hands in greeting to the dignitary and nodded benignly at everyone else. To each of them he spoke a few words, smiled, implied how pleased he was to welcome them in his home. Before he moved on, Sarah was introduced to him and he paused, his face expressing benevolence and concern for her welfare as he said, ‘I hope our Ravi and Birendra are looking after you?’ At the mention of Oxford, he asked her knowledgeably which School she had taken and when she said English, he nodded again wisely as if that was only to be expected. Delighted to find him so well-informed about her background, Sarah would have begun to talk enthusiastically about favourite authors and works, but his eyes were already moving beyond her and on to his next guest.
She was left with the impression of someone soft and infinitely accommodating but whom, perhaps because of his bulk, it would be impossible to move.
Later on, she slipped inside to go to the lavatory and as she sat there, enjoying the calm of the big vaulted cloakroom, she thought what a terrible pity it was that they were not staying there after all; everything would have been so much nicer, so much closer to the adventure she had imagined.
Before they left, the three of them went up to the uncle to say goodbye. He asked Ravi when he would be going home to his parents and when he heard it was so soon, exclaimed, ‘Well listen, young man, next time you just must stay here with us, do you hear?’ He turned to Sarah and asked her kindly what her plans were. She laughed and answered, ‘Oh, I’m going to Lucknow too.’
The uncle paused and for a second seemed to look at her more attentively than he had all evening. ‘Are you?’ he said. Then he turned to Ravi and gave him a searching stare.
*
Two days later, they caught a train to Lucknow. Sarah thought she was quite an old hand by then. She knew what to expect when they entered the railway station and steeled herself. But even so, stations always shocked her; there were whole families apparently camping on the platforms and unclaimed children working their way through the crowds. It seemed incredible that out of such a commotion she and Ravi should eventually find themselves in the right carriage of the right train, even if there were so many other people jostling and shrieking and squabbling in there too that she really did wonder how they could all reach their destination without a riot breaking out. It was dreadfully hot to begin with and until the train got going, creating a feeble breeze which brought in the ubiquitous dust, Sarah worried about how she would cope with the ten hours ahead.
Ravi began the journey in a filthy mood. He was going home without a firm offer of a job, only a hazy promise – of which he did not hold high hopes – of a position in a new social survey outfit, which would not be decided on for a couple of months yet. That he was going home was bad enough, but with no prospect of getting away for good and with the humiliating admission that he had so far failed to find a post, it was unbearable. Sarah was really the last straw. Since she had blurted out to his uncle that she was coming to Lucknow with him, Ravi had found himself becoming increasingly irritated by her. Time and again, she proved that she simply had no grasp of the realities of Indian life. Despite all the overwhelming daily evidence to the contrary, she persisted in hanging on to her stubborn little idea that somehow or other she could fit in here. Whereas in truth she stuck out like a sore thumb. In the long run, it exasperated him. Now she was sitting beside him, suffering nobly in the heat and the cramped space – as though millions of people did not put up with that as normality every day of their lives – and cultivating an expression of glazed affection for the people around hen That, Ravi thought, annoyed him most of all: the sentimental fondness she tried to show for Indian types for whom he had no time. It was insulting; it was as though she imagined that they must somehow be dear to him, whereas in fact they left him cold. He wondered how she would have reacted to a parallel, in which he romanticised the sturdy shopkeepers and doughy college servants of Oxford. How was it that she could not see the unbridgeable boundaries which separated them? He had thought that a week in India would open her eyes. Up to the last minute, he had hoped that she would see sense beforehand and not come with him to Lucknow. But his family would open her eyes for her, soon enough. And at the thought of his family and the scenes ahead, his bowels constricted.
