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Authors: Annapurna Potluri
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her loveliness. Though there was some relative difference in the family’s wealth, and though Shiva was known to be a bachelor of infinite eligibility—handsome, rich and from a good family—her beauty gave her family the upper hand. He would want for no one else. Shiva’s father was like his son: tall and proud; his mother was deeply maternal, her body already heavy, her brow sympathetic and intelligent.
Both of their families had retained ownership of the land through the permanent settlement licenses reached between the East India Company and authorities of the Princely States a hundred years before. Part of the contract ensured that their families, and others in a group of then nascent landed gentry, would continue to grow not only foodcrops but also indigo and tea. The ever-increasing tax on a presumed crop had forced many families to sell their land, but the Adivis through their close connections with the English had made a success of the treaty.
F OR A NJALI , HAVING guests was always painful; to each new person who saw her she knew she inspired a new pity, or shame or disgust. Each felt she was a source of ridicule or pain. Frequent though guests were in their home, she never stopped feeling the intrusion. Her father would often receive business associates, aunts, uncles, cousins and distant relatives. Of the relatives she had her favorites, but most it seemed reserved their smiles for her sister, who would flutter into the receiving room with a tray of filled teacups. The formality of manners required in the presence of strangers made home less homelike, and the putting on of formal airs, especially in the presence of Europeans, exhausted her. In the company of her father’s Indian friends, a “namaste” and a smile were usually enough; sometimes they would ask her how she was, but nothing much more. Around Europeans she was required to answer questions too. With white guests, she was expected to talk about the weather and her studies and interests, all with a rather feigned deference to their station and race, and more often than not, the fact that they were men alienated her further; few white women called upon her parents, as many of the wives of the Englishmen remained at home in cold, stony England, or at the very least passed most of the year with their children in the hill stations, where the weather and climate were said to be more suitable for European ladies.
H ERE , AS NIGHT fell, the garden’s night bloomers opened like shy children, surreptitiously, and the scent of flowers fell over the homelike a velvet curtain. The floor, the walls, even the sheets emanated the long-held heat of day, like an angry woman opening a tightly clenched fist. Kanakadurga had gone to bed; Adivi and Anjali were reading the paper, Lalita was overseeing the servants as they completed their nightly chores, Mohini was embroidering handkerchiefs. Adivi had offered him an after-dinner drink, but Alexandre made his excuses and declined, too tired. “You girls get ready for bed!” Lalita shouted at no one in particular. “Go! Anjali! Mohini! Get up, go! Anjali! What did I say?!”
Lalita took a softer tone than her husband with Anjali, and Alexandre imagined it difficult for Lalita to see a daughter with an old woman’s gait, who walked with a cane and sighed when she bent to sit or rose to stand. From a distance, she seemed a brightly dressed elderly lady, taking her afternoon tea, and sometimes Alexandre was surprised when she would turn her head and he would see the profile of a girl.
A S THE SKY was blanketed in midnight blue, and the stars pushed from within it, bright like bits of glass, Alexandre took out the journal he had kept on the train, filled with notes on Telugu etymology and syntax, interesting idioms and sayings. Describing languages was like pinning down a butterfly; just at the moment it was caught, it fluttered its wings, already escaping. Elegant translations, for the complex words, for the higher
Both of their families had retained ownership of the land through the permanent settlement licenses reached between the East India Company and authorities of the Princely States a hundred years before. Part of the contract ensured that their families, and others in a group of then nascent landed gentry, would continue to grow not only foodcrops but also indigo and tea. The ever-increasing tax on a presumed crop had forced many families to sell their land, but the Adivis through their close connections with the English had made a success of the treaty.
F OR A NJALI , HAVING guests was always painful; to each new person who saw her she knew she inspired a new pity, or shame or disgust. Each felt she was a source of ridicule or pain. Frequent though guests were in their home, she never stopped feeling the intrusion. Her father would often receive business associates, aunts, uncles, cousins and distant relatives. Of the relatives she had her favorites, but most it seemed reserved their smiles for her sister, who would flutter into the receiving room with a tray of filled teacups. The formality of manners required in the presence of strangers made home less homelike, and the putting on of formal airs, especially in the presence of Europeans, exhausted her. In the company of her father’s Indian friends, a “namaste” and a smile were usually enough; sometimes they would ask her how she was, but nothing much more. Around Europeans she was required to answer questions too. With white guests, she was expected to talk about the weather and her studies and interests, all with a rather feigned deference to their station and race, and more often than not, the fact that they were men alienated her further; few white women called upon her parents, as many of the wives of the Englishmen remained at home in cold, stony England, or at the very least passed most of the year with their children in the hill stations, where the weather and climate were said to be more suitable for European ladies.
H ERE , AS NIGHT fell, the garden’s night bloomers opened like shy children, surreptitiously, and the scent of flowers fell over the homelike a velvet curtain. The floor, the walls, even the sheets emanated the long-held heat of day, like an angry woman opening a tightly clenched fist. Kanakadurga had gone to bed; Adivi and Anjali were reading the paper, Lalita was overseeing the servants as they completed their nightly chores, Mohini was embroidering handkerchiefs. Adivi had offered him an after-dinner drink, but Alexandre made his excuses and declined, too tired. “You girls get ready for bed!” Lalita shouted at no one in particular. “Go! Anjali! Mohini! Get up, go! Anjali! What did I say?!”
Lalita took a softer tone than her husband with Anjali, and Alexandre imagined it difficult for Lalita to see a daughter with an old woman’s gait, who walked with a cane and sighed when she bent to sit or rose to stand. From a distance, she seemed a brightly dressed elderly lady, taking her afternoon tea, and sometimes Alexandre was surprised when she would turn her head and he would see the profile of a girl.
A S THE SKY was blanketed in midnight blue, and the stars pushed from within it, bright like bits of glass, Alexandre took out the journal he had kept on the train, filled with notes on Telugu etymology and syntax, interesting idioms and sayings. Describing languages was like pinning down a butterfly; just at the moment it was caught, it fluttered its wings, already escaping. Elegant translations, for the complex words, for the higher
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