18, Betrayal

Chapter 18 - Betrayal

The House knew great good fortune as the years went by. Its renown spread almost as wide as in the days when I had held court there. And my name was always on their lips, whether wondering if I would soon come home, or marvelling at my “charisma“, made even more magical to their minds by the remembering. Often they felt that the good fortune they now enjoyed through the arts I had taught or bequeathed to them was somehow a debt which they would have to repay. They talked sometimes of my Sadhu, too, the one who led me here, who prepared me for my final mission, in more hushed tones… while my memory was a shaft of light, his was a shadow. So when, one night the night watchman (too old, now, to watch all night) was woken by a knocking at the gate and saw the half naked sadhu standing there again, he nearly had a heart attack.

He wasn’t sure if what he was seeing was a ghost, or if he’d been transported back in time, or if the Sadhu had simply returned. The sadhu said nothing. But in fact - when the sleep cleared from the night watchman’s old eyes and they’d got used to the lantern light - it was clear that this was another sadhu altogether. This one was younger, plumper, and he had shoes on his feet and a thick silver coloured watch on his wrist. But apart from that, and the loin cloth and holy thread across his chest, he was as naked as his predecessor had been. Because that’s how the night watchman thought of him, as the next sadhu in some kind of logical series… and that’s how the cook’s assistant saw him too, so this time he was prepared and offered no sweets or rice or silverware - and though the sadhu said nothing, he went straight to Bimla and woke her up, saying simply, “The Sadhu has come...”.

Bimla’s heart too, had nearly stopped when she heard this - and though this sadhu did not have the powerful aura of the first one, she too, felt somewhere in the back of her mind a flash of recognition, felt that history was folding back on itself… that there must be some significance to this repetition of the night time apparition. But she couldn’t take him into her new mistress’ bedroom as she had done the first time, not when she was lying there with her husband (for though Chitra and Ravi had never had an official wedding, they thought of themselves, and everyone else thought of them, as married). He had not yet said anything, demanded anything, just stood there, looking at her quizzically shuffling from foot to foot. So she decided to play for time and offered him tea and some food warmed up from earlier in the evening and a bed for the night.

The sadhu, who was so high on opium that he could barely speak, ate his fill and, for a moment before he fell asleep on his comfortable charpoy on the veranda, marvelled in the back of his mind about how true it was what people said - that if you trusted in God, whatever you needed would come to you. It seemed to work even if you didn’t believe in the bastard at all! The opium had come to him from a dealer in Pakistan, and Afghan trader who had wanted him to smuggle it over the border into India. They had drunk and smoked late into the night - but he had cunningly poured his drink away and stayed sober, and then, when the dealer was snoring, had stuffed the opium into his bag and vanished. He didn’t see why he should go to all the trouble and danger of delivering the stuff for a measly ten percent. He wanted it all.

He’d disguised himself as a sadhu, hopped on the train headed for the border and hadn’t stopped travelling since, certain that the dealer was coming after him, ready to kill him (which he was). The ticket collector was a good Hindu and had too much respect to ask to see the half-naked ‘sadhu’’s ticket, and he’d found himself a nice spot in a second class bogey. That’s when his watch had come to him. It had fallen into his lap (well, virtually) from the wrist a heavily sleeping fellow passenger. Surely God must have meant him to have it, the way the man’s arm was hanging down from the bunk above him, dangling the watch in front of his face, swinging back and forth with the rocking of the train, flashing in the moonlight... When he got tired of the train, and the paranoia of being traced through the chattering conductors and chai-wallahs got too much, he started walking.

A lorry driver he met in a dhaba had given him a lift, in exchange for some of the opium. At first the driver had laughed and talked and sung, then he’d started raving and sweating and driving faster and faster and his eyes starting rolling back in his head. Then he crashed the lorry into a tree - shot forward, smashed into the windscreen. When he sat back again, he was silent and his motionless face and bulging eyes had pieces of glass sticking out all over them like a porcupine. But his nice, leather shoes, the sadhu had noted with a grateful nod to God, were completely undamaged.

