Poetry
Kevin Cowdall 
​

​A shadow within the shadows,
sheltering from the incessant heat
of a blistering mid-day sun under
the mantle of an overgrown shrub.
 
Loosely coiled, listless, unseen by
any humans who have to venture out, 
it disregards those who pass it by
with an unblinking indifference.
 
Only when a panting dog draws near
does it react, head and tail rising,
coils tightening; but the dog lopes by,
seeking only a cooling relief indoors.
 
It relaxes once more, coils spreading,
head settling, in to languid repose.
A shadow within the shadows,
sheltering from the incessant heat. 
​

​Kevin Cowdall was born in Liverpool, England; where he still lives and works. He developed an interest in writing at an early age and his first published poem appeared, appropriately, in the influential UK publication, ‘First Time’. In all, over 150 poems have been published in magazines, journals and anthologies, and on web sites, in the UK and across Europe, Australia, Canada, and the USA, and broadcast on local and regional BBC Radio.
He has released three previous poetry collections; ‘The Reflective Image’, ‘Monochrome Leaves’ and ‘A Walk in the Park’. His 2016 collection, ‘Assorted Bric-a-brac’ (bringing together the best from these previous collections with a selection of more recent poems), has been very well received and had excellent reviews and is available from the Kindle Store on Amazon. 
His new collection, ‘Natural Inclinations’, comprises 50 poems with a common theme of various elements of Nature / the natural world. 
Kevin is also the author of the novella, ‘Paper Gods and Iron Men’, available from the Kindle Store on Amazon. 

