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upset your tummy.’
    The peepul was a cool tree to sit beneath. Its heart-shaped leaves spun round in the faintest breeze, sending currents of cool air down from its branches. The leaf itself was likened by Ayah to the perfect male torso—a broad chest tapering down to a very slim waist—and she told me I ought to be built that way when I grew up.
    One day we strayed into the ruined palace, which had turrets and towers and winding passageways. And there we found a room with many small windows, each window-pane set with coloured glass. I was often to spend hours in this room, gazing out at the palace and lake and gardens through the coloured window-panes. When the sun came through the windows, the entire room was suffused with beams of red and gold and green and purple light, playing on the walls and on my face and clothes.
    The State had a busy little port, and Arab dhows sailed to and fro across the Gulf of Kutch. My father was friendly with the captain of a steamer making trips to Aden and back. The captain was a jovial, whisky-drinking Scotsman, who stuffed me with chocolates and suggested that I join the crew of his ship. The idea appealed to me, and I made elaborate plans for the voyage, only to discover one day when I went down to the docks that the ship had sailed away forever.
    Ayah was more dependable. She hated seeing me disappointed. When I told her about the treachery of Captain MacWhir she consoled me with the promise of a ride in a tonga—a two-wheeled horse-drawn buggy. Apparently she had a friend who plied a tonga in the bazaar.
    He came the next day, a young man sporting an orange waistcoat and a magnificent moustache. His name was Bansi Lal. Ayah put me on the front seat beside him, while she sat at the back to try and maintain some sort of equilibrium. We went out of the gate at a brisk trot, but as soon as we were on the open road circling the lake, Bansi Lal lashed his horse into a gallop, and we went tearing along the road at a furious and exhilarating pace. Ayah shouted to her friend to slow down, and I shouted to him to go faster. He grinned at both of us while a devil danced in his eyes, and he cracked his whip and called endearments to both Ayah and his horse.
    When finally we reached open country, he slowed down and brought the tonga to rest in a mango-grove. Ayah struggled out and, after berating Bansi Lal, sank down on the grass while I went off to explore the mango-grove. The fruit on the trees was as yet unripe, but the crows and mynahs had already begun to feast on the mangoes. I wandered about for some time, returning to the clearing by a different route to find Ayah and Bansi Lal embracing each other. Ayah had her back to me, but the tonga-driver had a rapt, rather funny expression on his face. This changed to a look of confusion when he saw me watching them with undisguised curiosity, and he got up hurriedly, fumbling with his pyjama-strings. I threw myself gaily upon Ayah and asked her what she had been doing; but for once she gave me an evasive reply. I don’t think the incident had any immediate effect on my innocence, but as I grew older I found myself looking back on it with a certain amount of awe.
    Both Ayah and I—for different reasons, as it turned out—began looking forward to our weekly tonga rides. Bansi Lal took us to some very lonely places—scrub-jungle or ruins or abandoned brick-kilns—and he and Ayah were extraordinarily tolerant of where I wandered during these excursions.
    But the tonga-rides really meant the end of my affair with Ayah. One day she informed my parents that she intended marrying Bansi Lal and going away with him. While my parents considered this a perfectly natural desire on Ayah’s part, I looked upon it as an act of base treachery. For several days I went about the house in a rebellious and sulky mood, refusing to speak to Ayah no matter how much she coaxed and petted me.
    On Ayah’s last day with us, Bansi Lal arrived in his tonga to take her