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 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
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