In the Shadow of Crows Read Online Free PDF Page A

until she reached the entrance and could stand again. Even in the sunlight, Bindra struggled to draw herself upright. The bindings on her feet, which protected her increasingly clawed toes, had caused her to limp the entire length of the morning’s arduous trek. This, in turn, was causing a new and unrelenting pain in her lower back.
    â€œWhere have you come from?” he asked, with his heavy Hindi accent.
    There was a mystifying aggression in his voice. She felt no inclination to converse with this hostile stranger, so waved vaguely towards the mountain road along which she had walked.
    â€œWhat’s wrong with your hands and feet?” he almost snarled. She looked down at herself. “It’s nothing,” she joked. “Just silly accidents.”
    She noticed the sadhu standing to one side, watching.
    The Brahmin stared at her dirty cloth bindings and made a loud clacking sound with his tongue.
    â€œLeave here,” he said, his face suddenly expressionless. “What did you say?” she asked in disbelief.
    â€œYou heard me, leave here!”
    He had raised his voice to her. The men in these hills did not raise their voices to women. Women were shown respect. Women were honoured for the divine qualities they embodied. Men bent to touch the feet of their cheli-beti sisters and daughters. Men undertook day-long fasts if they raised their voices to women.
    The Brahmin turned to pick up a long, metal trishul from a pile that lay against the rock face. To Bindra’s utter dismay, he abruptly, forcefully jabbed her with the ritual trident.
    â€œLeave here!” he bellowed, thrusting at her again, so hard that he caught her between her ribs.
    She looked into his eyes with bewilderment.
    All she could see was his fear.
    ***
    For three years I loved Priya.
    Together we cooked curries, made our own clothes, and hiked the Stiperstones and Clees. We spent rainy afternoons in matinees and galleries, our evenings outside theatres and concert halls in hope of cheap returns. We took Philosophy and Art at college, music lessons, language classes, and night trains to Bavaria. We sailed the Baltic with a Finn, then spent a spring in an Amsterdam squat, living on old Edam and peeing in a sink, until a pot-headed neighbour fell through our roof and brought in the weather.
    Back home, we would seek out ruins to explore by starlight, twist our ankles and dent our shins. And when the weather warmed, we would cycle after country graveyards with picnics in a basket, to dream of our shared future and fall asleep in each other’s arms on time-worn tombs.
    For three years, Priya loved me.
    â€œ I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times ,” she would recite from Tagore, as though to prove it, “ In life after life, in age after age forever .”
    For three years, I did not live a day without Priya. I did not sleep a night without whispering her name.
    And yet, my father’s mother was not happy.
    â€œListen dear, she’s a nice enough girl, but we don’t want her sort in our family.”
    Her sort?
    â€œAre you referring to the colour of her skin?” I asked, struggling to remain respectful, “because, as Priya likes to point out, I go darker than she does in the sun!”
    This was evidently no argument, but I persisted.
    â€œIn fact, she jokes that I must have more Indian blood in my veins than she has in hers!”
    My humour was not shared.
    â€œYou have not been listening,” she replied, with calculated restraint. “So listen now and listen well: No. No. Never!”
    ***
    Bindra had scurried down the hillside, back to the road. She was panting and perspiring.
    When the Brahmin had said she did not deserve to step onto consecrated soil, that her karma denied her the right, she had pulled herself tall and had felt the fire of Kali in her bones.
    â€œYour talk of karma is not our way in these hills,” she had protested. “ Karma