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  ‘From now on, Rabindra,’ he said, ‘you are confined to the house and, in so far as your duties require it, your brother’s clinic. Is that understood?’

  ‘Not entirely,’ I said.

  ‘What is difficult about this?’ he sighed. ‘You are not to be seen anywhere else except this house and the clinic.

  ‘But how am I to reach the clinic,’ I said, ‘except by means of the streets which must surely fall under the designation of “anywhere else”?’

  He stamped his feet a little. ‘Well, obviously you can walk there and back, you imbecile. But you must do so in such a way as to not be seen. Why is this so tortuous?’

  The truth is that a cold sense of apprehension had begun to creep through my bones. If I was confined to the house and clinic, how was I to meet my beloved? Moreover, how many pretenders would queue up in the meantime to protest their superiority, or convince her that my absence was the result of indifference? The answer was probably half the eligible young men in Pushkara.

  ‘But if, as I have heard, there are visitors from England,’ I ventured, desperately, ‘then surely our family, above all, should be among the first to greet them.’

  ‘You are not to go near them,’ he hissed through lips so tight they whitened slightly. ‘And how many times,’ he said, nodding towards Pol, ‘have I told you not to go near him?’

  And with that he was out of the door.

  It is true that the inaugural concert held to celebrate the opening of the Sri Malek Bister Memorial Hall had been excruciating. Even some of the elders could be seen digging fingernails into their flesh. The performer was Sergeant Shrinivasan, our policeman, who was said to have played the instrument to great acclaim through numerous lifetimes, though less so in this one. In the hands of a lyrical artiste, the Rudra Veena is quite capable of producing lilting melodies. In the hands of Sergeant Shrinivasan this was never going to be the case. He preferred the traditional motif in which a single note, resonating slowly back to the silence from which it came, is followed by another note some time later. Allegros, which is to say two notes played within several minutes of each other, are rare. It is said that by following the drift, as it were, the listener too can melt back to the silence from which all things come. This is all very well if the people around you aren’t coughing and snoring. Never has a clock on the wall so longingly been stared at. Never were the hands of time so earnestly beseeched. Never have buttocks been so numbed by the unforgiving rigours of a wooden seat.

  Since the Sergeant’s usual role conferred on him considerable powers, along with a stiff cane with which to exert them, nobody dared question his artistry. The elders meanwhile, having decreed a strictly classical programme, were obliged to grunt the more ecstatically the more agonising it became. Euphoric croaks of ‘ba!’ could be heard periodically as they plunged helplessly into the bliss of eternal nothingness. Since this only encouraged the Sergeant to play even more languidly, with every ‘ba!’ came a chorus of groans from the back row. At one point, I swear the second hand on the clock came to an actual stop. When I remarked on this to Pol, he said that I had evidently entered the blessed realm of undifferentiated timelessness, though I noticed that he too had teeth marks on the back of his hand.

  The applause, when Sergeant Shrinivasan finally laid his Veena to one side, was thunderous. Overcome with relief that it was all over, some of the elders even chanced their luck with a traditional and, as it turned out, unfortunate call for an encore. Malek Bister who had persuaded himself, as benefactor, to sit ostentatiously at the front, unable to fidget never mind catch a snooze, vowed never again to let the elders dictate what he did in his own bloody hall built with his own bloody money. And from that day the place had remained closed.

  Until now. For, as my sisters explained, a notice had appeared in the glazed box by the front door announcing that ‘Coming Soon’ would be a ‘Renowned Troupe of International Dancers’, along with the statement, underlined three times with an exclamation mark, that they were ‘Direct From England!’.

  My father had been furious for two reasons. The first was that three underlinings and an exclamation mark represented the sort of facile overstatement more characteristic of some backwoods peasant enclave than a village with its own mythology.

  ‘What,’ he demanded to know, later that evening, ‘will people think of us?’

  ‘That we are a backwoods peasant enclave?’ ventured one of my sisters, anxious to further his argument.

