March is starting to heat up. My shirt is sticking to my back as I write this. I have only been in Jaipur a month, and I have already forgotten how cool Shimla was when I left. Has the snow melted, or did you get one last storm?
Please give the little barrettes to Rekha. I thought they would look pretty in her hair. For Chullu, I have found the most beautiful marbles (which I’ll hold on to for the time being, since he’s liable to eat them). I will teach him how to become a sure shot when I see him next. Just think! By the time he’s two, he’ll be able to run his own marble gambling operation (joke, Auntie-Boss!).
I must get ready for my dinner at Samir Singh’s house. (Did I tell you, Boss, that he has invited me? Not to worry; no one will remember me as the eight-year-old ruffian I once was, scurrying around after you in Jaipur.) Manu-ji has told Samir Sahib to make sure he refers to me as Abbas Malik. Besides, I’m fooling everyone with my English-gentleman act!
Nimmi, you would love the room I’m writing this letter in. It’s the small Palace Guest House, which Manu Uncle was kind enough to arrange for me. I love this tiny bungalow because it comes with a tiny library. (Actually a set of bookshelves, but a man can dream. Auntie-Boss, why don’t we have a library at our house in Shimla?)
Say hello to Madho Singh when you’re at Auntie-Boss’s house. And bring the children to meet him. Madho is pretty contrary, but he loves company even though he pretends not to.
I miss you, Nimmi. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about you or Rekha or Chullu. I imagine us hiking up at Jakhu Hill and watching Chullu trying to catch the monkeys or walking along the Mall eating hot chili peanuts.
Now I really must go. Uncle and my stomach are both calling.
Yours,
Malik
At the sound of his own name, Madho Singh starts pacing back and forth on his perch. “Drums sound better at a distance! Squawk!” That clever bird has picked up proverbs that my husband, Jay, and I trade when we’re teasing each other.
I set the letter down on the table and take off my glasses.
Nimmi frowns, as if there might be more that I have kept from her.
Gently, I say, “As you know, my husband is a doctor at the Lady Bradley Hospital here in Shimla. I’m sure Malik has told you that, long before we married, Jay—Dr. Kumar—asked me to establish an herb garden on the hospital grounds so the clinic could offer natural treatments for the local residents who don’t trust manufactured medicine. Since we’ve been purchasing the flowers you harvest, I’ve been telling Dr. Kumar about you, how much you know about the mountain flora and fauna.”
I glance at her to see if she’s listening. She meets my gaze, looking puzzled.
“He thinks it would be a good idea if you could work with me on the Healing Garden. To see if there are more plants you know about that we should grow. Nimmi, you could have work all year around. Not just in the summer months.”
Her eyebrows gather in a frown. “But...what about my stall on the Shimla Mall?”
“You can still run that in the summer months, as you do now. We could also hire a local woman to run the stall while you work in the garden. Spring will be our busiest time for planting in the Healing Garden.”
“You would be my boss?”
I clear my throat. “You’ll be working for the hospital, Nimmi. It’s a way to feed your children, to provide for them, since you are no longer with your tribe.”
She draws a sharp breath, and I regret reminding her of how alone she is. I want to tell her how I made an independent living from my henna designs back in Jaipur—that it was hard work, but it made me realize I could rely on myself, that I was strong enough, clever enough. And how good it felt to know that. But she might think I was bragging, so I merely say, “A job will let you stand on your own feet.”
“You mean so Malik doesn’t have to spend any more money on me?”
The words boil over, like hot milk spilling out of a pan before it can be removed from the flame.
I know she’s frustrated, but I persist. “So you can be independent. Forever, Nimmi.”
I stop short of telling her that her children are growing; they will need new boots, new clothes and new books for school. She knows these things—she’s their mother, after all. Malik has described Nimmi’s simple lodgings to me. Last winter must have been brutal on the earthen floor; those flimsy walls couldn’t have kept them warm enough. If Nimmi could afford more comfortable lodgings, the children wouldn’t suffer so many ear infections or runny noses.
“Please think it over,” I say quietly.
Before she leaves, I hand her the barrettes that Malik sent for Rekha and bundle the candied lemons and rose petals along with some walnuts from my pantry in a cloth bag. She tries to resist taking it, but I fold her hand around the bag, keeping my hand on hers until she nods.
3
MALIK
Jaipur, State of Rajasthan, India
At Samir Singh’s house, I’m greeted by an old gateman in a khaki uniform—not one I remember from before—who asks me to wait under the mango tree while he announces my arrival for dinner. I watch him totter down the gravel drive toward the stately house, his white turban bouncing lightly on his head. I’ve been in Jaipur for a month now. Before that, I hadn’t visited the Pink City since I was eight years old. Back then, waiting outside houses like this one for Auntie-Boss to finish applying henna to one of her society ladies was a regular part of my day.
The Singh property is much as I remember it: freshly watered rosebushes, their deliciously scented blossoms large, dense and bloodred. The desert heat has not yet scorched Jaipur’s gardens; there will be ample time for that in the coming months. Even so, the Singh house—made of fine marble and stone and shaded by large neem trees—will stay cool. Frangipani vines, gracing each terrace of the two-story mansion, invite visitors to admire the fragrant flowers, their soft yellow centers spiraling into a fan of white petals.
The chowkidar returns and asks me to go straight through the house to the backyard.
As I approach the front veranda, I make note of the servant to one side of the house waxing a Mercedes sedan. Next to it stands a gleaming Rolls-Royce, which has been freshly washed and polished. The Singh-Sharma company must be doing very well indeed; the car I last saw Samir driving was a Hindustan Ambassador, a nod to post-independence made-in-India policy designed to promote the manufacturing of goods in India, including automobiles.
On the veranda, a neat array of shoes to one side of the front door reminds me that I must remove my own. I step out of my loafers, polished to a high shine, as I’d been taught to do at the Bishop Cotton School for Boys. Like my private-school classmates, I never wear socks. When I step through the wide front door into a quiet foyer, I stop a moment to take in my surroundings. I’ve never been inside a home as grand as this, though I spent many an afternoon outside homes I might have found to be as grand, or grander, had I been invited in. But at the time, I was just the boy who came with Lakshmi; the scrappy assistant, known only to the household’s gatemen, gardeners and servants.
On the wall to my right hangs a large tiger skin, the spoils from one of Samir’s shoots with the maharajas of Jaipur or Jodhpur or Bikaner. I wonder what Nimmi would think. She, who has guided sheep and goats through the Himalayan gorges with an eye out for predators like tigers, leopards and wild elephants, might think the killing of such animals for sport unnecessary, even cruel.