*
They sat side by side on the wooden seat and although they did not talk to each other much, they were united by the stares surrounding them. Sarah was the only foreigner in the carriage and fair game to while away the tedium of travelling. An hour or so into the journey, an old man opposite them, a self-elected spokesman for the passengers nearby, started to question Ravi about Sarah. After a while, Ravi said rather rudely, ‘Ask her yourself!’ So the old man cleared his throat and in quaintly archaic English, put the same questions to Sarah all over again. Although this annoyed Ravi, at least it saved him the effort of answering and he sat back rather sullenly and stared out of the window, lulled by the mechanical banality of the old man’s questions and Sarah’s well-meaning answers.
When Sarah could stand it no more, she turned to him and whispered, ‘Help me out, you lazy so-and-so.’
‘Get out your book,’ Ravi answered.
‘Oh, but Ravi, that’s such a put-down. Why are you in such a bad mood?’
‘I’m not. Look Sarah, you create your own problems, then you protest and make an outcry. It’s like the Lodi Gardens all over again. You encouraged him.’
‘I did not! I was just polite, that’s all. What am I supposed to do? Confront them all with a stony stare?’
‘We might get a bit of peace and quiet if you did.’
‘Oh Ravi, you’re being a pig.’
During this exchange, the old man had been painstakingly translating his conversation with Sarah for the benefit of the passengers who did not speak English. Now he had finished and leaned forward again, waiting with new questions from the others. Continuing their argument became a way of shutting out the rest of the carriage.
‘I don’t mean to be. I’m just getting fed up with you landing in sticky situations all of your own making and then turning to me, wide-eyed, for help. You’re not as naïve as you pretend to be.’
‘Yes, I am!’
‘Well then, you won’t have an easy time in India.’
‘I’m not having an easy time in India! I’m having a bloody difficult time in India and you don’t lift a finger to help me. Or is that a sticky situation all of my own making too?’
‘Hah!’
‘Oh God, you’re the end!’
‘Sarah, we’re not going to have a row in a railway carriage.’
‘Why not? We’ve had one just about everywhere else.’
‘Gosh, you can be so childish.’
‘And you’re such a despicable conformist!’
‘Attention please,’ the old man interrupted. ‘Ahem! Your attention, please. This old lady on my left wishes to ask you one very foolish question. Is yo
ur mother white-haired?’
‘Just a minute,’ Sarah said. ‘Just a minute.’
‘A conformist?’ Ravi repeated in genuine surprise. ‘That’s a new one.’
‘Yes,’ Sarah repeated bitterly, ‘a bloody weak-willed conformist. You care so much about what people think, don’t you? You just don’t dare defy them. All the things you blamed on India aren’t India at all; they’re you!’
‘I see,’ Ravi said coldly. ‘You mean it’s my fault that this is such an impossible country and that you’re not having a nice time here? Is that it? Well, if you remember, I did warn you.’
‘Yes, you warned me,’ Sarah burst out, ‘but you didn’t tell me that that was how you wanted it, that you didn’t actually want to fight against it, that you were quite happy to be part of this … this travesty.’
‘Let’s go and stand in the corridor,’ Ravi said. ‘I don’t want to make a spectacle of myself, even if you do.’
They squeezed outside. The pink plain slid past them in the late afternoon sun, pockmarked by the occasional village, a pustule of huts. They stood at the open window and observed a moment of truce. Sarah looked so miserable, staring out at the foreign landscape, that Ravi briefly put his hand on her shoulder. She did not shake him off.
‘Why didn’t you tell your aunt and uncle who I was?’ she asked after a while. ‘Would they really have been that upset?’
Ravi withdrew his hand. He looked out too onto the late afternoon landscape, bathed in the peaceful coral light of exhaustion, and his expression was remarkably similar to Sarah’s. ‘In a word, yes.’
‘But why?’ Sarah asked. ‘Why? I mean surely they’re perfectly on the ball and they realise that things like this go on? And anyway, would it really matter? I mean, basically – so what if they get upset?’
Ravi went on staring out of the window. So many things were going wrong; it was hard to separate Sarah from the general mass of difficulties. He resented that she had come now, bringing her extra intractable problem, when it was more than he could do to stay afloat here on his own.
