nothing but the dripping of the tap in the courtyard and the cawing of a crow in the road outside. The servants were huddled together in the kitchen. Where are my parents? Meera demanded. And it was then that their mother’s secret was revealed – how quickly the disease had spread through her blood, through her bones, how there was nothing any doctor could do. She died that night in hospital, and Meera, it was said later, never recovered.
Leela had lost her parents once already – but that was in the village. It was silently understood that since the peasantry in the countryside bore all sorts of troubles (bereavement, penury, chronic ill health) without once complaining, such an event, at such a young age, had been easily overcome. If Leela ever dreamt about her real mother, or pined for her unknown face, nobody ever thought to enquire.
But for an educated young girl from the city – well, that was different – such a death, for such a daughter, was a trauma.
Meera mourned her mother flamboyantly and persistently, wearing the marriage necklace at inappropriate times: over her sari when they walked to the fish market, or to lectures at college. She who had always hated cooking learnt to prepare her mother’s favourite dishes. As their father wept and did his best to carry on, and Leela retreated into silence, Meera explored the extravagant hinterland of grief.
It was in this mood, one night at dinner the following spring, that Meera announced she had taken a decision. Instead of going to Delhi University for an MA as they had already agreed, she would spend the following two years at Santiniketan, studying Sanskrit at Rabindranath Tagore’s university in the Bengal country side, just as her mother had done before her.
Privately, their father was appalled. Tagore was revered by Bengalis as a kind of saint, and because of this, the university he founded had a reputation for an almost otherworldly devotion to authentic Indianness (whatever that meant). Meera’s mother had studied there in the 1950s, and he remembered how, on their first meeting – in Flurys cake shop on Park Street – she had talked with a boldness that belied her mild demeanour of how Santiniketan alone of India’s educational institutions was capable of forging in its students a proper understanding of, and respect for, indigenous culture. Sitting there in Flurys, gazing at her lowered eyes, listening to her speaking, he had found the adulation preposterous. Twenty years later, he considered that his witty, cosmopolitan daughter was making a big mistake. The university was no longer what it had been; even for a Bengali, it had become provincial. Gently, he tried to persuade her of the merits of the capital, of the fine teachers in the English literature department at Delhi University. But Meera was not to be dissuaded; and whatever Meera had set her mind on, Leela had to do too. So it was in some perplexity and with many misgivings that early one stifling morning in July, Mr Bose saw his two daughters off at Howrah station, never suspecting, poor man, that the villainous Vyasa, recently appointed as Santiniketan’s youngest professor of Sanskrit, was readying himself to enter their lives; unable to predict, as I was, that chaos would ensue.
5
On the eve of his daughter’s wedding, Shiva Prasad Sharma, guardian of the national identity, saviour of pure Hindu India, was sitting at home in his small South Delhi flat, full of thoughts of his Autobiography. This morning he had completed the dictation of his early childhood up to the age of ten. It was at that point in his life – the year being 1945, the month November, fifty-six years ago almost to the day – that he had delivered his first public act of prodigiosity. His assistant, Manoj, a young man from Varanasi whose sole task it was currently to type up the Autobiography, had been greatly moved by the event. ‘But, sir,’ he exclaimed in Hindi, ‘was it possible that as a child you
Leela had lost her parents once already – but that was in the village. It was silently understood that since the peasantry in the countryside bore all sorts of troubles (bereavement, penury, chronic ill health) without once complaining, such an event, at such a young age, had been easily overcome. If Leela ever dreamt about her real mother, or pined for her unknown face, nobody ever thought to enquire.
But for an educated young girl from the city – well, that was different – such a death, for such a daughter, was a trauma.
Meera mourned her mother flamboyantly and persistently, wearing the marriage necklace at inappropriate times: over her sari when they walked to the fish market, or to lectures at college. She who had always hated cooking learnt to prepare her mother’s favourite dishes. As their father wept and did his best to carry on, and Leela retreated into silence, Meera explored the extravagant hinterland of grief.
It was in this mood, one night at dinner the following spring, that Meera announced she had taken a decision. Instead of going to Delhi University for an MA as they had already agreed, she would spend the following two years at Santiniketan, studying Sanskrit at Rabindranath Tagore’s university in the Bengal country side, just as her mother had done before her.
Privately, their father was appalled. Tagore was revered by Bengalis as a kind of saint, and because of this, the university he founded had a reputation for an almost otherworldly devotion to authentic Indianness (whatever that meant). Meera’s mother had studied there in the 1950s, and he remembered how, on their first meeting – in Flurys cake shop on Park Street – she had talked with a boldness that belied her mild demeanour of how Santiniketan alone of India’s educational institutions was capable of forging in its students a proper understanding of, and respect for, indigenous culture. Sitting there in Flurys, gazing at her lowered eyes, listening to her speaking, he had found the adulation preposterous. Twenty years later, he considered that his witty, cosmopolitan daughter was making a big mistake. The university was no longer what it had been; even for a Bengali, it had become provincial. Gently, he tried to persuade her of the merits of the capital, of the fine teachers in the English literature department at Delhi University. But Meera was not to be dissuaded; and whatever Meera had set her mind on, Leela had to do too. So it was in some perplexity and with many misgivings that early one stifling morning in July, Mr Bose saw his two daughters off at Howrah station, never suspecting, poor man, that the villainous Vyasa, recently appointed as Santiniketan’s youngest professor of Sanskrit, was readying himself to enter their lives; unable to predict, as I was, that chaos would ensue.
5
On the eve of his daughter’s wedding, Shiva Prasad Sharma, guardian of the national identity, saviour of pure Hindu India, was sitting at home in his small South Delhi flat, full of thoughts of his Autobiography. This morning he had completed the dictation of his early childhood up to the age of ten. It was at that point in his life – the year being 1945, the month November, fifty-six years ago almost to the day – that he had delivered his first public act of prodigiosity. His assistant, Manoj, a young man from Varanasi whose sole task it was currently to type up the Autobiography, had been greatly moved by the event. ‘But, sir,’ he exclaimed in Hindi, ‘was it possible that as a child you
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