Novel
Anna Sujatha Mathai

Previous Chapters

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
College Days
 
Back again in the heat of the plains, her Senior Cambridge exam behind her, Shueli  had to seek admission into the new college which had just come up on the University Campus, just near St. Stephen’s.. Though there had always been girls at St. Stephen’s, all of them were now expected to join the new college.. It had been named Miranda House, after the daughter, wife, or girl-friend of the paternalistic Vice-Chancellor, Sir Maurice Gwyer, or maybe just Sir Maurice’s favourite Shakespeare heroine. Sir Maurice Gwyer, so It remained one of those unsolved mysteries, as Sir Maurice would reply enigmatically and quizzically when asked. Red brick buildings, the same kind of system on which St. Stephen’s was based, but there was a far more Indian air sweeping the corridors of the new college. Perhaps it was the newly found Independence that gave Miranda House its liberal and rather jaunty air, though with some hints of the usual zenana attitude to women. Shueli found it all very thrilling and new, and opened her arms to embrace the intellectual and emotional excitement she felt College would surely offer her.
There were only ten girls in the English Honours Class. They tended rather to bunch together. To be a part of the select English Honours group seemed to set one apart in a way. They felt quite elite, and rather superior to the Pass Course girls!  It was a heady feeling, being on the threshold of womanhood, freer than she’d ever been so far, and, best of all, finding her own kind of friends. Girls drifted towards one another with vague hopes of friendship, attracted in mysterious ways, by qualities they sensed in one another. Wasn’t that the way friendships, even perhaps loves, were formed? On Shueli’s first day, as she drifted down the long verandah-corridors of the college, feeling hopelessly lost, and wishing Shalini were here, she heard a voice say “Hello Shueli. Don’t you remember me?” A wide, friendly smile accompanied the air of girlish enthusiasm and energy which drew Shueli immediately, and took her back to the three-day girl guides’ camp, when she was ten. She’d been worried that Papa and Ammy would wet-blanket the whole thing. But they hadn’t, feeling it’d be a “good thing for Shueli to learn to manage on her own for a few days.” At the Camp she found she had to share a room with Manisha Bhagwan, who had her hair in two tight plaits, emanating almost from her scalp. Whether they were practising the Reef Knot, or singing the Girl Guide songs, she made Shueli feel what a great adventure it all was. She bristled with plans and new ideas. She even told Shueli one day, when too much tooth-paste had oozed out of the tube: “Mustn’t waste tooth-paste, Shueli! There’s a way of putting the tooth-paste back in.” She never did demonstrate how it was done, but looking back on it, Shueli understood she was that kind of person. Someone who managed to get things done, however impossible. Being a bit of a dreamer herself, Shueli loved that quality in her friend. And now, here she stood, six years later, the same plaits, the same lovely smile. “Manisha, it’s you,” said Shueli, thrilled to see a familiar face, the weight of being anonymous among so many nameless, unknown girls, lifting for a while. “I’m mad about acting and plays and debates” Shueli confided. “Me too! By the way, call me Mani” with her wide, infectious grin. Mani told Shueli about all the school plays she’d participated in, usually as the lead. It was Shueli’s turn to be proud. While still at school, at the tremendous age of fourteen, she’d been asked by the head of the Shakespeare Society of St. Stephen’s College, a Reverend Gilroy, straight from Oxford and OUDS, an eccentric, brilliant young Englishman, who cycled around the Campus, his cassock rolled up to his knees, to be Viola in the Annual production, which was to be Twelfth Night. She could hardly believe it, was struck dumb by excitement. Shalini, when told, admitted she “was just green with envy. Going to play the lead with all those gorgeous looking Stephen’s boys? I’d rather do that any day than go for another term to boring old Rome, where I’ve been before anyway!” But Shueli, still aching in her heart for Arif, thought of him when she had to dress as a boy and go to Count Orsino’s court. The pain of that parting, the unthinkable horror of those days, informed her performance. When the Duke, who thought women could not love half as much as men, asked Viola: “What’s her history?” Shueli/Viola replied with feeling “A blank, my lord. She never told her love./ But let concealment, like a worm I’ the bud,/ Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought, / And with a green and yellow melancholy/ She sat like patience on a monument, / Smiling at grief.” How on earth did Shakespeare know everything,  Shueli wondered, even the innermost heart of a girl? The best bit for Shueli came at the end when she had to change from her male attire of doublet and hose, rather tiresome, into a white bridal dress and gauzy veil, and take the hand of the handsome young duke who, though world-weary in the play, brightened up perceptibly at the end. “Come on yaar! They’ve laid on quite a bash for us in the College Café! Let’s go!” Shueli found the air in the small café shimmered with excitement, she felt she was floating on air. Being the young heroine, she was the centre of attention for all the young actors, who produced their copies of the Programme for her to sign. The lady who had played Olivia was the wife of one of the Professors. The Maitlands were recently out from England to teach at St. Stephen’s… Mr. Maitland, bald and bumbling, was generally to be found under his car, checking or repairing it. When his wife, who had a high-pitched, quick way of speaking, called out to him in shrill tones, he would generally mutter, from under the car “Coming, darling! Wont be a minute..” and continue with his intensive examination of the car’s underside. They got the impression that he preferred it there. His wife, Nora Maitland, consoled herself with her pet Pekinese dogs, and filled her house with young students, all of whom found it a great privilege to be there. That’s where they had their play-readings, while Nora Maitland sat sewing the costumes for the Shakespeare Society plays. It was Nora who had designed and made Viola’s costumes, and she, too, was in high spirits at the party.. “Your costume turned out superb, the darzee did a great job, and you do look lovely in it, Shueli. Sshh.. Reverend Gilroy is going to say a few words…” The Reverend, rather acerbic in his speech, always stood on his toes when he was being especially sarcastic or witty. He loved the plays too, but his air suggested “Lord! What fools these mortals be!” He commented on each of the slip-ups, not one of which had escaped his eagle eyes, but, on the whole, he was pleased with his young actors and actresses. There was going to be another celebratory Supper Party at the Maitlands’, which would be fun, though they did seem quite old – thirty, maybe even forty! With the cruelty typical of the young, they weren’t too keen on those who weren’t immortal like themselves!
Now, in college, she proudly told Mani about all this, and they laughed, and became best friends on the spot. A young lady wearing a large bindi on her forehead, and a very bright, crisply starched sari, joined them “Do you know who’s taking the Milton classes?” The girl with the bindi turned out to be Ashvini Joshi, and the the three of them soon became fast friends, joined later by Tara Dutta, and the four of them soon began to be known as ‘The Quartet” – very special and different, not only in their clothes, but in the books they read, and, of course, in their attitude to life. Ashvini always tended to see the sad, or grim side of life, which was quite a new experience for Shueli. She had always questioned life, its hopeless sorrows and injustices, its cruelties, the terrible poverty one could not escape seeing everywhere, and she felt that many things that had lain dormant in her for so many years, were now coming alive. They didn’t laugh too much, as Ashvini made them feel they were being ‘superficial’.
“Why are you girls so dreadfully morbid?” Ammy would ask. “Why can’t you just be natural and normal, like other young girls?” Ashvini had just introduced them to Carson McCullers’ The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, of misshapen people and tortured love. Her story The Ballad of the Sad Café pierced Shueli’s heart to the core: Love is a joint experience between two persons but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but the two come from different countries…” Like Arif and herself, separated not only by the very nature of things, but by the cruel, artificial lines drawn between countries and people.
 Mani informed them  excitedly that the Milton class was going to be taken by Miss Dolly Muthanna. “She’s the Head of the Department, you know. Her class is really important, even if you hate Milton!. I believe she wants to talk to the whole Honours Course before starting her Milton lectures. Oh God! Now we’ll have to learn  about Blank Verse and all that stuff!” Which got everyone apprehensive, as they set off down the corridor to the room upstairs, where Miss Muthanna had already arrived. Miss Dolly had not acquired her English sounding first name at Oxford, where she had gone for Post-Graduate studies, after finishing with a First Class First and a Gold Medal at Madras University. She had been given the name Dolly by her very Anglicized father, General Muthanna. “Can’t keep calling her Dulari, though that’s what her mother would have preferred, God rest her soul! She’s got a sweet, round face, like a doll, and it’s a jolly good name too.” General Muthanna had been at Sandhurst, and living now in his native Coorg – “Just like the Scottish Highlands, or Wales, you know” – and so, Dolly she had become, and remained. The heavy pan-cake make-up, and the carefully drawn line of the lips and eyebrows really made her look like a doll, the girls thought. But her personality was awesome. She was always pleasant, and often called them ‘dears’ or ‘darlings’ or just Child, even when she was being utterly sarcastic, or delivering the most trenchant criticism. She started their very first class with “I’m glad you’re all here, my dears. Always remember this is an Honours Class. Never forget that most of the girls of this country never get to School, let alone College. So consider yourselves highly privileged. Which means you must develop some kind of sense of responsibility. You’re not here to study fashions or be playgirls! But I’m sure it’ll all come in good time. So don’t worry about it too much now, darlings! In the next three years, children, we shall delve into the mysteries of English prose and poetry. Milton’s Paradise Lost, and Spenser’s Faerie Queen is what we shall be looking at together.” Shueli was not so sure about the Faerie Queen, but Papa often used to read bits of Paradise Lost aloud in his study, or sometimes she had overheard bits of it, hiding behind the study door while he took his Tutorial group. One thing that Miss Muthanna said in her first day’s talk would stay in Shueli’s mind for years to come. “Children, it’s one thing to enjoy good writing, but don’t believe every single thing you read just because it’s in print. Learn to question the printed page. And do learn to think for yourselves, darlings! That is the whole purpose of education.” That was a great revelation for Shueli, who had always considered the printed page as being hallowed by its very being! And it was just another glimpse of the open road, the shining path of truth, which made Shueli so happy to be alive – and in college! All the doors and windows to experience stood wide open, and she breathed that air deeply. Bliss was it, indeed, in that dawn to be alive!
She was even more intoxicated by Miss Muthanna’s readings from Paradise lost. “Round he cast his baleful eyes, Which witnessed huge affliction and dismay…”
Dolly Muthanna would stretch the syllables with obvious delight at the description of Satan, and look around the class with relish. The sonorous language, the magic and music of far away places, Valdarno, Fesole, Hesebon and Horonaim, the gods and goddesses of Egypt and Syria, Baalim and Ashtaroth, Astarte, ‘the queen of heaven’. All the magic of the Old Testament seemed to come alive. Her sense of drama and poetry were deeply aroused by Miss Muthanna’s rendering of Milton’s description of the fallen angels… “..angel forms, who lay entranced, /  Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks / In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurean shades / High over-arched embower.” She was secretly drawn by Milton’s description of the fallen angel, Lucifer, and was relieved when Miss Muthanna explained “Children! We just can’t help finding Milton’s Satan more attractive than God, can we? (with a delightful giggle) And God is a bit of a bore, isn’t he? It’s very difficult to make goodness exciting!" Was it always like that, Shueli wondered – that evil had a strange fascination and magnetism, which goodness didn’t? People were usually a mix of good and evil. That’s what made them mysterious and interesting. Otherwise they’d be bland, like unspiced food.  Satan’s : “The mind is it’s own place, and in itself / Can make a heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n” and “Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven” struck a chord of sympathy in freedom loving Shueli’s mind.
