EXTRACT FROM CHAPTER ONE
Ashok had come home to Bangalore to find a wife. Or to put it more precisely, Dr Ashok Rao, newly qualified consultant ophthalmologist at Queen Anne's Hospital, London, had been ordered by his mother back to Bangalore for purposes of matrimony.
It was exactly a month since his mother's letter had arrived at his Richmond flat.
Now that your sister's marriage is arranged, she had written, time is for you also to settle down. Not wait for Priya being married. Your sister is strong-headed. She will not consent before she is graduating. You are already nearly thirty, and now you are a qualified consultant. You must come as soon as convenient.
The rest of the letter was filled with news from Bangalore and immersed him in the sunshine of his native city. When he had finished reading, he had placed the letter in the rack on the kitchen table. Then he got ready to leave the house. As he turned up the collar of his overcoat and stepped out into the clawing November drizzle, he reflected that his mother was right. She had mirrored his thoughts, despite the cynicism of disbelieving friends, the perpetual students from his Oxford days, who still regarded themselves as carefree and without responsibility. Ashok had rocketed up the career ladder and had achieved the almost unheard of status of a consultancy before he was thirty, while his friends were still struggling young lawyers, scientists and doctors who couldn't even envisage 'settling down'. But over and above all that, it was hard for his English friends to stomach the idea of an arranged marriage. Ashok, though, could slip easily across the cultural divide. India, England - worlds apart, but nevertheless both part of Ashok's world, and combining to furnish him, perhaps, with broader insights than those of some of his acquaintances.
In any case his friends had missed the point. Once he had listened to his heart and not his head. He'd learnt his lesson. It had taken five years for the pain to cease, and left him steeped in remorse. Now he sought a surer, steadier road. It hadn't been a case of capitulating to his parents' wishes.
His parents' house in the Malleshwaram suburb of north Bangalore had weathered his absence without protest. Apart from the appearance of a few new appliances, nothing had changed. The jumbled papaya and banana plants were still locked in battle over the limited space in the small walled garden, where orange, pink and purple bougainvillea rambled in tousled abandon over the front wall into the lane. The old mango tree still hung on bravely to its corner at the back. His mother's collection of garden pots, with their assortment of mysterious plants grown from pips, stones and cuttings still gave the whole scene the sense of a gloriously chaotic jungle, in the middle of which two elderly coconut palms, heavy with fruit, stood sentry.
From outside, the house had shoddy, crumbling appearance, which belied the comfortable interior. The excesses of the tropical climate saw to it that creeping mould and lichen quickly obscured the line between nature and the hand of man. The house was similar to the others in the lane, each like some eternal ammonite, set into the rich earth, which seemed to Ashok to have crept up into the once white walls, as if they were the ruins of an ancient forest hermitage. Every time he returned home, Ashok understood what it was that was absent from the clearly delineated, clinical, hygienic world that he had left behind in England.
In the West, nature was an enemy to be tamed and feared. Here, back in India there was no sharp, dividing line between man and the environment. Here he was part of nature, part of the earth, part of the gnarled old mango tree. He was kin to the butterfly that alighted on the arum lily, the ten-centimetre millipede plodding across the lane, the gecko lying in wait under the eaves. Despite the excitement of his family at his return, the many questions, the tales to tell, the serenity of the place enveloped him, obscuring the rigid urgency of English life. This time, more than ever before, he knew that England was a phase. His sojourn there was transitory. Today or tomorrow, this year or next, India would claim back her lost son.
***
It had all been fine until she saw the black-robed figure.
Newly arrived from England, Hannah Petersen had plunged with enthusiasm into the fevered atmosphere of the backstreets of Hyderabad. She was excited, and at last carefree, despite the sensation that she caused as she strode through the morning market crowds.
A head taller than most of the men, let alone the women, her feral halo of auburn hair blazed in the sunlight. She felt like the bobbing red balloon she had seen in an advert to promote some faceless English new town. It was fitting. The whole of England seemed faceless in the light of the colour and vitality here. She was doing her bit for the homeland. Promoting the old country by turning herself into an advertisement. The thought made her smile and her smile brought smiles in return. Hannah was charmed. The attention was friendly and curious. Not like... She shook the memory from her mind.
So many faces. Grizzled old men in turbans, large-eyed urchins, sinuous rickshaw peddlers, women with quicksilver eyes and flowers in their hair. A photographer's paradise. Theoretically this job should be easy, much easier than her usual form of journalism. But how could she hope to achieve any natural portraits? As soon as she got out the camera everything stopped. Market stallholders held up yard-long gourds or plump melons and stood to attention. People called to her from shed-like shop-entrances. 'Photo, here please! Photo!'
No point in trying. Now was not the time. She was late enough as it was.
So where, in this pungent chutney of a city, was the damned taxi office?
Mr Reddy, the receptionist at the Krishna Hotel, had told her it was near the Charminar, an ancient Islamic arch that dominated the old town. Although she had never been to the East before, Hannah trusted her sense of direction. She had given herself what she hoped was plenty of time en route to explore the maze of alleyways.
She felt at ease for the first time in a year. Warmth stirred within her that was not entirely due to the weather, echoes of long ago, the Friday warmth of grandmother Rosen's kitchen after a tortured week at school. As if the pragmatism inherited from her Danish father had been punctured by the awakening of a more mystical heritage that surely still lingered in the genes passed down to her through her mother. Within her Petersen body, her Rosen ancestors were calling to her. Hyderabad felt somehow familiar. It held no threat. The city was vibrant, quivering like a wakeful stallion. Yet there reigned beneath the bustle of frenetic activity, and the clamour of competing motor horns, an undercurrent of self-assurance and control.
A group of children ran up to her. English Pen? Your country coin? A good opportunity to shed some of the loose change she had been dragging around since England. She might as well have been distributing the Crown Jewels. Each penny was received with cries of joy and scrutinised. She remembered the children she'd known in Belfast, innocence eroded by bombs and guns. Long may these Indian youngsters delight in pens and foreign coins.
After twenty minutes Hannah realised she was lost.
She stopped by a pair of giggling girls in bright saris, who sat on the pavement weaving garlands of jasmine and marigolds. 'Charminar?'
A flurry of gestures and shouts answered her. 'Charminar! Charminar!' Hannah nodded her thanks and turned down the bazaar-like side alley the girls had indicated. Too narrow even for a cycle-rickshaw, crammed with shops selling colourful lac-bangles, wares spilling out onto the streets. She threaded her way through the handcarts and shoppers, plunging it seemed, into ever more chaos.
By now Willi would be waiting at the taxi office. Hannah felt bad about being late for the Dutch girl. She'd only met her yesterday. A lucky encounter. Just the sort of pick-me-up that Hannah needed in her jet-lagged state. It would be fun to drive to the fortress together. If she ever managed to find her way out of here.
'Charminar?' She confronted a dhoti-skirted lad, who had stopped to gape at her, a tray of deep-fried pakoras piled on his head.
'Char-min-ar,' he stammered, seemingly mesmerised by Hannah's eyes. Like moss through a Polaroid filter, Maighréad had once said. Vaguely the boy pointed and Hannah turned down an even narrower alleyway that seethed like a dark snake, the heat oppressive, seemingly unable to escape.
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