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possible of Suvarna Devi's stories, so simple in their language and structure, but how forceful and powerful for all that!
    The experience had aspects to it that Prema had not imagined when she set out. It reminded her, for instance, of how she had struggled to write stories herself when she was young—younger—and how she had sent them out to magazines only to have them returned with curt rejection slips, the hurt and bitterness with which she had mourned them as she put them away, and how discouragement had made her admit she was probably no writer after all.
    Now she could laugh at those rejections and the way she had taken them to heart, letting their poison seep into her till the urge to write, the ambition to write, had quite died inside her.
    She realised that all she had needed was this opportunity, this invitation held out to her—by Tara, of all people—to discover her true vocation. It was surely the right one since it had given her this new-found ease, and speed, and delight.
     
    So the work was done sooner than she, and perhaps Tara, had expected, and it was with a certain sense of regret, and trepidation, that she typed it out, then had a typist she knew at a copy shop down the road retype it for neatness—'Don't worry, auntie,' he said, 'it will look just like print'—and carried the bundle ceremoniously to Tara's office. Mailing it was of course possible and perhaps more professional but she couldn't resist the satisfaction of handing it over herself and seeing Tara's face register approval. The completion of this labour needed somehow to be marked and rewarded.
    Unfortunately, Tara was away. Her secretary informed Prema that she was at a conference in Prague, would be back in a week. If she left the manuscript, it would be given to Tara on her return. Prema could expect to hear from her very soon.
    She did not. Tara took her time, a very long time it seemed to Prema. In fact, Prema advanced from disappointment to impatience to annoyance at being treated in this manner and kept waiting as if she were only one of many people in a queue for Tara's attention. Had she no consideration for what an author—all right, a translator—might feel at being ignored, left in the dark, waiting, hoping?
    She could feel the grooves across her forehead and from her nostrils to her mouth deepening by the day. She snapped at her students. She marked their papers with increasing severity. She knew they found her unfair, ill-tempered and dull. But why did they consider themselves worthy of her attention? They were not, not. She was a translator, an author.
     
    Then, just like that, a change in the atmosphere, a sudden breeze to fill her sails, give her hope and move her forwards at last.
    A telephone call from Tara—first her secretary, then Tara herself—to say she was pleased, she approved the translation and would publish it; it would appear in the first list of translations by her press.
    It was true she did not exactly convey enthusiasm. She was certainly not effusive. In fact she did not even say she thought the translation 'good'. She said it was 'quite good'. Could there be a more tepid qualification?
    That might have crushed Prema as much as an outright rejection but Tara followed that limp opinion by saying she would get in touch with Suvarna Devi to draw up a contract, and asked if Prema knew how she might do that.
    So suddenly Prema had not only to see to the few notes and suggestions Tara made about the translation—just as the students were sitting their exams which meant their papers would soon be pouring in for her to mark—but she also had to busy herself with finding out about Suvarna Devi's whereabouts.
Why
had she not done that when she was actually there in her home town? And why did the publisher of her book, evidently a local one in the same town, not reply to her queries?
    It all proved incredibly difficult and frustrating. Until she thought of writing to the principal of the women's college