  Egypt and Syria and the Lebanon, and all those far-away places whose shores were lapped by the temperate waters of the Mediterranean along one coast with the Red Sea on the other. Desert lands, rich with the history of the Jewish  and Christian people, and the children of Hagar, who had been cast out into the desert with her baby son, Ishmael. Hearing Miss Muthanna read Milton brought all this history alive for Shueli. The wonderful stories from the Old Testament, which Ammy had told them, surfaced again. How the people of Israel had been promised a land, and how Abraham had led them to that promised land. “Imagine Abraham, that old prophet, standing with his people, after wandering so many years in strange lands where they could not sing, weeping by the waters of Babylon, at last looking down, with his people, upon the promised land. Imagine the Red Sea parting to allow the fleeing children of Israel through as the Egyptians pursued them…” And hadn’t St. Thomas come from that land, carrying the story of Jesus of Nazareth to the people of Malabar, to her own ancestors, who had embraced it, while continuing with their ancient and wise Hindu traditions?
And as she listened, the gift of the shooting stars opened up a scene for Shueli, not any the less bright because it was in the “future” nor any the less dark because it was in “the past”. Wasn’t she going to hold it all in her fist – happiness and sorrow, light and dark? She saw herself on her twenty-first birthday… She was on one of those great ocean liners, which used to take all of three weeks to get from Bombay to “the white cliffs of Dover” in England. Tuning in to A Date With You on All India Radio, Shueli had often heard Vera Lynn’s emotion packed voice singing “There’ll be bluuue birds over / The white cliffs of Dover/ There’ll be love and laughter, / And joy ever after, / Tomorrow, - just you wait and seee!” For many Indians and Anglo-Indians dreaming of going to England, those magic words seemed to say it all. As Shueli got on the ship at Bombay harbour, with Kuri, both of them beautiful and young, with such a bright, shining future ahead, joy ever after was what Shueli envisaged. Despite some dark shadows that had emerged, making the sky less bright, Shueli was sure everything would turn out just right. That’s why she didn’t shed a tear when she said goodbye to Ammy and Papa and Gaya, who had gone into a dark mood ever since Shueli had been swept into this marriage proposal, and, despite her strong reservations, had been “persuaded” into accepting it. Gaya alone knew that it would never have been if Arif and Gaya’s roads hadn’t taken different turnings. The occasional letter from Arif would send Shueli into a wild spin. But he was a Muslim and lived in Pakistan! How would she ever break down all the barriers that kept them apart. She wrote to him often, telling him about her friends and college. He wrote too, though more infrequently. How could he ever forget the experience of escaping from Delhi, and the part Shueli and her family had played in that escape? The word love, which lay hidden like a bright desert flower under clumps of cactii, never surfaced. She tired Gaya out, talking endlessly about Arif, till Gaya stuffed her ears with her pillow, saying “Oh God, Shueli, if you go on like this, I’ll end up writing about Arif in my Social Studies paper tomorrow!” If she mentioned it at college to Mani, Ashvini or Tara, they were quite impressed by the story for a while, but not for long. Life around one, the real life, was far more absorbing. “What would you do in Pakistan?” asked Ashvini. “You might have to observe Purdah, and maybe Arif will have a couple more wives!” The very thought of herself in a burqa sent Shueli and all of them into paroxysms of laughter. “Forget about Arif, Shooey” said Tara. “Let’s go to the Coffee House. Maybe Arjun and Dilip and Joey will be there.”
“Tara, when life is so dreadfully sad, how can you be thinking of silly things like boys?” That was Ashvini, who tended to be high-minded, and subdue their girlish high spirits with such remarks. But all the same, they would get away from class, and walk, very self-consciously, to the University coffee house, where they would sit and talk about important things – like the suffering in the world, what life really meant, and such things. All the time very conscious of who was coming in with whom! Sometimes they would be joined by some of the boys, and would chatter about their teachers, the next college play, and what Reverend Martin had said to the Principal after Assembly. The walls of the old University building, and the Library, where they spent a good deal of time, were covered with wild bougainvillea in many brilliant shades of maroon, orange and pink.. In summer, when the temperature zoomed to 112 degrees or more, they were thankful for the exquisite flowering trees which blossomed miraculously just then, making the Campus, and all the avenues leading off the Connaught Circle shady, cool and a riot of colour. The brilliant flaming Gul –Mohar, the purple Jacaranda, and the Laburnum shed their leaves in abandon, while the black crows called raucously to them, four girls filled with the headiness of being young and alive! 
They had so much fun, chattering, gossiping, and imitating the teachers. “Mrs. Diashenko was so sarcastic in class today. Agreed, she’s brilliant, - but the things she says! It’s too much!” Mrs. Diashenko was married to a Russian émigré, who taught Russian in the Languages Department of the University. She was a tall and stately woman from Gujarat, whom the girls sometimes referred to by her maiden name, Dayabai Patel. Her wit could be lethal, but she could also care very much for a student, if she considered her worthwhile. “Don’t get hemmed in by a book. Let your mind go off at a tangent…”  One of the girls was nearly in tears: “Dishky really ticked me off in class today. Just because I said I’d never read Tolstoy, she went off the deep end. And guess what? She said I had ‘no soul. None at all.!’  Maybe if I do read Tolstoy, she’ll allow me to have a soul!”  They all laughed. The fact was that the very sophisticated and intellectual standards of the teachers could have a very damning effect on some of the girls. Only Dolly Muthanna’s benevolence shone, like the sun, on good and bad alike! Mrs. D. and her Russian husband had drifted apart, their only son later going back to Russia with his father. Later, the old man did come back, and continued to teach Russian at the University. Mrs. D. had divorced, and was remarried to a promising young writer, who was always away, in the U.S. or elsewhere, on one Fellowship or the other. Years later, when Shueli returned to Delhi, her marriage broken, struggling to make a new life for herself, she taught for a while at her alma mater. Old Dr. Diashenko came to meet her. He seemed spent and broken, alone, living far from his own homeland. “Please do take a look at my manuscript, It’s a novel,” he said, holding out the rather ragged manuscript, typed laboriously on an old manual type-writer.
”I am typing with two fingers only. So it is going very slow. Maybe you can suggest for me some publisher?” Shueli’s heart was wrenched by the sad voice of the old gentleman, yet admiring the courage and tenacity which had kept him going, despite the harshness of his life. The novel had been about the valiant effort of a man to keep alive in an almost prison-like situation, the only human element being the low-caste woman who came to clean his house every day. The details were as rich and thorough as Robinson Crusoe on his desert island had mapped out… The novel was not fashionable, and though Shueli did try, through Mitran, to get it read, there were no takers. Not long after,  Shueli heard that the old man had died, and Mrs. D. had sat by his side, as death freed him.
                                                            ********
For each of their birthdays, they had formed the habit of going to one of the new little restaurants, started by one of the enterprising refugees from the Punjab. There was Alps and Kwality and Gaylord. “Let’s go to the Alps” suggested Manisha. “Frederick is singing there. He’s terrific, and their chocolate cake is divine. What are you getting for Ashvini?” she asked, to which Shueli replied “She only likes Books.” The last time, on Papa’s birthday, she had made an awful faux pas, or so it had seemed. Suitably impressed by the highbrow author’s name, she had been sure Papa would be impressed too. But when she handed him ‘The Body’s Rapture’  both Ammy and Papa had looked incredulous, and had then burst out laughing. “Why, Papa? He’s a very famous writer, and it must be a very intellectual book.” “I’m sure it is, Molla. I’m sure I shall enjoy it” he had said, smiling affectionately.
 Perhaps she would get Ashvini a book by Graham Greene or Francois Mauriac – everyone was talking about these writers. Quite, quite highbrow. Ashvini would approve. When Shueli had told her the other day about a Romance she was reading, Asvini had replied in a pained voice “Shooey – how could you?  Luckily, Asvini was thrilled with Shueli’s choice of Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair, which she gave her at the Alps, after ordering dark chocolate cake, and delicious Cappucino Coffee which had to be drunk with fresh cream poured over a spoon. Shueli had rather a fiasco when it came to Mani’s present. With her limited pocket-money, she had bought a shiny new, but actually old, - record of the great Caruso singing some grand operatic arias. She had found it in an old record shop in Connaught Place. “We can find any music you want Miss, even if it’s very old” said the young man from Goa, who owned the Western Music shop. She had put the shiny new record containing a whole world of lost music into a brown paper package and, clutching it carefully, had got into “The Leyland” – the bus where “anything could happen” carrying the boys and girls from New Delhi to the University. (Papa had just recently left the University, and they had moved here, which meant a long journey every day.)  The Leyland was almost like the magic horse of her childhood. You might have the boy you’d been dreaming about leaning dizzily close to you, as you both hung on to the overhead bars, or you might see him sitting and talking animatedly to Sour Face Anita, which could send you into the deepest depression! There was always a lot of giggling, chattering, and shrieks when ‘Sardarji’- the driver – took a sharp bend, or just braked unceremoniously, throwing everyone against everyone else! But this particular day, as she was thrown against Raghu Menon, and landed on Sarita’s lap, Shueli thought she heard a cracking sound. As soon as she got to College she ran to see if the Caruso record was alright… There stood Manisha, grinning happily, as everyone greeted her with cheery Happy Birthdays. Shueli handed her the record, just hoping against hope that all would be well, and her efforts to find a rare, old record had not been wasted. Mani opened the package. The Caruso record lay there, cracked right across the centre. “Oh Shueli, it’s broken. Never mind. Thanks anyway”  said  Manisha, going on  happily to examine her other presents. Shueli burst into tears. Later, she never could understand why it had assumed such enormous proportions.. She knew she wouldn’t be able to afford to get Manisha another present, and she was unlikely ever to find another Caruso record again. Her mood had been blighted for the day. But, on Ashvini’s birthday everything went just right. “I’ve been dying to read the End of the Affair. How did you know just what I wanted, Shooey?” asked Ashvini, as they sat in the cool, dimly lit Alps Restaurant, eating chocolate cake, and making  ‘requests’ to the Band for their favourite songs. Each had a special song, which was generally sad and moody, as Ashvini played a part in deciding who had which song! So there they sat, on the threshold of their lives, as the Connaught Place shoppers strolled in the busy shopping arcades outside, and the Alvarez Band from Goa played haunting, romantic tunes. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes; September Song; Blue Moon and Some Enchanted Evening! That they were insulated and cut off from the teeming life of the pavements outside, just never crossed their minds, though they did carry within themselves fears and worries about their futures in the new, Independent, rapidly changing India. Shueli often felt really depressed and helpless when Graany, or some relative or friend wrote in with their suggestions of boys who might be suitable, so that proposals could be made to the family. “Why on earth should Papa have to make a proposal for me? You mean I’ll stay unmarried for ever, if he doesn’t? It’s horrible, and on top of it all, his family will ask for a dowry, I suppose, for the great privilege of letting their son marry me.”
 Gaya would tease  “Just wait, Shueli. Ammy’s sure to pin down some pimply young man, and he and his bossy mother will come to look at you, and decide if you’re good enough for him. You’ll be asked to serve the tea, while they look you over! And after all that, if he, or his mother, decide you’re not good enough for their wonderful boy, you’ll be disgraced. And no one will ever marry you. You’ll have to remain a spinster till the end of your days!”
“I refuse! I refuse  positively to ever meet anyone like that. What do they think girls are? Cows or something?”
Papa would explain, “Every community has its customs and traditions, which have evolved over the years. It’s best to accept that, fit in, and make something of it.”
How would Shueli, young and not too sure of her way in the world, ever escape from the weight of this tradition? Was she, who dreamed of being as free as the wind, going to have all her dreams crushed, and find herself boxed in by a loveless marriage? She pushed aside the dreadful fear that sometimes threatened to overwhelm her, and gave herself to the joy of being young, alive, and at College.
 
