The Midnight Rose by Lucinda Riley

had walked out, Ari felt a faint tingle of fear clutch at his heart. Up until now, he had been convinced that he was merely involved in a battle of wills which he’d been prepared to lose graciously. It had never struck him for an instant that Lali might actually be serious about ending their relationship.
    Ari tried her cell again but received the same sound. As panic began to rise within him, he thought of how he might actually find her. He only knew that her parents lived somewhere in the labyrinthine streets of Dharavi—he’d been there once but would have no idea how to retrace his footsteps. Ari then racked his brains for friends of hers whom he knew. Lali had kept her female social life to herself, as many of the girls she’d grown up with were from poor families, like herself. She’d understood that they were not the kind of sophisticated women one could make up a four with for dinner at the Indigo Café. Ari had absolutely no idea how to find any of them.
    He wondered how it was possible that he could have lived under the same roof as Lali for the past four years yet know almost nothing about her life beyond their front door. Was I responsible for that? he asked himself brutally as he paced back and forth on the sun-filled terrace.
    Of course he was, he admitted finally. Certainly, as far as her parents were concerned, he’d made it clear that he wasn’t interested in forming a relationship with them. And he’d made no effort to try to, even for her sake. They were not bad people . . . poor, yes, but hardworking and devout Hindus who had brought their children up with a strong set of moral values and fought to educate them to the best of their meager resources.
    Ari dropped in exhaustion onto a chair and leaned forward, his head in his hands. He realized that he had patronized not only them, but also what they stood for—the blind faith in their gods, humility and acceptance of their lot, was what he despised. They were the “old India”—just as his parents were—whose servility had been engendered by two hundred years of British rule.
    The older generation didn’t seem to understand that the power had transferred, that there was no longer any need for subservience. The race he had been born into was coming into its own, there was nothing holding them back any longer and the sky was the limit.
    He’d wanted to run away from all the old values, which he felt placed limitations on those who believed in them. Sitting there, staring into space, Ari realized he was angry. But why?
    Suddenly, he did something he had forbidden himself to do for years. He put his head in his hands and wept.
    He knew he wouldn’t forget the long dark hours of that weekend in a hurry, as he faced what he had become and why. Whether he was grieving over the loss of Lali or for himself and the solitary, self-obsessed, angry person he had become, he wasn’t sure. As his pain poured out of him, he wondered whether he was having some form of breakdown, perhaps the result of fifteen years of pushing himself, day after day, without respite.
    Yes, he realized, he had gained a successful business, and the financial benefits that went with it. But in the process, he’d lost himself.
    He tried to work his way through the reasons for his anger and, more frighteningly, his dismissal of any emotion and compassion that had once been inside him. He thought back to his time at his boarding school in England, and the way the boys had looked down on him, simply because he was Indian. Independence may have come to India over sixty years before, but back then, the upper-class British had not surrendered their claim to empirical superiority.
    What had made it worse was that his parents had been so proud of him. Despite what he saw as the many terrible consequences of British rule for the Indian race, the culture and traditions of their masters had been indelibly imprinted upon them. To them, for an Indian boy to attend a British public school