To visit Queensland and Tasmania and the Great Barrier Reef before I die.
My life with the Taylors is comfortable, too, because I do not have much work to do. Unlike in the actress's house, where I was the only servant, there are three others here sharing the work.
Ramu is the cook and the kitchen is completely under him. Shanti makes the beds and does the washing. I have only to do the vacuuming and the cleaning. From time to time, I also polish the silver cutlery, stack up books in Colonel Taylor's library and help Bhagwati trim the hedges. All of us live in the servants' quarters attached to the main house. We have one large and two small rooms to ourselves. Bhagwati lives in the large one with his wife and son. Shanti lives alone in the second. And I share the third with Ramu. The room has bunk beds. I sleep in the one on top.
Ramu is a nice bloke. He joined the Taylors four months ago and is an excellent cook. His main claim to fame is that he knows French cooking, having previously worked for a French family.
He can make gateau de saumon and crepes suzette and cervettes au gratin, which is my favourite dish. Ramu is well built and his face, if you ignore the pockmarks, is quite good looking. He loves to see Hindi movies. His favourite films are those in which the rich heroine runs off with the poor hero. I have a suspicion that Shanti fancies Ramu. The way she looks at him, winking occasionally, makes me think she is trying to give Ramu a signal. But Ramu does not care for Shanti. He is in love with someone else. He has made me swear not to mention this to anyone, so I cannot reveal the name. But I suppose I can mention that she is a beautiful girl with blue eyes and golden hair.
Although I live in the servants' quarters, the Taylors treat me almost as part of the family.
Whenever they go for an outing to McDonald's, they remember to buy me a kids' meal. When Roy and Maggie play Scrabble, they always include me. When Roy watches cricket in the TV room, he always invites me to join him (though he gets nasty whenever Australia is losing).
Every time the Taylors travel to Australia on holiday, they make a point of getting me a small gift – a keyring saying I LOVE SYDNEY or a T-shirt with a funny message. Sometimes all this kindness makes me cry. When I am eating a slice of Edam cheese or drinking a can of root beer, I find it difficult to believe that I am the same orphan boy who was eating thick blackened chapattis and indigestible stew in a filthy juvenile home not far from here just five years ago. At times I actually start imagining myself as part of this Australian family. Ram Mohammad Taylor.
But when one of the servants is scolded or dismissed or when Colonel Taylor wags a finger and says 'You bloody Indians,' my dream world comes crashing down and I begin to think of myself as a mongrel peeping through a barred window into an exotic world which does not belong to me.
But there is one thing that does belong to me, and that is the money piling up from my salary, though I have yet either to see or touch it. After bad experiences with a string of servants, Colonel Taylor decided not to give me a monthly salary on the grounds that I am a minor. He gives me only fifty rupees per month as pocket money. I am supposed to receive the rest of my salary as accumulated savings only on termination of employment. And only then if I have
behaved well. Otherwise, like Raju and Ajay, it is bye bye without pay. Unlike me, Ramu gets his salary every month. A full two thousand rupees. He has already accumulated a kitty of eight thousand rupees which he keeps safely hidden inside a hollow space in the mattress of his bed. I have only a hundred rupees in my pocket, but I have a little red diary in which I keep adding up my salary every month. As of today, the Taylors owe me 22,500 rupees. Just the thought of owning all this money makes me giddy. Every night I dream of visiting the places I see in Australian Geographic. Ramu has bigger ambitions. He dreams of marrying a beautiful white girl and honeymooning in Sydney, and starting a chain of French restaurants where he will serve venison and crème brûlée.
* * *
The neighbourhood junk-dealer, or kabariwalla, is here. Mrs Taylor is selling him all the newspapers and magazines we have hoarded over the past six months. They must have cost at least ten thousand rupees to purchase. But we are selling them at fifteen rupees per kilo. Ramu and I bring out heavy bundles of the Times of India, Indian Express, the Pioneer and the Hindu.
We pull out the stacked copies of India Today, Femina, Cosmopolitan and The Australian. The kabariwalla weighs them on his dusty scales. Suddenly Roy appears on the scene. 'What's happening?' he asks his mother.
'Nothing. We are just getting rid of all the junk newsprint in the house,' she replies.