 
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Drama and Dissent
​
Apart from the fact that she still hoped that her feelings for Arif would find a chance to blossom sometime, somewhere, - she had so many exciting, new ideas to assimilate, so much happening to take in her stride, she was sure a wonderful life lay ahead for her. She shared with Manisha the passionate desire to be an actress. But she didn’t quite aspire to the heights that Mani did. “I want to see my name in lights someday” said Mani. Shueli said Yes, that would be too, too wonderful, but rather doubtfully. Wasn’t that asking for just a bit too much? 
“Anyway” said Tara firmly, “What’s much more important than having your name in lights is - just, - well, - to be happy. I’d just like to have a happy marriage, like my Ma and Pa had!”
“Yes,” thought Shueli, “If it’s someone I really love, that’s what I would want too. But he’d have to understand how much I love plays and things like that.”  She knew how conventional husbands could turn out to be regular jailers or tyrants. Just last summer, travelling down to Tiruvella to see Graany and Graanpaa, she had found herself in a compartment with a young woman, who had a littler baby with her. As usually happens on these long train journeys, where strangers become friends, Shueli and Ammu were soon chatting away. Ammu kept borrowing all the Women’s magazines Shueli had with her, but seemed unable to focus on any of them for long. She just seemed to lose interest, and would hand the magazine back to Shueli, and pick up her baby and rock it. Shueli thought to herself, the poor thing, isn’t too educated, I suppose – just totally domesticated. Suddenly Ammu said, “My husband doesn’t like me to waste my time reading. I have to look after the house, my husband and baby, and my husband’s mother lives with us.”
“But surely, reading a magazine is alright. Why should he prevent you from having the pleasure and relaxation of reading?” she asked, rather mystified. Did this poor girl have any education after school? As tactfully as possible, she asked “What were you doing before your marriage? Did you go to College?”
“Oh, yes” Ammu replied. “Actually, I was a lecturer and working on  Sartre .. Existentialism and Responsibility, for my Thesis…” she trailed off, as if it was forbidden fruit, or as if she was speaking of somebody else. Shueli was so shocked, she couldn’t conceal it. “But why – why didn’t you finish it?”
“Well, my marriage was fixed by my parents. I thought I could take it up again, after marriage. But my husband is a busy man, an engineer. He hates to see me sitting and reading. And then I had the baby, and all the household responsibilities. He just told me straight out not to waste my time  reading, and concentrate on my household responsibilities.” Shueli was outraged by the injustice of it. “But Ammu, - WHY?       How could you give up when you were working on such an interesting subject? Can’t you go back to it now? Surely you have a servant to do the housework, and your husband wouldn’t mind. Maybe he’ll even be proud of you.” There was a glazed, blank, obstinate look on Ammu’s face, which Shueli was too young at the time to understand. Years later, she remembered that look, and did understand where it sprang  from. It’s when you’ve given up the fight, and become your own worst enemy, taking into yourself all the arguments of one who is secretly your enemy, jealous of your separate being, of any achievement that might threaten his own standing. You’re no longer your own person. The waste of her intellectual powers explained Ammu’s listlessness, her inability even to concentrate on the trivia of a Woman’s Magazine. Or,  perhaps,  her unconscious rejection of material unworthy of her total absorption. Her husband had drawn a circle round her, which he told her was for her own safety and the well-being of her family. It would take great strength and ingenuity for any woman to walk out of that circle. Lord Rama had drawn that protective circle around Sita in the forest, warning her not to step out of it. Shueli remembered from Ammy’s stories that innocent Sita had transgressed that narrow boundary, and had been swept into a world of evil, desire and violence. Was that why women were so afraid? Anyway, Shueli was thrilled by the thought of Ammu working on Sartre. They would be doing a play by another French existentialist, Albert Camus, for the College Play that year, and she was going to be in it. The play had been chosen for them by their two young Lecturers, Gauri Vishwanathan and Kavita Sahni. Straight out of University themselves, full of new ideas and intellectual excitement, they opened for their students a new horizon full of enchantment and promise. Miss Vishwanathan had just come back from Cambridge. Brilliant and sensitive, her hands trembled when she lit another cigarette (forbidden by the College Principal, but very much de rigueur if you were somebody in the English Department!)  Kavita Sahni had a pre-Raphaelite look, a delicacy of face and movement, which came from her being a dancer. The Principal of the College, Miss Santwan, - an old martinet – wasn’t too sure what “my staff” was up to. “Young girls these days have all sorts of strange ideas” – she said grimly, when Shueli and Manisha went to inform her about the play. Shueli told her it was about a mistake made by a mother and daughter, who run a boarding house. “It’s called Le Maletendu, which means Cross Purposes, Miss Santwan.”  Gauri Vishwanathan speaking in her intense, sensitive way had tried to make them understand about the play: “You see, girls, it’s about a tragic mistake, about our lack of recognition of each other. The mother and daughter run a boarding house. They kill their lodgers and dispose of the bodies. When the son of the family, who had left many years ago, returns – they kill him, and only then realise their terrible mistake, They were two lonely, isolated women, but you see, they end up destroying the very thing they loved and had been waiting for…” Shueli and Mani were suitably impressed by the high-sounding theme, even if they didn’t really understand it, or see the point of it!  Shueli really preferred Shakespeare or a Greek tragedy, but the Shakespeare Society at St. Stephen’s did the Annual Shakespeare play, and Greek tragedy seemed too, too difficult. Miss Vishwanathan, in her Poetry class heightened their sense of mystery and the inexplicable fragility of life. “Queens have died, young and fair –“ she read to them from an old poem. The girls, who had barely thought of death and beauty being so closely intertwined, were urged by Miss V. to dwell on these paradoxes. “What do you think these lines mean? Meditate on these..”  Many years later, the forgotten lines returned to Shueli, who had come closer to the truth of them. She found them in a dusty cupboard in Papa’s study, the time she had returned there after his death. The little known poet, Thomas Nashe, had somersaulted over time, - writing in the 16th Century, leaping into the 20th, - his  ‘In Time of Pestilence’ as true as ever, kept alive for Shueli by her teacher’s sensitivity. From a time of death by pox and apoplexy to the still mysterious killer – AIDS. 
“Brightness falls from the air;  /   Queens have died young and fair;  /  Dust hath closed Helen’s eye.  / I am sick. I must die. /  Lord have mercy on me.”
To prepare them for the play, the Misses Vishwanathan and Sahni decided that the area of awareness of their girls had to be extended. “You girls need to get into the mood of the play, stretch your imaginations a bit. What do you think, Kavita?  Shall we get them listening to a Beethoven Symphony or to some poetry. Do you think they could come into town with us next week when we visit Anand?”
“Yes, - why not? Why not indeed?” replied Miss Sahni rather shyly and self-consciously, though Shueli couldn’t quite figure out why. The following week, soon after the morning lectures were over, Miss Muthanna asked them with a benevolent smile and a slight smirk if they were going to meet  “dear Anand..”  “Do go, darlings. It’ll do you all a lot of good to get out of here, and spread your wings a bit.”  Shueli decided not to mention it to Ammy and Papa, though it was likely that the secret would be out quite soon, as Shueli found it very difficult, unlike Gaya, to keep things hidden from those she lived with. Anyway, as they were going straight from College, in the University bus, she could keep it to herself for the time being.
Full of anticipation, they climbed the dingy stairs that led to the spacious flat above Connaught Place, where Anand Arya lived. “Is he married?” Tara asked in a whisper.
“Who knows? No signs of any wife here…”   Kavita Sahni, who had a rather attractive blush when she smiled, the wisps of hair around her fine-featured face giving her that look which Shueli remembered having seen in books on the Rossettis and the Pre-Raphaelite Movement, took charge of them, laughingly introducing “My students – my girls – “ to her friend, the famous painter, Anand Arya. He seemed a rather reserved, shy man. “Hmm. Yes, make yourselves at home. We’ll have some tea in a while,  Kavita, look after them -”  he broke off, and started speaking in chaste, beautiful Hindi.  Gauri V., meanwhile, had gone across to the Record cabinet.
“Shall we start with the Eroica, or will that be a bit too much for them to take in straight away?  Alright, let’s start with this piece by Schumann, and maybe a bit of Lizst?”
“Miss S. Miss V.” Manisha interposed brightly, “Could we have a look at Mr. Arya’s paintings? That’s if he doesn’t mind…”
“No, of course he doesn’t mind.” Said Miss S.  (The girls had shortened all the teachers’ surnames in this fashion.)
Jumping up impetuously, Miss S. leaned over the silent, rather withdrawn Anand Arya. Wisps of her long hair escaped from a loose chignon to fall across his shoulder. She put her arm across the back of the sofa, leaning over him, her lips just grazing the top of his head. The girls sat there, rigid spectators, not quite sure what to make of all this. They were relieved when Miss S., doing a little pirouette of sheer happiness, said laughingly, “Come on into the studio. Anand  has been working on the concept of Infinity in his Art.” 
In the small studio, stacked with paintings, seeing Shueli gaze raptly at one where lines and dim shapes seemed to move in a shimmer of hazy colour to what seemed to be a magnetic central point, she said, “Ah! That! The parallels of Life and Death never meet in our earthly life, but they merge in infinity. Only through Art can you penetrate that barrier.”
“Oh!” murmured Shueli, too overawed to speak.  She felt as if she were standing on a height, falling into an infinite space filled with colour and light. She was hurtling through space and time, to a single, many faceted star, like the star which had been so central a presence for her throughout her life.  “A single sound embodies that concept. It is Om!” said Miss V. joining them. ”Let’s have some tea, and listen to some music.”
Miss V. spoke to them about Cross Purposes. – “Try and connect it with the music, and Arulji’s paintings. All Art is the effort to reveal, and to understand, however fleetingly, the mystery of life.”
After tea was over, and the magic afternoon with the serious painter and the two women who sought to magically extend their world, it was time to go home. Just for a moment, as the music touched a crescendo, Shueli felt that the table they were sitting at, had risen above the floor, and was floating, suspended in the air, while the  paintings, with their indecipherable lines and crosses and circles floated in the space above. Miss V. and Miss S. suddenly looked like some ancient High-priestesses in the Temple of Isis. Getting home was quite a come-down after the rarefied atmosphere they had inhabited. Shueli hugged the secret new world that had been opened for her, to herself, as they would sometimes shine a torch under the blankets to read in the dark!
“Anand Arya is a married man, did you know?” Manisha whispered next morning, after class.
“Where on earth was his wife?” asked Shueli, for whom the world of extra marital affairs was still a closed book, despite encountering it frequently in fiction.
“Well, it seems he just ditched her, though she was also a fine writer. Buaji was saying they both got married very young. His wife – you’ve heard of Sashi Arya, haven’t you –  she writes most of her short stories in Hindi, though many have been translated into English?  Oh, you should read them, Shooey – they’re   so –o  mystical!”
“Yes, fine, but why did Mr. Arya leave her?  And was she awfully cut up about it?”
“Which woman wouldn’t be? Luckily, she’s got her writing. But, the thing is, Shooey, he seems to be  in love with our Miss S. – and she with him. Though she’s years younger. She’s about 25 or 26, and he’s old – maybe  even  forty!”  Manisha and Shueli both enjoyed dramatic stories like this.. “Miss S. must be feeling terrible about it..”
“Well, you know what it’s like. When you fall in love, there’s nothing you can do about it.” Shueli’s only experience of love, such a distant and far away love, had not prepared her for this kind of situation. No one at home would approve of her visit to this artist’s home. Ammy would say “Why can’t you girls be normal and happy and young? Look at Valsala, - so pure and simple. They have brought a proposal for her from an old family. The boy is in the Indian Police Service, and has seen her, and approved. Now she will make an excellent marriage.”
“Yes, but did she approve of him? Why is that only the boy’s prerogative?  Ammy, at this rate, because I’m dark, no one will ever approve of me. I’ll have to stay unmarried for ever!” said Gaya.
“Anyway” Ammy would most likely say “Why should these women lead such dissolute lives?”
