Chapter 6-

ONLY IN PEARLS

STANDING at the window of their bedroom, Dewan-bahadur Tekchand looked nervously at his watch, and then down at the waiting car where the chauffeur, tall and bearded and dressed in a fresh white uniform, was running a dust cloth over the bonnet of the Buick. His wife sat at the dressing table, wearing a gold- bordered white sari and her pearls, putting the final touches to her make-up. 'Sundar is wearing the other necklace,' she said.

He grunted absent-mindedly, and again looked at his watch.

'I don't think you were so nervous even when you came to see me, the first time,' she taunted him.

Tekchand gave her a fond look. 'Somehow this seems much.1 more important,' he said, and then, as though to make up for his lack of grace, added: 'It was different with you. I knew I was going to marry you long before I ever came to see you-after seeing your photograph. You certainly took a long time making up your mind,' she pouted.

She was putting a chain of white mogra flowers in her hair. The palla of her sari had dropped off and her choli was still unbuttoned, its silk stretching tightly across the back. In the mirror of the dressing table, he watched her breasts straining against their narrow strip of gauze. Like fruit showing through a net, he reflected, some wheat-coloured fruit, lush and ripe. She was an attractive woman, mature but well-preserved, with a glowing skin and a firm, vibrant body, and today she looked breathtakingly lovely, he thought, all primped up and flushed with excitement. 'He is coming to see your daughter, not you," he chided. 'Otherwise I would not have been nervous at all.'

In the mirror, he saw his wife blush at the compliment and reward him with a hard, level, low-lidded look; a look that, in the secret language that had evolved between them over the years of intimacy, held a special message for him. Who would have thought a woman in her thirty-ninth year could make you tremble all over like that, just with a look, Tekchand mused. Just as well she looks a little like you,' he said. 'A lot like you." "She is much more like you, really,' his wife said. 'Everyone says so. It is Debi who takes after me."

The mention of his son's name caused Tekchand to frown, shadowing his thoughts with a vague sense of uneasiness which he could not explain. 'He should have been here now, to...to help with things,' he complained, looking once again at his watch. 'Surely he could have given his gymnasium a miss today."

"He will be here all right, before you get back from the hotel- he promised, his wife assured him. I am rather glad that he does go to the gymnasium so regularly. He is looking so fit these days; much more colour in his cheeks.'

It is most odd, all this interest in physical culture. And it has lasted six years almost. I should have thought it would have passed off by now. I mean it just isn't normall I don't like it at all. And staying out late every now and then.' He shook his head.

"You don't think it's a woman, do you?"

A woman! Oh, go on! Debi isn't twenty yet. He is with boys all the time, wrestling and doing dands. I don't think he's even given a thought to women. How old were you?' "What d'you mean, how old was I?"

You know perfectly well what I mean,' his wife said, narrowing her eyes. 'How old were you when you began to think of women- I mean, seriously."

Not till I married you. But then no woman had made eyes at me like that."

'Liar!' his wife said, but she was not looking at him any more. She was rubbing the stopper of the perfume bottle behind her ears and in the centre of her palms and in the cleft of her breasts and finally under her nostrils.

He had always adored these gestures, the routine finishing touches to his wife's toilet. She caught his eyes in the mirror but said nothing. She put back the stopper on the Chanel bottle and tucked away her breasts in the choli. Then she got up and stood before the mirror for a final look at herself. A well-to-do, high- born Hindu woman dressed up for a formal occasion, poised, self-assured, exuding the aura of housewifeliness extolled in the myths of gods and goddesses, disturbingly beautiful but, dressed up like that, vaguely sanctified and unsexed. Like Ravi Varma's picture of Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity, her husband. thought. One could not think of making a pass at someone who stood on a pedestal, waiting to be worshipped.

Satisfied with what she saw, she came and sat down once more.

"What does Sundar feel about... about today?' he asked.

"Excited, excited and happy too, I think. At twenty a girl understands these things. I told her about the young man, and I think she's really thrilled-what girl wouldn't be? Will he be bringing any friend with him, do you think?"

'Oh God-I hope not!"

I have told them to lay tea for eight, just in case. But he shouldn't really bring more than a couple of friends. It's wrong to bring more, just as it is wrong to come alone."

