The Sleeping Dictionary Read Online Free PDF Page B

to each other in their sharp-sounding, funny language.
    I’d never seen an Englishman except for the Collector, and that was not close. Now, I could see the veins in one man’s head and the extreme fairness of his skin. A child in Johlpur had been born with skin as white as rice, hair of red, and eyes a curious shade of green. Thakurma said that a demon had taken up inside him, and I wondered now if these white-skinned men were also demons.
    As I fearfully looked away, my attention turned to a tea drinker who was finishing his cup of tea. Excitedly I darted forth and caught it in midair. Some people laughed, but the boys’ father shouted so loudly that my fingers slipped, and the cup smashed to the ground.
    “Don’t steal!” the father chided.
    “Forgive me,” I whispered in my dry-throated, painful new voice, aware of the brothers greedily drinking down the water from the jug the mother had filled since she’d finished in the well line.
    “The child can have this!” A deep, warm voice spoke from somewhere behind me. I turned to discover a man in a clean, finely woven kurta and dhoti. His light skin was closely shaven and bore a trace of saffron in the center of his forehead, the sign that he was a Hindu who had recently been blessed. From his unrumpled appearance, I knew he could not have come on a boat but must have lived in the town.
    “Babu, she is not our daughter. We know nothing about her caste. She will contaminate your well.” The grandfather seemed to puff up as he spoke.
    “I have drawn the water myself, so there is no danger.” The man made a sign of blessing toward the father. “Surely you will be rewarded for taking care of an orphan.”
    Was he a priest? I wondered. The conversation between the gentleman and the boys’ father ran along as merrily as the sound of good sweet water sloshing into urns and jugs and pails, water so close to me yet unattainable. Something in my head seemed to explode, and then my hands were cold, for the gentleman had put a cup full of water into my hands.
    “Drink,” he said, and I remembered what Ma had once explained, that even though Brahmins only ate food or drink prepared by their own kind, they could give others nourishment, as this man had decided to do for me.
    There are few sensations I remember more strongly than the feeling of drinking water after almost three days without it. It was pleasure mixed with agony, because my throat had become sore with dryness. The water rushed through my arid throat to my belly. Such delicious, lovely water; but the Brahmin was cautioning me to drink slowly, for taking water too fast would make me sick.
    “There will be more water where we are going. Food, too. Keep hold of your cup.” Then the stranger told the father that he would like to bring me to a temple in the next province, Orissa. Normally, very few girls were selected to become temple servants; because of the floods, the priests were generously opening doors.
    Johlpur was so small we had only roadside shrines for the various gods. I had heard about temples but had never been to one and certainly hadn’t known children could live inside. But the saheb was saying that girls were given food and clothing and grew up to dance and give prayers to Jagannath, a reincarnation of Lord Shiva. The saheb had been commanded by the priests to bring orphan girls coming into Digha to their temple.
    As he spoke, I saw the mother’s dry lips relax from their tight line. She bent to look into my face and said, “Surely it was Lord Shiva’sdoing that we came to this well just when the good saheb was arriving. You must thank him for his kindness. Go on, touch his feet.”
    I did so, and then the saheb gave some coins to the father, who at first protested but finally accepted the money, raising it to his forehead in gratitude. All around us people stared and pointed their fingers, asking why they could not also receive money from the saheb.
    It was a struggle for me to be bold