have laughed at the expression on Sunil’s face as he lost his balance and began to tumble backward. The next moment, he didn’t feel like laughing at all but went running after him down the path. Sunil didn’t roll far. His bush shirt caught in the lower branches of a little pine tree, which stood a foot or two above a mountain ledge, and Sunil stuck there, while a few stones he had dislodged went bouncing down the path and sailed off into empty air. Farid jumped after him. He pulled and tugged at him, while Sunil awkwardly tried to heave himself back onto the path. It was not easy for either of them, for they were both overweight, out of breath, and terribly upset. When at last they managed it, Sunil slowly arose and stood there with his eyes shut in fright, while Farid felt him all over, pressing his limbs to see if anything was broken, and trembling as much as Sunil himself. Without opening his eyes, Sunil said at last, “Let me go. Take me down.”
Farid carefully led him down, his arm around Sunil’s stout waist, stopping solicitously every few steps to see if he was all right. Then he took his hat off and put it on Sunil, to guard him from the sun.
Later that day they presented themselves before Farida. “We’re all leaving tomorrow,” Sunil said.
“Certainly,” Farid said. “He can go down and we’ll go up.”
There was a pause. When Farida spoke, it was to Farid. “There’s nothing up there,” she said coldly. “Can’t you get that into your head? Absolutely nothing.” She looked at him with a face of stone.
What could he say to convince her? What could he do? He knelt beside her on the new deerskin; seen through his tears, she swam in a halo of light. He called her name out loud—“Farida! Farida!”—as if she were far away, instead of right next to him. He seized her hands and began to talk and cry desperately. He told her how he had tried to kill Sunil, so that the two of them, Farid and Farida, could go away together and everything could be again as it was. Yes, for that he had been prepared to murder their childhood friend. He said this twice, to impress it on her, but she only extracted her cool hands from between his and said, “You’re neurotic.”
“Neurotic!” Sunil exclaimed. “He’s completely psychotic. We have to get him to London for treatment.”
The next day, two other air-conditioned limousines arrived, and Sunil and Farida and the handmaidens and their luggage prepared for a stately departure. Pilgrims gathered while the cars were being loaded; they joined their hands in respectful salutation and shouted “Jai Mataji!” Some of them waved little orange flags with Farida’s picture imprinted in black. Sunil and Farida were sitting in the back of the third car, waiting for Farid to join the chauffeur on the front seat. But Farid could not be found. Sunil tapped his foot and said, “We’ll miss our plane.”
“Give him a few more minutes,” Farida said. Under her breath she muttered, “Isn’t that just like him!” A signal was given, and the two cars in front moved off. “We can’t just leave him behind!” Farida cried, as the procession began to wind downhill.
“Please smile, Farida,” Sunil said. “Please wave.” She waved at the pilgrims by the roadside as the car slowly descended, but kept turning in her seat and craning to peer behind her. For the first time in many years she looked discontented, disappointed.
Farid was standing above them at his overlook, at the terminal point of his daily walk. He looked down at the cars leaving. They seemed to go very slowly and reluctantly, and he knew it would be easy, if he wanted to, to run after them and catch them up. He felt a sensation in his heart as if someone—some other heart attached to his—were tugging him down. But he planted himself a bit more sturdily, with his legs apart, and stood his ground. The cars grew smaller, creeping down the mountain into the bazaar, into the town, into the plains below. When they were completely out of sight, he descended the path and returned to her tree. The place was deserted now, and there was nothing to be seen except her old deerskin, which someone had rolled up and stuffed under a root. Farid spread it out again and smoothed it and sat on it. He thought he would just wait here until she came back for him. Of course, this might take a long time—many years, even—but when she came at last he would say, “Let’s go up, Farida,” and after the inevitable argument she would agree.
Kuku Malhotra was a modern Indian girl who lived with her boy friend in a roof-top studio in New Delhi. Kuku was a documentary film-maker and had lately obtained a grant from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting to make a documentary about her grandmother Sumitra. It may already have been too late. Nowadays the old lady sat mostly on her lawn or her verandah, bundled in shawls in the winter, fanned by a woman servant in the summer. Her name was still known, though she herself forgotten. Most people thought she was dead, along with all the others of her generation, who had been pioneers in the early years of Independence, the first truly modern Indians. When Kuku tried to interview her about those days, she remained silent, sunk into apathy. Only her lips chewed and mumbled; she rarely wore her teeth nowadays, except when it was time to eat. She still relished her food and got very excited over it, making frantic signs to her servant to hand her more hot bread and refill her little bowls with rice and fish. It seemed to Kuku that it was only in those moments that there was any trace left of the former Sumitra—of her boundless energy and her uninhibited enjoyment of life (and, Kuku thought, of lovers) that had broken down so many barriers for Kuku’s own generation.
Born between two European world wars, Kuku’s grandmother had come of age at the right time—just as Indians were reclaiming their country from British rule. She had grown up in Bombay where her father was a very rich businessman. She had lived in a big house on a hill overlooking the Arabian Sea and surrounded by a garden thick with palm trees. Her father’s money was at her disposal and she used it freely on herself and her friends. They had parties for every occasion, birthdays and the New Year and even Christmas, besides all the Hindu holidays. There were plenty of servants, and her father employed two cooks, one for Indian and the other for European cuisine. The parents and the servants enjoyed the parties almost as much as the young guests, who had names like Bunny, Bunti and Dickoo, carried over from their pampered childhood. The parties too were carried over from their childhood, together with the balloons and the jokes and the nicknames they shared. They were attractive, high-spirited young people, and it would have been impossible to predict how serious and important and even pompous they would become within a few years. Those who stayed in Bombay entered their fathers’ businesses and expanded them beyond all previous limits; those who went to New Delhi took over the highest posts of government and became rulers, kings of their country, crowned with offices.
It may have been the pull of New Delhi with all its might and power that influenced Sumitra to marry a boy from an old Delhi family. She could have married anyone she wanted. Many offers came for her, from all the leading families of their caste. Her father laid them before her for her consideration, always emphasizing that she was entirely free to choose or reject. She rejected them all, for of course she was going to make a modern love marriage; but she refused other young men too, those with whom she had grown up and partied in their fathers’ mansions. Many of them were in love with her, and she in love with some of them. She met Hari Prasad—known as Harry—on a visit she made to a cousin in Delhi. Here too the young people were throwing parties, and though these were not as lavish as the ones in Bombay, they held another kind of attraction. A transfer of power was taking place, and while the young people were dancing to gramophone records in the drawing room, their fathers and uncles were closeted in the study distributing cabinet posts among themselves. This was intoxicating.
Even without all that, Harry was attractive enough in himself, and different
