Out of India (2011)
“It was easy going – almost no traffic to worry us – and if we were early we had time to practise the day’s poem. This time, the words tripped along nicely: On either side the river lie Long fields of barley and of rye, That clothe the wold and meet the sky.
It seemed a cheerful incantation, but in the present circumstance I could make little sense of it. In this country, I saw a tangle of bushes, thorn, tamarind, acacia, palm, with dust-devils and too much distance in between. Somewhere over th...ere, it was true, flowed a big river. The town of Ferozepore had been founded on the old high bank of the Sutlej, one of the five watery fingers of the Punjab. But the reaches of that Himalayan run-off did not invite cosy reflection. The spirit of the water was unreliable, a thing only temporarily contained, moody amid snags and currents, shifting in a blink from bland to ugly.
On the verandah of the school bungalow the teacher, a Scotswoman in a long skirt and with two ropes of hair coiled in Valkyrie-fashion about her ears, greeted us formally.MoreLess
It seemed a cheerful incantation, but in the present circumstance I could make little sense of it. In this country, I saw a tangle of bushes, thorn, tamarind, acacia, palm, with dust-devils and too much distance in between. Somewhere over th...ere, it was true, flowed a big river. The town of Ferozepore had been founded on the old high bank of the Sutlej, one of the five watery fingers of the Punjab. But the reaches of that Himalayan run-off did not invite cosy reflection. The spirit of the water was unreliable, a thing only temporarily contained, moody amid snags and currents, shifting in a blink from bland to ugly.
On the verandah of the school bungalow the teacher, a Scotswoman in a long skirt and with two ropes of hair coiled in Valkyrie-fashion about her ears, greeted us formally.MoreLess
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