In a Free State Read Online Free PDF Page A

yesterday’s dirty shirt partly unbuttoned. He looked frightened.
    ‘Santosh, where have you been at this hour of morning? Without your shoes.’
    I could have embraced him. He hurried me back past the newspapers to our apartment and I took the bedding inside. The wide window showed the early morning sky, the big city; we were high up, way above the trees.
    I said, ‘I couldn’t find my room.’
    ‘Government sanctioned,’ my employer said. ‘Are you sure you’ve looked?’
    We looked together. One little corridor led past the bathroom to his bedroom; another, shorter, corridor led to the big room and the kitchen. There was nothing else.
    ‘Government sanctioned,’ my employer said, moving about the kitchen and opening cupboard doors. ‘Separate entrance, shelving. I have the correspondence.’ He opened another door and looked inside. ‘Santosh, do you think it is possible that this is what Government meant?’
    The cupboard he had opened was as high as the rest of the apartment and as wide as the kitchen, about six feet. It was aboutthree feet deep. It had two doors. One door opened into the kitchen; another door, directly opposite, opened into the corridor.
    ‘Separate entrance,’ my employer said. ‘Shelving, electric light, power point, fitted carpet.’
    ‘This must be my room, sahib.’
    ‘Santosh, some enemy in Government has done this to me.’
    ‘Oh no, sahib. You mustn’t say that. Besides, it is very big. I will be able to make myself very comfortable. It is much bigger than my little cubby-hole in the chambers. And it has a nice flat ceiling. I wouldn’t hit my head.’
    ‘You don’t understand, Santosh. Bombay is Bombay. Here if we start living in cupboards we give the wrong impression. They will think we all live in cupboards in Bombay.’
    ‘O sahib, but they can just look at me and see I am dirt.’
    ‘You are very good, Santosh. But these people are malicious. Still, if you are happy, then I am happy.’
    ‘I am very happy, sahib.’
    And after all the upset, I was. It was nice to crawl in that evening, spread my bedding and feel protected and hidden. I slept very well.
    *
    In the morning my employer said, ‘We must talk about money, Santosh. Your salary is one hundred rupees a month. But Washington isn’t Bombay. Everything is a little bit more expensive here, and I am going to give you a Dearness Allowance. As from today you are getting one hundred and fifty rupees.’
    ‘Sahib.’
    ‘And I’m giving you a fortnight’s pay in advance. In foreign exchange. Seventy-five rupees. Ten cents to the rupee, seven hundred and fifty cents. Seven fifty U.S. Here, Santosh. This afternoon you go out and have a little walk and enjoy. But be careful. We are not among friends, remember.’
    So at last, rested, with money in my pocket, I went out in theopen. And of course the city wasn’t a quarter as frightening as I had thought. The buildings weren’t particularly big, not all the streets were busy, and there were many lovely trees. A lot of the
hubshi
were about, very wild-looking some of them, with dark glasses and their hair frizzed out, but it seemed that if you didn’t trouble them they didn’t attack you.
    I was looking for a café or a tea-stall where perhaps domestics congregated. But I saw no domestics, and I was chased away from the place I did eventually go into. The girl said, after I had been waiting some time, ‘Can’t you read? We don’t serve hippies or bare feet here.’
    O father! I had come out without my shoes. But what a country, I thought, walking briskly away, where people are never allowed to dress normally but must forever wear their very best! Why must they wear out shoes and fine clothes for no purpose? What occasion are they honouring? What waste, what presumption! Who do they think is noticing them all the time?
    And even while these thoughts were in my head I found I had come to a roundabout with trees and a fountain where – and it was like a fulfilment