Free The Impressionist by Hari Kunzru

some kind of flower design on it.
    ‘Hold your head still,’ snaps Ma-ji, and Pran finds his jaw clamped between vice-like fingers while something, no, it couldn’t be, yes – rouge, is applied to his cheeks and lines of black kohl are drawn round his eyes. Pran tries to wriggle away but finds he is held fast. When he winces and shrinks back from the make-up stick he is immediately slapped. Ma-ji calls out for Balraj, who arrives coughing like a sick elephant and grasps Pran in a rigid armlock. When Pran protests, Balraj does something excruciating to his neck and Ma-ji hisses, in a tone shockingly unlike the gentle voice she used earlier, Keep quiet you little fool.
    Pran begins to suspect the beggar was having another of his little jokes.
    Soon he is released, temporarily, to stare at himself in the mirror. With his flimsy clothes and his wide eyes, their pupils dilated by drops of belladonna, he looks completely unlike the filthy boy who arrived at the alleyway door. Another beaker of special lassi is thrust under his nose. He shakes his head no, but Balraj forces his mouth open and Ma-ji pours the whole lot down his throat. They leave, locking the door behind them, and Pran finds himself alone in the room.
    He tries to think. During his cogitations, which keep collapsing or getting sidetracked or turning back on themselves, he concludes that Ma-ji and Balraj have designs which are not honourable. What these are, his brain is too fuzzy to calculate. If he tries, he will start getting scared. He must escape.
    Feeling as if he is moving through syrup, Pran examines the window and finds that, though it is unlocked, it opens three storeys above the street and there are no obvious handholds to use if he climbs out. Even if there were, the way his watery body feels, he doubts he would be able to cling on. He considers crying for help but the noise of the bazaar blankets everything. No one will hear. Over to the door. Locked and sturdy. He looks around for useful items. Weapons? No. Ropes? No. Perhaps he could tear up a sheet and use that. A sheet. Good idea. Very good.
    Pran pulls the cover off the bed and prepares to tear it into strips. It is a worn and greasy square of cloth, with a batik design on it, barely perceptible in the dim light. What is that pattern? Pran turns it over in his hands, feeling the material. It has an extraordinary texture and somehow he is experiencing it so much more clearly than he remembers ever having experienced a piece of material before. Its materialness, its materiality leaps into his fingers with such sharpness that it takes his breath away. As if, within this small thing, this insignificant bit of cloth, there could be worlds, whole universes of significance. And what is that pattern? The pattern. It is like a forest. Or a troupe of dancing girls. Or parrots. Yes, it is like a whole flock of parrots, red and green parrots, each one trained to speak in a different way. No, not in a different way. In a sense all the parrots talk the same. Although differently. How exactly do the parrots talk? Have that, and you have everything. The meaning of the pattern. All of it present in that one factor. The speech of the parrots. The answer is simple! The key lies in knowing how the parrots talk.
    Pran realizes he has come up with something important, but for the moment he has no idea what it means. Everything seems to have changed. The world is suddenly hectic. It is a lot to take in at once. He was not feeling like this a few minutes ago. He was more sleepy. That is it, he felt sleepy even when they were dressing him up. Now why did they do that? There is a question. They must have had a reason.
    Then Pran has a moment which contains an answer and in that answer lies an idea and concealed in that idea is the thought that perhaps the second special lassi has something to do with it. And just as he understands that the second special lassi is special in an extreme and very eccentric way, there is the