Rajmahal Read Online Free PDF Page A

catch a man ... Which should it be?” she smiled wickedly to herself at the first of the many anticipated thrills before a liaison. Tom, Dick, or Harry?” Ironically, she alighted on the oldest, who had so far shown no signs of facetious flirtatiousness. The lover-elect was cynical, the affair was brief and almost unpleasant. But Myrna felt liberated, as if she had smashed her way out of the glass bubble. The move to Calcutta came like a rescue air raid, one of the miraculous planes screaming down under strafing fire cover, and sweeping her away from that terrible place.
    Jack and Myrna examined many alternatives before settling for the Rajmahal. They ignored the advice against moving into a block tenanted by Indians. “In Alipore,” they were told, “you’ll get a house to yourselves and a garden, and you’ll be close to all of us. Everyone lives in Alipore, or Ballygunge, or Tollygunge . . . ” “Everyone who’s anyone, as well as white,” they may have added. But the thought of continuing within semi-rural limitations filled Myrna with dread. She needed desperately to be in the thick of things, centered.
    Jack didn’t mind either way, and the Rajmahal was that much closer to his office. He may have regretted it later when he saw the latitude it gave Myrna for her liaisons. But he couldn’t have foreseen and planned so clearly into the future.
    As for the Rajmahal, it felt both tentative and excited about the Stracheys, never having dealt with British tenants before. And it had also to deal with the ghosts who were frantic at the very thought of sharing their spaces with white people.

    â€œ Mlechchas in our midst!” shouted a swadeshi ghost. “Our purity will be sullied!”
    â€œWhat purity?” said a Sikh ghost tartly. “You know nothing about this city. It’s a real hodgepodge! Wait till you see what comes next.”
    â€œWe never thought we would have anything but upper-caste Bengalis,” said the swadeshi ghost, recklessly calling to question the aristocracy of the venerable Sardar Bahadur.
    â€œKeep shut! Bengalis . . . black, skinny creatures from the gutters . . . ” more unprintable words followed from a middle-aged Sikh ghost and the house had to intervene. The ghosts had begun to tussle with each other’s disembodied forms and utter little screams, which would soon escalate into shrieks, and this always permeated the atmosphere and affected the inhabitants’ nerves. But the Sikh ghost was right. The post-Ohri Rajmahal would truly see a “hodgepodge” of tenants within a very short period. And what with calming the ghosts at each new incursion, and grappling with its own confusion, the house had already entered its half year of frustration. It was only after things had settled down that it could follow its natural inclinations of concern and affection toward its inhabitants. “They are upper class, anyway,” it would try and soothe the ghosts. “And after all, variety is the spice of life.”
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    Jack Strachey had been full of zest during the early jute mill days. Life was good, work was hard, and the big, hot country was getting him in its grip. As long as he had no contact with those stinking “lines” across the road.
    All employees at Sharp’s, British employees, were sent on regular furlough to Britain to stop them from curdling, convulsing with colic and draining away. Too many succumbed to the enervating air with its cargo of mosquitoes, the muggy water with its infusion of microbes. The other objective of the furlough was to ensure British employees married British. A handful had gone native and acquired Indian wives, exotic creatures perfumed with oriental attars, their foreheads adorned with vermillion. A girl from home was so much more befitting . Jack had been seen with beautiful Bengali companions for a while, causing a ripple of anxiety at Sharp’s. “See that