Ruth Prawer Jhabvala - Heat and Dust

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8 March. It is from this time on that Olivia's letters to Marcia really begin. She had been writing to her before that, but infrequently and not in great detail: and it is only from the day of the Nawab's picnic that she began to write as if it were a relief to have someone to confide in.

Olivia never told Douglas about the Nawab's picnic. She had meant to as soon as she got home, but it so happened that he had been held up by a stabbing incident in the bazaar that day and was even later than usual. She asked him many questions, and as he loved talking about his work (she wasn't always all that interested), the time just went and she never did get round to telling him about her day. And when he left next morning, she was still asleep. So instead she wrote the first of her long letters to Marcia. I wonder what Marcia can have made of these letters: she was living in France at the time — she had married a Frenchman but they had separated and Marcia was on her own, living in a series of hotel rooms and getting involved with some rather difficult people. Olivia's life in India must have seemed strange and far-off.

I have laid Olivia's letters out on my little desk and work on them and on this journal throughout the morning. My day in Satipur has taken on a steady routine. It starts early because the town wakes early. First there are the temple bells — I lie in bed and listen to them — and then the fire is lit and the kettle put on in the tea-stall opposite. The air is fresh at this hour of the morning, the sky tender and pale. Everything seems as harmonious as the temple bells. I go down to the bazaar to buy curds and fresh green vegetables, and after cooking my meal, I settle down crosslegged on the floor to work on my papers.

Towards evening I sometimes go to the post office which is situated in what used to be Olivia's breakfast room. If it is about the time when the offices close, I walk over to the Crawfords' house to wait for Inder Lal. Both houses — the Crawfords' and Olivia's — once so different in their interiors are now furnished with the same ramshackle office furniture, and also have the same red betel stains on their walls. Their gardens too are identical now — that is, they are no longer gardens but patches of open ground where the clerks congregate in the shade of whatever trees have been left. Peddlers have obtained licences to sell peanuts and grams. There are rows of cycle stands with a cycle jammed into every notch.

It used to embarrass Inder Lal to find me waiting for him.

Perhaps he was even a little ashamed to be seen with me. I suppose we do make a strange couple — I'm so much taller than he is, and I walk with long strides and keep forgetting that this makes it difficult for him to keep up with me. But I think by now he has got used to me, and perhaps is even rather proud to be seen walking with his English friend. I also think he quite likes my company now. At first he welcomed it mainly to practise his English — he said it was a very good chance for him — but now he also seems to enjoy our conversations. I certainly do. He is very frank with me and tells me all sorts of personal things: not only about his life but also about his feelings. He has told' me that the only other person he can talk to freely is his mother but even with her well, he said, with the mother there are certain things one cannot speak as with the friend.

Once I asked "What about your wife?"

He said she was not intelligent. Also she had not had much education — his mother had not wanted him to marry a very educated girl; she said there was nothing but trouble to be expected from such a quarter. Ritu had been chosen on account of her suitable family background and her fair complexion. His mother had told him she was pretty, but he never could make up his mind about that. Sometimes he thought yes, sometimes no. He asked my opinion. I said yea. She must have been so when young, though now she is thin and worn and her face, like his, always anxious.

He told me that during the first years of her marriage she had been so homesick that she had never stopped crying. "It was very injurious to her health," he said, "especially when she got in family way. Mother and I tried to explain matters to her, how it was necessary for her to eat and be happy, but she did not understand. Naturally her health suffered and the child also was born weak. It was her fault. An intelligent person would have understood and taken care. "

He frowned and looked unhappy. By this time we had reached the lake. (This is about as far as Olivia would have got if she ever ventured to this side: because beyond this point the Indian part of the town began, the crowded lanes and bazaar where I now live.)

Inder Lal said "How is it possible for me to talk with her the way I am now talking with you? It is not possible. She would understand nothing." He added: "Her health also has remained very weak."

There were some boys swimming in the lake. They seemed to be having a very good time. We could see the water rising in sprays as they jumped up and down and splashed one another. Inder Lal watched them wistfully. Perhaps he wished he were one of them; or he may have been remembering summer evenings of his own when he too had gone swimming with his friends.

It could not have been all that long ago — he is still a young man, a few years younger than I am, about 25 or 26. When you look closer, you can see that his face really is young, only he seems older because of his careworn expression. When I first saw him, he seemed to me a typical Indian clerk, meek and bowed down with many cares. But now I see that he is not meek and bowed at all- or only outwardly — that really inside himself he is alive and yearning for all sorts of things beyond his reach. It shows mainly in his eyes which are beautiful- full of melancholy and liquid with longing.

10 M arch. I work hard at my Hindi and am beginning to have conversations with people which is a great advantage. I wish I could talk more with Ritu, Inder Lal's wife, but she is so shy that my improved Hindi doesn't help me with her at all. Although I'm quite a shy person myself, I try not to be with her. I feel it is my responsibility to get us going since I'm older and (I think) stronger. There is something frail, weak about her. Physically she is very thin, with thin arms on which her bangles slip about; but not only physically — I have the impression that her mind, or do I mean her will, is not strong either, that she is the sort of person who would give way quickly. Sometimes she tries to overcome her shyness and pays ~e a visit in my room; but though I talk away desperately in my appalling Hindi just so she will stay, quite soon she jumps up and runs away. The same happens when I try to visit her — I've seen her at my approach run to hide in the bathroom and, though it is not very salubrious (the little sweeper girl is not too good at her job), stay locked up in there till I go away again.

The days — and nights — are really heating up now. It is unpleasant to sleep indoors and everyone pulls out their beds at night. The town has become a communal dormitory. There are string-beds in front of all the stalls, and on the roofs, and in the courtyards: wherever there is an open space. I kept on sleeping indoors for a while since I was embarrassed to go to bed in public. But it just got too hot, so now I too have dragged my bed out into the courtyard and have joined it on to the Inder Lals' line. The family of the shop downstairs also sleep in this courtyard, and so does their little servant boy, and some others I haven't been able to identify. So we're quite a crowd. I no longer change into a nightie but sleep, like an Indian woman, in a sari.

It's amazing how still everything is. When Indians sleep, they really do sleep. Neither adults nor children have a regular bed-time — when they're tired they just drop, fully clothed, on to their beds, or the ground if they have no beds, and don't stir again till the next day begins. All one hears is occasionally someone crying out in their sleep, or a dog maybe a jackal — baying at the moon. I lie awake for hours: with happiness, actually. I have never known such a sense of communion. Lying like this under the open sky there is a feeling of being immersed in space — though not in empty space, for there are all these people sleeping all around me, the whole town and I am part of it. How different from my often very lonely room in London with only my own walls to look at and my books to read.