In the morning, Chitra, who had been told about the new guest, came down pale and trembling, and knelt before the sadhu, weeping “Lord, my husband is sleeping upstairs. I will do my duty, pay my dues, whatever is fated for me, but please, if it is possible, please don‘t take me away from him.” He hadn’t known what to make of it at first, the most he’d been expecting to be offered in this big old house was some food and perhaps a bit of money. Then it started to dawn on him exactly what was being offered, and he couldn’t believe his luck… good old God! He had always been good at thinking quickly, at taking advantage of unexpected situations, so he pretended to be angry, offended. It was a lucky guess. This made everyone in the house even more convinced that he was the reincarnation - or spiritual successor - of the original Sadhu, and they trembled and tried to placate him. He pretended that he would reluctantly agree to accepting another woman (he didn‘t much fancy this skinny old bitch anyway). They brought him younger and prettier girls, and his mouth watered for them, but he wondered how far he could push them. He turned them away, contemptuously and they wrung their hands and wept that they had no more girls.

Then Seema stepped forward, though her mother cried No and tried to pull her back. She didn’t smile or flirt, she trembled a little but looked defiantly straight into his eyes. He longed to sink his finger nails (which were long and blackened with train grease and diesel and the dust of the road) into her soft, young flesh, to thrash that defiant look out of her eyes. He reached out, just about to touch, when he caught a movement in the shadows and saw a slender child of about twelve cowering there, with terror in her big brown eyes. And the terror sent a thrill of excitement through him.

“That one. I want that one! You have been hiding her from me, you will all be cursed and your children and your children’s children will be cursed if you do not give her to me…”

They refused. He shouted and ranted and his curses got louder and more terrible. He had picked up something they’d mentioned once or twice about another sadhu, and he said that the wrath of the sadhu that had been before him would be even more terrible than his own. Then they ‘knew’ that if they didn’t give him what he wanted they would bring disaster on the whole house, on all their children, on their children’s children, on the whole town… and they couldn’t take that responsibility. Life was harsh and cruel, they knew, and sometimes you had to sacrifice one loved one to save all the others. And anyway, this was a holy man. How could it be wrong to let their child go with him, as her grandmother had gone? Wasn’t this destiny repeating itself? Maybe he would even be taking her to her grandmother, they thought, with the insane logic of the utterly desperate.

And Meera saw that they were going to betray her to save their own skins, and her little heart turned to ice. She hated them then and she would hate them forever. Her father was nowhere to be seen. And though her mother never actually agreed to the sadhu taking her away, neither did she stop him. She didn’t fight and scream and kill him to defend her child as Meera had expected her to. Instead she had fainted. She had fainted and let the filthy, blood-eyed, claw-fingered sadhu take her. She had broken her promise. She had lied.

Ravi couldn't be seen, but he could see everything that was happening from behind his screen, confused, angry, petrified of losing his daughter, appalled that his beloved Chitra would even consider such a thing after losing her own mother but at the same time, terrified of the curses of the sadhu. When they left the house, the man striding along dragging the little girl by her wrist, he had followed them, shuffling silently along a little distance behind them. He saw that Meera was so terrified, she could barely walk, her knees sinking at each step. Ravi didn’t have a plan, he just wanted to watch over her, to find his chance to save her, to bring her back home. When they were out on the street away from the gates of the House, the sadhu threw his head back and laughed like a hyena... and Ravi’s blood ran cold.

