Austenistan by Laaleen Sukhera

Author:Laaleen Sukhera
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2017-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Autumn Ball

Gayathri Warnasuriya

“To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love”

—Pride and Prejudice

Maya longed to go to the ball.

The problem was Prince Charming, or at least Prince Charming-once-upon-a-time, her husband, Hugo, who’d developed an aversion to socialising, in general, and to dancing, in particular.

It hadn’t always been like this, they’d met at a club in London and gone out dancing on their first few dates. He wasn’t the most romantic or expressive man she’d come across but Maya was drawn to his solid and quiet demeanour. Maya sensed he didn’t say things unless he meant them. This was proven a few months later when he proposed, albeit rather prosaically. One evening at dinner, he asked her if she’d like to get married as he had been assigned his first posting in the Foreign Service and she could accompany him as his wife. He had not got down on one knee, he had not arranged a string quartet, he had not even bought a ring. It was much more practical, in Hugo’s viewpoint, to buy a ring after Maya accepted. She did. She was thrilled to.

London was the centre of the world and she loved it, but she’d been living there ever since her family left Pakistan when she’d been nine. She was ready for a change. London had its perks but it also ground one down, she thought. So many of her friends were looking for work abroad for a better quality of life after all. She liked her job as a deputy editor at The Journal of Forensic Sciences but there would be other opportunities. She told Hugo the next day over dinner how she’d try to find a job at a science institute in Abuja. It would be a problem, Hugo said, as a ‘trailing spouse’, the wife of a diplomat, she wasn’t allowed to work unless it was for a charity or the embassy. That didn’t sound too bad, Maya thought, though it would be strange to not have her own salary. But with a science background, she could edit a journal for a charity, even brush up on her research skills. Besides, she thought, she wasn’t going to complain about the opportunity to be a lady of leisure for once, by the side of a handsome and charming man whom she was going to spend her life with. Her family felt much the same way. While they had been hoping Maya would meet a nice Pakistani boy, when she had refused to be introduced to any more following a series of mortifying meet-ups and rishtas from distant cousins and sons of friends, they had accepted it. While it would take Maya further away from them, they were happy for her.

Hugo’s first posting had been to Abuja, a new, purpose-built capital in the centre of Nigeria. They arrived as newlyweds and the first year of meeting people and exploring the country had seemed like an extended honeymoon. They sat outside at midnight,

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