“A handsome gift, indeed.” Tara paused. “I don’t think it would be seemly for me to join you in your cabin. Alone.” They were the same age, she noted. How funny the vast differences in their lives. Differences due to their gender and nationality and race. Demography is destiny, she thought, and sighed.

“What if we kept the door open?”

Tara laughed. “Even more scandalous! What if someone saw me in there with you?”

Jimmy rubbed his chin. “I have an idea. I will leave you alone in my berth while I fetch tea from the train canteen. You can look at the poem while I’m on my tea errand and leave at any time. What do you think? Perfectly innocent and civilized.”

Tara smiled. What would be the harm? Her nanni would be asleep for hours as would most people on the train. She wouldn’t have to pass through any of the other cars. It would all be quite discreet. She nodded. Jimmy grinned and led her down the hall to the last door before the end of the car. He slid it open. Tara stepped inside.

Jimmy had been gone at least fifteen, perhaps twenty, minutes. Perhaps he meant not to return until I’ve left, she thought. She’d read the poem over and over again. Relatively short. Lyrical. Tragic. We know their dream; enough / To know they dreamed and are dead. The lines lodged in her throat like a dry bone and brought tears to her eyes. She thought of her grandfather rising up to help in the Indian freedom struggle of the 1850s when he was her age, younger even. Tara cried for all the Indians who dreamed of a free India. Who dreamed and died. Hindu. Muslim. Sikh. Young and old. Poets and warriors. She wondered if she would live to see Indians govern themselves. She wondered if the day would come when Indians would not be grossly taxed by the British for the salt of their own land—from the summer-dried marshes along the Rann of Kutch that had produced salt for five thousand years and Orissa with her miles of coastline along the Bay of Bengal, her ancient towers and temples rising into blue skies. Jai Hind.

The door swooshed open before Tara could wipe her tears away. Upon seeing her, Jimmy nearly spilled the small metal teapot and two stacked metal cups in his hands. He quickly put them down on the tiny table that was attached to the wall just below the rectangular window. An inky night had settled onto the landscape.

“Are you okay? What happened?” Jimmy asked as he took a seat next to Tara. He was so close they were almost touching. Tara didn’t move away.