'I expect he will be sensible about it,' Tekchand said. "He's a very modern young man, from all accounts."

This was a great moment in their lives, the culmination of months of planning and manoeuvring. The young man who was now on his way to the formal ceremony of a bridegroom coming to 'seek' his bride, was something of a catch by any standards. Admittedly, he was seven years older than Sundari, but that hardly constituted a major drawback. How many parents of marriageable daughters must have written to him since he was nineteen or so, sent photographs, made overtures through com- mon friends, dangled handsome dowries before him as indeed Tekchand and his wife had. He had turned down all offers so far; and now he was coming to their house to see their daughter. There was not a more eligible bridegroom in the whole of India. But there could not be many girls like Sundari, either: looks, upbringing, a certain amount of money, a college education; someone who would fit in with the westernized life that most well-to-do Indians had become accustomed to.

"You had better take out a bottle of sherry,' his wife said.

"Sherry! At tea-time?" 

"Yes, of course. These days, all young men have a drink now and then. And he is said to be so modern. We don't want him to think that we are old-fashioned.'

'Of course we don't. And yet, sherry at tea-time...he trailed off and glanced at his watch again. I wish Debi had thought of staying in today..

If you look at your watch once more, I shall scream!' his wife said in sudden exasperation. Her voice was slightly edgy, showing that under the flush and the rouge, she too was feeling the strain. Or was it something else? The lash of some other kind of tension? Something to do with Debi-dayal? He wondered.

He came and perched on a corner of the cane stool and took her hand in his. Then, encouraged by her response, because she had edged away a little to make room for him, he put his arms around her and drew her close. He began caressing her throat, now smelling of perfume, at first gently, and then with a suddenly aroused hunger.

She freed her arms and pushed him away, gently but firmly. "There is not much time,' she laughed. 'I still have to see to a number of things. Perhaps it would be just as well if you were to go and bring Prince Charming, the way you're behaving!"

"Yes, of course,' Tekchand said, rising with alacrity.

"You had better put out some whisky too,' his wife told him. In a decanter just in case.

Her husband gave her a hard stare, and then went downstairs to take out the sherry and the whisky.

Once again they were in the bedroom. Tekchand could see that the tension of the afternoon had left his wife. Now she was relaxed and elated at the success of the day. She looked slightly drunk and ready to grant reckless favours, eager to engulf him in her private glow of ecstacy.

Tekchand was already in bed, slightly angry with himself over his preoccupation with affairs of business, thoughts which held him back from savouring the full glow of their triumph. The way the police had handled his complaint had been most slipshod. A mistake in accounting, they had tried to tell him. Such mistakes did not occur in his company, not with explosives. He had complained to the Commissioner of the C.I.D. that they were not taking his complaint seriously and had been fobbed off with the same sort of reply.

His thoughts were deflected by the sudden tinkle of bangles, almost deliberate in its insistence. He looked at his wife but failed to catch her eye. She was undressing, giving the process the sort of concentration that only a woman could be capable of, he reflected. She took off her sari and folded it neatly before putting it in the cupboard. Then she peeled off her choli and brassière and put them away in the wicker basket for washing. After that she stood in front of the dressing table and wriggled her hips until her petticoat slipped off with a swish and dropped around her in a pool of shimmering silk. For a time she stood, studying herself in the mirror, and then sat down on the low stool in front of it.

It was hot in the room, and the ceiling fan revolved in slow circles over their beds, kept separated as she had always insisted, with the reading-lamp table between them. He lit a cigarette and turned to look at his wife, suddenly remembering the promise of the afternoon.

She was removing the flowers from her hair, putting them away in a saucer of water to keep them fresh for the morning. Then she began to remove the jewellery she wore.

In the harsh glow of the cluster of lights overhead, he looked at his wife's arching back, and then at the reflection in the mirror, his mouth, in spite of all the years of intimacy, feeling slightly dry. She was unscrewing her diamond ear-clips. Her lips were pressing on the slightly protruding tongue and her face held the suggestion of a wince as though turning the screws was causing her pain.

