Read Online Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala - Free Book Online
Authors: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
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I now live.)
Inder Lal said "How is it possible for me to talk with her the way I am now talking with you? It is not possible. She would understand nothing." He added: "Her health also has remained very weak."
There were some boys swimming in the lake. They seemed to be having a very good time. We could see the water rising in sprays as they jumped up and down and splashed one another. Inder Lal watched them wistfully. Perhaps he wished he were one of them; or he may have been remembering summer evenings of his own when he too had gone swimming with his friends.
It could not have been all that long ago - he is still a young man, a few years younger than I am, about 25 or 26. When you look closer, you can see that his face really is young, only he seems older because of his careworn expression. When I first saw him, he seemed to me a typical Indian clerk, meek and bowed down with many cares. But now I see that he is not meek and bowed at all- or only outwardly - that really inside himself he is alive and yearning for all sorts of things beyond his reach. It shows mainly in his eyes which are beautiful- full of melancholy and liquid with longing.
10 M arch. I work hard at my Hindi and am beginning to have conversations with people which is a great advantage. I wish I could talk more with Ritu, Inder Lal's wife, but she is so shy that my improved Hindi doesn't help me with her at all. Although I'm quite a shy person myself, I try not to be with her. I feel it is my responsibility to get us going since I'm older and (I think) stronger. There is something frail, weak about her. Physically she is very thin, with thin arms on which her bangles slip about; but not only physically - I have the impression that her mind, or do I mean her will, is not strong either, that she is the sort of person who would give way quickly. Sometimes she tries to overcome her shyness and pays ~e a visit in my room; but though I talk away desperately in my appalling Hindi just so she will stay, quite soon she jumps up and runs away. The same happens when I try to visit her - I've seen her at my approach run to hide in the bathroom and, though it is not very salubrious (the little sweeper girl is not too good at her job), stay locked up in there till I go away again.
The days - and nights - are really heating up now. It is unpleasant to sleep indoors and everyone pulls out their beds at night. The town has become a communal dormitory. There are string-beds in front of all the stalls, and on the roofs, and in the courtyards: wherever there is an open space. I kept on sleeping indoors for a while since I was embarrassed to go to bed in public. But it just got too hot, so now I too have dragged my bed out into the courtyard and have joined it on to the Inder Lals' line. The family of the shop downstairs also sleep in this courtyard, and so does their little servant boy, and some others I haven't been able to identify. So we're quite a crowd. I no longer change into a nightie but sleep, like an Indian woman, in a sari.
It's amazing how still everything is. When Indians sleep, they really do sleep. Neither adults nor children have a regular bed-time - when they're tired they just drop, fully clothed, on to their beds, or the ground if they have no beds, and don't stir again till the next day begins. All one hears is occasionally someone crying out in their sleep, or a dog maybe a jackal - baying at the moon. I lie awake for hours: with happiness, actually. I have never known such a sense of communion. Lying like this under the open sky there is a feeling of being immersed in space - though not in empty space, for there are all these people sleeping all around me, the whole town and I am part of it. How different from my often very lonely room in London with only my own walls to look at and my books to read.
A few nights ago there was such a strange sound - for a moment I didn't react but lay there just hearing it: a high-pitched wail piercing through
Inder Lal said "How is it possible for me to talk with her the way I am now talking with you? It is not possible. She would understand nothing." He added: "Her health also has remained very weak."
There were some boys swimming in the lake. They seemed to be having a very good time. We could see the water rising in sprays as they jumped up and down and splashed one another. Inder Lal watched them wistfully. Perhaps he wished he were one of them; or he may have been remembering summer evenings of his own when he too had gone swimming with his friends.
It could not have been all that long ago - he is still a young man, a few years younger than I am, about 25 or 26. When you look closer, you can see that his face really is young, only he seems older because of his careworn expression. When I first saw him, he seemed to me a typical Indian clerk, meek and bowed down with many cares. But now I see that he is not meek and bowed at all- or only outwardly - that really inside himself he is alive and yearning for all sorts of things beyond his reach. It shows mainly in his eyes which are beautiful- full of melancholy and liquid with longing.
10 M arch. I work hard at my Hindi and am beginning to have conversations with people which is a great advantage. I wish I could talk more with Ritu, Inder Lal's wife, but she is so shy that my improved Hindi doesn't help me with her at all. Although I'm quite a shy person myself, I try not to be with her. I feel it is my responsibility to get us going since I'm older and (I think) stronger. There is something frail, weak about her. Physically she is very thin, with thin arms on which her bangles slip about; but not only physically - I have the impression that her mind, or do I mean her will, is not strong either, that she is the sort of person who would give way quickly. Sometimes she tries to overcome her shyness and pays ~e a visit in my room; but though I talk away desperately in my appalling Hindi just so she will stay, quite soon she jumps up and runs away. The same happens when I try to visit her - I've seen her at my approach run to hide in the bathroom and, though it is not very salubrious (the little sweeper girl is not too good at her job), stay locked up in there till I go away again.
The days - and nights - are really heating up now. It is unpleasant to sleep indoors and everyone pulls out their beds at night. The town has become a communal dormitory. There are string-beds in front of all the stalls, and on the roofs, and in the courtyards: wherever there is an open space. I kept on sleeping indoors for a while since I was embarrassed to go to bed in public. But it just got too hot, so now I too have dragged my bed out into the courtyard and have joined it on to the Inder Lals' line. The family of the shop downstairs also sleep in this courtyard, and so does their little servant boy, and some others I haven't been able to identify. So we're quite a crowd. I no longer change into a nightie but sleep, like an Indian woman, in a sari.
It's amazing how still everything is. When Indians sleep, they really do sleep. Neither adults nor children have a regular bed-time - when they're tired they just drop, fully clothed, on to their beds, or the ground if they have no beds, and don't stir again till the next day begins. All one hears is occasionally someone crying out in their sleep, or a dog maybe a jackal - baying at the moon. I lie awake for hours: with happiness, actually. I have never known such a sense of communion. Lying like this under the open sky there is a feeling of being immersed in space - though not in empty space, for there are all these people sleeping all around me, the whole town and I am part of it. How different from my often very lonely room in London with only my own walls to look at and my books to read.
A few nights ago there was such a strange sound - for a moment I didn't react but lay there just hearing it: a high-pitched wail piercing through
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