17, Attraction

Chapter 17 - Attraction

Kamala walks towards the edge of the garden, her bare feet pressing the dewy grass in the wake of the serpent - a flashing, golden stream slicing the darkness. When it reaches the edge of the garden, she stops but it keeps on flowing forwards, over the steep drop to the plains below, sugared with lights just as the sky is sugared with stars. She thinks it’s disappeared over the edge but then it rises and swims through the air curving and looping and waving - up and around and over the plain and back to Kamala… it stops in front of her and draws a long, looping figure of eight with its body, then it raises its hood before her and whispers, a hiss, then a breath, then a hiss, then a breath… “seee-mmaah, seee-mmmaaah!” Kamala doesn’t quite understand, ‘Seema‘? ‘See Ma‘? 'Maashi'? Either way, it seems important, so she too steps off the edge of the hill, rises up and starts to drift, gently over the plain… following the gleaming trail of the flying serpent. When the lights of the town are below them, dulling the glow of the serpent, lighting up Kamala’s belly and chin and knees and shins, they start to dive.

They fall and fall, Kamala with a delicious feeling of being drawn back to something huge and inexorable which she had never wanted to leave. She sees below her two great white stone serpents chasing each other’s tails - she falls, no dives with purposeful grace in the serpent’s golden wake - into the darkness at centre of the serpent circle. She falls through centuries of darkness and soon notices (strange to notice such a thing at a time like this) that though they must now be nearing the centre of the earth it is getting colder, not hotter. Her eye lashes crackle with ice and goose flesh stands up all over her skin. But though it is cold, colder than anything she has ever known before, she’s filled with a warm sense of homecoming. And finally she arrives. And she is surrounded by love, by a Mother’s embrace more encircling and safe and powerful than any she has known before.

And a voice which is not a voice fills her head and it is saying WELCOME MY CHILD, WELCOME. I HAVE BEEN WAITING A LONG TIME FOR YOU TO BE. YOU TO BE HERE. NOW YOU HAVE COME AT LAST THE WORK MUST BEGIN. THE DANGER IS NEAR. The next morning, Kamala popped a little yellow pill just to be sure. She didn’t have many of them left now - she would need to be careful. She rubbed the crustiness away from her eyelashes (that must be why she dreamt they were icing over) but she didn’t want to get up and start 'the work' just yet… her bed felt so warm and inviting, like those few occasions when Mother had allowed her to snuggle in with her, when she was poorly - or that last night in Aunty Seema’s bed. The whole room was filled with a delicious warmth, like the warmth of milk.

She‘d pulled the laptop into bed and was lazily tapping out her thoughts in an email to Jerome. ‘Perfectly rational‘, she told him after describing the dream, ‘The snake in the forest gave me a shock so it’s stayed in my subconscious, seeing it triggered the memory of those weird gateposts I saw on the way here in that dingy little town down below, I’m homesick and missing Mother and have been thinking a lot about Aunty Seema since I’ve been here… it’s just all those things mixed up by my brain.’

‘What about ‘the danger?’ Jerome zapped back.

"That could be anything, couldn’t it?" she replied "there’s the whole terrorism and world wars thing that everybody‘s always talking about, I’m always worrying subconsciously about that. Or, you and Amelia are always saying we’re all in danger of being taken over by the big multinational conglomerates - can‘t see what‘s so scary about a bunch of shops and factories myself, but I guess you know what you‘re talking about - And then there’s all those warnings in the news (see, I have been really listening!) about the End of Civilization As We Know It when the fuel runs out and everything grinds to a standstill… Ahaa! This project’s supposed to be exploring an alternative energy source… so that must be it, that must be the work that must begin… All perfectly logical and not weird at all."

"If you say so, loony :-) " Jerome responded, softening it with the smiley emotikon. "...but watch your back. That evil bastard White is on his way over to you soon. Watch him."

"What, you mean the 'evil bastard' who's set up ergonomically designed solar powered houses for people displaced by the dam?" Kamala tapped back, she was rather pleased with herself for having retained this piece of information, and wished there was an emotikon for smug sarcasm.

"Meelie here, Kam, yes, that evil bastard, and you can forget the "". You don't seriously think he's doing it for love do you? It's just a PR exercise - what do poor farmers know about solar power and ergonomics? They just want to carry on working the land like they've always done. He's just using them as pawns to enrich his evil empire! Put that together with his arms dealing, his stranglehold on the world's press and his influence on just about every government in the world and you'll understand what evil bastard means!" Kamala thought about the gentle, refined, rather dishy features of Andreas White, about that dazzling smile, that Voice, all of which seemed to pop up in the papers, on the internet news sites and on TV so frequently these days. She just couldn't see him as a power crazed monster planning to nuke the world.

