Teranesia Read Online Free PDF

truth above every faith, and hunt down the secrets of life and death.
    He would become a biologist.
    Four years later, Rajendra was working as a book-keeper in a warehouse, studying in the evenings and helping out at the IRA
     school on Sundays, when Radha Desai took over the women’s self-defence class. Each week he’d see her arriving, dressed in
     a plain white karate uniform, chauffeured by a man in his early thirties who was clearly not a servant. It tookRajendra a month to discover that she was neither married nor engaged; the chauffeur was her elder brother, and the only reason
     she wasn’t driving herself was fear of the car being vandalised.
    Prabir had trouble keeping a straight face when he described his parents’ courtship, but he knew it was the kind of thing
     Eleanor would want to hear about, even if he was short of authentic details and had to improvise. In Prabir’s version, Rajendra
     would synchronise the chants of his class of beggars reciting their multiplication tables with the shouts of Radha from the
     courtyard as she counted out push-ups and sit-ups, allowing him to hang on her every word without neglecting his students.
     And then just before lunch time she’d walk right past his classroom window, and he’d stare at the floor, or feign a migraine
     and cover his eyes, lest their gazes meet accidentally and his face betray everything to the worldly children.
    Prabir’s mother described her parents as ‘upper-middle-class pseudo-socialist hypocrites’. For their daughter to teach karate
     to Scheduled Caste women and brush shoulders with infamous atheists could be considered progressive and daring. To say that
     she’d married a book-keeper three years younger than herself who’d fought his way up to live in the slums wouldn’t have had
     quite the same value as a throw-away line at parties. His father was milder, merely saying that ‘Given their background, what
     could you expect?’
    Radha was studying genetics at the University of Calcutta. They’d meet secretly in parks and cafés early in the morning, before
     Rajendra started work – long before Radha’s first lecture, but she always had the excuse of karate training. Rajendra was
     still struggling with high-school biology, but Radha tutored him, and they set their sights on a distant goal: they’d work
     together as researchers. Somewhere, somehow. Prabir was confident that it had been love at first sight – though neither of
     them had ever said as much – but it wasbiology that kept them together, in more than the usual way. Prabir snorted with laughter as he described clandestine meetings
     on park benches, hands fumbling with the pages of textbooks, recitations of the phases in the life cycle of a cell. But for
     all that it amused and embarrassed him, and nagged at his conscience now and then, he never really felt like a thief and a
     traitor as he gave away secrets that weren’t his to give. Though all of this was supposedly for Eleanor’s benefit, imagining
     his parents’ lives became, for Prabir, something akin to staring into Madhusree’s eyes and trying to make sense of what he
     saw. In this case, though, he had no memories to guide him, just books and films, instinct and guesswork, and his parents’
     own guarded confessions.
    Rajendra won a scholarship to attend the university. With so many more opportunities to be together, they became less discreet.
     Their affair was discovered, and Radha left home, severing all ties with her family. She was still not qualified for an academic
     job, but she was able to support herself as a lab assistant. Four men ambushed Rajendra on the campus one night and put him
     in hospital; there was never any proof of who sent them. When he’d recovered, Radha tried to teach him to defend himself,
     but Rajendra turned out to be her worst student ever, strong but intractably clumsy, possibly as a result of early malnutrition.
    Lest Eleanor think less of his father for this