had my tea with Diwan Sahib and read the papers with him, I would come back and sit in my veranda, waiting for the sun to set over the snow-peaks.
I was not a good housekeeper, but I could not bring myself to employ someone to clean up. I did not have the spare cash, and besides I had never liked people going through my belongings. The only time someone – a childhood friend – came to stay with me in Ranikhet, she was lecturing me by the second morning: “Maya, for heaven’s sake! You’re never going to use that broken lamp again! And this ancient toaster? Has it ever worked? Why don’t you throw out that ugly tin trunk and get a proper side table? And, my God, look at those cobwebs!” When I told her cleaning cobwebs had been Michael’s department because I was not tall enough, she gave me an exasperated look and climbed onto a chair with a broom in her purposeful hand. She kept picking clothes out of my cupboard, holding them up for display between a finger and thumb, and saying, “Hey, there are flood victims who would turn this down if you donated it to them!”
Sometimes I did have cleaning fits, but just as I was about to throw something out, I would be held back by a memory: that’s the chipped blue ceramic bowl Michael and I bought when we set up house, that patched and darned sweater I never wear is the one my mother knitted for me, and that’s the toaster Diwan Sahib gave me during my first month in Ranikhet – it fused in a blaze of sparks the very next week and resisted all attempts to repair it, but still. Over the years, the clutter had become part of the comforting topography of the house, and after I had locked up at night and drawn the curtains and sat down with my glass of rum, I felt the house sighing with me, as if it were unwinding as well.
The cleanest part of the house was the earthen courtyard around it, which Charu swept every morning as if it were an extension of her own yard. She would come early with a broom, her hair and mouth covered with her dupatta, sweep and rake and sweep again, and leave in a cloud of dust and dry leaves. She would return a minute later and sprinkle a mug of water before the door to settle the dust, and when the smell of damp earth reached me inside the house, I would know she had finished.
In the days after Gouri Joshi died, Charu did not come. I did not expect her to: her grandmother said she was moping and hardly managing her chores. Then she did begin to come once more, but the sweeping was haphazard and the leaves remained unraked in many places. I watched her listless movements and was reminded of Mr Chauhan’s despair over the filth in the cantonment and his promise to turn Ranikhet into a Switzerland. He had said he would do something about the vandalism at the graveyard where Michael was buried, but he had done nothing that I could see. The lilies had struggled back to life, however, and no more damage had been done.
Charu disappeared for long hours with – and sometimes without – the other cows and goats. She often left Bijli behind too, tied to the door-post, indignant and restless, barking all afternoon. She left Ama to do all the work in their vegetable patches. When she ate at all, she poked at the rice on her plate, pushing much of it away. I heard her grandmother’s strident voice shout at her. “You think food grows on trees? Half your rice is thrown into the cow’s feed every day. You need to starve a day or two and then you’ll know what food is about.”
I did not know it then, but Charu did: Ranikhet appeared to be a dead end to the hotel manager and he had decided to move back to Delhi. With him would go his cook, her Kundan Singh. Charu had never been to the city he would go off to: she had no way of picturing his future life far away. What unimaginable lures and temptations did it hold? She did not know if she would ever see him again.
Later, when things fell into place, I was able to understand what I had seen that summer when I