Meelie and Jerome! Honestly, she loved them to bits, but what a couple of paranoid loonies...! It was sad that they couldn't accept that someone could just want to do something good. Hang on a sec, Meelie? She checked the World Clock on the internet... it was 3 am back in England. She flicked the email window open again.

"Meelie????? What are you doing with Jerome at 3 am might I ask???!!!!" There was a long 'silence' during which Kamala tapped her fingers on the edge of the laptop and grinned excitedly...

"Ok, ok, you caught us!" Came the eventual reply.

"You dirty dogs!!"

"No we're not. We're in love. A&J"

"Aaaaah! I'm really happy for you guys, I can't imagine a better suited couple - you have so many paranoid delusions in common!! Listen, gotta go, darlings, people to meet places to go.
Tata, and watch out for Dr Strangelove! : )" She was about to log out, when the You've got Mail icon popped up with an urgent red exclamation mark beside it.

"Seriously Kamala - please watch out, babe, that's no teddy bear's picnic you've got yourself mixed up in out there... we've found out some pretty scary things about your beloved Greenfields - it's a subsidiary of White Enterprises. You don't think factories are scary? Depends what they're making, doesn't it? Forget guns, forget weapons of mass destruction, think Weapons of the Apocalypse. They invest in death and decay not life and growth, they destabilise economies, use up the earth's resources... all for profit! And they've been buying up all the papers and TV satellite channels too, which they've been using to stir up all this international tension, they've bought up medical supplies, drugs, planes... there's nothing they want more than a good, profitable world war, and they've got it all set up... all they need now is the ammo. There's your danger. Jez."

Kamala felt a twinge of anxiety, but then she laughed. Jerome! Such a dramatist... the world would just be too dull for him without an evil mastermind stroking a white cat on his lap and waiting to take over the world!

She jumped out of bed, stretched and opened the curtains. There on the edge of the garden, standing on the exact spot where her dream self had so recently launched itself into the ether, was a figure in white with arms stretched wide like Jesus on Sugarloaf Mountain. The early morning sun shone through the white of his kurta outlining in gold the silhouette of his outstretched arms and his up-stretched torso. A breeze blew the blue-black shoulder length hair back off his face. Kamala could see the smooth, brown edge of his forehead, his nose, his cheek, his thin beard - and they too were outlined in gold. She watched for a long time as he moved through one posture after another with the slowness and poise of a praying mantis. Then he stopped, turned and seemed to look straight towards her window. She blushed fiercely and swiped the curtains shut again. Her heart was beating fast.

She felt wretched with embarrassment as she was introduced to him at breakfast; his surly “How do you do” and his refusal to meet her eye could have meant he was equally embarrassed, or that he hadn’t noticed her at all - she couldn‘t tell. He certainly barely seemed to acknowledge her existence. His name was Deepak. He was a photographer, apparently, who’d been commission to make a visual record of the project. He was in his early thirties, she guessed, and had long, thick dark lashes, lips that seemed to be permanently pouting and that blue-black hair, like Superman’s, which kept falling across his face and the little beard which lent him the air of a Renaissance French painter or an Austrian psychiatrist.

The other two new arrivals were Dr Karan Singh, the senior researcher and project manager, and Astrid Jensen, the guest researcher from Sweden. Astrid, or Ms Jensen, as she insisted on being called, was not much older than Kamala. Her pale hair, cropped close to her head, matched pale eyelashes and pale rimmed glasses - she nodded at Kamala as Dr Singh introduced them and her mouth gave a tight lipped twitch which could - if you were feeling generous - have been interpreted as a smile. She picked at her breakfast - a spicy semolina dish studded with mustard seeds, onions and roasted cashew nuts - trying unsuccessfully to conceal her distaste. On Kamala’s first day there, she had been a little surprised herself to be served ‘curry’ for breakfast, but one mouthful of the soft, warm, crumbling, spicy mixture had converted her.

