*

Raman, Sayyid, and the old villager had arrived at Nodi at ten o'clock - IV in the morning after riding for eight hours into the scrub of the desert. Or rather, Raman and Sayyid rode their horses; the old villager had pleaded instability and dizziness and dismounted from his donkey to walk the rest of the way. Raman and Sayyid slowed to a steady trot and listened as they rode to the clip-clop of their horses' shoes and the accompanying flap-flap of the villager's thick-soled feet. Two miles from Nodi, they had come upon a little boy asleep under the shade of a dhokara tree, his herd of two scrawny cows chewing away at the lower foliage. He woke up and a laugh burst out of him when he saw them, so full was he of happiness at the presence of the burra sahib, the big sahib. The boy ran screaming toward Nodi, shouting that Raman was here, that the old villager had made good his word and brought the burra sahib to their village. His cows he left foraging around the dhokara--they would eventually rest under the shade of the tree and wait for him to return to lead them home. For a long while, almost a mile, Raman could see the tiny figure of the boy as he raced through the deflated land of the desert, and even hear his jubilant wailing as it cut through the sheer air.

It was a reception he had missed in the years he had spent as Jai's advisor. Jai, though always happy to see Raman--sometimes he would be petulant but always polite--had never been this ecstatic. The entire trip no far had been glorious, Raman thought. Riding through the cool of the early morning, the servants' footsteps in accompaniment, their lanterns held untiringly aloft to light the way and to warn of snakes and scorpions. The stop for breakfast in the shadow of a tomb, crumbling and in ruins. No one knew whose tomb that was, who lay there in eternal rest, and travelers did not care, for the structure provided shade and coolness from the midday heat and a partial shelter at night for those who dared to sleep where ghosts walked. It was a tiny building, the inside walls blackened with smoke from a hundred breakfast, lunch, and dinner fires, and to this soot Sayyid added his own, cracking open eggs for a savory egg toast--thick slices of bread doused with whipped eggs, garlic, coriander leaves, and chili powder and fried on a pan. Sayyid then cut green mangoes for a sour chutney on the toast. This last was Raman's private affectation, when the mangoes lay heavy and green on the branches of the trees, sap smearing their sides, he ate his egg toast with mango chutney. Sayyid also served Raman with his hot cups of coffee and wedges of golden muskmelon to finish the meal. For the next two hours, Raman rode in aimless musings, a smile painting his face without his knowledge.

At sunrise the thick earth of the Sukh desert turned from indigo to gold. In two hours, the heat became almost unbearable, but Raman affixed a sola topi upon his head and sweated his way in the saddle, relishing the waves of heat from the ground upon his face, and the tiredness that had begun to creep into his limbs.

Half a mile out from the village, what seemed to be the entire village had turned out to meet him. Some of the men had garlands in their hands, made from knitted mango leaves, and these they insisted on putting around Raman's neck even before he dismounted from Sans Reproche. His neck and chest grew heavy with the weight of the good wishes and blessings upon him. They led him to the main village square, which was no more than a brick platform built around the burly and growing roots of a banyan tree. The main shops were arranged around the tree--a greengrocer with withered vegetables baking in the heat, a dry-goods merchant with small mounds of multicolored lentils and pulses, a blacksmith with his smithy fire and cinder-blackened face, a cloth merchant with a few cheap voile saris hung under a jute awning. Nodi was a poor village, like too many villages in India. He saw a few of the women glance at him shyly from under their ghoonghats, the veils only pulled over their heads to their noses, saw that a few more had their hands folded in supplication, and that yet others had tears in their eyes. They kept wiping the tears, more fell in their place, and Raman felt an ache flood his heart.

It must have been too long since any administrator had been here at Nodi to listen to their complaints, seek out their wants, pacify their needs. Colonel Pankhurst and Raman's primary duties were to Jai. In other parts of the British Raj, the villages would come under the jurisdiction of the Indian Civil Service. In Rudrakot, because it was a princely state and the ICS had no authority here, Jai was in charge of the land and the people, collecting agriculture taxes, putting that money to good use. Raman now saw that they had all been lax in their duties. He had held Jai's hand for so long, mentored him into adulthood, taught him right from wrong as much as he knew himself and as much as he could that he had forgotten the common people in the kingdom of Rudrakot. It took him only a few minutes into one such visit to realize all of their folly.

Raman sat down in the shade of the banyan, in the best shade of the banyan, for its leaves were sparse in some . Areas, and as the sun shifted to pierce through the tree's canopy, the villagers insisted that Raman move from one spot to the other so that he could be the coolest of them all. He listened to the men speak for hours about the vagaries of the monsoon rains, the failing of crops, the lack of water, the fights over land rights, whose cattle strayed and foraged in whose land, and so on. Some of the women talked of squabbles from their front doorsteps where they spent the afternoons knitting for the cooler, winter desert nights, and soon Raman found a pattern among them all. If their husbands were engaged in a spat, inevitably the women found something spiteful and petty to say about each other. Her voice is too loud. She brays like a donkey. She Acts teeth like a horse. To each complaint, Raman sat and listened with patience. He kept his place under the banyan tree all morning and afternoon long, eating his lunch and drinking his afternoon chai right there in front of hundreds of eyes. Finally, the old villager, who had been attending to Raman's every word, scuttled over on his haunches as close as he could get to Raman's knees and coughed to attract his attention. Then Raman spoke to the villagers in his gentle voice about the possibility that they must all face, that there might not be a monsoon this year, no matter how much they prayed or propitiated their Gods. That the well this villager had built had sweet and clean water inside it, that its vicinity was to be kept pristine if the water was to maintain its freshness. That to sully the land around it, to defecate and shit there would mean taking away the only source of pure water for all of Nodi. That even if the nights were immeasurably hot--and they were hot now and were going to continue to be--the villagers must show resilience and strength and not seek the temporary coolness of the well's saucer-shaped brickwork.