Few women close to forty could sit stark naked in front of a mirror in that kind of light with so much assurance, he mused, with a purely possessive glow of pride, and then he found himself trying to determine exactly where the process of ageing had begun to show: two minute furrows on her forehead, accentuated now in her preoccupation over the removal of the ear-clips, the slight coarsening of the skin around the nostrils, the fullness under the jaw that had not been there before, the slack of the breasts, the darkening patches around the nipples, the almost unnoticeable heaviness of the abdomen with its suggestion of a fold, the mottling of the flesh over the hips and inside the thighs. And yet, the overall effect was one of ripeness and bloom, he told himself, like a mango at its juiciest, not of decay and age. She had been careful about her figure, and lucky with the bone-structure of her face. where had he read that a woman was at her loveliest at thirty-eight, or was it something that he had made up himself?

In softer light... he ran his tongue over his lips. 'Don't take off the pearls," he told her. 'I like you in pearls-just pearls.'

She said nothing in reply, but she did not take off her necklace. She soaked a pad of cotton wool in some kind of toilet water and began to remove her make-up, and after that daubed some of the lotion under her arms. Then she turned the stool and sat facing him.

'I like him,' she said. 'Sundari is very lucky."

'Did Sundari say anything?" he asked.

'She didn't have to say anything girls don't, unless they have objections." I am glad that Mr. Chandidar said "no" when I asked him to have a whisky and thank heavens he didn't bring anyone else with him."

'He was just being on his best behaviour. And you had better learn to call him Gopal now; he is going to be your son-in-law.'

"Is that what you call him?" I call him Gopi-he told me to call him Gopi. That's what his friends call him.'

'He certainly seems to have made a hit with you. He was all over you."

She smiled. It is customary for a prospective groom to make himself agreeable to the girl's mother." 'I don't know. I should have expected him to be a little more reserved... you know what I mean, shy....

'Oh, but he was so delightfully spontaneous. So natural." And yet I could hardly get a word out of the man,' he grumbled. And who is to blame? The way you kept glaring at the poor thing; as though he were someone who had come to kidnap your daughter thought I was most courteous, I even tried to press a drink on him.' 

'Darling, if you could only have seen yourself. ... as though merely being civil was an effort. And the whisky knew you were dying for a drink yourself. I noticed the way you poured it. It looked quite fierce." ...why, I

He wondered if he had ever had a drink in her presence without her noticing its colour. 'And I'm not so sure about his being on his best behaviour,' he said. "The way he jumped at it when you suggested that he should take Sundar for a drive!"

She laughed and made a face at him. 'But darling, they've got to get to know each other; they have to be given all opportunities. And don't you remember how you yourself wanted me to go out for a walk with you in the garden after my parents had left us alone on the verandah."

But you never came,' he complained. 'Didn't you want to?"

"You know I wanted to, but my mother had not said anything about it. These days, a mother just can't afford to miss out on any of these things.

Do you mean to say that you had told Sundari she should go for a drive in the car with him after tea?"

She nodded. 'Naturally. But don't you... don't you like him?" "Oh, I suppose he's all right. And yet I can't help feeling that they should not have gone for a drive all by themselves. It...it seems so forward. Why couldn't Dhansingh have taken them?" 'No, Dhansingh could not have taken them; oh, no. And remember, Gopi is not a... not a bachha, like our Debi. He has been abroad, been around with girls...

You mean he has... that he has had sex experience?'

She went on smiling, but did not answer his question.

He sat up in bed. 'Do you really think so?" he asked. She still ignored his question. Instead she said:

"I did not like the way Debi seemed to react to him. They had hardly anything to say to each other."

The thought of the way his son had behaved towards their guest brought a frown on Tekchand's face. He stretched back on his pillows. "I don't know what has come over the boy; Mr.

Chandidar, on the other hand, was so courteous. He even asked Debi to go and stay with him in Bombay during his holidays.

It would do him a lot of good, instead of his being always tied up with wrestling friends. So... so common." 

"I thought it most sensible of Gopi not to bring anyone else with him. I wonder what sort of ring he will give her."

'I hope he will go."

"Who?"

'Debi. I want him to go and stay with Chandidar... Gopal, for a while. Do you think he will?

"Of course he will," his wife assured him. I shall make him go. Then, perhaps we could even send Sundari for a few days, without causing comment.' She rose and picked up the petticoat lying at her feet, and folded it and put it away. Then she went into the bath-room. When she came out, a few minutes later, she was still naked. She switched off the overhead lights and went and lay down in her own bed.

