‘Oh Miss Lata, meet me here
Far from banks of Windermere.
On the Ganga we will skim
Many hers and single him.’
Lata laughed.
‘Say you’ll come with me,’ said Kabir.
‘All right,’ said Lata, shaking her head, not – as it appeared to Kabir – in partial denial of her own decision but in partial regret at her own weakness.
3.13
LATA did not want ten friends to accompany her, and even if she had she would not have been able to round up half that number. One was enough. Malati unfortunately had left Brahmpur. Lata decided to go over to Hema’s place to persuade her to come. Hema was very excited at the prospect, and readily agreed. It sounded romantic and conspiratorial. ‘I’ll keep it a secret,’ she said, but made the mistake of confiding it on pain of lifelong enmity to one of her innumerable cousins, who confided it to another cousin on similarly strict terms. Within a day it had come to Taiji’s ears. Taiji, normally lenient, saw grave dangers in this enterprise. She did not know – nor for that matter did Hema – that Kabir was Muslim. But going out with any boy in a boat at six in the morning: even she baulked here. She told Hema she would not be allowed to go out. Hema sulked but succumbed, and phoned Lata on Sunday evening. Lata went to bed in great anxiety, but, having made up her mind, did not sleep badly.
She could not let Kabir down again. She pictured him standing in the banyan grove, cold and anxious, without even the granitic sustenance of Mrs Nowrojee’s little cakes, waiting for her as the minutes passed and she did not come. At a quarter to six the next morning she got out of bed, dressed quickly, pulled on a baggy grey sweater that had once belonged to her father, told her mother she was going for a long walk in the university grounds, and went to meet Kabir at the appointed place.
He was waiting for her. It was light, and the whole grove was filled with the sound of waking birds.
‘You’re looking very unusual in that sweater,’ he said approvingly.
‘You look just the same as ever,’ she said, also approvingly. ‘Have you been waiting long?’
He shook his head.
She told him about the confusion with Hema.
‘I hope you’re not going to call it off because you don’t have a chaperone,’ he said.
‘No,’ said Lata. She felt as bold as Malati. She had not had much time to think about things this morning, and did not want to either. Despite her evening’s anxiety, her oval face looked fresh and attractive, and her lively eyes were no longer sleepy.
They got down to the river and walked along the sand for a while until they came to some stone steps. A few washermen were standing in the water, beating clothes against the steps. On a small path going up the slope at this point stood a few bored little donkeys overburdened with bundles of clothes. A washerman’s dog barked at them in uncertain, staccato yaps.
‘Are you sure we’ll get a boat?’ said Lata.
‘Oh, yes, there’s always someone. I’ve done this often enough.’
A small, sharp pulse of pain went through Lata, though Kabir had meant merely that he enjoyed going out on the Ganga at dawn.
‘Ah, there’s one,’ he said. A boatman was scouting up and down with his boat in midstream. It was April, so the river was low and the current sluggish. Kabir cupped his hands and shouted: ‘Aré, mallah!’
The boatman, however, made no attempt to row towards them.
‘What’s the matter?’ he yelled in Hindi that had a strong Brahmpuri accent; he gave the verb ‘hai’ an unusual emphasis.
‘Can you take us to a point where we can see the Barsaat Mahal and its reflection?’ said Kabir.
‘Sure!’
‘How much?’
‘Two rupees.’ He was now approaching the shore in his old flat-bottomed boat.
Kabir got annoyed. ‘Aren’t you ashamed to ask so much?’ he said angrily.
‘It’s what everyone charges, Sahib.’
‘I’m not some outsider that you can cheat me,’ said Kabir.
‘Oh,’ said Lata, ‘please don’t quarrel over nothing –’
She stopped short; presumably Kabir would insist on paying, and he, like her, probably did not have much money.
Kabir went on angrily, shouting to be heard over the sound of the clothes hitting the steps ofthe ghat: ‘We come empty-handed into this world and go out empty-handed. Do you have to lie so early in the morning? Will you take this money with you when you go?’
The boatman, presumably intrigued at being so philosophically addressed, said: ‘Sahib, come down. Whatever you think is appropriate I will accept.’
He guided Kabir towards a spot a couple of hundred yards away where the boat could come close to the shore. By the time Lata and Kabir had reached the spot, he had gone up the river.