My Nine Lives Read Online Free PDF Page B

with my white hair and simple ways, insinuating myself into a respectable home to carry on my nefarious business. Of course I was not allowed to stay another minute but had to pack up there and then; Priti came back up with me and helped me. The only difficult part wasto carry down my trunk—not that it had much in it, but it was one of those metal trunks they have in India as a precaution against rodents and destructive insects.
    Priti very quickly found another place for me. This one is further out—since I first came here, Delhi has proliferated into widespread new suburbs and colonies—so that after work Priti has to hire a motorcycle rickshaw to bring her here. But she seems to think this expense worth her while. Her mood is altogether much better nowadays than when I first met her again. Her circumstances appear to have improved from that time; she often wears new clothes and her face too is smoother, brighter with more make-up. Far from borrowing money from me as she sometimes had to, she leaves little gifts for me, such as a picture framed from a calendar. Altogether she has tried to make my room more attractive and comfortable. I have a solid wooden double bed now instead of the narrow string cot I had in the other place; the new bed is really too big for the room and also for me, so I sleep on the mat, which has been changed and is very colorful. I don’t often meet Priti, for I try to stay out beyond the time that she is entertaining her friends. But sometimes she waits for me to come home, and then she is very nice to me and asks me whether I’m comfortable in this new place and not disturbed by the people living in the downstairs part of the house.
    It is true that these tenants, who are all women, are noisy, especially at night when they entertain clients with music and dancing, and probably drinking too, for their voices and laughter become very loud. Sometimes there are fights, and once or twice the police have been called. I would have liked to make friends with my new neighbors, but I don’t often see them, for after their lively nights they like to sleeplate into the day. However, we live together very amicably, and I’m glad to help them out with little household items, such as sugar for their tea. They like to sip it hot and sweet, while sitting on the steps leading up to my room—large, plump, youngish women in shiny satin saris and with cascades of jewelry.
    I’m now too far from Nizamuddin and from the river to visit there as regularly as before. But there are always nice peaceful places to be found in India, even in the middle of a crowded city. On the outskirts of the new colony where I now live is a cluster of crumbling little pavilions; there are tombs inside them with inscriptions that have become indecipherable so that I have no idea who is buried here. I sit inside one of the pavilions by the tombs—there are three of them, side by side—waiting until I can go home without disturbing Priti. Although there is a hole in the roof, it is cool in here—anyway, cooler than outside where the sun beats down on the flat earth with only dry shrubs growing out of it and no trees. When the sun has set, the bats come out and cut into the soft skin of the darkened sky. When I first came here, I was completely alone and would squat on the stone floor, leaning against a tomb with a book, or with my unfinished thesis and the poetry quoted in it. Now other people have begun to join me. First there was an old man, a retired accountant, whose eyes were failing so that he asked me to read to him. Then more have come—mostly old people, but also one or two young clerks who love to hear or recite poetry in the way Somnath and his friends used to. One old lady has a very sweet voice and she knows all the songs of Mirabai, which she sings to us and encourages us to join in. When we are not singing or reciting, we talk together, often about the hardships in our lives: