Surya. Helios. Phaeton’s dad.
The interiors of English houses weren’t built to cope with uninterrupted, heat-inducing sunshine. But odd how it conferred beauty, even on these very streets — Warren, and Whitfield, Grafton Way, even illuminating Charlotte Street, which otherwise seemed permanently to be in the shade. It wasn’t as if the sun was just the ruler of the universe that he, Walia, and even the Patels lived in; he was its creator — not only in sending out the ray of light that penetrated the seed and stirred the shoot. The sun wove maya — the fabric of the visible world. Some Hindus said that maya was dream, or illusion; but there was nothing else to speak of — the visible world was all there was. It was his work. Daily the enchantment recurred — except in England, not daily; there were weeks and months of anaemic reality, when the sun was reluctant, and Tottenham Court Road was an industrial version of itself. On such days, the lights of the night were more uplifting — the lamps, the lit shop windows on Oxford Street, the neon advertising — than the light of day, and you prayed for the day’s end so you might seek out areas alive with artificial glitter. But today — like yesterday — the sun was out, and living as well as inert things verified his handiwork: shakchunni, the cabbages in the crate outside her shop, the newspaper rack — all were complicit in this work-in-progress: the day.
—
The English outside the Grafton Arms had taken off their shirts; expanses of pink with ruddy blotches, swigging down lager. If only they’d had more sun! This is what they’d have been like — semi-naked, sedentary, congregated in pairs or threes. They wouldn’t have needed Empire — because their souls would have been full.
Alas, that’s not the way history had turned out. The weather was what it was; Empire had happened; Ananda was here. Sometimes, in November, when the day shrank and grew damp, Ananda daydreamed about what it would have been like if India had been colonised by the Caribbean. He’d have been at a Caribbean university, in shirtsleeves the whole year. The thought consoled him as he made his way to Malet Street.
But that wasn’t how history turned out! — which is why he was in Warren Street rather than St. Kitts or St. Lucia. That’s why the people from St. Kitts and St. Lucia were here too — the little shop on the corner of Whitfield Street, with its euphoric spells of music.
Thank goodness for immigrants! They — tired West Indian women steering prams before them, Caribbean workmen at building sites, wrestling with each other during their breaks like teetering boys, Paki gentlemen in worn black suits, the sudden swarms of dark-skinned children following in the wake of a schoolteacher, even the industrious, practical, seldom-smiling Chinese — they brought some sunshine to a place starved of light. The Gujarati and Pakistani shopkeepers kept the day from sputtering out: their shops open till after nine, well after the natives had retired. Sundays were a graveyard but for the Alis, Patels, Shahs, who (with Thatcher’s collusion) were always open for business.
His hunger had passed, but then been revived by the static of the tandoori platter. He was suddenly ravenous. Near Goodge Street there was an American Style Fried Chicken which, till recently, he was too ingenuous to realise was not Kentucky Fried Chicken. There was McDonald’s of course — for which, he’d heard, oxen were compressed and flattened (like one of those cars pounded to a flat metallic shape in a scrapyard) to a neat patty — eyeballs and all. This horrible diminution surely offended some primordial law? Would someone pay one day?
At the Greek takeaway on Charlotte Street he paused to look at a rotating rump of meat, from which a man scraped shavings at intervals. Also, impaled on skewers were small chunks of — beef or mutton? A small flood of saliva filled his mouth. Could these be progeny of the food mentioned adoringly in the Iliad? Food was usually more appetising in books, and Homer’s descriptions had galvanised Ananda’s gastric juices — just as, when he was a boy, reading, in Enid Blyton, of picnics flowing with scones, milk, sandwiches, and jam used to fill him with a powerful longing. That surfeit was missing from the life he’d come to know in London, although, if you could afford it, you could eat halibut in a restaurant, or rainbow trout in butter and almonds. The days of rationing — which he’d learnt of from his uncle — were long over. He went in, shyly ordered a skewer of lamb from the moustached Greek. The rump on the spindle had an unpleasant smell. Chewing a dead, resistant piece, he fantasised he was partaking of the food Homer had written of — then rejected the fantasy. It was odd how quickly the meat became cold and lumpy: masticated chunks settled in his stomach, allaying the restive juices. He wondered if the food at the takeaway was below par, or whether Homer had overrated the soldiers’ repasts.
3 Eumaeus
Usually, he descended two levels at Warren Street for the journey, riding escalator after escalator, ignoring the sign saying Victoria Line, reaching deeper into the earth for the Northern. Today he was near Goodge Street. He took the lift down and just missed the train when he reached the platform. There would be another one in two minutes, going to Edgware.
This was a kind of default route. He’d known hardly any other since that first visit in 1973. Belsize Park was inevitable; he and his parents went no further north — Golders Green was unexplored; Hampstead he only ever went to on foot with his uncle. And his uncle made that journey slightly melodramatic, staring portentously at Ananda — when was he ever serious? — and saying, “The Devil lives in the North.” “The North? I thought the Devil lives in Hell,” said Ananda, recalling, at once, his favourite line attributed to Mephistopheles: Why this is hell, nor am I out of it. “The North,” insisted his uncle, “is beloved of the Devil. They say the further North you go, the greater the chances of running into him.” The map opposite the platform depicted one straight line splitting into two, High Barnet dangling from the left, Edgware from the right — and Mill Hill East, not far above High Barnet, appearing to hang from a hair. The picture was imprinted in Ananda’s mind as the essence of an expedition. Not because he lived in Belsize Park, but because he repeatedly went there. In the train, the map of the Northern Line was drawn sideways, becoming a bracelet in two parts, united and linked together at Euston.
The bracelet’s outer border — trains bound for High Barnet or going via King’s Cross — were irrelevant, no, inimical, to him. Stops like King’s Cross, Moorgate, and Angel had to be avoided, despite being on the Northern Line; head for them, and you were lost for half an hour. Other lines — Metropolitan, Central, Piccadilly — existed as rumour, in narratives he had little interest in.