Lesser Breeds by Nayantara Sahgal

Author:Nayantara Sahgal
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Winter’s early dusk was in the room when Bhai started talking about Shãn. With the future so uncertain, both the country’s and his own, he wished he could be sure at least of Shãn’s. He would have liked to send her to university abroad, to breathe the air of a free country, but England was under bombardment and he had no contacts anywhere else in the West.

‘Can you still say that?’ Edgar accused, and asked Bhai to leave the arrangements for her education to him.

As they said goodbye downstairs he warned, ‘You will be careful, won’t you, Nikhil? You said you couldn’t count on civil liberties in wartime.’

‘Or in peacetime either if one stepped outside the limits of His Majesty’s loyal opposition.’

‘Then be extra careful.’

‘And you?’

Why me? I’m free to come and go as I please, figured Edgar that day. Their handclasp was the last thing he remembered. In the car he raised a hand in sombre farewell to the figure in white. The livery of freedom, Gandhi had called it. The devil’s own choice of colour. Muddied easily. Bloodied easily. Great patches of blood came back to Edgar along with the 1930 refrain:

With dear old Gandhi

We’ll all march to Dandi

And break all the salt laws

That a white man ever made.

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