Free The Splendor Of Silence by Indu Sundaresan

was done upstairs. The top story of the house, seen from the gates, sat on only two-thirds of the bottom story--it ended somewhere above the dining room in a huge and open verandah. Herein the pillared, roofed-in verandah--was the concession to India. No English home could boast so much open space for outdoor living; the weather would not support it. The stairs to the second story climbed from the entry hallway and came to a small landing upstairs, then cleaved into corridors running along the house on both sides, to drawing rooms and six bedrooms with attached baths.
    Toward the back a verandah wrapped itself around the lower story, its roof the balcony of the top story, looking out into the lush garden with its banyan and tamarind trees. Here Mila had stood earlier in the morning, looking down upon her father praying at the well.
    The servants slept in separate buildings behind the house, tucked behind the trees, which also had the offices of living for the masters of the main house--the kitchens, the storeroom, and the storage room. Also to the back was a huge, steel-girdered shed that housed the two cars, a jeep and a Morris Cowley; their chauffeurs; and a phaeton. The cows for milk, the horses for riding and for drawing the phaeton, and the chickens for eggs had their own sheds too, and each animal had its keepers. A cowherd milked the cows every morning and grazed them in the scrub near the lake; three syces exercised the horses and accompanied Mila on her morning rides; and Pallavi fussed over the chickens, rustled through the straw for breakfast eggs and encouraged her charges to be obliging or they would find themselves in the pot for a home buffet.
    Raman drank his morning cup of coffee in the upstairs verandah, which faced south. When he had first come to Rudrakot, this verandah was a bare square of cement with a low compound wall around it. He had the concrete pillars erected, and a thick thatched roof of straw and dr y p alm fronds put on top to keep away the sun's glare. But over the years he found the roof to be impractical. It disintegrated during the rains--sparse as they were--and after the monsoons, every insect in Rudrakot, along with the ever-present yellow geckos, found its home there. Kiran and Ashok loved this, quite naturally, and spent all of their time catching beetles and grasshoppers by poking sticks into the thatch and gathering up their spoils by the handful. Mila hated it, also quite naturally; she had not her brothers' fascination with either the insects or the geckos that left their tails wriggling on the floor as they tried to escape.
    A brick-and-mortar roof was also impracticable, so Raman, after years of hits and misses, came up with the idea of a wooden skeletal frame for the roof, covered now with lightweight khus matting knitted of fragrant river rushes. This dried swiftly after the rains, kept direct sunlight off their faces, and gave out a pleasant aroma. The idea was so successful that Raman had khus mats installed along the pillars too, rolled up in the mornings and let down in the afternoons. Raman had been at Rudrakot for fourteen years, well beyond the time of any political agent's duties. As a member of the political branch of the Indian Civil Service, he should have moved all over the country, but he had been here for most of his life as an ICS officer, and for a reason. So there had been time to experiment with the verandah roof's vajaries, to understand them, and, finally, to appease them.
    He raised the coffee cup to inhale that first, sharp scent of coffee beans, and saliva rinsed his mouth in anticipation. It was quiet around him. The sparrows tittered in the bushes; the busy gray-and-black crows cawed out morning greetings; the tamarind tree's leaves rustled quietly in a gentle breeze from the lake. He set the cup down on the saucer, and let his mind rest for a while. Raman had woken early, as usual, bathed and said his prayers, and heard Mila depart for her morning ride.