Because Raman had stayed under the banyan tree, listened to them speak, showed a concern and consideration they had not had from any other administrator, his words were taken as gospel. The villagers nodded their heads respectfully, made promises to do exactly as Raman said, and even told him the words he was always thrilled to hear at the end of one of these village sessions. Aap hamare Ma-Baap ho, Saha You are our mother and you are our father.

The Lu came roaring out of the desert and exploded around them a minute later, just as Raman was wiping a surreptitious tear from the corner of his eye, using a cloth towel to ostensibly mop his face of sweat. The villagers and Raman had all been somewhat mesmerized by each other and no one had noticed that the atmosphere had become laden with the stillness that heralded the coming of the Lu. And no one had remembered that the Lu was always prophesied around the time of purnima, the full moon, which was tomorrow.

As the wind snarled and clamored around them, they all ran, shouting with laughter at themselves that they could have been so ignorant of its approach. Sayyid brought a towel to wrap around his master's head, and they both wrestled with the piece of cloth, Raman screaming that Sayyid should take cover himself, Sayyid shouting back that he would be where Raman was. After the villagers had taken their very old and their very young away and tucked them under the shelter of charpais and huts, two young men came running across the village square with torn and ragged blankets and offered them to Raman and Sayyid.

"Come to our house, Sahib," one man said above the bawling of the wind.

"We are all right here," Raman replied, "Go, take cover yourself. Are our horses safe?"

"Yes," a man said, "we led them to the mango grove behind the village; they will be safe enough there."

Raman and Sayyid stayed crouched under the banyan tree, the wind whipping up red dirt in swirls and eddies as they each huddled in the relative comfort of their blankets. The dust flew in to sting Raman's legs and his stomach through the rents in the blanket, but he was thankful for the little protection it provided. Every now and then, he put out a hand blindly to feel for Sayyid's shoulder and to make sure that he was still near him. And so he rode out the storm. Conversation was not possible, so, ensconced within the tough roots of the many-armed banyan tree, Raman allowed a lassitude to overcome his body and immersed himself in his thoughts.

Sayyid had shown him Mila's note at breakfast that morning, and Raman had read it briefly and put it away, more because he could do nothing about it, could not turn back to Rudrakot, and did not really want to either. He was a little discomfited by the tone, what was it she had not been disrespectful, Mila would never be that, could never be that. But she had always before, in all of her conversations with him, made her desires seem like requests. Not this time. Dearest Papa, she had written, Captain Hawthorne has expressed a wish to visit Chetak's tomb, and I will take him there tomorrow. Ashok comes with us and I wanted to let you know of our plans in case we leave before you waken in the morning.

Shutting his ears to the blast of the wind, Raman admonished himself not to be too fanciful and too imaginative, just as Mila always was. She could create stories out of little beginnings, and give them legs, torsos, heads, ears, eyes, and noses to make them complete. She must have been fired last night, and yes, there was something different in the way she had written that note, but it was nothing, surely it was nothing? Then, because he had little else to do, thoughts about the suitability of Mila's going away on such a pleasure visit with a man they knew so little about came to Raman. Normally, busy as he was with a hundred myriad troubles during the day, he would give very little credence to such proprieties. But he had nothing to do during the dust storm. He was physically exhausted from what had already been a long day for him, and the queries and complaints of the villagers had mentally taken his strength too, but Mila, Ashok, and Kiran were still never far from his mind. Ashok was with her; if only Sayyid could have been too, Raman thought. He reached out to pat

Sayyid's shoulder again, and felt a reassuring press of fingers upon his hand in return. Sayyid was the very soul of goodness and decorum--his presence would have stilled all gossiping tongues if they had even thought of wagging in that direction. Sayyid should have gone with Mila. But he was being unnecessarily stupid here, Raman thought. For he had liked Sam Hawthorne, immensely, more in the short time he had known him than any other man. And Raman was used to being confident in his ability to judge men's characters upon first acquaintance; it was one of his best and most finely honed skills. Sam Hawthorne would be properly solicitous of his Mila. Raman sighed. It was not Sam Hawthorne he was worried about, it was the ladies at the Victoria Club. Well, at least they would return later this evening, and safely, and even as he thought this, the wind flattened him against the banyan's roots and knocked his head against the bark. Raman pulled the smelly blanket closer about his face with a sense of dread. The storm would have reached them too, and if it lasted any longer Mila, Ashok, and Sam would have to stay the night at Chetak's tomb.

"Sayyid," he said.

He heard Sayyid reply, his voice muffled by the roar of the wind and the blanket over his mouth, "Ji, Sahib, I know. But they will be safe for the night, at least that."

"Did you send the telegraph?" Raman asked, bending close to Sayyid's ear.

Sayyid nodded and Raman sat back again. It was curious that Captain Hawthorne was an officer in a regiment called the Third Burma Rangers, more curious that the Americans had already formed, trained, and sent out an entire regiment to help in the retaking of Burma. Why, Burma had just fallen. Were the Third Burma Rangers a regular army unit or what else? Who was this Sam Hawthorne? Why had he come to Rudrakot? The telegraph he had sent to Calcutta last night would answer some of these questions for him.

Chapter Twenty.

In his own account of what he did, Neill continues that the first culprit was a subadar of the 6th who was made to do the work with a sweeper's bush put in his hand by a sweeper; a Mahommedan officer of the civil court was flogged and made to lick up part of the blood with his tongue. "I will hold my own," Neill continued, "with the blessing and help of God. I cannot help seeing that His finger is in all this "

-Philip Mason, A Mauer of Hono, [974