the orchard, the hold of other people on Kulfi and her awareness of them retreated even further and, like Sampath, she discovered the relief of space. Inspired by the forest, she had embarked upon a series of experiments, a fervent crusade to bring her fantastic imaginings into being. She cooked outdoors, in the sunshine, under the gigantic sky. She felt she was on the brink of something enormous. All around her was a landscape she understood profoundly, that she could comprehend without thought or analysis. She understood it like she understood her son, without conversation or the need to construct a connection or to maintain it. Pinky was a stranger to her, made her nervous and even scared sometimes; it was lucky she was so independent. But Sampath she
knew.
She knew why he was sitting in a tree. It was the right place for him to be; that is where he belonged.
Whenever she saw him upon his cot, saw his face peeking from between the leaves, she was reminded of the day when he was born, his birth mingling in her memory with the wildest storm she had ever witnessed, with the arrival of famine relief and the silver miracle of rain. There, in the midst of the chaos, her son’s face had contained an exquisite peace, an absorption in a world other than the one he had been born into.
She cooked only for Sampath, leaving Ammaji to cater to the rest of the family, for his was the only judgement Kulfi trusted.
Almost all day she worked, trying this and that, producing, even in these early days of apprenticeship to her imagination, meals of such flavour and rarity that others could merely guess at what they were missing by the smells that rose from her pots, so intoxicating them by evening’s end that they had barely any recollection of what had passed when they departed from their audience with Sampath. They felt filled, though, with a sense of magic and wellbeing. By the look of Sampath, he too was permeated with a similar feeling, but to a much greater degree. His cheeks grew slowly plumper day by day; his tense, worried expression melted into one of contentment; the soft movement of the days and nights rising and falling about him were gently reflected in his face, and his eyes mirrored the quiet of the distant hills.
9
‘What about my typing course?’ Pinky asked her father one morning not long after The Sermon in the Guava Tree, when it had become apparent, she thought, that no one cared that the life of Pinky Chawla in Shahkot had been rudely interrupted by Sampath’s move up the hillside. A week or two was all very well, but she had come to the conclusion that it did not appeal to her as a permanent arrangement.
But Mr Chawla had his mind on other matters. He had been given extended compassionate leave from work, and that meant he would have enough time to see if his secret plans for Sampath – and indeed, for their entire family could work. Absent-mindedly, he said to his daughter: ‘Of what use is that? Really, it is silly to take a class for a such a simple matter.’
This was most unfair of him, for he himself had been the one to lecture her not so very long ago: ‘It is very important for young girls to know something useful, not just sit at home and get married. This is the modern India. You should take a typing course.’
Pinky was not interested in typing, and she certainly did not wish to do anything useful in modern India, but she was well aware of the necessity of putting in an appearance in the bazaar every day. If you did not do so, your place in the hierarchy of things, indeed your very identity in thesocial sphere, would be totally obliterated. Now, condemned to a once-a-week trip undertaken to collect supplies, visit the bank, the post office and other such places for which it was necessary to go into town, she realized she would have to make the most of her meagre opportunities, and these trips became the high point of her existence in the orchard.
‘Shall I wear this?’ she would mutter to
knew.
She knew why he was sitting in a tree. It was the right place for him to be; that is where he belonged.
Whenever she saw him upon his cot, saw his face peeking from between the leaves, she was reminded of the day when he was born, his birth mingling in her memory with the wildest storm she had ever witnessed, with the arrival of famine relief and the silver miracle of rain. There, in the midst of the chaos, her son’s face had contained an exquisite peace, an absorption in a world other than the one he had been born into.
She cooked only for Sampath, leaving Ammaji to cater to the rest of the family, for his was the only judgement Kulfi trusted.
Almost all day she worked, trying this and that, producing, even in these early days of apprenticeship to her imagination, meals of such flavour and rarity that others could merely guess at what they were missing by the smells that rose from her pots, so intoxicating them by evening’s end that they had barely any recollection of what had passed when they departed from their audience with Sampath. They felt filled, though, with a sense of magic and wellbeing. By the look of Sampath, he too was permeated with a similar feeling, but to a much greater degree. His cheeks grew slowly plumper day by day; his tense, worried expression melted into one of contentment; the soft movement of the days and nights rising and falling about him were gently reflected in his face, and his eyes mirrored the quiet of the distant hills.
9
‘What about my typing course?’ Pinky asked her father one morning not long after The Sermon in the Guava Tree, when it had become apparent, she thought, that no one cared that the life of Pinky Chawla in Shahkot had been rudely interrupted by Sampath’s move up the hillside. A week or two was all very well, but she had come to the conclusion that it did not appeal to her as a permanent arrangement.
But Mr Chawla had his mind on other matters. He had been given extended compassionate leave from work, and that meant he would have enough time to see if his secret plans for Sampath – and indeed, for their entire family could work. Absent-mindedly, he said to his daughter: ‘Of what use is that? Really, it is silly to take a class for a such a simple matter.’
This was most unfair of him, for he himself had been the one to lecture her not so very long ago: ‘It is very important for young girls to know something useful, not just sit at home and get married. This is the modern India. You should take a typing course.’
Pinky was not interested in typing, and she certainly did not wish to do anything useful in modern India, but she was well aware of the necessity of putting in an appearance in the bazaar every day. If you did not do so, your place in the hierarchy of things, indeed your very identity in thesocial sphere, would be totally obliterated. Now, condemned to a once-a-week trip undertaken to collect supplies, visit the bank, the post office and other such places for which it was necessary to go into town, she realized she would have to make the most of her meagre opportunities, and these trips became the high point of her existence in the orchard.
‘Shall I wear this?’ she would mutter to
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