Dr Singh was a thin, amiable man in his forties who welcomed Kamala warmly and instantly made her feel a part of the team. “Kamala, my dear,” he cried as she sat down opposite Ms Jensen and beside Deepak, “Delightful to have you join the project. So glad you could come at such short notice. How much do you know about it?” She’d read the proposals, of course and the initial study reports, but much of it was blotted out with an official looking stamp reading 'Sensitive material'. Now Dr Singh filled her in on some of the details…

“Have you any idea what it could mean for India if we pull this off? India’s economic problems would be solved for ever! Everybody would be able to afford power, we wouldn’t need to rely on fossil fuels, or have to flood valleys and villages any more... Never mind India - the whole world will benefit! Isn’t that so, Ms Jensen?” (he took Ms Jensen’s assent for granted and charged ahead) “This research is unique in the world today, we are at the forefront of something really spectacular…”

Having been offered an opportunity to speak, Ms Jensen now seemed determined to take it - but the only way to do so in the face of Dr Singh’s galloping enthusiasm was to interrupt. She interrupted...

“Of course, Svedish scientists have been investigating the energy potential of botanical phenomena for some time. Ve are very much in tune with nature back in Sveden…”

“Of course, Ms Jensen, of course. The project benefits immeasurably from the Swedish contribution, that must certainly be acknowledged... The world will be grateful, all future generations will be grateful if we pull this off - renewable energy for all for ever! Think of it! And at such little cost - trees are everywhere, photosynthesising away, sucking in that light, pumping that sap up from the ground, converting energy into matter. Of course we're not sure yet how the conversion takes place or how to harness it, but the point is, we know it's possible! And that's what we're going to find out now! Isn’t it amazing that up to now we’ve just chopped them down and used their carcasses when all the time we could have been putting all that living energy to our service? ”

"What kind of energy, exactly, Dr Singh?" Asked Kamala, a little puzzled still. This didn't quite gel with what the reports seemed to refer to, but it was hard to say with all the sections obscured with big blotchy black 'Censored for Security Purposes' stamps.

"Well, that's the mysterious part. We're not quite sure - over the years we've detected huge surges of energy on certain very sensitive instruments... but without any of the corresponding disturbance you'd expect around it. And we haven't quite pin-pointed what 'it' is exactly. But that's what we're going to find out, isn't it? We're going to really get to the bottom of the potential of these trees!"

Bits of semolina sprayed from his lips in his enthusiasm. He paused momentarily to take a sip of tea. Ms Jensen saw a chink of opportunity and leapt in…

“Back in Sveden, ve have been exploiting the potential of trees for all kinds purposes for many years…”

“Oh certainly, Ms Jensen, Sweden is a very clever country… lovely wood burning stoves! But we're talking about serious energy here...”

Dr Singh, all charm and smiles and infectious excitement, rattled on oblivious to Ms Jensen's burning cheeks.

“It’s so thrilling to hear him talk,” Kamala emailed Jerome and Amelia later, “I feel so proud and excited to be part of it all, but a bit guilty too. I feel like a bit of an impostor who really has no right to be here.” Deepak said nothing at all. She wasn’t even sure he was listening. He just concentrated on eating his breakfast with his hair swinging into his face as he leant forward to eat, the Greenfields logo spoon delicately balanced on his slim, smooth, brown fingers, browner by contrast with the white sleeve of his kurta… the same one he’d been wearing in the garden this morning. She blushed again at the memory and quickly looked away.

Her only conversation with him during that meal had only made her feel more awkward. While Dr Singh was talking, Kamala had suddenly reached out and started passing Deepak the water jug. A fraction of a second later he looked up from his cereal and said "Could you pass me the....oh, thank you" And had given her a weird look. It had not only been embarrassing, but had reminded her yet again of her dreadful, illogical condition - whatever the hell it was. She kept her eyes studiously away from him after that. But she must have looked back at him involuntarily because a few minutes later she noticed that his hand was trembling and his lips were no longer soft and round, but pressed tightly together. He was glaring at cheerful, smiling Dr Singh.

