Read Online East Into Upper East by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala - Free Book Online

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 everyoccasion, 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,