“Ammy has no imagination, or understanding of the darker side of life” Shueli glowered moodily, which was becoming more frequent as she became more and more of a misfit and a rebel. How stifling it would be, she sometimes thought, to fit into a conventional Syrian Christian marriage. It would be goodbye to the theatre, maybe even Literature. To be “a good wife”, - just have babies, - and cook, - no, that would be the end of all adventure and dreams.
It was Miss Kavita Sahni who introduced Shueli to the Romantic Movement and the
Romantic Poets of England. Oh, the magic of Keats and Wordsworth and Shelley, to
rediscover the voices hidden in Nature, to regain the child-like sense of wonder and mystery buried, yet alive, within each of us. All their scribblings in school, on blank pages of exercise books, Arif’s enigmatic green eyes, Shalini’s letters, filled with quotations , the long hours spent in her father’s dusty study, all came back with renewed intensity and meaning. Not just the sickly champak odours of Shelley, but his ethereal Odes, - even if we’ve never seen a skylark, thought Shueli!  (No wonder Sir Edmund Gosse advised Sarojini Naidu to stop writing about nightingales and skylarks, and write about the bul-bul and the koel  instead!) And Shelley’s great poem, Adonais:  “The soul of Adonais, like a star,  /Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.”
Shueli had already discovered Keats in her childhood:  “Bright Star, would I were steadfast as thou art – Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night / And watching, with eternal lids apart,  / Like Nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite…”  Miss S. reading to just Ashvini and Shueli in their shared tutorial hour, heightened the rich sense of discovery, and cast a radiant light on even her darkest hours in the years to come. Miss S., dimpling, wisps of hair curling around her rather Greek profile, read:   “Then felt I like some watcher of the skies   /  When a new planet swims into his ken; /  Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes  /  He stared at the Pacific – and all his men  /  Look’d at each other with a wild surmise -  /  Silent, upon a peak in Darien.”  Tears of joy stood in their eyes as they read this together. “Yes, that’s what the Romantic Movement was all about  - wonder in the most every day – a sense of the extraordinary – as if one had discovered a brand new planet for the first time.”
That was what Shueli would remember, years later, as her plane began to descend over New York Harbour, the first time she ever visited the great continent of America. And there, standing majestically, holding aloft the torch of liberty, was the Statue that represented a country’s finest dreams. There was the great, new continent, which had become home for so many immigrants fleeing persecution and injustice, seeking opportunity. She remembered it too, when news came that same summer, of the men landing on the moon. She read of how those first men ever to set foot on the moon, had fallen down upon the earth of the moon, and kissed it, as moved, or more so, perhaps, as Cortez and his men must have been when they had discovered the Pacific Ocean.  Or, thought Shueli, as each one of us is when we stumble upon unsuspected beauty in every day life.
When it was time for the play, Shueli brought some of this burgeoning vision to her role. They rehearsed for days. She was to be the old mother, while Tara played the daughter. They wanted to borrow one of the St. Stephen’s boys for the part of the lodger, who was actually the son. “Stephen’s is always borrowing our girls for their Shakespeare Society productions – what’s wrong with our asking one of their boys to act in our play?” asked Shueli. But Miss Santwan put her foot down. “Rubbish. Nothing doing. I won’t have any of those boys wandering around among our girls. Girls have always acted as men in our college productions. You just stick to that.” Last year, when she and Mani and Tara had been given parts in the Shakespeare Society production of Much Ado About Nothing, all sorts of arrangements had to be made. As the rehearsals were at “odd hours” – sometimes after dinner, the Hostel authorities insisted that “our girls must be escorted back.” Which the Stephen’s boys found a most enjoyable duty.
Misses S. and V. rehearsed them meticulously, and at the oddest hours, with cups of tea to keep them going. There was an air of great expectation on the final day.
”The Press is here,” someone said. “The Independent’s Art & Theatre Critic has come.
“Oh!” said Shueli nervously, “That must be Mr. Gabor Szabo. Hope he doesn’t say anything awful about us!”  Mr. Szabo was a Hungarian, who had made India his home for many years now. He had been in Lahore as Curator of the Museum there where Papa had first met him. The Curatorship had established him as a great scholar of the Arts. After the Partition, he had moved to Delhi. “He’s awfully high-brow –“ the girls said, not using the word pejoratively, but as high praise. “He knows all about Indian, as well as European Art. And Tantra, and the Theatre, of course, - nowadays he has a Column on The Arts and Theatre.”  Shueli used to see Mr. Szabo sometimes, as he was in the circle of Papa’s intellectual friends, in the Thursday Club, which met once a week at different homes to discuss books and ideas. Among them was Penderel Moon, who was in the I.C.S. and was the last British Finance Secretary, and later, Bursar of All Saints College, Oxford. He also wrote an important study  of Gandhi and Modern India. Some of the others were the B.B.C. Correspondent in Delhi, several distinguished Indians, scholars and creative people, and of course, Gabor Szabo, who was to marry a well-known Indian woman designer and architect. Shueli used to listen to all the scintillating talk, which she could overhear in her room. Once, when she did peer in, to pass on a message for Papa (Ammy usually kept clear of all this highbrow activity, except to send in the most delicious South Indian coffee and ‘bondas’.) – Gabor Szabo spotted her. “Come in. Vhy do you not come in?” She hesitated, as her hair was loose, and she was bare foot! “Vhy you are shy of not having shoes on. You are looking most beautiful with your long hair flowing like that. And bare foot…” which made Shueli scramble for her slippers, and emerge, feeling rather flattered, but also highly embarrassed by Mr. Szabo’s compliments. He looked so odd – he made Shueli feel uneasy. He had long, white hair, which he brushed across his rather bald head. His elaborate East European way of speaking English set him apart from the others. Mr. Szabo gave them an excellent write-up for Cross Purposes, praising their histrionic abilities, though the references to Existentialism and European Theatre Aesthetics probably went right over their heads.
When Shueli returned to Delhi years, she wondered what had happened to the Szabos. “Well, it’s a tragic story,” someone told her. “Gabor Szabo’s wife, Kanta, had a mentally retarded, albino child. She deserted both of them, leaving him with the responsibility of the child. He suffered terribly, and later, when he heard of her death in some far away country, where she had gone to create a great Pavilion, - he  sank into a terrible depression, and took his own life .”  Not too long after, Shueli saw an albino boy in the market, wandering around aimlessly. She was told it was the Szabo boy, lost, homeless, alone in the world.
Though the real meaning of the play largely evaded the young actresses, they got a lot of attention and praise for it. Even more than praise from the critics, what really meant a lot to Shueli was the reaction of Ashvini’s mother, Mrs. Joshi. A simple lady, not highly educated like her husband, who held a position of influence and power, she was much loved by her entire family. Mrs. Joshi had said to her daughter: “Tears came to my eyes, Ashu. How did Shueli, at this young age, know what it feels like to be a mother, to be old and broken?”  But the very next day, soon after Miss S. and Miss V. had told them to relax, and they would take the girls for a special treat to the Coffee House just then – they got a summons from the Principal’s Office. The College Peon told them: “Principal MemSa’ab wants you in her office immediately.”
In her spacious office, Miss Santwan sat, twirling a pen rather feverishly. Her grey hair, which always had a fly away look, now seemed to be full of electricity, almost standing on end!  “Come in, girls. You may sit down,” she said grimly. “I’d like an explanation from you about this dreadful play you did. Who on earth chose it?” When Shueli and Mani sat absolutely silent, knowing that it would be no use trying to impress Miss Santwan with talk about Existentialism, she went on: “ Why  do you girls, who come from nice, happy families, choose plays about such wretched women, and murder, and horrible families?” Well, thought Shueli rebelliously to herself, Othello isn’t about nice, happy families. Neither is King Lear. Macbeth is even worse, and as for Hamlet, the less said the better! …And how would old fuddy-duddy Miss Santwan even begin to tolerate the great Greek Tragedies? They were reading Aristotle’s Theory of Tragic Drama with Mrs. Diashenko, and Shueli thought it was so profound. The Greek words, Catharsis, Hubris, speaking of human pity and fear and pride – why, the Greek tragedies, and Shakespeare too, - despite all the corpses that littered the stage by the last Act – didn’t they reveal human destiny, and divine purpose? But what would someone like Miss Santwan, - who was a mathematician, totally unsympathetic to Literature – what would she comprehend? Perhaps, the four of them, so caught up in the exaltation of their literary studies, had become a trifle arrogant, and imagined that they belonged to some Higher Order! It was Ammy who brought Shueli down to earth. “Why must you all be so ridiculously morbid? Why can’t you just be like other normal, ordinary girls?” She more or less seemed to agree with Miss Santwan, so Shueli began to give her up as a lost cause! But the worst blow came from Papa, who had always been so understanding before, so very much on her side. When Shueli muttered that she “didn’t want to be dull and ordinary, but someone rather different,” he answered bluntly. “Well, I’m afraid you’re just an ordinary flower, like everyone else, and you’ll have to ‘fit in’!”  That Papa could say that to her, hurt Shueli more than anything. More and more, she was beginning to feel cut off from her family. And Arif, who she imagined might have understood and comforted her, was so hopelessly far away.. Once in a long while, a letter would come from Arif or his mother. They were always filled with affection for the whole family, but never contained any of the special words Shueli’s heart yearned for. It would be too unladylike for her to write him a letter revealing her hidden feelings. Recently she had even begun to feel that she had built it all up in her own imagination. It didn’t seem to have any existence in the real world. And even if she could make it all real, reveal her own feelings, and have the joy of knowing that hew reciprocated them, her family would be unutterably shocked. They would never agree to her marrying a Muslim and going off to Pakistan! She was timid about even mentioning this possibility. Once when she had talked of marrying outside the community, she had got  quite a harsh response from both Ammy and Papa. “Well, if it matters so little to you what we think, - you can go to Timbuctoo!” said Papa crushing Shueli’s resolve to get her point of view across. She simmered inwardly and thought  Papa is getting to be like Mr. Barrett.  She and Gaya had discovered a very old copy of a play called The Barretts of Wimpole Street, about the life of the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning. How she and her brothers and sisters had been crushed, subdued and almost destroyed by their tyrannical father. Elizabeth Barrett had been in a wheelchair, till she had been rescued by he future husband, the poet Robert Browning. Maybe, thought Shueli with some self pity, she too would be confined to a wheelchair, until she was rescued by some famous poet – or maybe Arif? Her imagination enabled her to work out the logistics of such  a dramatic rescue. But she wilted when she thought of the reality. It wasn’t as if there was someone waiting in the wings to rescue her. If there was an actual person urging her to stand up for herself and fight back,. she could surely be heroic. But here she was, in love with a distant unreality. She felt put down, made to feel helpless and powerless. She argued about everything under the sun with Papa, - religion, freedom to think, even love and sex, - but when it came to this matter of choosing her own husband, whatever his background, they just couldn’t see eye to eye. Anyway, she thought, What am I fighting for? Arif has probably forgotten all about me. True, he writes sometimes, letters full of thankfulness and affection.. They shared the memories of those nights full of fear, when the sky was lit by flames of hatred. That memorable rescue was something they could never forget, creating an irrevocable, though tenuous bond between them. Maybe, Shueli thought, maybe, when I finish my B.A., I can try to get there, and meet him again. And when he realises the depth of my love, he cannot but return it. She felt like a woman, and yet she was a child, or was treated like one. After all, there was plenty of time. Besides, what of her dreams of Oxford, or of the Theatre?
“So intimately near  / And yet as far, / As aching star from star.” she read in a poem by the Indian poet, Armando Menezes, and thought how aptly it described her hopeless situation, not only with Arif, but with all her dreams.
​

