THE IMMIGRANT Read Online Free PDF Page A

anxious, always trying to make ends meet, clinging dearly to their standard of living through toil and sacrifice. The single servant was an ancient, bucktoothed, grey-haired woman, who had to be supervised into proper labour, who chatted relentlessly the whole time she worked and minded if you didn’t listen.
    Into the car and out to Peggy’s Cove. ‘It’s down the South Shore,’ said Dr Sharma, ‘about fifty kilometres or so.’ Lovely scenery, spectacular setting. As before the nephew was struck by the lack of people along the way, but this paled next to the beauty of their destination. There, beyond huge sloping boulders lay sparkling waters, glittering grey and silver in the bright sunlight. A white lighthouse marked the edge of land and sea, and as they stood on the rocks the wind tore into their clothes, hair and ears. He knew the place, knew it from Enid Blyton, the place where four children had gone for an adventure along with Kiki the parrot. What would his friends say if they could see him now, he thought, while Nancy took pictures and gulls wheeled and shouted.
    Within five minutes the wind had frozen Ananda’s bones. And that too in August. What kind of summer was this? His nose began to run, and as he had no hanky he wiped it surreptitiously with his fingers, dragging his hands across his face as if deep in thought. When he could bear it no longer, he excused himself and went into the gift shop. It was warm there. His uncle followed him. ‘Want anything?’ he asked. The boy shook his head. In his slim wallet he only had the eight US dollars he had been allowed to take when he had left India, dollars he was too afraid to spend. He had been so focused on leaving, it had never occurred to him that money would be an issue once he reached Canada, because of course everything would be taken care of.
    When his uncle felt Ananda had drunk his fill of Canadian beauty, they got in the car and headed back to Halifax and the Taj Mahal.
    In the red lamplit warmth of the restaurant on Spring Garden Road, Ananda breathed in smells he could no longer take for granted. Bending his head over the menu, he bleakly asked for mutter paneer, while the family bickered gently over what had been good last time and how much of the mutton, chicken, fish, tandoor and gravy items to order: Dad, you swore last time the lassi was too sweet, so why are you ordering it again? And Mum, you cannot eat spicy, though you think you can. Don’t forget the pappadums. And Ananda, too bad you are vegetarian, the meat here is really yum.
    ‘You are not eating?’ observed the uncle, as he looked at the single naan on Ananda’s plate, now cold, and stained red with the oily gravy from his mutter paneer.
    In fact his appetite was curbed by memories too recent and too raw to be ignored.
    ‘It’s still night for him,’ explained Nancy on his behalf.
    After the saunf, called mouth freshener, and after the bill, so mammoth for food so familiar, they trooped out. From the car he was shown the Citadel, the graveyard, the pier, the cathedral, Scotia Square, Spring Garden Road, its park. Then on to Dalhousie University, the biggest university in Nova Scotia. Where the uncle studied, where Ananda was provisionally enrolled. And there to the right was the site of the Killam Library, still under construction, the Student Union Building, the Forrest Building, King’s College and the Dome that was part of the Arts and Administration building. He caught a glimpse of department signs on old wooden houses, yes, they said, Dal—Dalhousie—had bought most of the houses around.
    The tour of Halifax was over.
    To continue bonding with his nephew, Dr Sharma suggested they walk down to Point Pleasant Park, at the end of Young Avenue; they would be back in an hour. It was four in the evening, yet Ananda’s eyelids were drooping, his head felt heavy, his body was screaming for a bed. But his uncle had decided he must see this park and it was not in him to be