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took out a familiar-looking volume. Saintsbury on Dryden in the English Men of Letters series, published 1915. The date on the library sticker in front was a current one. Did students still read what Saintsbury had to say on Dryden, on his – here I opened the book – on his ‘varied cadence and subtly disposed music’ and other such fulsome rubbish? Judging from all the underlinings in the book, yes, they did. AS College, the last colonial outpost, where Saintsbury and Gosse were king, where the Beauties of Literature still flourished.
    ‘All his selection,’ said the librarian, who had noticed what I was doing.
    ‘Who bought the books after him?’ I wanted to know.
    The librarian looked apologetic. ‘After the Professor Sahib’s time we could afford less and less. And now of course, students depend on keys and guides.’
    He sounded quite despondent. I told him it was the same in Delhi, but how did that help? Whether there was Saintsbury or Foucault in the library, in the end we teachers were redundant. The vast majority of students were just concerned with their marks, using any means necessary to achieve them, whether knives or cheating, cheap kunjis or mugging up the notes of last year’s topper.
    *
     
    Our group of seekers and guides moved on. We stopped at classroom number eight on the ground floor.
    ‘Where he taught.’
    It was a large, empty room, resembling a theatre. A few pigeons fluttered around the rafters, the steep rows of benches  and desks were of a dark, sombre wood.
    ‘This used to be the most crowded classroom in the entire college.’
    ‘Students used to come from Lahore to hear him.’
    ‘They sat on the window sills.’
    ‘Stood in the corridors, the doorways, trying to hear what he said.’
    ‘But what was so special about what he said?’ I was curious. English was English. You could only carry it so far.
    ‘Oh,’ said Kailashnath, looking around the classroom where he too had once sat, ‘he brought the subject alive. Most of us had never stepped out of Amritsar. The things he talked about, his expression, his way of speaking, we felt we were in another world. Am I right, ji?’ he asked turning to the teachers.
    They smiled assent.
    I walked inside. The ceiling was high, with three faint domes marked into it. Two large windows looked directly upon the green, thick-creepered, college boundary wall. From the inner door and windows one could see the broad veranda, and the courtyard beyond. I climbed the steps and sat on the topmost row, looking down at the stage far beneath me. The coos of pigeons sounded nearer than the conversation of the little group below. They were standing on the podium, around the lectern, where at one time a teacher performed, working his way into the hearts and minds of captive students.
    *
     
    My history had started here, in this classroom. Here it was that my parents must have looked at each other significantly, doomed love in their eyes.
    ‘Imagine my plight,’ my father used to say, performer still, first making sure my mother was in earshot. ‘Imagine my plight.’ And he would roll his eyes, mock alarm and distress crossing his face. ‘Your mother engaged to someone else!’
    He said nothing about his wife.
    Virmati plus fiancé, the Professor plus wife. An invisible quadrangle in a classroom.

X
     
     
    At what stage did thoughts of the Professor replace the permitted thoughts of her fiancé in Virmati’s mind?
    That he looked at her, she knew. That he paid attention to her, she was aware. But to think of him was impossible, given the gulf between them, until he bridged it by crying out his need. Eldest and a girl, she was finely tuned to neediness, it called to her blood and bones. He spread his anguish at her feet, and demanded that she do with him as she pleased.
    Days passed, and Virmati’s confusion grew. She would sometimes wish that … but what could she wish? Early marriage, and no education? No Professor, and no love? Her soul