He turned and leaned on his elbow to look at her. Now, with the shaded bedside light casting only a soft glow over the bed, she looked just as he had always wanted her to look, the imperfec- tions that had not been there when he had first seen her naked suddenly touched away by an artist's brush. 'I like him,' she said. 'So handsome, so well-mannered.'

In spite of himself, a sudden prick of jealousy flashed through his mind for the youth and good looks of the man who was going to be his son-in-law. Why was she going on about him like that? It was curious, how their minds worked.

"I thought he was so much... oh, so much like you when you came to my father's house to see me,' she was saying. 'So refined and a little shy at first; and then, when you got to know him, so friendly."

He did not say anything. His thoughts flew back into the past, to the day when he had first seen his wife; the slender, demure girl in the pale-green sari who at first would not raise her head to look at him, and then, when her parents left them together for a few minutes, reached out and touched his hand. It was difficult to think that the woman lying on the bed without a stitch of clothing, wearing only the pearls he had given her because he wanted her to wear them, was the same girl. 'How you keep staring at me,' she complained, 'after twenty- one years of marriage!"

'I don't feel we've been married all that long, and in any case, you look exactly as you did then." 

She closed her eyes and covered her breasts with her hands. "And I don't feel married at all,' she said, very flatly, not addressing the remark to him, but just speaking out. Not to you or anyone.

"What are you, then? What are you doing on that bed with nothing on? Nothing except the pearls."

I am your mistress; a kept woman, and you have just bought me by giving me the pearl necklace, and I am a little frightened of what you are going to do to me, because this is the first time.. just shows what a woman will do for a string of pearls-wait to be ravished by a complete stranger.'

He was slightly shocked by her mood; and yet, in some way, he was prepared for it, since however inadequately, it matched his own mood too. Twenty-one years, he remembered. How often, in those years, he had stilled the raging fires of that body? Two thousand one hundred times at least. And yet, whenever she wished, she could still evoke within him the wildest longing for her. Even though her body had lost its girlish slenderness and hardness, it was more than ever capable of responding to a caress; he thought of the way her breasts swelled under his hand's gentle stroking, the way her legs shivered at the touch of his lips; maturity had only given it a fiercer, wilder appetite.

Like a musical instrument, he thought, seasoned by use, a taut string tuned for its best performance. Two thousand and one hundred times? Three thousand? But for him, it was like the first time, always. What did that mean? That theirs was the perfect marriage, the perfect love? And yet, God knew that in those twenty-one years, he himself had not always been faithful to her.

And yet, with the others it had never been the same. It was an act of lust, an almost purely physical experience, something that a healthy and hard-working man needed for toning up his system, like exercise; toning up his system and clearing his brain. It did not mean anything at all, did not stir something deep within you.

But what about her? What happened when he himself was away and she felt like this; during all his business trips; those three months in Europe in 1933? Did she then lie like that, a wanton brown goddess stretched out on the white sheets, desirable, desiring, for someone else?-mad with desire, not caring who it was as he himself had not cared. Who? Some lover with whom she had made an assignation? It was difficult for a woman situated as she was. A casual tumble in the bedroom with some lusty servant called up on an errand? The chauffeur Dhansingh-built like a dark Apollo; virile, young, earthy; the perfect counterpart of the sort of woman he himself would choose; someone who could give her all that her body longed for.

Suddenly he was ashamed of his thoughts. What did it matter; love such as theirs could not be polluted by lapses of the body, lapses he himself had succumbed to. If ever a marriage had been blessed by the gods, it was theirs.

She turned her back to him and settled herself more com- fortably, drawing up her knees and wriggling her toes, spelling out another unmistakable signal for him. The way their marital relationship had developed, he was usually the one who responded even though it was for him to show that he was making the initial advance, exercising the prerogative of the male. For a moment longer, he went on looking; the black hair falling on both sides of the neck, the square, well-set shoulders, the straight, narrowing back, the sudden voluptuousness of the buttocks, the inner whiteness of the silk-soft thighs, the long, slender legs.

She turned and lay on her stomach, lazily stretching out her legs. Obeying a private signal, he shed his muslin kurta and pyjamas and walked across to her bed. He gave a slight pat on her seat and she turned on her back, swiftly as a fish in water. As he crouched over her, he found her feet planted on his chest, resisting him, pushing him away.

