Under Oriental Skies

August 10, 1875

'Unsex me!', how loudly and forcefully do these words echo and re-echo in my ears now as I write these words. We have just returned from a staging of Macbeth at King George's Hall behind the Mall, and more than the bright lights of Simla, the gaudy dresses from Saville Row and the reeking perfumes from Calcutta, it is these words that keep on reverberating within me.

Come, you spirits

That tend on mortal thoughts,

Unsex me here,

And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full

Of direst cruelty!

Make thick my blood

Come to my woman's breasts,

And take my milk for gall,

You murdering ministers!

Lady Macbeth was played by Victoria, the Hardinge's youngest daughter and she did rise to the occasion, staring into the cold darknesses in front of her, rooted to the spot as she beckoned to the sinister spirits that lurk in the depths of every man to come and release her from her much-maligned sex, and put steel into her resolve to vanquish King Duncan and become Queen of Scotland. With a voice resonating with fierceness, she resolutely pressed onwards with her brave naked will, a will as cold as the blade of her flashing dagger, to condemn the vacillating Macbeth, her weakling of a husband, for his unmanly cowardice.

Yes, I do wish I could become Lady Macbeth some day. Even if just for once. But who would then be my Macbeth? James? No. He would rather plunge a dagger into a patient's ulcer than one into... Into... I do not know. And who would be King Duncan? David? The white face in the window? The Viceroy himself? Ah no, I must forthwith stop these terrible thoughts. The evil witches are all around me. Hark! I can hear them whispering these poisoned words to me now, dragging me away gently into their demoniac realms.

David was around for a little while after we came back, talking to the mali about his planned expedition to the lower Himalayas next Spring. He came in after we had finished coffee and sat down on his favourite chair beside the dark window as I was beginning to read The Romance of the Shangri La. He seemed rather amused for some reason and kept on smiling at the windows, but when I asked him what was amusing him so much he did not seem to have even heard my question. I returned to my book. Yes, I do think David can be a trifle impolite at times.

James came in with another one of his thick volumes of The Harvard Medical Review. He is going down to Delhi tomorrow for a meeting with Lord Halliday, the Viceroy's personal secretary. I was absorbed in my book when Ramu rushed in and announced that one of the kitchen-maids had been possessed by a witch. James threw a long sneering glance at Ramu but the news electrified David who bolted out of the room along with Ramu. The witches of Macbeth were all around me, and I made a move to follow David when James cast a disapproving look in my direction. I struggled to go back to my Shangri La but I could not. There were reports recently in the local newspapers that there had been an increase in the number of the Natives who had become possessed by evil spirits, and I so terribly wanted to see what happens to these pour souls when the devillish forces that lie sleeping within all of us suddenly break forth onto the surface.

After about fifteen minutes, David came back. For a man so gullible as him, so ready to believe any bizarre story that the gleeful Natives would spin around him, he was surprisingly scientific today : 'Oh, just another case of hysteria. The women around these parts are particularly prone to this.'

He paused for a moment. Then he smiled again at himself and added : 'But then I guess we men must be susceptible to hysteria too. How otherwise would we recognise it in the women around us?'

James spoke for the first time in the evening. With a voice heavy with scorn, he asked : 'And I take it that is your scientific theory? That the doctor must be infected with the same disease that he discovers in his patient?'

'Well, I suppose so. Say, you are a Christian aren't you?'

'I will be damned if I am not.'

A cry of horror rose to my mouth at his words, and I managed just in time to clasp my hands over my lips.

'Ah, pretty good language, James. Wonder what the Reverend Johnston will have to say about this damnation. Now if you are a Christian, surely you believe in the dogma of Original Sin? Surely you know that all human beings are infected with a most debilitating disease that we have inherited from our common parents, Adam and Eve? So there, that is your proof.'

James stroked his beard for a few moments, gave me another cold withering look (I do not know why he never does this to David though), and returned to his medicine. David slumped into his chair once again, and I went back to my Shangri La.

