The Weary Generations Read Online Free

‘You might as well say we don’t know how to wrap a sari around us.’
    Some of them laughed quietly. Naim felt that they weren’t laughing at what was actually being said, just amusing themselves because they were in a certain mood, as if carrying on a private engagement. There was wilfulness in their exchange.
    Ayaz Beg called out to Naim. He wanted help with fixing the camera, of which Naim perhaps knew more than his uncle did. It was a big box camera with a light-bulb flash, and Naim could take it apart and put it together again. It took them several minutes before it was loaded and the shutter working properly. Guests had started arriving. Nawab Ghulam Mohyyeddin stood at the entrance with a handsome middle-aged woman, receiving the guests. Azra stood alongside them. First came the foreigners, most of them British. Some of them wore top hats and long coats, under which they were sweating. They handed their hats and coats to the servants and were led to the best sofa chairs in the seating area, where they sat smoking cigars and talking in low voices, their women in high-neck dresses smoking long cigarettes stuck in equally long holders held aloft. The women laughed loudly, feeling free. The Indian guests arrived a little later. They were in various attires, marked by their area of origin, but chiefly by religion: Muslims in tasselled Turkish caps and long gowns, Hindus in hitched-in-the-middle loose dhotis and turbans, only a few of them in non-denominational sherwanis. They paid scant attention to the servants and went and sat silently on one side, bunched together, notcaring to remove their large, loosely wound turbans and holding their canes straight up on the ground in front of them between their legs. They had all come in two- and four-horse behlis, only some foreigners and very few Indians arriving in automobiles. An Indian, in a shiny, gold-worked sherwani and tight turban, with a young man in Western dress trailing him, arrived in a car. The nawab met him, executing a deep bow. Someone said it was the Maharajkumar of Partap Nagar and the young man his secretary. He handed his gold-topped cane to the young man, who hung on to it. The Maharajkumar went and sat with the Britishers. An Englishwoman, sitting three seats away, leaned forward and waved to him. The man waved back.
    As Mr Gokhle arrived, all the Indians and two British people stood up to greet him. Ayaz Beg mentioned his name. Naim went and stood close to him. He had heard the name before, but it was the first time he had set eyes on the man. He had on a sherwani-type half-coat, buttoned up to the neck, over pantaloons, both in black, and wore a cap, the kind Naim had seen on Tilak’s head in photographs in Calcutta. A long narrow muffler was thrown freely round his neck. Wearing gold-rimmed glasses, the man might have been considered good-looking were he not so weak, thin and pale. Among the younger people, Naim was the only one who stepped forward and shook hands with him. Mrs Besant was the last to arrive. She wore a bright yellow sari and went and sat with the Indian guests. Upon her arrival, a hesitant conversation began in that group. Some British men stared at her. Servants were offering fruit juices to the guests. Naim stood under a young pomegranate tree, looking up in the subdued glow of a Japanese lantern hung among the branches to the shimmering red buds that had begun to appear. It’s a winter fruit, Naim thought absent-mindedly. What’s it doing here in May?
    â€˜Hello,’ Azra said, emerging from behind the tree. ‘Have you had something to drink?’
    â€˜No,’ Naim replied.
    â€˜Have this.’ Azra proffered a tumbler full of fruit juice. Naim immediately lifted it to his lips.
    â€˜Do you never take off your hat?’
    â€˜No. Oh yes, I do,’ blurted out Naim, taking a quick gulp of the drink.
    Azra shone her eyes, which seemed in the half-darkness to have become almost black.