  ‘With a place in the scriptures?’ he barked. ‘With a history that dates back to before there was even history? Have you any idea how long this village, this abode of legends, has nestled here among these hallowed hills? Hmm?’

  ‘Since a very long time, Baba?’ suggested my other sister.

  ‘Then why do you say this is just some backwoods peasant enclave?’ he demanded.

  ‘But I didn’t,’ she bleated.

  ‘Then who did?’ said Father, glaring at me in case I had. Fortunately he didn’t wait too long before getting on to the second thing that annoyed him. The fact that Malek Bister had organised anything at all.

  ‘How dare a man with not a jot, nor a particle, nor the tiniest, most microbial speck of learning presume to opine upon, never mind determine, the shape and substance of our widely respected, nay universally envied cultural programme?’ Father took the long, slow breath of an advocate who has just delivered a point so weighty that the heaving of it has left him momentarily enfeebled. When he recovered, however, it was not to argue further but to pass judgment. ‘It is clear to all right-minded, clear-thinking people,’ he said in the sonorous tones of one whose words cannot be doubted, ‘that these so-called “Artistes from England” are nothing but a fraudulent imposition to be dispensed with at the earliest opportunity. Meanwhile, let us remember that that which is not achieved by Proper Procedure is not achieved at all.’

  That night I slept fitfully, Father’s words circulating endlessly through twisting dreams of sunglasses, petticoats and crimson nails. What, exactly, had he meant by ‘procedure’? If the gods had brought our brides to Pushkara, surely they would have arranged for the appropriate visas? Or perhaps this was just another round in the stand-off between Malek and the elders in which Malek never sought permission for anything because they wouldn’t have granted it anyway. But where did that leave me? I had tried to explain to Pol that any delay on our part would leave us vulnerable to the exertions of our rivals, but he was in fatalistic mood declaiming the need to trust. There was much talk of karmic inevitability, surrender to universal Will and the unimportance of personal desire in the Grand Scheme of Things. At several junctures I had to work hard to suppress a personal desire to grab him by the scruff of the neck.

  ‘What if the gods are toying with us,’ I had said at one point, ‘and all this is simply an attempt to make us look stupid?’

  ‘If that is their intention,’ he had muttered, ‘they needn’t have gone to so much trouble.’

  Although I set off early the next day, keeping to the backstreets in order to remain unseen, I was constantly accosted with, ‘Rabindranath, why do you skulk along the backstreets with a pillow-case over your head?’ By the time I abandoned subterfuge and returned to the main road, all I heard was, ‘Aha, so you’ve given up skulking along the back-streets with a pillow-case over your head!’ I decided that if my father asked, I could at least say that I’d tried.

  When I arrived, finally, it seemed that half the menfolk of Pushkara had fallen inexplicably sick. The queue snaked as far back as the notorious pot-hole, the scene of many a broken bicycle and responsible for much of my clinical endeavours. Several of them were stooping pitifully or holding their heads in pain.

  ‘And what is wrong with you?’ I asked Hanuman whose parents sold brass elephants. Normally, of course, I’d wait until I was behind my desk before seeking a diagnosis but, in matters epidemiological, not only is urgency
of paramount importance but, conveniently, to ask of one is to prognosticate the many.

  ‘My internal organs,’ he groaned, ‘are extremely sore.’

  ‘Which organs specifically?’ I pressed.

  ‘How should I know?’ he retorted. ‘Do you want me to get them out so you can have a look?’

  Next in the queue was Parasurama, a young man in the company of his wife.

  ‘I have the most terrible nausea,’ he winced, pressing his knees together.

  ‘You said it was a headache,’ shrilled his good lady. ‘So which is it? Or perhaps it is neither. Perhaps it is some other bit of your body that makes you suddenly need to visit the clinic.’

  ‘Please,’ I said. ‘It is my job to ascertain the whereabouts of his discomfort.’