Poetry
​​Shanta Acharya 

THE LAST ILLUSION 
 
Lying awake like the sky all night
I fall asleep with the promise of dawn,
waking in a land of rainbows
beyond our universe,
part Vegas, part Himalayas,
welcomed by an unfamiliar God.
 
Not the gods, goddesses, saints, saviours
I had grown accustomed to –
no parents, grandparents, ancestors, friends.
All believers of truth, goodness, integrity
and other such virtues were despatched to earth
to pay their dues, mend lives blighted by ethics.
 
The gods to themselves kept Justice,
humans held on to Hope –
the strong, pure in mind and action
believing most in divine retribution.
 
Ushered into this transcendent realm
I encounter history’s countless evil men.
These were no monsters regaling me
with stories of their inhumanity.
 
Smiling at my shock of recognition,
the last illusion,
their bacchanal proceeded without interruption.
I was summoned to join in their celebration.
 
What any human knows is finite,
what we do not know is infinite…
 
Angels singing carry me back gently to myself
leaving me to figure It out…
I am woken by the cold, clear light of day.


​WISHES 
 
Having tied strings on trees, walls, stones,
wished on the new moon, fallen eyelashes,
tossed coins in rivers, fountains, wells,
sometimes over my head and shoulder
in more places than I care to remember,
 
circled several times the sacred scarab,
climbed mountains, hugged pillars, statues;
kissed icons, shrouds, Shiva Linga,
images of gods, goddesses, saints;
made donations,
fasted on different days of the week, prayed
to the sun, moon and other divine powers, 
lighted candles in churches, cathedrals,
folded my palms in prayer in temples,
knelt reverently in mosques and pagodas –
 
I have learnt that wishes are milestones 
on our journey back home.
Nothing disappears without a trace,
only our pilgrimage transforms as we learn
to celebrate our brief passage with grace.
  
(From Imagine: New and Selected Poems)
​

​Shanta Acharya, born and educated in Cuttack, Odisha, won a scholarship to Oxford, where she was among the first batch of women admitted to Worcester College in 1979. A recipient of the Violet Vaughan Morgan Fellowship, she was awarded the Doctor of Philosophy for her work on Ralph Waldo Emerson. She was a visiting scholar in the Department of English and American Literature and Languages at Harvard University before joining Morgan Stanley in London. She worked in the asset management industry and has written extensively on the subject. The author of ten books, her publications range from poetry, literary criticism and fiction to finance. Founder of Poetry in the House, Shanta hosted a series of monthly poetry readings at Lauderdale House in London from 1996 to 2015. In addition to her philanthropic activities, she served twice on the board of trustees of the Poetry Society in the UK.

Novel
Ted Morrissey 
​

Previous Chapters                                                  

                                                      Letter 5 – Part 3
                                                                   Lehi

She also took from her bag two of the volumes I had lent her, and we were just beginning to discuss her reaction when Mrs O interrupted our conversation, begging our pardons, to report that Mr Smythe was at the alley door, and for some reason could not come inside—when she is speaking rapidly I struggle with her brogue. I excused myself from Mae’s company and proceeded directly through the hall and kitchen to the door. Opening it, I found Mr S and a boy of approximately Aggie’s age who was clearly an urchin of the streets. ‘I was en route to responding to your kind invitation, madam, when I spied this fellow loitering about, peeping in your windows.’ Mr S, dressed again in his regimental reds, had a hand upon the boy’s shoulder. ‘He claims to have a message for you.’ My heart began to beat against my breast. ‘For me?’ I said, somewhat breathless. ‘Yes, mum.’ He reached a hand black with dirt and coal dust into a torn pocket and produced a folded piece of paper. I had no patience for delay and unfolded the message there in the alley, thinking it must be from you, my dear, and wondering why you had not sent it by regular post, feeling in the instant it was a bad omen—all this while unfolding the single sheet of paper, which read
Unable to meet – agents watching everywhere. S
The reference to watchful agents, ubiquitous ones at that, prompted me to think of Rev Grayling and his many spies. I must say my skills to comprehend the message were diminished by the disappointment at realizing the note had not been sent by you. The ‘S’ for a signature confounded me. I was about to inform the messenger he had the wrong address and send him on his way: Then the context of the abbreviated missive came to me. ‘For whom are you looking?’ I enquired. ‘For you, mum. For Mrs Shelley.’ ‘You have missed your mark, but I shall put it into her hand.’ The boy fingered his ragged cap and attempted to run off, but Mr S still had hold of him. He loosened his grip and gave the boy a sixpense for his trouble. I led our neighbor to the parlor directly and settled him in a chair with a cup of tea as I delivered the note to its intended recipient. She explained what was already obvious. She and Shelley planned through intermediaries to meet here, hoping the clandestine reunion would be missed by the deputies who were intent on jailing her husband. Though she did not say as much, I received the impression that the secret rendezvous was Mae’s primary reason for visiting.
For an instant I felt a pang of pique, a twinge of temper at the perceived deception, but I soon realized that I would quickly stoop to an innocent charade if it meant meeting you, my dear. I can forgive a lonely heart much.
The three of us commenced a congenial conversation. Still, I had difficulty relaxing, listening to little William with his wet cough. It was too reminiscent of Maurice when he first became ill, before we knew (accepted?) the seriousness of his condition.
Doctor Higgins insisted that the compresses, if properly applied with rigorous precision, would heal his sick lungs, their potent and pungent aromatic vapors would loosen the mucous and free his lungs to breathe. For the longest time the doctor maintained that Maurice’s coughing was a positive sign, that the compresses were working. Even after Maurice began coughing blood, Doctor Higgins was emphatic that the treatments be maintained. I believed him. I wanted to trust in his practice. I could not accept that our little dove was slipping away, even though children die every day. Our little boy could not; must not.
Meanwhile Rev Grayling visited us more and more often; and more and more I thought of him as the angel of death. With the same level of insistence as Doctor Higgins, Rev Grayling insisted upon ministering to Maurice, but I knew, even from the commencement of his visits, they weren’t the ministrations of healing—they were the ministrations of dying. The Reverend accepted little Maurice’s doom long before it was inevitable. Rev Grayling’s efforts to help Maurice die were undermining Doctor Higgins’ to help Maurice live. In the end, with God on his side, Rev Grayling prevailed. How could he not?
I tried to speak to you about the battle that was being waged in our very house, joined about Maurice’s weakening body—but I only half understood it myself at the time, and you did not want to discuss Maurice and his deteriorating condition. You tended to him as a loving father but it was as if you were trying to render it unreal by not acknowledging it in words. Words have the power to create reality, so you avoided casting the deadly spell. Or so it seems in reflection.
I willed myself not to reflect on these unpleasant recollections and to concentrate on the pleasant conversation Mr Smythe and Mrs Shelley were having, largely about books. I wondered at Mae’s ability to compose herself after the disappointment of her thwarted rendezvous with her husband—but little by little I had sensed that living with the caprices of a poet must not be the easiest situation, and Mae had already grown inured to the twists and turns, the erratic highs and lows. Or, at least, she had already developed the talent for appear hardened to them. Perhaps it was a kindred ability to her ignoring her son’s worrisome congestion.
I’m afraid my need for sleep has overtaken me, my dear. There is not much left to say regarding the diminutive soiree. I shall see about posting this on the morrow—or holding on just a bit longer (to fill the space remaining on the page). Good night for now, my love.
​

Ted Morrissey is the author of four books of fiction as well as two books of scholarship. His works of fiction include the novels An Untimely Frost and Men of Winter, and the novella Weeping with an Ancient God, which was named a Best Book of 2015 by Chicago Book Review. His stories, essays and reviews have appeared in more than forty publications. He teaches in the MFA in Writing program at Lindenwood University. He lives near Springfield, Illinois, where he and his wife Melissa, an educator and children’s author, direct Twelve Winters ​​​Press. ​

Poetry
~ Shakeel Mohammed 

​Ram was a friend,
now he is a Hindu.
Tom was a classmate,
now he is a Christian
 
I loved Ram’s Mom’s Cuisine,
today it’s haram
Tom’s mom’s cakes were mouthwatering,
now I avoid it
 
I used to eat beef with Jayanthan,
today I could get lynched for that.
I used to wait for Santa,
now I say no to my children.
 
I hardly had any Muslim friends.
today I have only Muslim friends.
I had so many non Muslim friends,
now I have none.
 
I grew up in India,
today I live in an alien land.
It’s the same place,
it just isn't the same.
​

​Shakeel Mohammed is a Mechanical Engineer who graduated from Manipal Institute of Technology. He is the Managing Partner of Zackiez Foods, a popular confectionery brand in Kochi. He is an amateur poet and “Ram was a friend” is the reflection of his inner anxieties. 

