and after cooking my meal, I settle down crosslegged on the floor to work on my papers.
Towards evening I sometimes go to the post office which is situated in what used to be Oliviaâs breakfast room. If it is about the time when the offices close, I walk over to the Crawfordsâ house to wait for Inder Lal. Both houses â the Crawfordsâ and Oliviaâs â once so different in their interiors, are now furnished with the same ramshackle office furniture,and also have the same red betel stains on their walls. Their gardens too are identical now â that is, they are no longer gardens but patches of open ground where the clerks congregate in the shade of whatever trees have been left. Peddlers have obtained licences to sell peanuts and grams. There are rows of cycle stands with a cycle jammed into every notch.
It used to embarrass Inder Lal to find me waiting for him. Perhaps he was even a little ashamed to be seen with me. I suppose we do make a strange couple â Iâm so much taller than he is, and I walk with long strides and keep forgetting that this makes it difficult for him to keep up with me. But I think by now he has got used to me and perhaps is even rather proud to be seen walking with his English friend. I also think he quite likes my company now. At first he welcomed it mainly to practise his English â he said it was a very good chance for him â but now he also seems to enjoy our conversations. I certainly do. He is very frank with me and tells me all sorts of personal things: not only about his life but also about his feelings. He has told me that the only other person he can talk to freely is his mother but even with her â well, he said, with the mother there are certain things one cannot speak as with the friend.
Once I asked âWhat about your wife?â
He said she was not intelligent. Also she had not had much education â his mother had not wanted him to marry a very educated girl; she said there was nothing but trouble to be expected from such a quarter. Ritu had been chosen on account of her suitable family background and her fair complexion. His mother had told him she was pretty, but he never could make up his mind about that. Sometimes he thought yes, sometimes no. He asked my opinion. I said yes. She must have been so when young, though now she is thinand worn and her face, like his, always anxious.
He told me that during the first years of her marriage she had been so homesick that she had never stopped crying. âIt was very injurious to her health,â he said, âespecially when she got in family way. Mother and I tried to explain matters to her, how it was necessary for her to eat and be happy, but she did not understand. Naturally her health suffered and the child also was born weak. It was her fault. An intelligent person would have understood and taken care.â
He frowned and looked unhappy. By this time we had reached the lake. (This is about as far as Olivia would have got if she ever ventured to this side: because beyond this point the Indian part of the town began, the crowded lanes and bazaar where I now live.)
Inder Lal said âHow 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.â He added: âHer health also has remained very weak.â
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 â 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
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