Shining Hero

Triumphantly he held out his hands. ‘I knew I had some paise hidden in this pocket. I’ll go out now and buy some milk for her.’

‘For him,’ laughed Dolly. Happy tears began to run down her cheeks because she knew everything would be all right from now on. Holding the now howling baby in one arm, she reached up and kissed Adhiratha.

‘You don’t know how much I love you,’ she said. ‘You just don’t.’

‘I won’t be long,’ he said as he rushed out. ‘I expect there will be some left over at the khatal.’

The cattle stall in the centre of their area was owned by the landlord and his tenants bought milk for their households and businesses from there as well as using the dung for fuel.

Dolly stood at the open door looking down into the darkness of the stairway, till she heard at last the sound of his footsteps receding.

The baby went on crying for a little while and then, exhausted, fell asleep.

Dolly waited, thinking, ‘He is being a very long time. Perhaps there was no milk left at the khatal. Perhaps he has had to go to the house of the Gwala.’

An hour later she was still waiting. The baby woke up again and once more began crying. Where could Adhiratha be?

After another hour, in which Dolly started to panic and the baby’s desperation was unendurable, she decided the only hope was to go from room to room, and hut to hut begging milk from someone.

Adhiratha never came back. He was hit by a lorry and died on the spot. It was two days of numbing dread and misery before Dolly found out.

3 WARLIKE GESTURES (#ulink_e3709b30-f7a0-5b08-a2f1-91b4c34e3662)

Sankha’s voice, Gandhiva’s accents, and the chariot’s booming sound,Filled the air like distant thunder, shook the firm and solid ground. Kuru’s soldiers fled in terror or they slumbered with the dead,And the rescued lowing cattle with their tails uplifted fled.

Shivarani Gupta, Koonty’s eldest sister, was so tall by the time she was thirteen that her father began to worry that she might never find a husband.

Shivarani laughed, called him an old silly and accused him of knowing nothing about the modern world in which, she said, tall women were the fashion.

By the time Shivarani was sixteen she was taller than ever and her father’s anxiety was greatly increased. As was her mother’s.

The Guptas lived on a modern bungalow on the Hatibari estate that had been built ten years earlier to house the estate manager. Meena Gupta, Shivarani’s mother, went once a week to Calcutta to meet her friends at the Calcutta Club where they ate miniature samosas, drank flowery orange pekoe and played mahjong. And there Meena Gupta poured out her worries.

‘Shivarani is growing like this sort of giraffe because of the genes of my husband’s family. My sister-in-law is nearly six feet tall and if my mother had known about her, she would have forbidden the marriage for everyone knows what difficulties come to families whose daughters are too large.’

Mrs Gupta’s Calcutta Club friends smiled with sympathy, thinking how dreadful it must be for someone as fair and small as Mrs Gupta to have a dark giantess for a daughter.

The Guptas began to approach suitable families, hoping for a match for their lanky daughter while she still possessed one marriageable asset, the bloom of youth.

Three times Shivarani was paraded, wearing her prettiest sari and Meena Gupta’s most costly jewels, before the parents of suitable boys. Three times the Gupta family heard no more of the matter until receiving an invitation to a wedding. The suitable boy was marrying a shorter fairer girl.

‘So many boys wanting to marry Shivarani,’ lied Mrs Gupta to her Cal Club friends. ‘Boy after boy, from good family after good family brought before her for approval and like princess in fairy tale, she rejects them. Eeny meeny miney mo.’

There followed insincere commiseration on the unreasonableness of nubile daughters. ‘We all have such a girl at home, don’t we know it.’ They knew that in reality it was the boy, or his family, who was rejecting Shivarani. But then what good family would marry a girl like that?

Someone said helpfully, ‘I have seen a product for lightening the skin being advertised. Perhaps you can purchase it in Sahib Singh’s.’

The suggestion made Mrs Gupta unreasonably cross. ‘And why should I require such stuff? Are you saying my daughter is black, Leela?’

‘Have another little samosa, Meena. Don’t pay attention to silly Leela,’ the friends tried to soothe.

Meena Gupta, silently blaming her husband for his outsize sister, nibbled her samosa through a veil of tears and vowed, though there was nothing to be done about the height, she would try to lighten Shivarani’s complexion the moment she got home.

After the third rejection Shivarani, her face red with her humiliation, her eyes red with tears, said she would not allow herself to be paraded any more. Her parents, frantic with worry, because what sort of life was there for a woman without marriage, begged Shivarani to give the process just one more chance. Reluctantly the girl agreed. ‘But on condition, no jewels and no pretty sari. They must see me as I am.’ Shivarani’s parents shuddered. What hope was there for the girl, unless she was disguised in opulence and glamour? But those were Shivarani’s terms and she appeared before the aunts and mother of the prospective bridegroom wearing a plain handloom sari in beige and, ‘Oh no, my God,’ whimpered Meena, a pair of high-heeled shoes. ‘You said they must see you as you are, but you are not as high as that,’ mourned Meena Gupta but Shivarani insisted. Either she would appear thus dressed or not at all.

There came a little gasp from the assembled family of the prospective bridegroom that Meena knew was not of admiration. But all the same they continued with their questioning as though, in spite of everything, they were still interested.

A photo of the boy was produced. Meena accepted it with caution and for a moment hardly dared focus her eyes on it. There was sure to be something dreadfully wrong with the fellow or why was his family, even after seeing Shivarani in her khadi sari and high heels, still considering her? When Meena at last dared to look, she thought he was quite handsome.

When Shivarani saw the photo, for the first time in the husband-choosing process, she actually smiled. ‘He looks nice,’ she said.

At last Meena Gupta felt it was safe to tell her club friends. She was unable to keep the triumph out of her voice as she said, ‘He is good-looking, of high intelligence, from excellent family, and what more can any mother want for their daughter?’ Meena thought she saw a quick glance flash between two of her friends. ‘What?’ she asked. ‘I there something I don’t know?’

‘Of course not,’ said Leela hastily. ‘I have never seen the fellow and I am sure he is a very good match.’ She had been on the rough end of Meena’s temper once already and did not want to risk it again.

Meena went to have tea with the boy’s parents and to meet the boy himself while Shivarani waited anxiously at home. But when Meena, usually the most garrulous of women, returned, she hung her shawl on the hook and removed her outdoor slippers in silence.

Shivarani clenched her hands till her knuckles went white, and waited. After a long silent moment she asked, ‘What was he like?’

‘Very nice,’ said Meena. ‘Just as good-looking as in the photo. And he is clever too.’

‘Yes, but,’ pressed Shivarani.

Meena turned her back to her eldest daughter and looking into the hall mirror, began patting down her hair.

‘There is something wrong with him?’

Meena, her gaze on her reflection, shook her head.

‘But I know there is something,’ Shivarani pursued.

‘Well …’ said Meena.

‘What, yes? What?’ Shivarani could hardly bear it.

Meena shrugged gently and said, ‘He is young. Perhaps he will grow a little more.’

Shivarani, frowning, said, ‘Young? How young? I thought you said he was nearly thirty.’

‘That is young,’ said Meena stiffly.

‘What are you telling me?’ cried Shivarani. ‘That you are hoping a man of nearly thirty will keep on growing?’

‘But you never know. That’s what I am thinking,’ murmured Meena Gupta and winked a tear away.

Shivarani stared at her mother’s back and the colour drained from her face. ‘He’s a midget, you mean?’

‘Hush hush,’ soothed her mother. ‘Size is not all. He comes from a prosperous family. He looks like a very nice person. He has doctorates in three subjects. And most important of all, you are so tall and so if you have a short husband your children will come out the right size.’