From the beginning, darling,' she whispered. 'Remember we are not married. You are a bad man who has bought me with the pearls. This is the first time. You are my lover."

Obediently, eagerly, he joined in, beginning at the beginning; following a method in the chapter of Anangaranga which bore the heading, 'How to seduce a virgin' and which he had long ago read to her in bed.

On that occasion they had laughed rather a lot about the elaborate ritual prescribed. Today neither of them laughed. He kissed her insteps and then the palms of her hands and then thrust his face between the breasts where the scent of Chanel

No. 5 was mixed with the scent of her body. It had a distinctive scent of its own, heady and delicate. He remembered reading somewhere that the odour of perspiration under sexual stimula- tion was quite different from that of normal sweat.

You are a wild man from the jungle; a soldier who has killed his adversary and abducted his wife, me; a big, red-faced soldier smelling of drink,' she was whispering.

Her mood had already changed, from the subtleties of Ananga- ranga to the brutal, gluttonous love of soliders and wild men, but now they were too close to each other for him to feel shocked by what she was saying.

Fate did not deny them that particular favour that night, the last time they would ever make love to each other like that; the coiling together, the surrender and the rapture of two human bodies made for each other, tuned to each other's demands by long years of practice, like two musical instruments playing in perfect harmony, a last loud pæean to the act of procreation.

It was later that night, as they lay, spent and contented and. sleepy but unwilling to surrender to sleep because they wanted to re-live the triumph of the day, that they heard the crunch of wheels of the car in the drive-way below, and after that of the car stopping and of doors being opened by the night watchman and the sound of conversation in the hall below the stairs.

I can't imagine who it can be,' Tekchand said, as he slipped on a dressing gown, 'at this time of night. I'll go down and see."

A white sergeant and two constables were waiting for him in the hall, and behind them he could see the blue-black police car with wire-gauze windows.

"My name is Pearce,' the sergeant introduced himself, touching his cap. Sergeant Pearce. I have a warrant for the arrest of your son, Debi-dayal.'

This was not true. There must be some mistake. Things like this did not happen to people like him. Not in the India of the British. 'What... what is my son supposed to have done?" Tekchand stammered.

Revolutionary activities, Sergeant Pearce said, 'Burning up an aeroplane. Stealing explosives and detonators-stealing them and using them too, to blow up trains,' and then, seeing the expression of shock on Tekchand's face, Sergeant Pearce said: I'm about this, sir." sorry 

THE SEASHORE NEAR BOMBAY

Not many of them belonged to the Cricket Club, but they made a point of addressing the barman as 'Eddie', and fewer still belonged to the Willingdon, but they spoke familiarly of the special facilities of its dressing room. They travelled between Bombay and Poona according to the racing season, and every three years they made trips to Europe, just to keep in touch, as they said, and to buy some suits and shoes in London; and of course they always took the Italian line because they didn't want to be mixed up with all the koi-hais who travelled by the P & O, so that by now they had come to know all the pursers and stewards on both the Contes. Most of them had their own shacks at Juhu or Marve, or at least shacks belonging to friends which they had been allowed to use, and in these shacks they gave the most delightful pyjama parties by moonlight and played poker and rummy and vingt-et-un every night for no-limit stakes.

On racing days, they dressed conventionally, the men in pearl-grey suits made in London with matching English-made felt hats and carrying outsize binoculars, and the women in gorgeous, gold-bordered saris and carrying race-cards and elegant little pencils. They all found their way into the members' enclosure even though it was known that few of them would have qualified for membership, and they placed heavy bets on all the races and spoke casually of their losses and even more casually of their winnings.

The rest of the week, both the men and the women wore white linen bush-shirts, coloured slacks and Bombay chaplis. Most of them possessed, or had friends who possessed, red sports cars equipped with superchargers, in which they invariably beat the Deccan Queen to Poona by several minutes.

They were the fast set of a metropolis, the high-living men and women who were almost a natural growth on the life of a big city, like mushrooms growing on a dry log; and if you made allowances for climate and upbringing and religious inhibitions and eating habits, they might just as easily have belonged to Shanghai or San Francisco or Buenos Aires, as to Bombay.