  ‘I’ll tell you the whereabouts,’ she hooted. ‘It’s in his mind. That’s where.’

  ‘Are you saying these symptoms are psychosomatic?’ I said, hoping to baffle her with arcane scientific terminology.

  ‘I’m saying he’s a liar,’ she shouted, jabbing him in the stomach.

  ‘That is not quite the same,’ I said as he bent forward groaning. ‘What you are possibly referring to is “Munchausen Syndrome”, a condition to which people of the Germanic continent are particularly susceptible.’

  ‘And this… this syndrome is what?’ she said, flailing at him as he tried to put an arm around her. ‘Leering at that which should not be leered at? Lying to your family and skiving off work to satisfy one’s carnal curiosities?’

  ‘Well, no. It’s mainly about staying indoors and eating too much in order to draw undue attention to oneself,’ I said, though to be honest that particular page in the medical dictionary had been one of several abridged by mice.

  ‘He is a married man. I didn’t know he had carnal curiosities.’ She wiped her nose on a fold of her shawl. ‘Perhaps there is something you can give him for that?’

  ‘There is usually something for everything,’ I said cautiously. ‘And what we don’t have, I can order.’

  ‘Well, whatever it is you give him,’ she said, waving at the lengthening queue, ‘you’ll need plenty of it.’

  When I managed to push my way through to the waiting room, the first thing I noticed was a widely contagious neurological disorder causing people to stare fixedly, their jaws locked open as they stretched their necks and waved from side to side. In a fleeting moment of clinical excitement, I wondered if we hadn’t discovered a new disease. This was something I had often dreamed of as a just reward for Dev’s medical explorations. To stand at last on a gilded podium and receive the Noble Prize was something, I knew, that he coveted above all accolades. He had mentioned it one evening after I’d expressed concern that too much research might be slurring his speech and making him clumsy.

  ‘No prize without sacrifice,’ he had laughed maniacally. ‘If you want those yacht parties and Swedish women, then you’ve got to put the hours in. You’ve got to take those hours, every last one of them in your grubby, greasy hands and shove them right in as far as they’ll go.’

  On another occasion he told me about some of the prize-winners he most admired such as the eminent Dr Watson who had developed a crick in his neck from solving mysteries. ‘Observation,’ he had tried to explain, though we both knew I struggled a bit with the more rarified echelons of abstract science, ‘is the you know of the something or other, which is that, the thing, which it is, you see.’

  It struck me that our new discovery might forever be known as ‘Dev Sharma Syndrome’, or even ‘Pushkara Disease’. Doctors would nod sagely at the stiff necks and rigid eyeballs in front of them and say, ‘My good fellow, I fear that what you have got is a bad case of the Pushkaras.’ Although I could see objections to this. While it was established practice to name ailments after the clinicians who discovered them, I wondered sometimes if it didn’t pale after a while to find your name eternally cross-indexed with vomiting. How did the good Doctors Crohn, Elephantitis and Stool feel as yet another hotel receptionist tried not to smirk? Among blessings, scientific renown can be especially mixed.

  It was only when I reached the central vortex around which the epidemic swirled that I too was struck by its contagion, my eyes locked open, my jaw hung slack and my limbs refusing to move.

  She was sitting in the middle of the room, a simple blue dress hanging lightly over her legs. Her shoes were black, flat and rather plain. A delicate chime of silver bangles slid back as she raised a hand to brush the hair from her eyes. Standing next to her was the man in the crumpled suit whose name, I remembered, was Mike.

  ‘How much longer, do you reckon?’ she said.

  He shrugged.

  ‘Bloody goldfish bowl,’ she said, after a moment.

  ‘Where?’ said Mike.

  ‘Not where. Us.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Yeah.’

