‘He touched my collar and said, “A teacher’s shirt. I send you shirts from my factory.”’

The Return

It was no use standing in this primeval garden and looking at birds, paddy fields, the river, the mountains, the massed foliage under which flashed the dark water. Along the earth banks the garandiyas slid along, disappearing into the clumps of sword-like plants.

It was no use. They, Camille and Raj, had nothing; no share in the power they felt pressing its weight upon them. The aura of power. They had no money. People like Melwyn and others less kind would always assess, evaluate, measure and find that they did not matter in this world. Their talents, their skills were worth nothing because they could not go out into the human jungle and fight for their survival. People like themselves, whom Jasmine called the innocents of the world, would perish in the onslaught, buried under the volcanic flow that erupted, of money, money, money. They would be buried under it. The innocents of the world. All that they valued was nothing: their fine old furniture, the books, the gentleness, the desire not to hurt or wound, not to kill or take by force what belonged to others, not even to wield power over others. All this was despised. Those in power were the kings of the gameboards. And people like Camille and Raj were the pawns so deliberately set in their squares; the ivory or wooden pawns that bled as they fell, suddenly transmuted into flesh in pools of blood, while the brooding silence of the victor gave way to a grimace of delight over the discomfiture of the vanquished.

Camille thought of an acquaintance, Ananda, who reeled from shock on his return from abroad. He mumbled incoherently about the books with gold bindings, the marble-topped tables, the carriages with their horses, the land gifted by his philanthropic parents to build a convent. He had come back to find a stranger wedged firmly on his land and refusing to budge. He fell ill, went mad, spent two months in hospital. With all his philanthropic ideas he still wanted his land. But he was helpless. He would never get it. He wanted his wife, who was a doctor, to give free medicine to the poor. Don Quixote tilting against windmills.

‘I leave it all to God,’ Ananda had finally said. God willed it then that Ananda should relinquish all claims to his land.