Free Fire On the Mountain by Anita Desai

lift her and blow her away.
    She had not wanted to come here with her great-grandmother. She had planned to come to Monkey Pointalone, on a solitary afternoon expedition, without anyone’s knowing. Secrecy was to have been the essence of it, she relished it so – Raka had all the jealous, guarded instincts of an explorer, a discoverer, she hated her great-grandmother intently watching her ascent, clenching her hands with tension when the goats nearly knocked her off her feet or when she slipped on the loose pebbles. As she scrambled up, her resentment at the mention of boarding-school at Sanawar was still inside her chest, tight as a stone. But now it blew away with the wind, leaving her light and exhilarated, airborne as a seed or a blade of grass.
    The wind swung her about and threatened to throw her onto her knees. But she held her hair down about her ears and held onto a rock with her toes, hearing it whip at her dress, and was sure that if she let go, if she spread out her arms and rose on her toes, she would fly, fly off the hill-top and down, down on currents of air, like the eagles that circled slowly, regally below her.
    She was higher than the eagles, higher than Kasauli and Sanawar and all the other hills: they were as low and soft as banks of golden moss far below. To the south the plain stretched endlessly out and away, no longer hot and livid under the summer sun but calm and still and cat-grey in the dusk, raked by the shining flow of Punjab’s five rivers and Chandigarh’s lake set in its breast like a dull silver brooch – not set so much as floating a little above the flatness, suspended in the dusk. There was a breadth of space, a vast, sweeping depth to the scene. Raka thought it like an ancient scroll unrolled at her feet for her to survey.
    To the north, the soft, downy hills flowed, wave upon wave, gold and blue and violet and indigo, like the sea. The sound of the wind rushing up through the pines and then receding was the sound of the sea.
    I’m shipwrecked, Raka exulted, I’m shipwrecked andalone. She clung to a rock – my boat, alone in my boat on the sea, she sang.
    So she stood, rocking, her feet placed wide-apart, her ear-drums thrumming with the roar of the waves and the wind, till she began to get an ear-ache, grew aware of the darkness gathering, remembered the old lady waiting on the bench below, and began to make her way reluctantly downhill, finding it simplest just to sit down and slide roughly down on her bottom.
    It was quite dark at the foot of the hill, in the crêpe myrtle grove. The old lady rose to meet Raka in agitation. When she saw the child was whole, her bones intact, she made some scolding sounds in relief, and they walked homewards in a great silence which was rent now and then by the clear, ringing call of some invisible bird that defied night.
    When they reached Carignano the lights were on. The hills were black waves in the night, with the lights of the villages and towns so many lighted ships out at sea.
    A nightjar began to cackle. Ram Lal came hurrying to open the gate for them.
    â€˜What’s for dinner?’ cried Raka, running forwards.

Chapter 9
    THE WALK TO Monkey Point had not been a success after all for Nanda Kaul did not suggest another. Over tea, she would open a book and read – she had three or four on a table at her side, always: Gogol’s
Dead Souls
, Waley’s translation of Chinese poems, a book on Indian birds by Salim Ali – and when Raka rose and furtively slipped off theveranda by herself, she would turn a leaf and frown with greater concentration.
    As soon as Raka was out of sight, however, she would put down her book and hurry up the knoll from where she could survey a great length of the Upper Mall as it snaked around the hills. Here ladies and gentlemen on holiday perambulated sedately and their children took turns at riding Kasauli’s two ponies, Rani and Rolo, almost equally