The core of the set was formed by the more sporting princes; the inner circle comprised young Indians from Oxford or Cam- bridge who now could not fit themselves into any truly Indian. backgrounds, also the sons of rich Marwaris feeling their oats, The rank and file were the men and women who lived off them: racing sharks, card sharpers, society prostitutes, bootleggers and pimps. There was the usual leavening of foreigners: a couple of white Russians with grandiose titles and unpronounceable names, diamond-wearing refugees who had fled from Hitler's Germany, and a dozen or so Middle-European women of indeterminate ages and easy morals who spoke no language known to any of them but who seemed to get along just as well without. There was, too, the inevitable sprinkling of Eurasians pretending to be Italian counts, Arabian horse-dealers who were actually gold smugglers, and Chinese shipowners who were actually opium smugglers.

It was almost by a natural process of gravitation that Gopal Chandidar had found his way into this set, for, without being aware of it, he provided just the cementing influence to hold its disparate elements together. They needed him for the prestige of his family name, and even more so for his money. And he too needed them. After three years at a college in England, he had become too westernized to fit smoothly into his own kind of society. He represented the modern generation, staunchly opposed to the structure of the joint Hindu family with its rule by the elders, its clinical segregation of the male and the female. In his own family, it was considered sinful to drink a glass of beer, and ballroom dancing was a shockingly immoral western innovation. He had cut himself away from it without regret, and the nearest substitute for what he-and other Westernized young Indians like himself-hankered for, was the linen-bush-shirt and sunglasses set of Bombay. A young Parsi journalist who was a few years his senior at Oxford had taken him to a game of poker at one of the Prince's
parties, and now, barely six months later, he was a part of the circle himself, though he had not yet taken to wearing dark glasses. He fitted neatly into the pattern. He had joined the Race Club, bought a half-interest in a horse, and begun to enjoy playing cards for high stakes. His secluded, double-storied bungalow on the far side of Juhu was ideal for parties.

And yet, at times, he could not help feeling an outsider, the man who did not quite belong. It was all very well playing cards for high stakes for an hour or two after dinner, but it was not his idea of fun to spend an entire night playing chemin-de-fer in a smoke-filled room.

Tonight was one of those nights. They had gathered at the house of Prince Amjid, and had far too much to eat and drink. He felt a headache coming on. He had slipped out of the little air-conditioned room where they were playing, and lay back on one of the enormous stuffed chairs on the verandah overlooking the sea. From the inner room, he could hear the murmur of their voices, interspersed by sudden sharp exclamations.

What did he have in common with a myopic Prince with fat legs and diamonds in his ears?-he found himself wondering. The Prince who slept throughout the hours of daylight and only came to life at night. He was said to receive ten thousand rupees a day for his pocket money-about three times as much as he himself made in a whole month. And yet, he was in debt to some of the Marwaris. He even owed Gopal over two thousand rupees since their last poker game three weeks earlier. He had made no move to settle up. For a moment, he wondered if he could slip away without telling anyone. Or would that look too pointed? The Prince was the sort of person who was certain to connect it with his gambling debt. What was there to do when he got home, anyway-read a book?

He saw Malini at the other end of the verandah, walking towards him, holding two tall glasses in her hands. She was dressed in white beach pyjamas, a halter and sandals, and her face and arms and shoulders looked a lovely shade of copper, like an advertisement for suntan lotion. Gopal had met her several times, at just such parties as this one, and had felt attracted by her; but he had shown no interest in her because everyone knew that she was the Prince's mistress and that he was childishly jealous. But now he was in the process of making up to one of the Central European women and was showing unmistakable signs of dropping Malini. Today it was Tanya whom the Prince had wanted to sit by him, 'to bring me luck' as he said. For a moment, as Malini came up, Gopal found himself wondering whether he would have preferred Tanya to Malini, if he were in the Prince's place.

Malini came, walking delicately, so as not to spill the drinks. she carried, luscious, strikingly attractive; Tanya, on the other hand, was in the room at the other end of the house, snuggling up to the Prince to bring him luck. It would be nice to take Malini on if the Prince was really dropping her, Gopal reflected. She stopped close to his chair. 'All alone or waiting for someone?" she asked.

