them don’t get enough to eat,” Ama said. “They won’t even have a job when they finish with that school. All this studying is a waste of time.” She gave me a look of concentrated scorn. The day before she had had yet another argument with Charu about the amount of time she was spending at my house on her lessons.
Diwan Sahib ignored her. “I am going to tell them,” he said, “that they must put their ears to the earth and rocks and hear them breathe. Because here in Ranikhet the rocks do breathe. I am going to tell them to listen for one second on their way through the woods to their school for the sound of the sap rising through the trees; to spend one day painting the snow peaks they never bother to look at. They are like people born rich who don’t understand what money is until it disappears.”
“I’d rather have some money and not just the mountains,” Ama said. “You can’t eat mountains.” She made a move as if to leave.
Diwan Sahib was too deep in thought to notice her. He continued, “I want to tell them they live in a corner of the earth where predators still roam free. Where, on an evening’s playing among the trees, they might hear movement in the undergrowth and see a kalij pheasant scuttling away with its mate. Where they do all these ordinary things, like lessons and tuitions and games, and then come home to the call of foxes and owls.”
I said, taking care with my words, “It’s natural for them not to notice owls and foxes calling. They’ve grown up with them. Just as city children pay no attention to car noises – ”
Diwan Sahib looked at me aghast. “A Scop’s Owl like a car noise! Are you off your head?” He was overtaken by another of his coughing fits as Charu rushed in. She never spoke directly to Diwan Sahib, afraid of him or shy; today she ran to his chair and held its arm, panting, and said, in a high, trembling voice, “You have to save Puran. They have arrested his deer.”
* * *
Diwan Sahib changed into a rather grand if crumpled and mothballed grey jacket and white shirt. “You can’t deal with the police and that fool Chauhan in a dressing gown,” he explained when he emerged in his uncharacteristic finery. We had to walk slower than usual because he coughed a lot and had to stop frequently to catch his breath. Halfway there, the drizzle thickened, raindrops were flung into our faces by the wind. Ama hitched her sari to her knees and fished out the plastic bag she kept tucked in her waistband for such eventualities. Her white hair straggled out from under the bag-cap. I rolled up my jeans. By the time we reached the police station, we were cold, soaked, bedraggled.
We charged into the police station, past the shouts of the chowkidar, to the bars of the lock-up. The deer was nowhere to be seen. Instead there was Puran, caged behind the bars. He sat in a corner, whimpering and groaning, scratching his head and slapping his thighs. Tears and snot smeared his face. The room was rank with the effects of rain on his foul-smelling clothes.
The constable sat at her desk looking irritable and shouting for the chowkidar to light some incense. “What do you think? I want him here? I want to throw him out, he smells enough to make me want to cut off my nose,” she said to Ama, who looked frightened and tearful at the sight of her son imprisoned. I had never before seen Ama at a loss for words. Now she slid to her haunches and half-sat, half-crouched on the floor, head in her hands, quite unmindful of the plastic bag that topped it like an upturned boat. Charu stood very straight, holding the bars of the lock-up. Her face had frozen into anger at the constable’s words and she had assumed a fierce, silent hauteur.
The constable had not invited Diwan Sahib to sit. He stood over her desk, still panting, leaning on it with both hands. He drew a wheezy breath and began to explain the situation to her with painstaking, careful courtesy. Puran was a little different from others, he said. He could not talk to people, but he could talk to animals. Animals trusted him. Foxes came to him if he called them. Injured birds arrived on his