Free Translator Translated by Anita Desai Page A

could Tara possibly have kept herself informed of Prema's progress—or stasis? Naturally there was no mention of that to be found anywhere.
    But now there was a flurry of activity up on the stage, behind the row of potted palms; while the microphone was shifted and adjusted, figures came and disappeared, the next item on the programme was revealed to be not quite ready, and Tara actually seemed willing to carry on this pointless conversation that Prema wished she had not begun.
    And then a providential act took place. A small, grubby paperback slid out of the overstuffed, ungainly satchel that Prema was trying to keep from falling off her lap. And as Prema tried to stuff it back before any further objects followed it out, Tara, idly continuing the conversation since nothing else seemed to be happening, asked, 'What is that you're reading?'
    Prema had to hold it out for her observation so as not to seem unduly secretive, confident that Tara could not read the script in which it was printed, so distant was it from life here in the capital. But, as she did so, the thought flitted across her mind like an unforeseen fly that Tara may be genuinely interested since she was a publisher and in a very specialised field. Prema realised that there was, after all, something about which they might converse.
    'It is in Oriya,' she said, handing over the soiled copy and regretting how badly she had used it, dog-earing the pages, scribbling in the margins, even putting down cups of tea on its cover so that the lurid illustration of a forest fire, a burning hut and a fleeing woman was marked with brown rims. 'It is very good,' she hastened to assure Tara in spite of its appearance to the contrary. 'Very moving.'
    'Who is it by? And do you read Oriya?'
    Prema fussily adjusted the spectacles on the bridge of her nose in an embarrassment grotesquely enlarged by their lenses. 'It was my childhood language. And it is written by a woman who comes from the same area where my mother lived. She is very much respected there even if no one knows about her here.'
    Tara continued to hold the book and turn its pages as if they could impart something to her. Onstage a row of schoolgirls in the school uniform of pleated skirts, white blouses, knitted ties, limp socks and once-white gym shoes had lined up to sing, but the book seemed to interest her more even if she could not read one letter in that script. When the song onstage ended—rising in a crescendo that could not possibly be maintained and wasn't—she handed the book back to Prema, saying, 'I wish I could read it. I am thinking of starting a new division of my publishing house. We've published texts in English, you see, but I want to branch into translations now, and publish writers well known in their own regions but unknown outside which is such a shame. What do you think?'
    Inarticulate Prema could not at first reply but her spectacles glittered with the enthusiasm of her unspoken response until, just before the principal's speech began to be broadcast, the loudspeaker causing it to echo at fluctuating volume, she managed to say, fervently, 'That is a
wonderful
idea. That is what we
need
.'
    Then the principal was well launched upon her speech, the microphone tamed, it seemed, by her authority, and there was no alternative but to be silent and listen. At the end of it, some of the women who had been in their class and recognised Tara—although clearly not Prema—swooped upon her with cries and exclamations and Prema picked up her satchel and retreated. It was time for tea.
     
    When she got home on the bus and climbed the stairs to her rooftop apartment—left unswept as usual by the landlady's slatternly maid (she would have to complain again)—the day was sinking into its murky nicotine-tinged haze of dust with home-going traffic pouring through it like blue-black oil from a leak in the street below. The crows that spent the day swinging on the electric and telephone wires and squabbling