He liked her voice, husky and low-pitched. She must be trained to speak like that, he decided, for he knew that she often played small parts in films. All alone,' he told her.

'Oh good,' Malini said without smiling. I came out with two drinks; one for myself and one for whoever would sit and hold my hand." He laughed. 'I wouldn't need to be offered a drink to hold your hand,' he told her.

She gave him a hard, level, look. I hardly expected that you would turn out to be a friend: I always thought you were one of those who shy away from women.' She handed him one of the glasses. 'Cheers!' she said.

'Aren't you going to sit down?" he asked. 'I can't very well hold your hand while you are standing up."

She lowered herself on to the arm of his chair, very carefully, but even so some of the whisky from her glass spilled on the carpet. She must have had a lot to drink, he thought.

Tell me,' she said after a time. "Are you allowed to visit your brother-in-law in jail?"

'He's not my brother-in-law,' Gopal said.

'Oh, I am sorry; is there a hitch or something?"

"No, there is no hitch; just that I don't acquire a brother-in-law until the marriage takes place." 

'Oh, I am so glad; really glad. Actually I should have thought it would be so exciting to have a convict for a brother-in-law."

Was she being bitchy?-he asked himself; was that why she had come out, brought him a drink-just so that she could take it out on someone because her Prince had discarded her?

'I thought you wanted to be friendly,' he said. 'Oh dear! Have I said anything wrong? I was only trying to be companionable; but I seem to have offended you." 'Oh, no,' he assured her. 'I am getting quite used to people asking me about Debi-dayal."

You're really not angry with little me, are you, sweet?"

'Of course not.'

"Good, because you really are rather a pet. Let's take our drinks on the sand. What do you say to that? It's much cooler, out on the beach." They both went out of the verandah and into the dark night towards the dim line of the sand, carrying their drinks with them.

When they returned, about an hour later and rejoined the others in the cardroom, they found them still bending over the card table with grim concentration. The men had fat black cigars stuck in their mouths and all of them had glasses of whisky at their elbows while the two Princes had the two women clinging to their chairs to bring them luck. No one turned to look at them.

'Banco!' someone called.

Malini gave an artificial yawn and wriggled her shoulders. Darling, I am dead with sleep,' she said to Amjid. 'Mr. Chandidar is driving me back. Nighty-night."

No one turned. Casually, they walked out of the cold room filled with cigar smokeand the fumes of whisky and the women's perfume. 'Huit à la banquel' they heard someone shout in the cardroom.

=assured him. He must be careful not to besmirch the family's prestige. Even his aunt, the Maharani of Begwad, sent him a long telegram telling him that he must not marry Sundari.arisons of means and methods. On 12th July, when Debi-dayal was sentenced to life imprisonment, almost all the evening papers carried his photograph. Most of the Chandidars had implored Gopal to break off his engagement. They would find another bride for him, they ssured him. He must be careful not to besmirch the family's prestige. Even his aunt, the Maharani of Begwad, sent him a long telegram telling him that he must not marry Sundari.

Gopal had taken no notice of their clamour. He had little in common with them. They would never have understood how: difficult it was for someone like him to find the bride of his choice among the higher-caste Hindus. They matched couples through horoscopes, and as far as they were concerned, looks took a second place to such considerations as caste and orthodox upbringing. He had had to turn down dozens of proposals which they had regarded as suitable, and he certainly had no intention of starting all over again and ending up by marrying someone old-fashioned, someone like his aunt, who actually observed strict purdah.

Early in August, Sundari came to Bombay. He took her to lunch at Cornaglia's, and during lunch, she explained to him that she had come to Bombay to visit her brother who was in the jail at Thana.

That was the first time they had mentioned Debi-dayal's name. If Gopal wanted to say anything about breaking their engagement on account of him, this was the time to say it. He sat looking at her for a long time, without saying anything. Then he said:

'I didn't know he was at Thana.'

"They gather them there,' she explained, 'before being trans- ported. They will all be taken away in a week or so-for life.'

There was nothing he could think of saying; this was something they would have to learn to live with. He was glad that she had not burst into sobs or made a scene.

"Tomorrow is a visiting day,' Sundari said. 'And Debi has

agreed to see me." Oh,' Gopal said. 'Oh, I see."

