Under the Jeweled Sky by Alison McQueen

a modest house on Kim Street, where her husband ran a small business making shoes. That much his father remembered, although the finer points of his recollections had faded until he was not so sure of the details, such as the color of the door.
    Jag knew that it was his father’s destiny to return to his home city one day. He talked about it all the time. They would travel there together, father and son, and reestablish old family ties while Jag passed his matriculation and began his adult life, fixing another generational rung on the ladder of his forebears. His father spoke of it often as they sat together in the evening, talking man to son by thin lamplight after washing and performing their puja . Jag’s father would secure his pension before making his final journey, compensation from his master after a lifetime of devoted service intended to sustain him through his weakening years. For that, he was prepared to wait, for without it, he would be sure to face an old age filled with nothing but hard work and penury.
    Jag thought of all this as he washed their clothes, soaping them for far too long, distracted by the mire of worries that kept him awake night after night. He wanted things to be different. He wanted to be able to make his own choices and walk his own path. He was tired of hearing his father’s plans for the future. What about his future? What was he going to achieve by being dragged off to Amritsar? Three months. That was all she had left. August, September, October, then she would be gone. She had said that they might stay on until Christmas, but what good would that be to him? He knew what he wanted now. He wanted to be able to walk with her, side by side, without hiding in the shadows and sneaking around like criminals. They weren’t doing anything wrong, yet he could not even imagine what the consequences would be if they were to be found out.
    Jag pulled at the water pump, venting his frustration as he worked the handle hard, filling the trough to rinse the clothes he had come to despise. He hated wearing these things, these simple cottons that marked him as different from her, different from them . He should be able to wear a shirt and a tie, and smart trousers with a jacket, to show that he was educated and respectable. He could read and write as well as any man, and he had a natural gift for mathematics. Equations, multiplication, long division. There was no problem he couldn’t solve. Except this.
    That is the trouble with this country, he thought. You are born to your status, to your given caste, and once you have come into its being, you can never leave it, never move up and be seen as better than the life you were birthed into. It was wrong, and once India had been freed, it would have to change. Even Gandhiji himself had said so. He had been moved to speak out on behalf of the Dalits, the Untouchables, saying that every person who sought to perpetuate the lowliness of that rank without hope of release should hang their heads in shame.
    Jag’s father had returned with the Maharaja three weeks ago, and Jag had barely managed to get away for a moment since then. There was too much work to be done. So many people had left, and the bickering had already started about how the extra duties were to be divided among the palace’s diminished manpower. To make matters worse, his father had announced joyfully that he would not be accompanying the Maharaja when he went to Delhi for the independence celebrations. The Maharaja would take only six bearers with him, and his father would be permitted to stay behind, to be with his son so that they might welcome India’s new dawn together. Jag had joined in his father’s happiness, hugging him hard while swallowing his disappointment.
    He pummeled the clothes in the water trough before hauling them out and wringing them tightly until his knuckles turned white, hands hurting. If he did not see her soon, she would forget about him,