The Age of Shiva Read Free Page B

vividly about the Red Fort from back then was the Union Jack flapping atop a pole, its stern geometry of triangles and crosses clashing with the delicate intricacy of the minarets and arches. In its stead now flew the Indian flag, the centuries-old Ashoka wheel at its center forming a bridge between the Hindu strand of saffron and the Muslim strand of green. A new united India, we had been taught, with a unified identity for the future.
    â€œWe should come again tomorrow, to see the fireworks,” Roopa said, as we watched workers hoist large cloth portraits of Gandhiji and Nehru on either side of the Lahore Gate for a special celebration the next evening. “A full lakh of rupees they’re supposed to be spending, to celebrate the five-year mark.”
    Floodlights started coming on all round the fort, bathing the sandstone in patriotic cascades of white and green and orange. “Testing, testing,” someone said over a loudspeaker. Then Nehru’s voice crackled through the air, reprising his 1947 Independence Day speech. “The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us. Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?” I noticed Roopa rub her wrist across the stripes of Dev’s sweater, then slide her hand under his.
    It seems bizarre to blame Nehru for my life, but I think it was his words that helped egg me on towards my fate. Listening to him made me start wondering what my own future would hold for me, whom would I be spending it with. What were my opportunities, dangling ripe and heavy within reach, waiting to be plucked? I stood there, absorbing the bustle and tinsel of the street, as men with scarves wound around their faces bicycled by. Looming ahead was the imposing façade of the fort with its neat rows of windows and doorways and the flag undulating lazily from a pole. Beyond stretched the vast rising expanse of the sky, as smooth and unmarked as a sheet of parchment dipped in ink. “…The past is over and it is the future that beckons to us now,” Nehru declared.
    What story did I plan to inscribe across the blank expanse of my own future? Already, my parents had started inviting the families of prospective bridegrooms to come over and inspect Roopa. Even though I was two years younger, Biji, savvy to every marketing possibility, found some pretext to trot me out as well at every such occasion. “My second daughter, Meera. A bit more time, and you’ll see her blossom into another Roopa, just you wait.” It was quite possible that she might have us both married off within the year, before I even had a chance to get to college, before I could experience any of the adventures I had dreamt about or seen on the screen. I felt something clutch at my heart. Roopa never tired of boasting about her college flirtations, the boys she had met even before the poetry evening where she was introduced to Dev. When would it be my turn for romance?
    A small sigh escaped Roopa’s throat and I turned around to see Dev brush his lips against her fingers. My sister’s eyes were closed, and her head slightly tilted back, as if she had just surrendered herself to the comfort of a particularly soft and luxurious pillow. I looked at Dev’s mouth, at the incipient shadow of his mustache, at the half smile playing at his lips. (From the fleeting contact with my sister’s fingers, perhaps?) Under the crest of his chin, a streak of makeup still gleamed unwashed on his neck, like a luminous brushstroke of silver painted across the darkness of his skin. “A new star arises, the star of freedom in the East, a new hope comes into being, a vision long cherished materializes,” Nehru said, and I suddenly realized that Dev’s eyes were open, that his gaze was focused on my face, that he had been observing me while I examined