As the clock began to strike eleven, David rose to go.

He came up to me and said : 'By the way, or shall I say, on my way out, I did hear your question earlier about why I was smiling. I was smiling because I wanted to see if you would notice that I was. And when you did, I started smiling all the more.'

The massive brown doors shut softly after him.

A cold wind swept in. The first intimation of the Simla winter.

Under Oriental Skies

August 2, 1875

James has been distressed the whole day. Perhaps I have been even more so. Last night after he fell asleep with a volume of the British Physiological Review on his shoulders, I was reading Col. Arthur Fitzpatrick's Travels through the Mystical Heartlands of India when for a moment I looked up at the newly painted yellow window in front of me. I am sure that had I but the ability I could draw what I saw to the minutest detail : a shimmering white face with a pair of cold eyes whose intense stare burnt into my warm flesh like a burst of a thousand flaming arrows. My shriek of horror echoed and reechoed through the entire house.

James sprang up from his sleep and seeing me pointing towards the window darted towards it, opened it and looked down into the darkness of the garden.

A few minutes later he was sleeping soundly again.

I went to the desk and took out an old copy of the New Testament that dear uncle Jack (God bless his soul!) had given me when I was fourteen. I opened it at my favourite twenty-third Psalm :

The Lord is my shepherd

I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures

He leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul

He guideth me in straight paths for His name's sake.

Yea, Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death

I will fear no evil

For Thou art with me

Thy rod and thy staff

They comfort me.

James was unusually quiet at breakfast. I could feel something of the weight that was bearing down on his immaculately sculpted shoulders. The wife of an aspiring Surgeon in the Viceroy's office verging on insanity! How dreadful that must be for his reputation!

The Fairbarns came in for tea in the afternoon just as the mists were clearing up after the sudden burst of rain towards lunch. Lady Fairbarn was excited about a farm that they were buying in Rhodesia and methodically kept on complimenting me on my green dress after a precise interval of every five minutes.

'Have you been to the Mall recently? The tastes are definitely deteriorating!'

I was, however, living in a different time and place : the white face from the previous night kept on swimming in and out in front of my eyes.

A face that filled me with a cold dread.

And yet, there was an inexplicable allure in the midst of that very dread.

Under Oriental Skies

July 29, 1875

I have made a frightful mess of myself today. We were driven up to the Viceregal Lodge in the morning where Her Ladyship Dufferin was due to arrive towards noon. Knowing that I always feel nervous at these public meetings, James had cautioned me to hold my own in front of the dignitaries. I sat down near one of the grand intricately ornamented windows in the Ball Room glancing at the massive vacant spaces on the yellow ceilings, and the glimmering glasses of the chandeliers. There I remained for the greater part of the quiet morning, drinking in the Strauss, the Mozart, and the Beethoven that wafted towards me from somewhere behind the thick heavy red curtains.

I was woken up from my solitary reverie by the hustle and bustle in the courtyard just as the clock was striking twelve. There she was followed by a host of men in heavy polished boots and glittering blue coats. She walked down the aisle, with all the Lords and the Ladies bowing to her and giving her their best smiles.

When she came up to me, however, I felt so overwhelmed for a moment that I forgot all our time-honoured rules of courtesy and instead stared awkwardly at her hat festooned with roses and hibiscuses. Dear God, what a horrible taste in hats Her Ladyship has! It was one of the hats I had seen in '66 when Ralph had taken me to Brighton. Oh, why do I keep on writing about Ralph on these pages? I was standing on the pier when I saw one of these old overfed women from the North sailing away wearing a gigantic green hat whose frills came down to her powdered neck.

A frisson of laughter ran through me and for some reason, I know what, I remembered the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland and blurted out, 'The Mad Hatter!'

Almost as immediately, I excused myself, desperately mumbling something under my breath, and frantically rushed out of the room, followed soon thereafter by James. James was once again very composed. For a few moments, he glared at me and then sat down beside me and stared through the window, slowly shaking his head. There was a vast wall of emptiness between us the whole afternoon.

