Amitav Ghosh - The Glass Palace

‘I learnt Hindustani as a child, Your Highness,’ Uma said. ‘We lived in Delhi for a while.’

‘ Achha ? Well, now we would like to ask something else of you, Uma.’ The Queen made a beckoning gesture. ‘You may approach us.’

Uma went over to the Queen and lowered her head.

‘Uma,’ the Queen whispered, ‘we would like to examine your garments.’

‘Your Highness!’

‘As you can see, my daughters wear their saris in the local style. But I prefer this new fashion. It is more elegant — the sari looks more like a htamein. Would it be too great an imposition to ask you to reveal the secrets of this new style to us?’

Uma was startled into laughter. ‘I would be glad to, whenever you please.’

The Queen turned stiffly to the Collector. ‘You, Collector-sahib, are no doubt impatient to be on your way to the Cutchery and the many pressing tasks that await you. But may I ask if you will permit your wife to remain with us a little longer?’

The Collector left, and in defiance of the initial auguries of disaster, the visit ended very amicably, with Uma spending the rest of the afternoon in Outram House, chatting with Dolly and the Princesses.

The Collector’s house was known as the Residency. It was a large bungalow with a colonnaded portico and a steep, red-tiled roof. It stood on the crest of a hill, looking southward over the bay and the valley of the Kajali river. It was surrounded by a walled garden that stretched a long way down the slope, stopping just short of the river’s gorge.

One morning Uma discovered a narrow entrance hidden behind a thicket of bamboo at the bottom of her garden. The gate was overgrown with weeds but she was able to open it just wide enough to squeeze through. Twenty feet beyond, a wooded out-crop jutted out over the valley of the Kajali river. There was a peepul at the lip of the gorge, a majestic old tree with a thick beard of aerial roots hanging from its gnarled grey branches. She could tell that goats came to graze there: the earth beneath the tree’s canopy had been cropped clean of undergrowth. She could see trails of black droppings leading down the slope. The goatherds had built themselves a platform to sit on by heaping earth and stones around the peepul’s trunk.

Uma was amazed by the view: the meandering river, the estuary, the curve of the bay, the windswept cliffs — she could see more of the valley from here than from the Residency on top of the hill. She returned the next day and the day after. The goat-herds came only at dawn and for the rest of the day the place was deserted. She took to slipping out of the house every morning, leaving the door of her bedroom shut, so that the servants would think she was still inside. She would sit in the peepul’s deep shade for an hour or two with a book.

One morning Dolly surprised her by appearing unexpectedly out of the peepul’s beard of hanging roots. She’d called to return some clothes that Uma had sent over to Outram House — petticoats and blouses, for the Princesses to have copied by their tailors. She’d waited in the drawing room of the Residency while the servants went looking for Uma. They’d looked everywhere before giving up: memsahib wasn’t at home, they said, she must have slipped out for a walk.

‘How did you know I was here?’

‘Our coachman is related to yours.’

‘Did Kanhoji tell you?’ Kanhoji was the elderly coachman who drove Uma around town.

‘Yes.’

‘I wonder how he knew about my secret tree.’

‘He said he’d heard about it from the herdsmen who bring their goats here in the morning. They’re from his village.’

‘Really?’ Uma fell silent. It was odd to think that the goatherds were just as aware of her presence as she was of theirs. ‘Well, the view’s wonderful, don’t you think?’

Dolly gave the valley a perfunctory glance. ‘I’ve grown so used to it I never give it a thought any more.’

‘I think it’s amazing. I come here almost every day.’

‘Every day?’

‘Just for a bit.’

‘I can see why you would.’ She paused to look at Uma. ‘It must be lonely for you here, in Ratnagiri.’

‘Lonely?’ Uma was taken aback. It hadn’t occurred to her to use that word of herself. It was not as though she never met anyone, or that she was ever at a loss for things to do — the Collector made sure of that. Every Monday his office sent up a memorandum listing her engagements for the week — a municipal function, a sports day at a school, a prize-giving at the vocational college. She usually had only one appointment a day, not so many as to keep her uncomfortably busy nor so few as to make her days seem oppressively long. She went through the list carefully when it arrived at the beginning of the week, and then she put it on her dressing table, with a weight on it, so it wouldn’t blow away. The thought of missing an appointment worried her, although there was little chance of that. The Collector’s office was very good about sending reminders: a peon came up to the Residency about an hour before each new appointment to tell Kanhoji to bring the gaari round. She’d hear the horses standing under the porch; they’d snort and kick the gravel, and Kanhoji would click his tongue, tuk-tuk-tuk.

The nicest part of these appointments was the journey into town and back. There was a window between the coach and the driver’s bench. Every few minutes Kanhoji would stick his tiny, wrinkled face into the window and tell her about the places around them — the Cutchery, the gaol, the college, the bazaars. There were times when she was tempted to get off so she could go into the bazaars and bargain with the fishwives. But she knew there would be a scandal; the Collector would come home and say: ‘You should just have let me know so that I could have arranged some bandobast .’ But the bandobast would have destroyed any pleasure she might have taken in the occasion: half the town would have gathered, with everyone falling over themselves to please the Collector. The shopkeepers would have handed over anything she so much as glanced at, and when she got home the bearers and the khansama would have sulked as though she’d dealt them a reproach.

‘What about you, Dolly?’ Uma said. ‘Are you lonely here?’

‘Me? I’ve lived here nearly twenty years, and this is home to me now.’

‘Really?’ It struck Uma that there was something almost incredible about the thought that a woman of such beauty and poise had spent most of her life in this small provincial district town.

‘Do you remember anything of Burma?’

‘I remember the Mandalay palace. Especially the walls.’

‘Why the walls?’

‘Many of them were lined with mirrors. There was a great hall called the Glass Palace. Everything there was of crystal and gold. You could see yourself everywhere if you lay on the floor.’

‘And Rangoon? Do you remember Rangoon?’

‘Our steamer anchored there for a couple of nights, but we weren’t allowed into the city.’

‘I have an uncle in Rangoon. He works for a bank. If I’d visited him I’d be able to tell you about it.’

Dolly turned her eyes on Uma’s face. ‘Do you think I want to know about Burma?’

‘Don’t you?’

‘No. Not at all.’

‘But you’ve been away so long.’

Dolly laughed. ‘I think you’re feeling a little sorry for me. Aren’t you?’

‘No,’ Uma faltered. ‘No.’

‘There’s no point in being sorry for me. I’m used to living in places with high walls. Mandalay wasn’t much different. I don’t really expect much else.’

‘Do you ever think of going back?’