with the Colonel
The crumbling house reverberated with footsteps running to quiet the incessant yipping of a nameless canine. The mansion, once alive with the laughter of children (as they fled from angry maids who tried to dress them up for school), was now a ghost of its former self. It had slowly been turned into a fortress, with each new wrought-iron door, with multiple padlocks and barb-wire fence. Security reasons, you see.
The past had to be defended against the onslaught of the new and ugly. In a town where the careful architecture of a bygone era was being swallowed by naked brick buildings or plastic malls, this was one of the last refuges of a memory. A memory of another India, now long forgotten, perhaps occasionally spoken about at cocktail dinner parties where the old guards gathered to reminisce.
Their fortitude in these turbulent times was touching, as they valiantly defended the last stand, steeling themselves with Darjeeling Chai.
In this town only the Pot Festival stayed alive, though even she had changed her garb to a gaudier shade.
We were indeed privileged to get a glimpse of the past, to have a vague whiff of the former glory of a colonial nation, of blood-shed and partitions and hidden doors where boxes kept memories for a few decades more.
The vanguard still stands strong, for how much longer is hard to predict. But the steps still reverberated with those old memories, held securely with glass, nails, wire, bricks, pooja, vastu, astrology, homeopathy and chai.
Read the next part.
The crumbling house reverberated with footsteps running to quiet the incessant yipping of a nameless canine. The mansion, once alive with the laughter of children (as they fled from angry maids who tried to dress them up for school), was now a ghost of its former self. It had slowly been turned into a fortress, with each new wrought-iron door, with multiple padlocks and barb-wire fence. Security reasons, you see.
The past had to be defended against the onslaught of the new and ugly. In a town where the careful architecture of a bygone era was being swallowed by naked brick buildings or plastic malls, this was one of the last refuges of a memory. A memory of another India, now long forgotten, perhaps occasionally spoken about at cocktail dinner parties where the old guards gathered to reminisce.
Their fortitude in these turbulent times was touching, as they valiantly defended the last stand, steeling themselves with Darjeeling Chai.
In this town only the Pot Festival stayed alive, though even she had changed her garb to a gaudier shade.
We were indeed privileged to get a glimpse of the past, to have a vague whiff of the former glory of a colonial nation, of blood-shed and partitions and hidden doors where boxes kept memories for a few decades more.
The vanguard still stands strong, for how much longer is hard to predict. But the steps still reverberated with those old memories, held securely with glass, nails, wire, bricks, pooja, vastu, astrology, homeopathy and chai.
Read the next part.
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