‘
‘I think we might change the subject, guys,’ I interjected, looking at Karla. Her face was pale, and her eyes were wide with what seemed to be fright. Are you okay?’
‘I’m fine,’ she answered quickly. ‘Maybe that elevator ride was scarier than I thought.’
‘Sorry for problem, Miss Karla,’ Prabaker apologised, his face pinched in a solicitous frown. ‘From now, only happy talking. No more talking about killing and murders and blood all over the houses, and all that.’
‘That should cover it, Prabu,’ I muttered through clenched teeth, glaring at him.
Several young women came to clear the used banana leaves away, and lay out small dishes of sweet rabdi dessert for us. They stared at Karla with frank fascination.
‘Her legs are too thin,’ one of them said, in Hindi. ‘You can see them, through the pants.’
‘And her feet are too big,’ said another.
‘But her hair is very soft, and a good, black Indian colour,’ said a third.
‘Her eyes are the colour of stink-weed,’ said the first with a contemptuous sniff.
‘Be careful, sisters,’ I laughed, speaking in Hindi. ‘My friend speaks perfect Hindi, and she understands everything you’re saying.’
The women reacted with shocked scepticism, chattering amongst themselves. One of them stooped to stare into Karla’s face, and asked her loudly if she spoke Hindi.
‘My legs may be too thin, and my feet may be too big,’ Karla replied in fluent Hindi, ‘but there’s nothing wrong with my hearing.’
The women shrieked in delight and crowded around her, laughing happily. They pleaded with her to join them, sweeping her away to the women’s banquet. I watched her for some time, surprised to see her smile and even laugh out loud in the company of the women and the young girls. She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever known. It was the beauty of a desert at dawn: a loveliness that filled my eyes, and crushed me into silent, unbreathing awe.
Looking at her there, in the Village in the Sky, watching her laugh, it shocked me to think that I’d deliberately avoided her for so many months. I was no less surprised by how tactile the girls were with her, how easily they reached out to stroke her hair or to take her hands in their own. I’d perceived her to be aloof and almost cold. In less than a minute, those women were more familiar with her than I’d dared to be in more than a year of friendship. I remembered the quick, impulsive kiss she’d given me, in my hut. I remembered the smell of cinnamon and jasmine in her hair, and the press of her lips, like sweet grapes swollen with the summer sun.
Tea arrived, and I took my glass to stand near one of the huge window openings that looked out over the slum. Far below, the tattered cloak of the ghetto spread outward from the construction site to the very edge of the sea. The narrow lanes, obscured by ragged overhangs, were only partially visible and seemed more like tunnels than streets. Smoke rose in drifts from cooking fires, and stuttered on a sluggish seaward breeze to disperse over a scattering of canoes that fished the muddy shore.
Inland from the slum there were a large number of tall apartment buildings, the expensive homes of the middle-rich. From my perch, I looked down at the fabulous gardens of palms and creepers on the tops of some, and the miniature slums that servants of the rich had built for themselves on the tops of others. Mould and mildew scarred every building, even the newest. I’d come to think of it as beautiful, that decline and decay, creeping across the face of the grandest designs: that stain of the end, spreading across every bright beginning in Bombay.
‘You’re right, it is a good view,’ Karla said quietly as she joined me.
‘I come up here at night, sometimes, when everyone’s asleep,’ I said, just as quietly. ‘It’s one of my favourite places to be alone.’
We were silent, for a while, watching the crows hover and dip over the slum.
‘So, where’s
‘I don’t like to be alone,’ she said flatly, and then turned in time to see my expression. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I guess I’m surprised. I just, well, I thought of you as someone who’s good at being alone. I don’t mean that in a bad way. I just think of you as… sort of aloof, sort of above it all.’
‘Your aim is off.’ she smiled. ‘Below it all, would be more like it.’
‘Wow, twice in one day.’
‘What?’
‘That’s twice in one day that I’ve seen a big smile. You were smiling with the girls before, and I was thinking that it’s the first time I’ve ever seen you really smile.’
‘Well, of