Kamala tried to remember - what had Dr Singh just said? Something about who owned the trees… or the land the trees were on, wasn’t it? Yes that was it - Greenfields had thought they might have trouble getting legal access to the land because of some new law, there were some people who lived in the forests, but it was alright, Dr Singh had said - the project had top level government backing and there would be no trouble about shifting “a few stone age tree huggers…” “…after we’ve got them to show us how to milk those trees, of course! Do you know, Kamala, dear, there’ve been rumours going around for years - centuries probably - that these tribals have a way of producing vast amounts of energy from a particular tree or type of tree - but no-one believed them. But our investigations have now identified and narrowed down a series of previously unexplained power surges to a particular patch of forest up in those hills."

He waved his arms excitedly "We're really very close now! Think of all that energy wasted on a bunch of tribals who still use bows and arrows to hunt!” He looked up in surprise as Deepak’s spoon hit his bowl with a loud ringing noise, like the bell at the end of a boxing round. “Excuse me” Deepak snapped, and marched out of the room. “Delightful fellow” said Dr Singh mildly - but looking a shade puzzled “Delightful. Nice to have him with us to document these historic times, eh?” Kamala was puzzled too, and a little unnerved. She had been so looking forward to working with Dr Singh, to going out into the forest and doing some real field work, being part of this whole project… but this other strange, brooding man made her feel unsettled in ways she couldn‘t quite decipher. She felt drawn to him like a moth drawn to light, but at the same time she was afraid (as any moth with good sense should be), like a child who sees monsters in the dark.

She never mentioned him in her emails to Jerome, Amelia or Mother, she didn’t know why, and for some reason the omission made her feel slightly guilty. Jerome and Amelia's return emails were getting dull. They almost never sent her messages saying anything personal anymore - they were always just circulated messages, strident warnings of the evils of multinationals, White Enterprises, Extronn and Greenfields the most evil of them all. Kamala was hurt. She knew this was their 'thing', and maybe some of the big companies did do some bad things, damage the environment, pay crap wages and things like that, but why did they have to ram it down her throat? They knew this was her big chance in life. They should be happy for her. It just wasn't polite.

16, Acceptance

Chapter 16 - Acceptance

Ravi never returned to his hut, except once, to collect a few precious mementoes of his previous life… a piece of carving in the shape of a peacock from the crown of his first tanpura (which he‘d smashed when he‘d first realised he had the disease), his comb and a pair of embroidered sandals I had given him that he could no longer wear (no toes to grip them with). He had kept them for years wrapped in cloth and tucked into the rafters of his hut. They still looked like new when he unwrapped them and showed them to Chitra. She put them on her own feet and they laughed - her small feet looked like a child’s in them. Ravi never had to go through the humiliation of begging again - he lived, shielded from the flinching gaze of the world behind the crumbling, carved screens of the big house, the two white cobras at the gate marking the boundaries of his world. And to Chitra, he was the world now. She no longer wandered the streets either, but spent all day and all night gazing at Ravi, at his eyes so full of expression, at his hair, so fine and dark and wavy, at his chest, so smooth and strong. Even at the poor foreshortened stubs of his fingers, the missing quarter of his face - though he hated her looking so she did it when he was asleep. And though it wrenched something inside her - with pity, with horror - when she saw this exposed portion of his skull, his mortality shoved forward before its time, she pressed her fingers to the side of her own face and thought about her own skull, which was right there grinning away inside her own skin, and she loved the broken parts of him too.