  The babble of voices hushed abruptly as I stepped forward. Eyes, in spite of their rigidity, swivelled to watch me. Breaths were held, limbs frozen. Even the flies seemed to hover silently in the sultry air. If it wasn’t for clinical decorum I would have leapt over to her, laughing and crying, for here she was, my destiny, my beloved, the consummation of my heart’s desire, the apogee of all my longings, waiting with a quiet grace and solemn humility I had never seen before in any human being, ever. In this moment hung the fecundity of generations. And I promised never again to doubt the powers of Pol to win celestial favours.

  ‘What?’ she said, noticing me.

  ‘Perhaps you would like to come with me,’ I said, indicating my office.

  ‘Are you the Doctor?’ said Mike.

  ‘Not at all. I am merely the Clinic Skivvy. My brother, who has been to England, is the Doctor. But I can provide you with a preliminary consultation until he is ready to see you,’ I thought. What I actually said was, ‘Yes of course.’

  ‘I’ll see you at the hotel,’ said the man.

  ‘You’re not waiting?’ she said.

  He looked around. ‘I dunno, there’s got to be a drink somewhere in this bloody town.’

  ‘Mountain resort,’ she said dryly.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘whatever.’

  I closed the door and gestured to the chair in front of my desk.

  ‘It is my opinion,’ I said, getting one or two matters out of the way, ‘that we should not have sex before marriage.’

  ‘Word gets around then,’ she said, sitting down.

  I opened my diagnosis pad and sharpened a pencil.

  ‘Anyway,’ she said, looking at her hands, ‘it’s not sex, it’s acting.’

  Dev had often told me that in love nothing makes sense, even things so simple, ordinarily, that they don’t have to. Love, he had said, is a distress you never want to end. And though I had found that slightly paradoxical at the time, I was beginning to understand what he meant.

  ‘Anyway,’ she added, looking up, ‘you’ve got your opinions and I’ve got mine. Right now I just need something for the runs.’

  ‘And how long have you had these “Runs”?’ I asked, making a note.

  ‘About a week now,’ she said. ‘Well, it’s got worse the last couple of days.’

  ‘And where does it hurt?’ I asked.

  ‘It doesn’t hurt. It’s the runs.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, reaching for the medical dictionary with a calm professionalism that never failed to put my patients at their ease. A deft flick of my fingers opened it to the section marked ‘R’. I nodded knowingly and began to wend my way through Rabies, Rickets and Rhinitis.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she said.

  ‘Rubber Allergy,’ I said. ‘We’re almost there. Oh.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’ve got to “S” without any mention of “The Runs”, or even “Runs, The”. Still,’ I smiled at her, ‘let us spare a thought for the goo
d Doctor Rubinstein-Taybi and pray that the disorder to which he lends his name is not too unsightly.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ she said.

  Reading the dictionary had long been my favourite part of the consultation, the patients visibly relaxing as I intoned, ‘Club Foot, Coccidioidomycosis, Coenuriasis’ and finally, ‘aha, it seems to me that what you have described is the Common Cold.’ If, on this occasion, it only seemed to agitate her, I reminded myself that a little bewilderment in the presence of one’s beloved is perfectly natural.

  ‘Perhaps it’s a new disease,’ I smiled. ‘If you like we could name it after you.’

  ‘It’s not new,’ she said. ‘I’ve had it before. Everyone’s had it. Mike was laid up for three days in Bombay with it.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, my pencil poised. ‘And would you say that your neck is unusually stiff at the moment?’

  She stared at me. I made a note of the fact that it might be. ‘When in doubt,’ Dev had said to me once, ‘make a note and gaze into space as if you’re thinking of something far away.’

  ‘You know,’ she said insistently. ‘The Squits.’

  I was there in a flash. ‘You have a squint?’ I said.

  ‘Do I look as if I’ve got a squint?’ she said.

  ‘You have been attacked by a squid?’ I said, in a moment of clinical inspiration.

  She shook her head.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but that is the nearest I can find to what you describe, and to be frank there is nothing in here about squids, that was just a guess. But I suggest that you try focusing your eyes on something in front of you until both of them are pointing in the same direction. Did your parents have a squint?’