Tikkipala Read Online Free PDF Page A

happy, thank you, Khan,’ she told the old man and began to feel like laughing again.
    It was a week before she saw the Collector’s family again.
    Daisy, her fiancée and her brother had spent the time shopping in Delhi, but as soon as they got back Daisy sent a message to say that she had something she wanted to show Sangita, and that her friend must come over without delay.
    â€˜Definitely we do not want to offend the Collector at this crucial moment,’ said the Raja, ‘But I am starting to have some concern at your recent behaviour, for it seemed to me that you returned from the dance at the Collector’s house at an hour far too late for any respectable married woman.’
    â€˜It was not my fault,’ said Sangita. ‘I asked them to bring me back much earlier, but their car ran out of petrol and they had to send a man to bring it.’ She had never been a good liar. The Raja looked at her with suspicion.
    Daisy’s surprise was that she and Paul had each been given a little car by their father. ‘So we are going to go for a drive and to have a picnic.’ The picnic was all packed and ready, as though Sangita’s agreement had been taken for granted.
    â€˜I have to be back by six,’ said Sangita. ‘For Anwar’s bedtime.’
    â€˜Oh, we’ll be back hours before that,’ laughed Daisy.
    Sangita began climbing into Daisy’s car.
    â€˜No, no, darling,’ cried Daisy. ‘George and I are going in one car and you and Paul are going in the other one.’
    â€˜Oh, no,’ cried Sangita. ‘I couldn’t possibly.’
    â€˜Of course you could. Why not?’
    â€˜What will people say if they see the wife of the Raja driving round in the car with only a young man and no chaperone? It will be a scandal. My husband will be furious.’
    â€˜Don’t be so silly,’ scoffed Daisy. ‘I’ll be in the other car. We’ll be driving one behind the other. And anyway we are going right out of Bidwar, so no one will know who you are.’
    How could such a small thing destroy all your happiness. Because of that single moment in which she climbed into Paul’s car and sat at his side, she had so nearly lost her child and had destroyed two years of her life.
    Now the thought made a chilly shiver run through her.
    â€˜You needn’t shiver, Mama because the animal is too far away to bite you,’ came Anwar’s voice.
    â€˜I was thinking of another frightening thing, darling,’ whispered Sangita. Then, to take her mind off her scary memory, ‘Tell me about the animal. Has anyone ever seen it?’
    â€˜Oh, no,’ said the child. ‘Because it lives up there and no one else can climb up. But everyone knows about it. They say that it’s bigger than an elephant and that it eats tigers and it’s got a white face like a gora.’
    â€˜Oh, dear,’ said Sangita. ‘It sounds horrid.’
    â€˜And it eats children too,’ he went on. ‘That’s what the bearer told me. But it never comes down here,’ he added quickly.
    â€˜Why not?’ said Sangita. She loved the way this son of hers invented things. He is a boy with an imagination, she told herself, and one day he might become a poet or a writer of novels.
    â€˜Because it gets sunburnt if it comes out of the jungle, so it has to stay in the dark. But it couldn’t get down here anyway, because the rock is too high and slippery.’
    â€˜How does it find the children to eat, if it never comes down and there’s no one living up there?’
    Anwar looked worried. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’
    They set off in the pair of little two-seaters, the cars dashing along side by side.
    â€˜Isn’t it fun?’ cried Daisy, her face only dimly visible through the veil of scarlet dust.
    She and Paul raced each other out of the town, teasing, shouting, mocking each other’s cars, while