She gave birth to four children, first a round, bright eyed little girl - Seema, then two little boys who both died before they were a year old and then, a few years later, pale little Meera. Seema and Meera. One loud and rumbunctuous and full of mischief and one small and shy and prim.
Seema got along with everyone, she made them laugh and delighted them with her childish songs and antics. Ravi loved them both desperately, but Meera he loved with an intensity that sometimes caused him an actual pain. Her smallness, her frailness, her nervousness made him want to protect her from any pain or suffering, his precious little one. He would fuss over her if she fell and grazed her knee and she would weep inconsolably, outraged that she should have to feel this thing called pain. Seema, on the other hand seemed to feel no pain, and would pick herself up and dust herself off and carry on playing with blood seeping into her skirts, and later
Bimla would grumble, unable to wash the stains out. Ravi hated the fact that Chitra had resumed the trade of her mother. He sulked and quarrelled with her - having no answer to give her when she asked 'But what else do you suggest I do to earn a living?", afraid to voice the fact that if he had not had to become a beggar, he could have kept her. One afternoon, while making a point of going off to explore alone, he came across a storeroom at the back of the house full of musical instruments. His missing fingers itched again to play them, but he could not get a decent sound out of any of them. Then suddenly, in a plain wooden box, rusted with age, he found a strange, squat, three-stringed lute. Its neck was carved in the shape of a cobra, its head rearing over the top. To his delight, he found he only needed to touch it oh so gently with the pads of his hands and it would burst with song of such aching beauty that it almost made him weep and laugh at the same time. And as he played it, alone in the shadows of the abandoned store room, the realisation came to him that this had to be. It has to be. That it had been the calling of her mother, that it would be her calling, that it didn’t mean that she would love him any the less or that she would be any the less pure for him or precious to him. But more than this, as the room filled with the voice of the lute, he himself was filled with a conviction, an absolute conviction, that this had to be.

The reputation of the House, already established, grew to greater heights; the vibrant energy of the 'new' Chitra, who could twine around your body like a snake and make you feel like you were a youth again if you were old, or if you were a youth, make you feel like a god! And all the time, the soul-wrenchingly beautiful music that blew through the house like the wind off the sea. The early mutterings that there was no point in paying for something that so many had had for free in the gutters and behind the rubbish heaps of the town fell silent, the murmurings that it was neither healthy nor dignified to lie with the wife of a leper fell silent and strains of the lute grew stronger and sweeter, and the urges of the men of the town - and to be honest, some of the wealthier and more bored of the women too - to come and sample the wares of the house grew stronger. More and more customers came, and then more women arrived, wanting to be part of the glory of the House. Bimla and Chitra vetted them carefully to ensure that they held the same aesthetic values, the same sense of belonging to a noble tradition. There would be no coarse whoring in this house. Here everything was decorous and elegant and as it should be - everything keeping its rightful place in the Universe, and keeping in harmony with everything else in the Universe.

They were always particularly pleased when a girl came down from the forest. The forest women were sombre and quiet, they worked incredibly hard and - though they always seemed to carry a deep sorrow in their eyes - never seemed to lose their dignity or sense of self. But Ravi drew the line at letting their daughters have anything to do with this world - their mother’s trade may feed and clothe them, but he didn’t want them to be any part of it. He worried in particular about little Meera, with her thin, angular face and big serious eyes. Eyes that saw everything. Saw how her mother scrubbed and scrubbed at her body after an evening’s work. Saw how the ‘guests’ arrived all jumpy and alert, with a sliding, smirking look in their eyes (which frightened her) and left looking bleary and sated as though they had drunk poison (which disgusted and frightened her more). Her perpendicular little ears heard every grunt and gasp and moan, her narrow little nose wrinkled at every whiff of perfumed hair-oil and at the all too human muskiness that it was trying to mask. Chitra and Ravi were so focused on protecting Meera from the business of the house over the years, that they hadn’t noticed that Seema, now thirteen, was drawing the eyes of the men to her, winding their glances in on her little fingers, playing them out again with an expertise that came totally naturally to her, bouncing them off her hip, biting her lip. And clearly delighting in every minute of it, just as she delighted in her food and in her baths and in the luxury of someone combing coconut oil through her hair. And by some imperceptible process, Seema became part of it, she seemed always to have been part of it, as though she was born to it.

