The sky is bruise-dark and dull. An intuitive leaf trembles even before the wind touches it. The first rains are here. A mynah takes a dip in a puddle and flutters her wings joyously, sending a spray of droplets around her. Her mate calls from the treetop ‘tutiyaon tutiyaon’. The mate’s cry is high-pitched—reminds me of Zarine’s complaint against a well-known singer that she couldn’t take the high notes. ‘Pachi chichvay chai (she is shrieking again),’ Zarine would exclaim, listening to Radio Ceylon.
The windows are smeared with moisture and you can hardly see through them. Suddenly they rattle, as wind and rain lash against them. The monsoons have been forklifted from mid-ocean to assault us; rather relieve us from the cloying heat. Could anything be more welcome?
Raining hard, as I said, and the postman, rubber boots upto his ankles and a rubber raincoat on top, plus a hazed polythene sheet, squelches up the corridor. It is a letter from Claire.
Her face comes to me, opalescent through the latticed rain curtain. We have been writing to each other since Zarine died. She heard about Zarine and her condolence was an outpouring of genuine feeling. There never has been anything spurious about her. She had written she wanted to come to Bombay. What more could I have wanted? But that’s not what I said to her. Not during the sticky summer, or the rains, I had written back, no way. And rude question, but how long are you going to be here? Am embroiled in a case in the Calcutta High Court where the judge gives a date and an adjournment every week. The fellow has decided ten cases in twelve hundred days. Eminently fit for the Supreme Court, I feel.
I open the sticky flap. Am arriving Saturday, she says by BOAC. Flight No. … Lots of luggage, bring a pick-up truck, more likely. About the stay. How long, you asked. Forever. I want a Parsee wedding—and food on a plantain leaf!
Who was it that last talked about the concentrics of a mandala?