Novel
Anna Sujatha Mathai 
​

Previous Chapters

CHAPTER ELEVEN
Life Goes On

Things began to settle down, outwardly at least. The refugee camps in the old city, and the Purana Quila were full of Hindus and Sikhs who had fled from the massacres that had ravaged the Punjab. They came empty-handed, but didn’t stay that way too long. They were far too resourceful, with a great flair for business, They opened little shops, restaurants, innovated the auto-rickshaw (a scooter or motor-cycle attached to a rickshaw!) and soon, the erstwhile sleepy city of Delhi was bustling with a newly found vigour.
Gaya and Shueli went back to school. There were quite a few new students from Lahore and other parts of the Punjab, whose families had managed to escape in good time. There were still whispered recountings of horrific happenings. On the whole, though, the Punjabis were too robust to be broken by their traumatic experiences. Usha Prakash, a beautiful Punjabi girl, with two long plaits held together by black and scarlet ‘purandiyas’
sobbed as she told them: “My mother’s cousin and her husband were pulled out of the tonga they had got into, and were killed in the most dreadful way.. But my mother always says, ’Let the waters of our rivers flow over our dead, and heal our wounds. We must live for tomorrow.’”
Brave people, thought Shueli, whose heart still ached for Arif. She couldn’t even share that memory with any of her classmates.  And there had been no news from the escaped family. “It’s too dangerous for them to write,” said Papa, “I’m sure they will let us know how they are, once the worst is over, and things have settled back to normal.” Rasheed, their dear young servant, had also been taken to the Refugee Camp “He managed to get away with a whole group that was escorted by one of the Regiments. I think he’ll be better off, once he settles down there and gets a job.” But Ammy and Shueli were unconvinced. “He was more or less part of our family. Papa, how can you say he’ll be happy there? He’s been forced to leave his home, and all of us, and the College – where he’s lived since he was a baby.  Can anyone get over such a thing?” “Well, it’s better than being dead,” said Gaya pragmatically, which set them laughing.
Shalini was back for a term, and in whispers, Shueli told her the secret, hidden story of Arif and his family, and how they had escaped. Shueli didn’t like keeping things hidden from those dear to her, but she could not bring herself to talk of the closeness that had so magically emerged between her and Arif, in that time of shared danger and fear. So she kept it to herself. Maybe Shalini guessed that there was a little more to the story than Shueli had revealed. After she left, Shueli got a letter from Cairo in Shalini’s  flamboyant hand, with little sketches to accompany it.
“Just been reading Carmen Navaro’s latest Romance. Her heroine, Ingrid, was madly in love with Mark Croydon, who didn’t seem to notice her at all. So, do you know what Ingrid did? She bought a horse, and went riding past Mark’s house, and just in front of Mark’s house, fell off, and lay there, screaming, till Mark heard. He came running out, picked her up and carried her inside, where he laid her on the sofa. And, do you know Shueli, he noticed her for the first time, and fell madly in love with her. That’s what you’ve got to do if you want someone to sit up and look at you!” This advice was accompanied by a drawing of a curly-haired woman falling off a horse! Shueli giggled at the thought of her falling off a horse and being gathered into Arif’s arms, while he gazed at her adoringly. No. It wouldn’t work for her. He’d detest the obviousness of it. And anyway, how was she going to get all the way to Karachi on a horse? Pakistan, that strange sounding word! Why, it was as far away for her as that distant star. But it was that same bright and steadfast star which had shone for her from childhood, and was in no way diminished by partings, partitions, or the pain and fear of the human beings it shone upon.
A few months later they received a note, smuggled in by one of the Airline ladies, from Mrs. Azeez, her sister Mrs. Baig, and Arif. The note simply read: “Our eternal thanks to Mr. Philipose, Amaal, and the dear girls. Inshaah Allah, we shall meet again soon, and you shall be our guests here in Karachi. We are only gradually recovering from our terrible last days in Delhi. In fact, Shareefa is still suffering from a terrible trembling of the legs. We hope she will soon recover.” It was signed Shareefa and Sakina. On a separate piece of paper, Arif wrote: (the letter was not addressed to Shueli separately, because he knew it might make her parents uneasy.) “My heart is still in India, though I have got admission into one of the very good schools here. I miss our tents, and I miss all of you. How can I ever forget, or thank you enough? Do you remember, Shueli, ‘Oh Death in Life! The days that are no more!’?  Abba and Uncle also thank you profoundly for taking care of us in a time of danger. Have you finished your exam? I completed mine, and will be going into Senior School from next year. I found these lines from a Sufi poet, and thought you might like it, Shueli. Caravans and journeys go together, and we have just made this dangerous journey. That’s why it appealed to me, and I share it with you:
“It is a happy caravan, the caravan in which you are.
During the night, amidst the black waves of darkness,
Your presence is its guiding star.
Men of that caravan can go where they wish,
They have no fear, having you with them, like the heroes of Badr.”
Goodbye for now.  Arif.
All day Shueli went around in a happy daze, hugging the written and unwritten message that seemed to speak to  her from that letter. As it was just a note added on to the main letter, Shueli’s parents didn’t read too much into it. Ammy said “You children shared a lot during that terrible time, went through so much together. None of us can ever forget…” Only Gaya said, “Shueli, will you please let me read, and not go on and on about Arif?”
What was to come was most unexpected, as no one anticipated that anything worse could possibly happen. After their evening walk, Gaya gave Amber, their dog, a bowl of water. Ammy said “I’ll see if Shankar has started making the phulkas for dinner”, and Papa said “I have a lecture to prepare for tomorrow, but let’s hear the Evening News first” and turned the Radio on. They could not believe what they heard, the terrible words coming from the news  reader’s lips. Tears flowed from their eyes as they heard, with shock, that Mahatma Gandhi had been assassinated that day, at a prayer meeting. A bullet fired at close range had killed him. He had fallen saying “He Ram.”
“Oh Godohgod” said Ammy, also in tears “Who on earth – which villain – could have done this?” Papa just sat down, his head in his hands, and said “It’s too much. This madness – after all we’ve been through..”
And Nehru spoke for everyone, when he said  “A light has gone out of our lives.”
The music on the radio was a continuous wailing – sitars, sarods, voices, weeping for that great soul. Once again they heard “Ishwara Allah there naam/ Sabko sammathi de Bhagwan”, and also some of Gandhiji’s favourite hymns. When I survey the wondrous cross – Love so amazing, so divine, or Lead kindly light,- the night is dark, and I am far from home. The music went on for days, - every time they turned on the Radio, it was the same. The  man was gone, the music remained.
  In her confused after-memory, something that was, perhaps, not directly related, remained connected. In the Cathedral of the Redemption, one Sunday, Lord Louis Mountbatten, the first Governor-General of a free India, read the Lesson. Dressed in full Naval uniform, tall and aristocratic, Shueli thought she had never seen anyone so handsome.  Behind the secret stairway that Shalini and Shueli had so often climbed when ‘bunking’ class, the organ burst into majestic tones, and  Lord Mountbatten began to read: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.” The rich voice continued, stirring something already nascent in young Shueli’s heart. Like tender shoots, forced by a rude winter, into bud, Shueli was moving out of her childhood. “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a (wo)man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face…” This is what it means to be a woman and a human being, thought Shueli, to have a heart full of love, and to live fully, even if it isn’t easy.
                                                     ******************
 
“What shall I do when I grow up, Gaya? Shall I be an actress, and get a scholarship to RADA, like Kusum Chowdhury did? I’d love that! Or perhaps I should go to Oxford, and become a professor, like Papa?” Gaya was rather non-committal in her answers. She had become a rather sickly child, and Ammy kept worrying about her, saying “I don’t know how she’s even going to complete her Senior Cambridge. We’ll have to find a boy for her very soon, and get her married.” Marriage seemed to be the solution for everything, for both Ammy and Graany. “Why can’t they leave us in peace?” grumbled Shueli, when a letter arrived from Graany, full of lists of “good boys” whose parents might agree to the connection. Of course, Graany hoped, Amaal and Piloo were putting aside something for the girls’ dowry and jewellery, without which “they will have to stay unmarried, and become teachers or something…” (this last thought was meant to imply the utter degradation of going through life without a husband.) “And don’t forget that Gaya is dark, and it will be more difficult. Kunjmol’s grandson is a handsome boy. He has an excellent job in the Munnar plantations. Then there’s Dilip, the Cherian boy, who’s very clever, and trying for the I.A.S. Should suit Shueli. That’s if you make the proposals soon. Otherwise, they’ll be snatched away. Somebody else will get hold of them. As it is, I hear Ammini is trying her level best to get Dilip! Unless you start now, the girls may stay spinsters all their lives. Good boys are few and far between, and everyone grabs them!”
 “Oh, for heaven’s sake, why does Graany go on like this?” Shueli would fume. “As if we can’t find our own boys. And as for Ammy, -“ Shueli giggled “She’s becoming as bad as Mrs. Bennett in Pride and Prejudice..”
“Yes” laughed Gaya, “She’s always trying to get you seen by the mothers of these eligible bachelors. Just to make sure that at least one of them takes to you, and wants you for her son!”
“Well, I don’t care if any old Syrian Christian mother likes me or not. They’re all so awfully boring. Don’t care for poetry, or theatre, or anything.” Shueli was always secretly dreaming of Arif anyway, which made all these suggestions and schemings of her mother and grandmother completely unreal. In a book she had just picked up, called The Sea Hawk, which she read and reread secretly, the hero, who had turned into a cruel pirate, had returned for the woman he loved, who was about to be forced into a marriage, and carried her away into the night, throwing her over his shoulder “like a sack!” “How romantic” sighed Shueli, lost in her reverie, broken by Ammy saying, “You should try to learn a little cooking, Shueli, not just sit and read all the time. If we meet Mrs. Kuruvilla next week at the dinner party at the Alexanders’ place, if she asks you whether you’re interested in cooking, what on earth will you say? “I’ll tell her I hate cooking, and want to be an actress. That should put her off for life!”
“You girls” said Ammy despairingly, “I don’t know what’s going to happen to you. At this rate, no one in our community will marry either of you. And if someone does, and he turns round to you after you’ve burned all the food, and says ‘My mother’s cooking was so wonderful. I really miss it,’ – what on earth will you do?”
Gaya, always superb with sharp repartee, retorted “I’ll tell him I miss my mother’s cooking!” And both the girls burst into uncontrolled laughter, soon joined by Ammy, who had a sharp sense of humour herself. “Of course, you do have to finish college, and be educated. But really, the best thing for a woman is to have a happy marriage, a husband and children,” said Ammy, who had, herself, never wanted more.
“Perhaps because you booked your husband when you were only two!” said Shueli, which set them laughing again, and put an end to the subject of marriage versus career, - for the time being at least. They all went into the courtyard where ice-cream was being made in the old wooden bucket cum churner. “Pack it properly with salt outside, khansaamaa “ Ammy advised the cook.
Her ice-cream was always the creamiest, her dosais and idlis and appams were luscious, and her cakes and pies were the best. “Must have inherited it from Graany” Shueli and Gaya would say. Papa would tease them “ Well, you know that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach!” which would get both the girls wild: “How hateful, Papa. As if that’s all there is to a man!”
“Shueli’s thinking of the man’s Soul,” said Gaya, looking upwards soulfully. Shueli laughed with everyone else, but thought to herself “Who cares about food? I’ll find my perfect soul-mate one day.” In a way, she thought, she had found him in Arif, but he had had to go away just when she discovered him. Also, maybe she was just a bit young to really know, though of course she felt she did. It was all very confusing. They had gone to see a cinema the other day. The heroine seemed to be quite old – over thirty at least. She’d gone to Italy, and, for the first time in her life, fallen “head over heels in love.” But the Italian let her down, and she took a train to leave for ever. HE rushed to the station, realizing the terrible misunderstanding that was parting them. He held a red rose in his hand for her. But he arrived too late. The train was just steaming out. His hands just barely touched hers. Her fingers just grazed the rose, which he held out for her. She could not grasp it. “ How sad” thought Shueli “I wonder if life is always like that?”
Time enough to find out, to test the waters of life. In these in between years, she could dream and hope, before the black waters of real life engulfed her.
 