Ravi could see this and had to accept it, but he set his lips tightly together and refused to talk about it - this too, he supposed, had to be, though he didn‘t like it at all. Chitra and Bimla often had to chide Seema for not behaving in a manner quite dignified enough to suit the tone of the House, (singing a shade too loudly, showing a hint too much pleasure in her art, dressing a bit too racily…) but she attracted so many customers and seemed to take such enormous, voluptuous delight in her work that they didn’t have the heart to chide too sternly. So while Seema revelled in the sensuous glare of the public areas of the house, Meera skulked in the shadows, or locked herself away in her room where she had a stash of books. She was the only one in the family who had learned to read (Seema had been taught, but had never learned); Meera even learned to read English. Ravi was so proud of his little one’s cleverness and wished that his old mistress could see how wonderfully her granddaughter had turned out.

Meera loved losing herself in the alterative worlds the books whipped up around her - strange worlds where cold, soft ice feathers fell from the sky and pale skinned girls and boys drank exotic sounding drinks called 'ginger beer' and went on adventures without their parents, or ayahs or anyone. The girls and boys spoke with measured, politeness, with dignity which was not undermined by strange heaving noises and nasty smells and undercurrents of pungent, twisted, dangerous things... How nicely they spoke even when caught in dangerous situations with smugglers at their heels, they would run to the nice, policeman with kind blue eyes and say 'Please, sir, please, help me.' And then they would be safe and everything would be alright again.

When rumours started that a member of the royal family was interested in availing himself of the services of the House, Bimla almost wept with joy and pride and went around for days talking about “the old days” until everyone was sick of the sound of those words. He was the great nephew of the old maharajah, and though the British had taken away all the family’s power and most of their wealth, they had managed to tuck away enough cash, antiques and jewellery in a Swiss bank account to keep a couple of generations of them going in the luxury to which they had been accustomed. The princeling that eventually turned up one night, in a long, low, dark automobile with two friends, was a handsome youth, his ancestry glowed through his fine bone structure and his cool gaze - but there was something sallow about his skin, something shifty about the corners of his mouth. Nevertheless, they sat him down and brought him sherbets and a hookah, and played him music and had girls dance for him.

Meera, now eleven, watched it all in disgusted fascination from the safety of the shadows at the top of the stairs. Ravi watched it all in resignation from the shadows of the veranda where he sat and played his lute. But the prince didn’t like the look of any of the girls, he said. “Haven’t you got anything a little younger?” he said “Fresher?” Bimla and Chitra looked at each other dismayed, when Seema suddenly chirped up brightly. “I know, I'll go and get Meera, she‘s completely fresh!” Meera had heard these words, turned, run down the corridor, jumped into an old chest full of musty shawls and pulled the heavy lid over her. Chitra and Bimla both slapped Seema soundly - one on each side of her head, simultaneously - for making such a suggestion. “Oh for goodness, sake, it was just a joke!“ Seema had muttered, rolling her eyes and rubbing the sides of her head. Ravi stepped out of the shadows and stood defiantly between the rather unnerved prince and the foot of the stairs to protect his precious little one. He let the cloth fall away from his disintegrated face and felt a grim satisfaction as the prince shrunk away - too well bred to express his horror, but too shocked to hide it completely. They searched everywhere for Meera, all over the house, upstairs and downstairs and on the roof and in the veranda, swinging lanterns in the dark garden calling her name, just as Bimla had called Chitra’s name years before.

When they eventually found her, and reached their arms into the box to pull her out, Meera had screamed as though they were going to murder her and it took them a long time to convince her that they weren’t going to give her to the prince. “I promise you, my darling“ her mother had wept as she kissed her hair and stroked her arms and squeezed her to her chest, “I promise, I would never… never….!”

But she had lied, she had lied. Her mother, who was so big and clever and sensible, who was supposed to keep her safe, who Meera had trusted with her life... had lied.