The Impressionist Read Online Free PDF Page B

love-letters burnt to cinders, a Bengali with a squint, an alcoholic Sindhi with a fondness for Keats, two or three terrified university students and even an Englishman, who left after one lesson, saying that he would never set foot in the house again.
    Anjali put these failures down to bad blood, and was prepared to argue her case against all comers. Though at first Pran Nath had his defenders, one by one they slipped away, alienated by his arrogance or his unappealing practical jokes. There were those who pointed out that the boy was actually quite bright, but they found his cleverness was mostly directed towards destroying their possessions, or finding some new and disgusting thing to secrete in their food, hair or bedclothes. His talent for mimicry, another potential saving grace, was employed in cruel parodies of the chowkidar’s limp, or the way the dirzi’s hare-lipped son ate dal. People tried to explain to him, but it was like feeding salt to a monkey. One by one they came to agree with the cook: the boy was a curse.
    Still, officially he was the only son. Everything he said or did was, by definition, perfect. With his father shut in his study, and no mother, brother or even a consolation-prize sister to turn to, he was also more or less alone. The household bit its collective lip. Pran Nath was oblivious to their dislike, supremely convinced of his central position in the cosmos. This was based on the admiration of his extended family, but after a few years even they had started to turn away. One by one the proud aunties died or ceased visiting. His paternal uncle suffered a stroke, brought on, it was whispered, by Pran Nath imitating the sound of a wild animal outside his window one night.
    So as Pran reaches out a hand towards Anjali’s daughter, his world is more precarious than he thinks. Huge forces are tensed, ready to uncoil. If his fingers connect, things will move fast, but the moment has a certain frozen grace to it, a fake stillness which approaches the true stillness of synchronicity. Time out of time, mysteriously pervaded by the smell of raw onions.

By the end of the Great War, the distinguished court pleader Pandit Amar Nath Razdan has become the proud author of no less than 276 published articles, which have appeared in organs ranging from Kashmiri Youth Society pamphlets to national newspapers. His interests are wide ranging. Politically he favours a cautious nationalism, based on the maintenance of the separate identities of all communities. On matters of religion he belongs to the conservative wing of the Kashmiri Pandit community, equating social with moral status, and sternly disapproving of all relaxations of caste restriction. On the important issue of individual health he is a staunch and prolific advocate of rigorous personal hygiene, which he believes should be reinforced by local government ordinances, or perhaps even a salaried inspectorate paid for out of the coffers of the Department of Health. On etiquette he mourns the decline of the formal canons of traditional politeness. On language he is a fierce opponent of debased or impure usage, impropriety, profanity and slang. In literature he favours the Ancient writers over the Moderns. In the pictorial and plastic arts, likewise. Food, he has opined, should be prepared plainly and nutritiously, taking care to avoid faddishness, innovation or undue richness of sauce. On matters of dress, personal modesty and avoidance of overbold patterning are the watchwords, especially when considering the reckless combination of checks and stripes.
    On the whole, Pandit Razdan’s opinions are received politely and attentively by those to whom he offers them. If, in court, rival pleaders and members of the audience are occasionally to be observed with heads lolling or eyes shut during one of his famously meticulous summings-up, this is usually put down to the hot weather, heaviness of diet or some otherwise unrelated cause.
    The acute observer, a man