I have let James down, and I feel horrible about it. This meeting was so vital for his wish to become the Viceroy's personal Surgeon and I have spoilt all his chances. Oh, how utterly stupid I feel now! I feel like wringing my head in despair!

Towards evening, David came in, half-drunk, I seem to think now. He was the last person I wanted to talk to, but I let him go on once again about some faqirs he had met in Gujerat last year. It seems he wants to dress as one of them and travel with them to the mountains of Afghanistan and the cold heights of Tibet.

I was still feeling so frustrated with myself that I blurted out the entire episode in the morning to him. He spoke nothing for almost half an hour. And then with the voice of a man on whose shoulders hung the weight of eternity, he began to speak, steadily and slowly.

'In England, a woman is free only during two stages of her life --- either when she is too young or when she is too old. In the former case, her parents will put up with all her tantrums, tantalise her with gifts and wait upon her demands. Her merest whim becomes their command. And in the latter, she sits down beside the fire and as the great matron pulls the strings of the marriages of the little ones, offers free advice to anyone who seeks it and with the full brunt of her experiences comments on how wayward the youth around her have become. But between childhood and senility, a woman has no independence, she is the unfreest of all beings on this planet : she can only put up a brave face as her husband goes about the ponderous task of his public service to God, King, and Country.'

I listened patiently to him, but did not know what to think or reply. He too remained silent for a long time, as if he had unburdened the unspoken afflictions of the centuries from his agonised heart and was now exhausted by the titanic effort.

After dinner, I sat down at the desk looking at the garden below, bathed in the most beautiful moonlight. How I wished I could talk to dear Mamma for a while! She has this heavenly way of healing me with her slightest touch, closing up the cracks that threaten to open up within myself with the mere sound of her kind voice!

My dear little one,

I hope you are keeping well, and you are safe and away from the heat and the dust of the Indian plains. I have just returned this Monday from Edwina and Robert, and their three beautiful children. Oh, they are three cherubims, these little ones! Their radiant smiles make you feel you are in the bliss of heaven, far away from the toils and the turmoils of miserable sooty-faced London! Oh, dear, how terribly the Thames stinks in summer! Would you believe it, they are thinking of shutting the windows of Parliament this year to keep off the horrible smell?

But let me come back to Edwina and Robert. They are now stationed in Cornwall, and it is frightfully beautiful country out there. They were all sorely missing you and remembering the Spring of '82. Iris sends you her love too, and hopes to see you very soon in Southampton. She is getting engaged this winter to Sir Arthur McIvor, you know? I think it will be an awfully good match, the two dear ones. They are so much in love, heads turn around when they go walking down the road! His grandfather served in India during the Mutiny and was a close friend of my granfather too.

Are you coming to England at all next summer, my little one? James, I know, must be awfully busy trying to get his promotion. Your father is very proud of him, you know. He says that the young man will get to high places that he himself was never able to reach. Your grandfather talks about him all the time too. The Empire needs robust young men like him, he keeps on repeating to himself, sipping his mulled wine near the grand fire in our house whenever he comes to visit us. And then he nods himself to a peaceful sleep.

But what do I care for all this talk of government and politics, of men and their armies, of kings and their battles! Our proper place is inside the home, to raise the next generation that will carry the flag of our brave country into new worlds that are yet untouched by our glories. And above all, what matters to me is that you should be happy, under whatever skies you may live, English or Oriental.

With lots of love,

Your doting Mamma

James came into the room just as I finished writing this letter in my own hand. He looked over my shoulder for a moment, twitched his lips for a brief moment, picked up a massive volume of the British Medical Quarterly and sank into his bed, his eyes riveted on the latest surgical procedures.

'Must you always be writing and reading this womanly stuff?'

Of course, he did not ask me that question. But somehow I knew that he was struggling with himself to keep it within himself.

