Indian Summer by Will Randall

Author:Will Randall
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789085241522
Publisher: For the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Published: 2003-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

10

Let’s Go Fly a Kite

Near the Osho Commune, in the small parade of shops, was a bookseller specialising in ‘Mystical and the Spiritual Books’. Owned, somewhat surprisingly, in this male-oriented commercial world, by a mother and daughter team, the high-ceilinged room was a maze of different piles of books stacked horizontally according to their category. Thanks to our daily power cut, light came only through the front door and a small grille high up in the back wall, so, as I hunted along the shelves, the younger of the two women approached me with a torch, aiming it so that I could see the names on the spines.

“Chai, Mister? Or perhaps some coffee?” asked the older woman who was seated on a stool behind a low table, two legs of which I noticed were made up of piles of books. I wondered what would happen if I wished to purchase one.

“Well, perhaps some tea would be nice.” I had grown by this stage to enjoy the tiny cups of horribly sweet mud-coloured liquid, although more than one cup at a time had a racing effect similar to that of those tiny cups of coffee that are served up to shaky, pale, chain-smoking women in Parisian cafés.

Reaching under the table, where a number of incense sticks were burning, she lit a small gas ring and expertly balanced on it a small brass saucepan with a long black wooden handle.

“Just one minute, please…” She adjusted the flame. “So please tell me, Sahib, what sort of reading material are you looking for?”

“Well, actually I was looking for a copy of the Ramayana.”

Fenella had fired me with enthusiasm.

I sat down on the low stool that was pulled out for me. It was extraordinarily uncomfortable.

“Oh, the Ramayana, that is most interesting. You are interested in our holy writings? You are a scholar from England perhaps? From one of your fine universities? You know, of course, of our university here in Poona? You know we call it the Oxford of the East? Perhaps you have given lectures here?”

“Well, yes, no, no, no,” was my lame response in reply to the barrage of questions, though I need not have worried too much because the old lady had already turned away and was arranging a wooden ladder against the wall. Her daughter holding it steady by sitting on the bottom rung, she climbed up with remarkable agility to a shelf above the front door. After a few ‘left, right’ directions called down to me over her shoulder, so that I might shift the beam of the torch about to help her find what it was she was looking for, she removed what appeared at that height to be a large cardboard box. Somehow she succeeded in tucking it under her arm like a washing basket and descended again.

“This one, I think you will be liking very much. A most beautiful edition and I think I can make a very nice price for this one.” Regardless of the price, I wondered how I would ever get it home.

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