 
 
CHAPTER TWELVE
Mussoorie 
​
That summer, before Shueli was to join college, the family had gone to Mussoorie,  the hill station built by the British, a retreat in the Himalayas, from the summer’s unbearable heat and dust. They would pack food and water, and set off in the car, with Papa driving.  Past  Dehra Dun, at the foothills of the Himalayas, the road would start climbing, winding sharply all the way. “Hairpin bends” the girls would shout excitedly, hanging their heads out of the window, enjoying the cool breeze, and the fragrance of pine, which got stronger as they ascended into the hills. Gaya sometimes got nauseous, and had to be given limes to smell or suck.
Their dog, Leo, suddenly revived after the fierce heat of the plains, had his head out of the window, his tongue lolling wetly, panting with delight. Ammy would never agree to leave the dog with Jumman  (the man of all work), because he “won’t really care for our poor doggy, and he may just die of a broken heart!” Ammy loved all animals passionately, and the dogs were a part of the family…as Gaya had said once, “They are human beings too, aren’t they?” 
Once they reached Mussoorie, they would head for Firland Hall, either walking, or on ponies, or Ammy would get a dandy, a kind of rickshaw carried by three or four men. Firland Hall  was surrounded by orchards, overlooking a dream-like valley. They loved to sit in one of the upper balconies, or the bay windows of the old English style drawing room, and watch the mist swirl in over the valley. Firland Hall was a centre for the Language School,  which all British Missionaries in India had to attend.  It was managed by Aunty Sarala Rockford, who was a good friend of Ammy’s.  Ammy, who could never resist a good story, though Papa was saying “Why do you want to talk about such things in front of the children? Why not drop it?” would tell them about Aunty Sarala, who had been found in a rubbish heap in an old part of a South Indian city. Nobody wanted the ugly, naked creature – left without even a stitch to cover her, a girl child at that. “There was one family that had been praying for a child. But even they said that, after all they didn’t know what sort of blood she carried, what kind of stock she came from, and finally, they gave up the idea. There was an old English missionary lady called Miss Dorothy Seaward. She had already adopted three Indian waifs, and was willing to take this small morsel of unwanted humanity. So Aunty Sarala became Sarala Seaford, and was saved from certain death in the streets. I don’t think the old lady was particularly  loving.  She just did what she thought was right. Sarala got food, clothes, education, but not much more. That’s why she seems so tough and hard of heart. She never received any love. Anyway, Sarala was introduced to an English gentleman who had some business in India, and when he said he wanted to marry her, the old foster mother agreed. Sarala was happy to make some kind of life for herself, a home of her own.. Her husband became very successful in his business, and they had a boy and a girl, - Tony and Mary, who go to school in England, and come here for the holidays, as you know.” Apart from the missionary families, there were many Indian families who came there regularly for their summer holidays. There was also a newly married couple from the South, the Devadasses, she, very plump and fair-skinned, he a huge, dark man, like many Tamilians.  Shueli was fascinated by them. They took her on shopping expeditions, and to the Mall for lunch. “But it’s very strange, Gaya,” said Shueli, “Every time I go and knock on their door, they take ages. They never seem to be dressed. And then she keeps giggling – quite silly really.” This summer, they were a bit too old, with Shueli going to be sixteen, but earlier, they had had a lovely group of children, who played games, went for long walks to Kemptee Falls and other places, organised picnics under the pine trees, and raided the apple and pear orchards whenever they could, much to the chagrine of the old Mali, who chased them off, shouting “Baba log, chor, chor. I’ll report to the Burra Sahib.” But he could never catch them, and they would scramble for safety, to the branch of a tree, or to one of the balconies, which was out of bounds for him! Then there was Jonathan (Jonty Boy) Jarvis, whose mother was a striking blonde, her golden hair coiled in a regal plait round her head. Jonty Boy always made a beeline for Shueli’s room, and she would think up stories to please a three-year old. Sometimews, when she was changing, she would see him standing there smiling, his thumb in his mouth. “Happy, Jonty Boy?”  she’d ask, and he’d reply with a blissful smile “Ummm… ‘appy”  Then there was the utterly handsome young Pesi Shroff, about two years older than Shueli. He never seemed to do anything quiet, like just sitting and reading. He asked Shueli if she’d like to go to the skating Rink with him, but she had to admit she didn’t know how to skate, upon which he would reply, with the cruel candour of the young, “You really are boring. Can’t you do anything?” which made Shueli’s heart plummet to the depths of despair. She cheered up, however, when he suggested a long ramble to Landour instead, and they could listen to the haunting cry of the cuckoo, and feel the pine fragrance of the mountain air on their faces.
  There were two very old ladies staying there that summer. One was Lady Emily Kinnaird, who was practically one hundred years old. “Do you know it was Lady Emily who started the Kinnaird College in Lahore, or, it was named after her. She was a founder of the Y.W.C.A. in India.” But the aristocratic old lady had lost most of her memory, and liked to play some quite simple games. She got the children sitting around her, and told them stories, which were often interrupted by “Oh dear me, I’ve quite forgotten what I was telling you!”
The other old lady was an Indian, whose father had been a great scholar, who had translated the Ramayana into English metrical verse form. He had gone secretly, so Ammy told them, to England in the last century. “It was considered unclean and a loss of caste for a Hindu to go abroad at that time. You can imagine that long journey by ship for weeks, almost a month, and how strange it must have been to eat food cooked in animal fat, eat pork or even beef, and watch people with their strange ways of dancing, a man holding a woman and going round and round! Well, this scholar made that fearful voyage, and did the Indian Civil Service exam held there. As a student in Calcutta he’d already discovered the English classics, and later, at University College, he discovered the great poets. Everyone was very shocked when he did a Bengali translation of  the Rig Veda.”  Once they heard the very old lady, Romesh Chander Dutt’s  daughter, remark, “Well, you know he always said that the Mahabharata was the Iliad of India, while the Ramayana was the Indian Odyssey!”  They’d always loved the story of Sita and Rama, especially the exciting way Ammy told it, and looked at the old lady with great reverence, even when she was being crotchety and complaining: “The daal is so watery.” Or “Why does the soup smell like this?”
For Shueli’s sixteenth birthday, Appa and Ammy arranged a tea-party, under the old trees at the bottom of the garden, where the pine cones lay in great heaps. They went shopping on the Mall, and Shueli was asked to choose her first really nice sari. It was a pale blue Mysore chiffon, with a narrow gold border, and Shueli hoped, rather nervously, that she would look beautiful and grown-up in it. People still referred to them as “the children” but Shueli could feel her body bursting out, budding, blossoming – it was a lovely feeling. People were always complaining about how awful it is to be a woman. She thought it was the most glorious thing. Her feelings, though confused, were heightened when, on her birthday morning, there was a knock on their cottage door. It was handsome Pesi Shroff, looking more than ever like a film star, his hair brilliantined, his acquiline features drawn into a wide grin. He was carrying the biggest bunch of red roses Shueli had ever seen. No one had ever given her roses before. Arif had once plucked a rose from the garden, a single red rose, and given it to her. She had treasured it ever since, and had pressed the rose petals into a copy of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. It opened at the page where Juliet cries to the night: “Give me my Romeo, and when he shall die,/ Take him and cut him out in little stars,/ And he will make the face of heaven so fine / That all the world will be in love with night/ And pay no worship to the garish sun.” It was Arif she thought of, as she stood, tongue-tied, looking at Pesi smiling awkwardly, holding out the roses to her. “Here. These are for you. Happy Birthday and all the rest of it. See you in the evening,” and vanished! There was a little note attached to the roses, which said very simply “Happy Birthday, and Many Happy Returns of the Day, dear Shueli.”  It was her first ever gift of roses, if she didn’t count the pressed rose petals from Arif.
The party in the evening was perfect. She blew out the sixteen candles on the chocolate cake baked by Aunty Sarala. “My little gift for you, Shueli, and God bless you.” Papa, Ammy and Gaya gave her a collection of classics: Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, The Mill on the Floss, and a lovely copy of The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. “How do I love Thee? Let me count the ways…”  “Oh! I love it, and I’ll treasure it all my life.” Ammy had written a little card on which she’d quoted a Victorian verse: “Be good, sweet maid. Let those who will be clever.”
“Ammy what on earth do you mean by writing such insipid stuff? I’d much rather be clever than good!” Gaya agreed most fervently, and they all laughed as Ammy looked at her subversive daughters with pride and amusement.
​