"The last visiting day. I don't know what I am going to say to him-what can one say? I have always loved Debi. You see, he and I have always been very close." "Such a shame that he went astray,' said Gopal. Sundari stopped eating and looked evenly at him. He did not go astray,' she said. 'He just happened to be one of the unlucky ones who were caught. According to his lights, he was only doing what he thought was his duty. 

Unlucky, he thought, not wrong; someone deserving of pity, but not censure. The line of thought gave him a mental jar. "There is something in that, of course," he said weakly. And yet...

'Don't you see? He was trying to be sincere and brave. It is. it is our thinking that may be all wrong... those of us who are willing to live under foreign rule without qualms people like my father. And yet, there are others... look at the patriots in Ireland...look at America; how she got her independence by people protesting and fighting. If their young men had not striven to overthrow foreign rule, they would never have been free. This was a new Sundari, earnest, impassioned. Where was it that he had read, that a woman could look more tender than a petal and yet be harder than steel inside-in some Sanskrit romantic poem, surely; but that was what her face reminded him of. He went on staring at her, taken aback by her fervour.

'But Father will never see it in that way. He thinks that the Americans who fought to win independence were heroes, but that our own fighters are seditionists,' Sundari was saying. 'Can one blame Debi for being so bitter? He has refused to see Father."

Gopal, too, thought of people like Debi-dayal as seditionists. I am sorry to hear that,' he said. "Your father must be so upset.'

'But I myself was not at all surprised. He and Debi belong to different worlds; he keeps wanting to apologise about what Debi has done, instead of being proud. I am the only one in the family who understands how Debi feels about... about these things. Do you think you could drive me over?"

The question came so suddenly, that for a moment he was at a loss to say anything. He had resented being associated with the scandal. He had been educated in England, and he worked in a British firm. He also held an honorary commission in the British- Indian army. As far as people like Debi-dayal, or even the followers of Mahatma Gandhi were concerned, he was staunchly in the opposite camp. He could not afford to get mixed up with them, let alone visit them in jails.

"To the... to Thana ?" he asked.

She must have noticed his hesitation. 'Oh, never mind. On second thoughts, perhaps it would be better if I were to go by
myself." 

"But of course I will take you,' he said.

"You know this has nothing to do with you. Actually, several people have hinted that you might even wish to break off our engagement. I just... What absolute nonsense!' he protested.

'Do let me finish. I just wanted to say that if you do wish to break off the engagement, I would understand perfectly."

"Now stop being silly, he told her. 'And try and eat some of that pomfret. I will certainly drive you to Thana, or anywhere else you want to go."

The next morning, they drove to Thana. He stopped the car in the cobbled courtyard in front of the jail. Facing them was a long, thirty-foot high, wall, and in the centre of the wall, a great steel door. The big door had a small, one-man door set in one of its panels, guarded by a yellow-turbanned policeman. A prison official met them just inside the door and led them through a long corridor smelling of sisal and coconut fibre, to a small room where he left them.

From where they sat, awed and expectant, they could hear the sound of doors opening on creaky hinges and of footsteps in the corridors outside. The room had a small, grilled window opening into another room, and behind the window, there was a high stool for the prisoner to sit.

Gopal felt ill at ease, small; in the position of supplicant before a minor government official. He had never seen the inside of a jail before. The Superintendent came and introduced himself, and then he said:

I am sorry, Mr. Chandidar, but the prisoner will only see Miss Kerwad. That is his right, of course, to see or not see any of his visitors. If you would care to wait in my office...

After all that waiting, the bracing up for an ordeal, the drawing upon reserves of good manners, it was like a slap in the face. He tried not to show his chagrin. 'No, no; I shall wait in the car, outside,' he offered, rising.

"I am sorry, but that is his privilege,' the Superintendent apologised. 'I have to observe the rules.

"Yes, of course,' Gopal said. The Seashore near Bombay

Fifteen minutes later, when Sundari came out, escorted by the Superintendent himself, her eyes were wet with tears. All through the drive back to town, she did not say a word to him. He drove angrily, concentrating on the mechanics of the drive, and did not attempt to speak to her or comfort her. They were held too far apart by their different bonds. They were separated even before they were joined together in matrimony, for their marriage was still more than two months away, when the auspicious season would begin.