Home To India by Jacquelin Singh

and mirrored darkly in it, was an abandoned mosque, crumbling at the walls, weak in the minarets. There had been no one to see to its upkeep for three years now.
    There still remained a little way to go. Smoke from the fires of dried cow dung rose in the dusk, filtering the orange and diffusing whatever light was left into a soft, even glow. Its subtle fragrance, like old wood burning, or some exotic incense, filled the air.
    â€œIt’s just beyond that tamarind tree,” Tej said and pointed to a spot a few yards off where great shadows had formed in the gathering darkness. In the afterglow, we proceeded past the tree, past a compound wall, and finally reached a wooden gate seven feet high.
    It opened at our coming, and inside the yard was a bouquet of disembodied faces. Expressions of unself-conscious curiosity, suspicion, and shyness were held for an instant in bold relief by the light of kerosene lanterns. Family and servants had gathered for this, as had onlookers from the rooftops of nearby houses. Then out of the dusk a short, brisk, motherly figure emerged and took me in her warm, plump arms before I had a chance to go through the ritual of touching the hem of her garment. Tej had coached me to do this with older people as a mark of respect and good upbringing. The others materialized out of the deep dusk—Pitaji, a tall, heavy, military presence against the lantern light; then Goodi and Rano. Beside them was a third person.
    We two must have looked at one another for a moment too long. I could feel the breaths of the others stop. They stood watching us. Tej created some business with the luggage. Hari turned to help him. Mataji, Pitaji, the girls, and the cousins from Amritsar formed a tableau in the half-dark. I took a step forward. An unanticipated question crossed my mind: was I supposed to touch the hem of her garment? She was, after all, older than I. Something powerful held me back. Where was Tej to advise me what to do? To get me through this moment? There was no one to give a hint. And she kept standing there, a tall, full figure in the light of the kerosene lantern that made a shadow of her features at the same time it shone through the dupatta—sheer as a dragonfly’s wing—that was drawn over her head and that partially covered her face.
    From behind her darted another form out of the dark. It was a child wearing a turban sizes too big for him. The occasion for breaking the impasse had presented itself. I bent down to chuck him under the chin. He slipped away, to hide behind his mother. By the time I straightened up, Dilraj Kaur had turned to order one of the servants to bring us tea, and everybody had started talking at once.

5
    By the time Uncle Gurnam Singh arrived from Bikaner in the first week of July—in a jeep, with all his retinue, out of a whirl of dust and confusion, filling the village with excitement and wonder—the heat of the premonsoon summer had taken possession of our very flesh and bones.
    The dry winds that whipped through the dun-colored landscape in May and June had given way to a relentless, moisture-laden, yellow dust-haze that not even the smallest breeze disturbed. There was a breathless suspension of sound, except for the drugged hum of crickets in the hibiscus hedgerows. And all conversations centered on when the rains would come. The monsoon had been drenching and flooding the streets of Bombay for over a month and was moving north in its own time. Pitaji, like farmers everywhere and always, scanned the skies morning and evening, looking for clues.
    Everything was ready to pop, and the uneasy relationship that had grown between Dilraj Kaur and me since my arrival six weeks earlier, was, like the heat, locked in with the lid on. In the beginning we sometimes caught ourselves studying one another, she perhaps wondering if my pubic hair was the same color as the pale blond of my head; I trying to figure out if she shaved hers, as I had heard Indian