How hard dear James tries to hide his contempt for me! And how terribly he underestimates the powers of a woman's intuition!

It makes him at once sorely pitiable and dearly lovable!

Under Oriental Skies

July 25, 1875

I have been feeling edgy and irritable the whole day. It all started during breakfast when Ramu dropped a beautiful china plate which splintered on the polished floor into a thousand bits. A flash of anger ran through me and I felt like hitting out at him. Surprisingly for his temperament, James was very calm. He slowly raised his head from The Simla Mail and stared at the pieces as if he was methodically counting their number while Ramu, having apologised profusely, dashed out frantically and called for Tipu who came in to gather the pieces.

Later in the morning, when we went out into the garden, everything looked haphazardly arranged. The crocuses were in full bloom and they reminded me of the summer of '66 in Somerset House with Ralph and his brothers. And yet nothing seemed to be in the right place today. When the mali came in and started explaining to James why he needed some more money for the new hibiscus seeds, I felt once again an inexplicable anger surge through my body and rack my limbs. I wished I could take every flower in the garden by my hands, uproot it, burn the whole mass into a gigantic pile, and drink the wild smoke until I had become whole again.

It started raining after lunch, and I sat by the window cursing at it under my breath for having spoilt the afternoon walk. David came in just as dusk was falling, fully drenched. Few people would perhaps be able to guess that the two of David and James are brothers : each believed that the other was a complete failure in his life.

I must assert though that David is a bit eccentric. Or perhaps more than a bit. I asked him once why he never carried an umbrella with himself even when he knew that it was going to rain. For a moment, he smiled to himself. At times like these, I seem to believe that nothing amuses him more than himself.

'Ah, you see, the rain, the rain. For people who are not afraid to take a bath, whence the fear of the rain? For me, the entire sky is a shower, and the whole world is a bathroom.'

James was sitting at the other end of the room, smoking his pipe and reading The British Medical Gazette. He emitted a brief snort, looked in my direction, and then towards David, in an expression of pity, sadly shaking his head.

Nevertheless, talking to David today irritated me all the more. After he came in, he started a long winded conversation in his pathetic broken Hindusthani with Ramu about the Indian rain. Ramu seems to think that there is a lost tribe in the lower Himalayas which knows the secret of healing arthritis with water collected from the first shower of the Eastern Monsoons. David sat down with Ramu on the porch, his eyes filled with the wonder of a child, avidly drinking in every word that Ramu threw at him and wildly gesticulating to him as he searched for the right word in Hindusthani. So much for our Lords and Ladies in the Upper House who deliberate day and night on the superiority of our European race and send Eton-and-Cambridge educated Davids to civilize the Natives!

David was excited about what he had heard from Ramu and was insistent that I hear him out too. I endured him for a few minutes, when I began to feel that excruciating pang of irritation flush through my face all over again. I struggled with myself as something within me wanted to lash out fiercely at him, and something else was trying to find the strength for restraint.

'Can't we talk about something else?'

'You mean, about the failures of Western medicine to cure arthritis?'

'Must you always be this cynical? I daresay James has done more among the sick people here than you have.'

'Ah, back to James, General Surgeon, by the Queen's Appointment. A pair of skilful hands meets a pair of blue eyes. '

'And what is wrong about that?'

'Right? Wrong? Oh, don't ask me all these textbook questions. I know what is right and I know what is wrong. What I really want to know is which rights are more wrong and which wrongs are less right.'

I think the rope snapped somewhere at that stage. I turned my face towards the crocuses outside and stared at the pouring rain with a sullen face.

David left after dinner when the rain finally stopped.

I sat down on the porch staring at the beautiful night sky spangled with shining stars. A cool breeze was blowing through the garden and into the house through the white curtains. I felt a gentle peace sinking into me. The deep storm inside me had subsided, and I felt like a battered ship that having braved a perilous gale on the high seas sails into the safety of an expecting harbour.

For today, at least.