Delhi Read Online Free PDF Page B

tape recorders and gramophones compete with the snake charmers’ pipes.
    Our arrival causes a stir. By the time we pull up alongside the verandah of the rest-house, transistors have been toned down; three snake charmers blow lustily through their gourd pipes; an old man with a king cobra twined round his neck approaches us. ‘Christmas!’ exclaims Lady Hoity-Toity. ‘I don’t like snakes and I don’t like picnickers.’ She surveys the scene for a moment, shudders a long
ooh
of disgust. ‘How long do we have to stay here?’ she asks.
    ‘There’s this amphitheatre. Then there is an old dam about two miles from here, village Anangpur another mile beyond the dam. There are the remains of the wall which protected Anangpur. It’ll take us most of the afternoon and evening.’
    She’s a lady of quick decisions. She orders the flunky to unload the hamper. She goes in, examines the room and the bathroom, sniffs at the towels, turns up her nose at the bundle of clipped newspapers in a box beside the toilet. She dictates the order of the day to the chauffeur, ‘Take the car back. Come back around 9 p.m.’ She does not ask me if I am free till 9 p.m.
    The flunky puts the hamper and her suitcase on the floor. The chauffeur and the flunky salute and take their leave. She flops into an armchair, glances at her wrist-watch and says, ‘I am dying for a drink. Be a darling and mix me a gin and tonic. And help yourself to anything you like—Scotch, champagne, beer, gin—all on your old President.’
    I act the butler. I mix Her Ladyship a gin and tonic. While I am still making up my mind what to take, I have to mix her another and light her cigarette. I make myself a dry martini and sit down on the edge of the bed. I raise my glass. She ignores the gesture. ‘Tell me about this place Suraj... Suraj...’
    ‘Kund
to rhyme with the German
Bund.
Simply means pond.’ I tell her about the Tomara Rajputs who ruled Delhi in the seventh and eighth centuries and their chieftain Surajpal after whom the amphitheatre is named.
    She holds out her glass, ‘Be a honey!’
    I be a honey and give her another gin-tonic. ‘And this dam and the village?’ She puts her legs on either arm of her armchair just as she would do to let a man enter her. How can I talk of the Tomara Rajputs with her opening her thighs in this wanton manner? I try to keep my mind off her middle. ‘The dam was built by another Tomara, Anangpal. He also built the fortified town Anangpur; we can go there in the afternoon. Then he shifted his capital westward and built a citadel of red sandstone which came to be known as Lal Kot.’
    She’s lost interest in my lecture. Her eyes are drooping. ‘Go on,’ she orders.
    ‘No, I won’t,’ I reply rudely. ‘You are half-asleep.’
    She laughs, coughs, spits. She throws her cigarette on the floor and squashes it under her foot. ‘Forgive me! I’ll have a wash and get out of this,’ she says holding her blue denims. ‘Won’t be a jiffy.’ She pulls out a skirt from her case and goes into the bathroom. The bathroom has a curtain which only covers the middle part of the doorway. It also has a door; she does not shut the door. She unzips her denims and hangs them on a peg. She wears white lace panties to cover her little bottom. She bends over the basin to wash her face. I know she is doing it to rouse my curiosity. My curiosity rises. She buries her face in a towel. She turns round, bends over and slips on her skirt.
    ‘Chalo,’
she says.
‘Juldi
(quick). Is that right?’
    We step out. It is quieter. The snake charmers are bundled under trees and the picnickers are huddled round their transistors; the women are frying
poories.
Boys in bum-tight trousers, girls in bosom-and-bum-tight long shirts stroll about the amphitheatre.
    Hoity-Toity examines a bush of thorny caparis in flower. She looks across the ridge and is entranced. On one side is the vast Romanesque amphitheatre with large steps going down to the pool.