Free A Life Apart by Neel Mukherjee

teemed with bathing men, it was an act that managed ingeniously to observe a sacred ritual without endangering
any of the sanctions against women being seen in public.
    She remembers those painful visits with Miss Shepherd, Colonel Campbell’s wife and Mr Fearfield’s wife – all members of the Madras Ladies’ Club – to the Maharani
of Mysore a few years ago. The process leading up to those visits itself comprised a story. For months she had importuned James and Sir George to do something about the Indian women of the
Presidency: where were they? why didn’t they come, along with their husbands, to any of the events to which they were invited? why did only the men turn up? why were they so rigidly secluded?
could the Anglos not do anything to break this down? James had patiently explained to her the status of women in Indian society. Well, then, if men posed so many threats and problems to them,
surely the English ladies could do something? Send out an invitation for a ‘Ladies Only’ at the Club? Once again, James had explained to her, in his very patient and forbearing way, the
problems Indian men had exposing their wives to foreigners. But surely they wouldn’t have problems ‘exposing’ them to foreign women? At which point James had thrown up his hands
in despair and said if she wanted to so much, why didn’t she try, along with the other ladies of the Presidency, and see where they got. There was a stiff little lecture on how damnedest the
Raj had tried to do away with barbaric Indian customs like suttee, purdah , the evils of zenana , the way Indian men treated their women as chattel, and if the bloody obstinate men were
not going to allow them to meet their wives, he was damned if he was going to allow them to meet English ladies.
    Ah.
    So Miss Gilby, accompanied by the more stalwart and interested ladies, had set about getting to know these invisible Indian women. As sister of the District Collector, she sent out
invitations for an ‘At Home’. Nearly no one bothered to reply. The chicken galantine with aspic jelly, cucumber sandwiches, anchovy and salad sandwiches, rout cakes, the proud madeira
cake, petits fours, mango and custard apple ices – all the lovely things she and Iris Shepherd had planned so excitedly from their new Mrs Beeton had come to nothing. The most articulate of
the refusals was sent to James. ‘Dear Sir,’ it said, ‘as my wife does not know English, she desires me to write this to you, regarding the “At Home” this evening. My
wife is extremely thankful to Mr’ – and then an ‘s’ added in ink after the typewritten ‘Mr’ – ‘Gilby for graciously extending the invitation to her,
but regrets very much that as according to the prevailing custom of the country, no Hindu lady is likely to attend the party, she is afraid to be the solitary exception to it. Moreover, she will
feel herself completely stranded in the midst of strangers, and would, I am afraid, make an awkward nuisance of herself as she has never attended a party in all her life, least of all one hosted by
English gentlemen and ladies. She, therefore, sincerely regrets that she is unable to oblige and sends her heartfelt apologies etc etc.’
    Miss Gilby’s first thought was, God, if we haven’t given them anything else, we certainly have given them our language of evasiveness, and then, ashamed of this uncharitable and
unusual flare-up in her generally kind soul, she began to comprehend the real problems the letter had expressed. How would the English and the native ladies communicate, how would she go about in
her crusade of breaking down barriers, if they did not share a common tongue? It was of utmost importance that Indian ladies be educated in English. From there everything would follow, as the night
the day.
    The goal proved much more elusive than Miss Gilby had initially reckoned it to be. Like a mirage, it kept receding further and further, not just out of her reach but, it