had not dug so deep, I could see that. I began to gather the lily bulbs from all around the grave to replant them.
* * *
On my way back from the graveyard, when I reached Mall Road, I saw Mr Chauhan standing at the fork of the road leading down towards the Light House. I was tired and aching; my clothes were filthy and my fingernails black and split from returning the lily bulbs to their places with my bare hands. Mr Chauhan did not seem to notice my dishevelled condition. He was studying one of his signs, which said, “Don’t Drive Rash, You Will Crash”. The yellow paint still glistened wetly on the dark rockface. He swayed back on his heels and tilted his head for a different view, caressing his thin moustache with a smile of satisfaction. I had not noticed the purple birthmark by his ear before. It was shaped like Australia.
When he saw me, he smiled. “Ah Mam, as you see, I’m doing what I can for our town. I think it has potential, but nobody has known how to tap it. This could be a great tourist destination. I am going to beautify it from top to bottom before the Regimental Reunion in November.”
“What needs beautifying is the graveyard,” I said. “Have you ever been there?” I knew I sounded short, but could not help my tone.
“These signs, you see,” Mr Chauhan went on, as if I had not spoken. “Daily you will pass them, without thinking you will read them, and slowly – what will happen?” He smiled in triumph. “They will start altering your mind. You will begin to think differently. I don’t mean you, of course, you are a good citizen. I mean all these … “ He waved an arm over all the landscape. “All these wretched villagers, their dirty children … they have to learn.” The grass along the side of the road was strewn with plastic cups, beedi wrappers, and deflated foil packets that had once contained fries and gutka. He poked at the rubbish with a stick and said, “No civic sense, I tell you, none. This road was swept only last week.” Then he spotted Charu at a distance, slapping the rump of a cow to make it move. Instead it raised its tail and let out great dollops of dung that steamed in the cool air.
“That is exactly what I mean,” Mr Chauhan said. “Disgusting, disgusting! Is this what an army cantonment should be filled with? Dung?”
Charu threw us a guilty look over her shoulder, as if she had overheard Mr Chauhan, and harried her animals to make them go down the hillside, out of sight. She gave me a quick, apologetic smile as she passed us and tugged at Bijli’s collar to make him follow her. He had other plans.
“I went to the graveyard,” I said, trying to control the tremor in my voice. “And not only was my husband’s grave vandalised, I saw that the wings of the angels on one of the colonial graves have been broken – smashed deliberately. Many of the graves had rubbish on them. The wall around the graveyard is broken.”
Mr Chauhan said, “Do you know what I think the real problem of the Indian state is?” He paused for effect. “We are too soft, far too soft on everything. Just as we are with terrorists. They keep dropping bombs here and there and what do we do about it? Nothing. And here? Same thing, different situation. All anti-socials. These cows, dumping dung, is anyone able to stop them?”
He was startled into silence by a voice exclaiming in foreign accents, “Oh look! Another foraging party!” We had not noticed the bearded man who had stationed himself on the grassy slope below, with binoculars round his neck. He was pointing them skyward at a flock of passing birds. A backpacked woman stood next to him, staring up through an identical pair of binoculars.
Mr Chauhan lowered his voice to a hiss. “What sort of impression does the tourist get of Ranikhet when he arrives expecting a neat and clean army town and sees all this garbage? In foreign countries I have heard people have to pick up even their dog’s … waste from roads.”
“Mr Chauhan, I am trying to tell you something,” I said. “A genuine problem.”
Maybe I was shouting, because he said in a soft, dangerous voice, “I heard you Madam, please do not raise your voice. People throw rubbish