in some home for destitute spinsters.
All in all, it was a profoundly depressing visit. Despite the efforts of Mrs Pankhurst and her valiant crew of suffragettes, we were still in the dear, dead days when marriage was not only fashionable, but also romantic; and we were great ones for Romance â âHappiness, and I guess, all those things weâve always pined for.â How else could one live happily ever after unless one married (see Cinderella & Co.), when boy-meets-girl or vice versa was the theme of almost every novel, play and pop-song ever written?
Of course
I wanted to get married! But not if it entailed setting my cap at some pimply-faced and presumably gullible youth, for the purpose of using him as a first step towards getting invited to partieswhere I might meet someone more worthwhile â who would in turn introduce me to something even better; and so on, up the ladder, towards the Prince Charming class, ruthlessly kicking away each rung as I mounted to the next.
The result of Gerryâs pep-talk was that I left Cawnpore in a distinctly subdued frame of mind, and with my morale once more in flinders. But one look at Delhi Central as the train drew in did wonders for my drooping spirits, for it looked exactly the same as it had on the sad day when I had last seen it. And suddenly it was as though all those grey, intervening years of exile were no more than a brief dream from which I had just awoken. Nothing had changed!
Here once again were the same sounds and smells and sights. The familiar grey-headed crows, the jostling, shouting luggage coolies, the same vendors of food and drink, fruit and toys; the same milling and vociferous crowds of passengers, some, like ourselves, with their journey done, descending from the train, while others scrambled aboard it, bound for towns and cities in the north. I had last seen this station through a haze of tears, afraid that I might never see dear Delhi again. And now, once more, I found that my eyes were swimming because I was so happy to see it again and to know that I had come back to a loved and familiar place, even though there was something missing: of all the many friends that had crowded the platform to wish us âbon voyageâ on that long ago day of our leaving, none were there to welcome us back, and I was suddenly aware of the gap between ten and nineteen ⦠the enormous gap.
Bets and I had travelled up in the care of a Major and Mrs Something-or-other who were bound for somewhere further north, and only our parents and Abdul Karim were on the platform to meet us. And presently we were driving out of the station yard through the ranks of
tongas
and
tikka-gharies
, along familiar streets and past familiar places. But this time, alas, we did not, as in the old days, turn left towards Old Delhi and the Kashmir Gate, but right â towards New Delhi, a place that had consisted of little more than the foundations of buildings when we had last seen it. Now it was the capital city of India and most of its buildings were not only completed but occupied. I thought it looked raw and ugly and barren, and found it difficult to believe that the thousands of small, struggling saplings that had been planted on either side of the wide avenues, each one surrounded by a zariba of chicken-wire or iron stakes to protect themfrom the depredations of wandering goats and cattle or the destructive attentions of vandals, would ever live to become tall and green. Or that the barren wastes of parched ground would ever be covered with grass and shrubs and flowerbeds.
The whole place looked as hot and bleak and colourless as the Thar, the great Indian desert that lies between Jodhpur and the Indus, while the grandiose buildings that Sir Edwin Lutyens and Sir Richard Baker had designed to lend splendour and dignity to the latest and (it was hoped) last and greatest city of Delhi, were, in my opinion, the ugliest things I had ever seen. In those early days the
All in all, it was a profoundly depressing visit. Despite the efforts of Mrs Pankhurst and her valiant crew of suffragettes, we were still in the dear, dead days when marriage was not only fashionable, but also romantic; and we were great ones for Romance â âHappiness, and I guess, all those things weâve always pined for.â How else could one live happily ever after unless one married (see Cinderella & Co.), when boy-meets-girl or vice versa was the theme of almost every novel, play and pop-song ever written?
Of course
I wanted to get married! But not if it entailed setting my cap at some pimply-faced and presumably gullible youth, for the purpose of using him as a first step towards getting invited to partieswhere I might meet someone more worthwhile â who would in turn introduce me to something even better; and so on, up the ladder, towards the Prince Charming class, ruthlessly kicking away each rung as I mounted to the next.
The result of Gerryâs pep-talk was that I left Cawnpore in a distinctly subdued frame of mind, and with my morale once more in flinders. But one look at Delhi Central as the train drew in did wonders for my drooping spirits, for it looked exactly the same as it had on the sad day when I had last seen it. And suddenly it was as though all those grey, intervening years of exile were no more than a brief dream from which I had just awoken. Nothing had changed!
Here once again were the same sounds and smells and sights. The familiar grey-headed crows, the jostling, shouting luggage coolies, the same vendors of food and drink, fruit and toys; the same milling and vociferous crowds of passengers, some, like ourselves, with their journey done, descending from the train, while others scrambled aboard it, bound for towns and cities in the north. I had last seen this station through a haze of tears, afraid that I might never see dear Delhi again. And now, once more, I found that my eyes were swimming because I was so happy to see it again and to know that I had come back to a loved and familiar place, even though there was something missing: of all the many friends that had crowded the platform to wish us âbon voyageâ on that long ago day of our leaving, none were there to welcome us back, and I was suddenly aware of the gap between ten and nineteen ⦠the enormous gap.
Bets and I had travelled up in the care of a Major and Mrs Something-or-other who were bound for somewhere further north, and only our parents and Abdul Karim were on the platform to meet us. And presently we were driving out of the station yard through the ranks of
tongas
and
tikka-gharies
, along familiar streets and past familiar places. But this time, alas, we did not, as in the old days, turn left towards Old Delhi and the Kashmir Gate, but right â towards New Delhi, a place that had consisted of little more than the foundations of buildings when we had last seen it. Now it was the capital city of India and most of its buildings were not only completed but occupied. I thought it looked raw and ugly and barren, and found it difficult to believe that the thousands of small, struggling saplings that had been planted on either side of the wide avenues, each one surrounded by a zariba of chicken-wire or iron stakes to protect themfrom the depredations of wandering goats and cattle or the destructive attentions of vandals, would ever live to become tall and green. Or that the barren wastes of parched ground would ever be covered with grass and shrubs and flowerbeds.
The whole place looked as hot and bleak and colourless as the Thar, the great Indian desert that lies between Jodhpur and the Indus, while the grandiose buildings that Sir Edwin Lutyens and Sir Richard Baker had designed to lend splendour and dignity to the latest and (it was hoped) last and greatest city of Delhi, were, in my opinion, the ugliest things I had ever seen. In those early days the
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