The Complete Stories by Anita Desai

Author:Anita Desai
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House

Five Hours to Simla or Faisla

Then, miraculously, out of the pelt of yellow fur that was the dust growing across the great northern Indian plain, a wavering grey line emerged. It might have been a cloud bank looming, but it was not – the sun blazed, the earth shrivelled, the heat burned away every trace of such beneficence. Yet the grey darkened, turned bluish, took on substance.

‘Look – mountains!’

‘Where?’

‘No! I can’t see any mountains.’

‘Are you blind? Look, look up – not down, fool!’

A scuffle broke out between the boys on the sticky grime of the Rexine-covered front seat and was quietened by a tap on their heads from their mother at the back. ‘Yes, yes, mountains. The Himalayas. We’ll be there soon.’

‘Hunh.’ A sceptical grunt from the driver of the tired, dust-coated grey Ambassador car. ‘At least five more hours to Simla.’ He ran his hand over the back of his neck where all the dirt of the road seemed to have found its way under the wilting cotton collar.

‘Sim-la! Sim-la!’ the boys set up a chant, their knees jouncing up and down in unison.

Smack, the driver’s left hand landed on the closest pair, bringing out an instant flush of red and sudden, sullen silence.

‘Be quiet!’ the mother hissed from the back seat, unnecessarily.

The Ambassador gave a sudden lurch, throwing everyone forwards. The baby, whose mouth had been glued to the nipple of a rubber bottle like a fly to syrup, came unstuck and let out a wail of indignation. Even the mother let out a small involuntary cry. Her daughter, who had been asleep on the back seat, her legs across her mother’s lap, crowding the baby and its bottle, now stirred.

‘Accident!’ howled the small boy who had been smacked, triumphantly.

But no, it was not. His father had stopped, with the usual infuriating control exercised by robotic adults, just short of the bicycle rickshaw ahead. The bicycle rickshaw had, equally robotically, avoided riding forwards into the bullock cart carrying a party of farmers’ families to market. Then there was a bus, loaded with baggage and spilling over with passengers, and that too had shuddered to a halt with a grinding of brakes. Ahead of it was a truck, wrapped and folded in canvas sheets that blocked all else from sight. The mountains had disappeared and so had the road.

Also the first cacophony of screeching brakes and grinding gears. There followed the comparatively static hum of engines, and drivers waited in exasperation for the next lurch forwards. For the moment there was a lull, unusual on that highway. Then the waiting very quickly began to fray at the edges. The sun was beating on the metal of the vehicles and the road lay flattened across the parched plain without a tree to screen them from the sun or dust. First one car horn began to honk, then a bicycle rickshaw began to clang its bell, then a truck blared its musical horn maddeningly, and then the lesser ones began to

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