Free East Into Upper East by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

however he was also quite proud—and the busier she was the more languid he became. He drank steadily—only vodka now—and this wrapped him in a pleasant haze, which made him very tolerant. She saw to it that he always had clean linen; he had taken to wearing only Indian clothes, fine white shirts with embroidery at the shoulders and neckline. Before leaving for her many duties, she arranged her household and ordered the day’s meals for her husband and daughter. These two remained very close, and Sumitra was aware that this was partly the result of an alliance against herself. When Harry mocked Sumitra—he imitated the way she posed for the photographers while garlanding a VIP—Monica laughed loudly in her mother’s face; and she too mocked her, not in the good-natured way that Harry did but bitterly. She blamed her mother for many things. Later, whenever Kuku spoke admiringly of her grandmother’s achievements, Monica would pull a face: “She did it for herself,” she told Kuku. “To show off and be admired by people; by men ,” she said.

    In her mid-thirties, when she met Lieutenant-General Har Dayal, Sumitra was even more attractive than in her youth. She had become elegant and worldly, befitting the part she played on the national stage. She rustled around in her brocades with masculine purpose and feminine grace; there was a somewhat set expression about her mouth now, which may have been the determination of a busy woman, an almost public personage, but also an indication of some disappointment. There was no one really she could open herself to fully: husband and daughter had ganged up against her, at best indifferent if not contemptuous of the great role she played. As for those among whom she played it—the politicians and higher bureaucrats—they were not of her background, not of her education, not of her class. There was no one, she felt, who understood her: except her husband, and he wilfully misinterpreted her. So she was ready for Lieutenant-General Har Dayal when he entered: for not only was he, like her husband, a man of education and refinement, he was also, unlike herhusband, an important person—in fact, a sort of national hero. He was a career officer, among the last batch of Indians to be trained at Sandhurst where he had acquired the manners of a British gentleman. At the same time he was an Indian aristocrat, a minor raja in a minor state, not more than a large landowner but with an ancestral habit of command. He was of the traditional warrior caste and looked like a warrior: tall, broad, upright, manly and shining in his uniform. And he had just won a border war against a neighboring enemy country and had been decorated with the highest award for gallantry. Now he had been brought to army headquarters in New Delhi with a view to succeeding the present commander-in-chief.
    Meanwhile he was an honored guest—an indispensable ornament like Sumitra herself—at all receptions and banquets for foreign dignitaries. He knew how to behave: to make conversation in English, to use the right cutlery, to let ladies precede him through a door. The Indian politicians still tended to rush in first and even to jostle and push their way to the front at the buffet table, so that Sumitra had to be on constant guard: it was mortifying to see a plate being snatched from the French ambassador’s wife by the Minister for Trade and Commerce. Sumitra and Lieutenant-General Har Dayal became allies, each signaling to the other to prevent or make up for some breach of manners; sometimes both rolled their eyes in mock despair.
    Lieutenant-General Har Dayal—or Too, as he came to be known to Sumitra and her family—had been married for many years and had teenage children at boarding schools. After the first few months in New Delhi, his wife, unable to stand the sort of official life they led, had gone back to their estate. Theirs had been an arranged