Free The Way Things Were by Aatish Taseer

alarm and wonder of a child. Kitten Singh brought her over with a triumphant, ‘Meet Gauri! She was married to a Sanskritist.’ But it is not Sanskrit that draws them to each other; it is their need for a quiet corner away from this brunch of politicians, TV anchors, writers and journalists. The moment he is with her the room recedes. The guests, so threatening till a moment ago, become like a carousel of half-familiar faces, gliding by them as they speak.
    He notices his father’s old friend, the Raja of Marukshetra: a heavy-set, elegant man, with a stern moustache and large eyes. He’s dressed that afternoon in a tight white churidar and a pale blue kurta; he has a spittoon in one hand, a Bloody Mary in the other. Skanda can also make out a dark-skinned woman, a little fat, magnificently unmade-up, with no jewellery save for a gold star anise in her nose. Chamunda! Beside her, a much larger woman, full of laughter and boisterous conversation. Vandana, he suspects. It is still the city of his childhood, but there are changes: Gayatri Mann is in a wheel-chair. Her head drops to one side and she speaks with difficulty out of the corner of her mouth.
    ‘It happened,’ Kitten Singh had said earlier, trying to catch him up on everyone’s news at once, ‘when she was in New York. Bapa is not with us anymore either. He passed on last year. But, you know who’s flourishing? Nixu Mohapatra. He’s Chief Minister of Odra, for the umpteenth time! He still doesn’t speak a word of the local language. Can you believe it? But the people, they love him for it. They say it protects him from corrupting voices. This must be what your father used to describe as “that innate Indian distrust of oneself”.’
    Soon after this survey of the room, Kitten Singh had brought Gauri over. And it was a relief.
    ‘This waiting?’ Skanda says now. ‘It is a description of those periods in our lives when we suffer . . . for love – or for our art . . . You said, you were a writer, yes?’
    ‘Hardly a writer. I write copy for websites.’
    ‘Well, anyway, the canto I’m referring to is called “Asceticism Bears Fruit”. And it is Uma who has taken up the ascetic’s robes.’
    ‘But what is the fruit?’
    ‘The love of Shiva.’
    ‘Oh, romantic. Is this what the English call sentimental poetry?’
    He feels his gorge rise.
    ‘More sentimental than the sonnets?’ he says.
    ‘Ah, but there the language is very specific. Very concrete. It brings something real to mind. Here it is all red lotuses and thunder clouds. Moons, creepers, rivers, submarine fires. It’s so stylized. What was that funny word you just used? You know, for the colour of Uma’s robes?’
    ‘Babhru?’
    ‘Yes, that’s the one! Babhru to you too! Sorry! I’m being a little supercilious, aren’t I?’
    ‘It’s a word for brown,’ Skanda says calmly. ‘Reddish-brown. Tawny. It is described as the colour of a young or infant sun. It has the same origin as brown in English or
braun
in German.’
    And now, for the first time, into those elongated eyes some respect seems to creep. She says something he likes; she says, ‘We, in India, prefer to take the long road back to India, don’t we? Via the West, preferably. Like this house – look at it: all this beaten brass and floral ceramics, the block print cloth . . . it feels like India . . .’
    ‘ . . . Returned to India via the Kings Road?’
    ‘Yes!’
    Emboldened, he says, ‘And, Gauri, this colour she wears, it is very specific. It is the most Indian of Indian colours. It is that smoky-saffron-brown colour. Which is the colour of the rising and setting sun here, and practically nowhere else. I’ve seen it a thousand times myself from the window of a train or car, leaving the city at dawn.’
    ‘I haven’t left the city much recently; and never at dawn, at any rate.
I
have a young son myself . . .’
    Something about the way she says this makes him feel that there is more to her antipathy for