knew it would be easy, if he wanted to, to run after them and catch them up. He felt a sensation in his heart as if someone—some other heart attached to his—were tugging him down. But he planted himself a bit more sturdily, with his legs apart, and stood his ground. The cars grew smaller, creeping down the mountain into the bazaar, into the town, into the plains below. When they were completely out of sight, he descended the path and returned to her tree. The place was deserted now, and there was nothing to be seen except her old deerskin, which someone had rolled up and stuffed under a root. Farid spread it out again and smoothed it and sat on it. He thought he would just wait here until she came back for him. Of course, this might take a long time—many years, even—but when she came at last he would say, “Let’s go up, Farida,” and after the inevitable argument she would agree.
Kuku Malhotra was a modern Indian girl who lived with her boy friend in a roof-top studio in New Delhi. Kuku was a documentary film-maker and had lately obtained a grant from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting to make a documentary about her grandmother Sumitra. It may already have been too late. Nowadays the old lady sat mostly on her lawn or her verandah, bundled in shawls in the winter, fanned by a woman servant in the summer. Her name was still known, though she herself forgotten. Most people thought she was dead, along with all the others of her generation, who had been pioneers in the early years of Independence, the first truly modern Indians. When Kuku tried to interview her about those days, she remained silent, sunk into apathy. Only her lips chewed and mumbled; she rarely wore her teeth nowadays, except when it was time to eat. She still relished her food and got very excited over it, making frantic signs to her servant to hand her more hot bread and refill her little bowls with rice and fish. It seemed to Kuku that it was only in those moments that there was any trace left of the former Sumitra—of her boundless energy and her uninhibited enjoyment of life (and, Kuku thought, of lovers) that had broken down so many barriers for Kuku’s own generation.
Born between two European world wars, Kuku’s grandmother had come of age at the right time—just as Indians were reclaiming their country from British rule. She had grown up in Bombay where her father was a very rich businessman. She had lived in a big house on a hill overlooking the Arabian Sea and surrounded by a garden thick with palm trees. Her father’s money was at her disposal and she used it freely on herself and her friends. They had parties for every occasion, birthdays and the New Year and even Christmas, besides all the Hindu holidays. There were plenty of servants, and her father employed two cooks, one for Indian and the other for European cuisine. The parents and the servants enjoyed the parties almost as much as the young guests, who had names like Bunny, Bunti and Dickoo, carried over from their pampered childhood. The parties too were carried over from their childhood, together with the balloons and the jokes and the nicknames they shared. They were attractive, high-spirited young people, and it would have been impossible to predict how serious and important and even pompous they would become within a few years. Those who stayed in Bombay entered their fathers’ businesses and expanded them beyond all previous limits; those who went to New Delhi took over the highest posts of government and became rulers, kings of their country, crowned with offices.
It may have been the pull of New Delhi with all its might and power that influenced Sumitra to marry a boy from an old Delhi family. She could have married anyone she wanted. Many offers came for her, from all the leading families of their caste. Her father laid them before her for her consideration, always emphasizing that she was entirely free to choose or reject. She rejected them all, for of course she was going to make a modern love marriage; but she refused other young men too, those with whom she had grown up and partied in their fathers’ mansions. Many of them were in love with her, and she in love with some of them. She met Hari Prasad—known as Harry—on a visit she made to a cousin in Delhi. Here too the young people were throwing parties, and though these were not as lavish as the ones in Bombay, they held another kind of attraction. A transfer of power was taking place, and while the young people were dancing to gramophone records in the drawing room, their fathers and uncles were closeted in the study distributing cabinet posts among themselves. This was intoxicating.
Even without all that, Harry was attractive enough in himself, and different from the boys she had grown up with. He liked painting and literature; he had been to Oxford where he had developed his taste for oriental poetry and French wine. Somewhat languid and passive, he let Sumitra woo him; that suited her too, for it was in her nature to initiate and take the leading part. It made him laugh and pleased him—at that time—the way Sumitra took charge of things. It pleased his father too and was useful to him, for she became his hostess—a part few women at that time were qualified to play, for most of them were like Sumitra’s mother, and Harry’s, who spoke little English and spent their time in their prayer rooms or closeted with their spiritual advisers to ward off evil influences. But Harry’s father was entering a new, a wider world than any known to them before. He was a brilliant lawyer who had defended Indian leaders and kept or sprung them out of jail. He lived with his family in his own large New Delhi residence built many years before Independence with his own wealth and in the style of the surrounding residences of high-ranking British administrators.
Before moving in with her boy friend, Kuku Malhotra had lived in this house, with her grandmother Sumitra and her mother Monica, who was Sumitra and Harry’s only child. By that time the other grand British-style villas around them had been requisitioned for ministerial residences or torn down for modern blocks of flats. Monica too would have liked to sell the house and land at huge profit, but this was impossible while her mother was still alive. Monica took over a plot of land at the rear—part of what had been extensive servants’ quarters—and here, under her supervision, a group of flats was built as rental units. Her mother Sumitra did not like this activity on her estate, and she squinted malevolently at the workmen trampling over her lawn. Monica, busy fighting with the contractor, ignored Sumitra’s resentment: now, at fifty, she felt free for the first time to do what she and not what her mother wanted.
Monica had always been eclipsed by her mother, in looks and personality. Yet Sumitra herself had not been beautiful, not even in her youth—she was short and had always tended to be plump and her facial features too were rounded. But her gestures were as graceful as an Indian dancer’s, and like a dancer, she jingled with golden bangles and with the anklets that it had become fashionable to wear along with other traditional Indian jewelry (Sumitra also tried a diamond nose stud but it didn’t suit her). The blouses she wore under her saris were copied from Indian miniatures—it was all part of the cultural renaissance—and they were very short, just sufficient to support her breasts, leaving bare a large expanse of her midriff, as smooth as beige satin.
As her father-in-law’s hostess, Sumitra had introduced an original style of entertaining, which was partly modern and partly derived from the traditional refinements of an Indian royal court. Later, after he died, she was greatly in demand at the official parties to which foreign dignitaries were invited. At that time, many of the cabinet ministers and even the President in his palace were peasant politicians with village wives and no idea how to function in society. Sumitra became New Delhi’s semi-official hostess. The food she ordered to be prepared was mostly Indian but with the spices so cunningly blended that only their exquisite fragrance and none of their sharpness remained. Often a classical musician or dancer was brought in to entertain, their art also toned down to appeal to blander tastes; and though the guests were encouraged to immerse themselves in this cultured Indian ambience, they did not have to sit on the floor reclining against bolsters but were provided with chairs and sofas to support their stiff European spines.
At first her husband Harry accompanied her to all these grand receptions. Tall and slim, handsome and educated, he was an asset to her, though all he did was talk to the second secretary of some embassy or a cultural attaché’s wife. This became very boring for him, and after a while he began to refuse to go with her; he said he couldn’t stand another set of speeches extolling the amity and friendship between two great nations. At first she coaxed him—laughingly agreed with him that yes, wasn’t it horrible, but if she could suffer why couldn’t he, and anyway please for her sake—till