Golden Afternoon (67 page)

When we could see our well-wishers no more, Bets and I turned our attention to the view outside the windows, and I think both of us sent a silent farewell to places we had known since childhood, and had said goodbye to once before when we were leaving India to go to boarding-school in England, not knowing whether we would ever come back. Well, we had done so. And now we were leaving again for another unknown land. But at least we had both Tacklow and Mother with us this time, and were not going to be abandoned for years on end. But would I come back a second time? That was the question … Oh, please God, let me come back!

When we woke the next morning we were in a different world. The south. The train wound through the long, breathtakingly beautiful canyon that is called the Ghats, and which nowadays few visitors and no tourists ever see, because it is easier and quicker to fly. A few hours later we were being shown to our rooms in the hotel where we would spend the night before boarding the SS
Conte Rosso
, bound for the ‘dragon-green, the luminous, the dark, the serpent-haunted sea' to that legendary land of Far Cathay, whose borders had only recently been forcibly broken down by western merchants greedy for trade, and which Tacklow loved as I loved India. Well, it was only fair that he should get the chance to go back there, and I hoped that China would be as kind to her prodigal son as India had been to me, her prodigal daughter. But as I looked out of my bedroom at the twinkling lights of the fishing boats, along the islands and the shoreline of the bay that some Portuguese adventurer, centuries ago, had named ‘
Bom-baya
' — ‘Beautiful Bay' — and that Lockwood Kipling, Rudyard Kipling's father, had described as ‘this blazing beauty of a city' — I knew that however enchanting China turned out to be, I would return to India as surely as a homing pigeon, or a pin to a magnet.

Bets, secure in the knowledge that there was no doubt about her return, was already sound asleep, but I stayed by the window, watching the lights and the stars reflected in the water, listening to the crowd around the romanesque gateway to India, and the mixture of Indian and European
night-noises — the faint strains of a dance band playing ‘The music goes round and around' — tom-toms and tablas, and ‘conches in a temple, oil-lamps in a dome/and a low moon out of Africa says “This way home”…'

I leant out over the windowsill at a dangerous angle and repeated in an undertone, so as not to wake Bets: ‘I'm coming back —
main wapas ana … zarur!
We both are. I promise! Tomorrow or tomorrow or tomorrow — Some day, anyway!'

And we did, of course.

M.M. Kaye
(1908-2004) was born in India and spent much of her childhood and adult life there. She became world famous with the publication of her monumental bestseller,
The Far Pavilions.
She is also the author of the bestselling
Trade Wind and Shadow of the Moon.
She lived in England. You can sign up for author updates
here
.

 

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Title Page

Copyright Notice

Foreword

1. ‘Exemption from oblivion'

2. ‘Me and my shadow'

3. ‘My blue heaven'

4. ‘Charmaine'

5. ‘Tales of far Kashmir'

6. ‘Song of India'

7. ‘Life is just a bowl of cherries'

Glossary

ALSO BY M. M. KAYE

About the Author

Copyright