—10—
The summers became the best time of year.
The three of us, Gurdaya, Tanveer, and I, convinced our mothers that Nainital was safe and intriguing for children, and we would watch out for each other.
The freedom was not common, and it did not happen all at once, but an incident at a time, a picnic, then another time a hike.
Because our fathers were always away on various matters of business and our mothers approved and had few others to socialize with in the hill station, we slid beneath their attention.
We pretended to be explorers, sighting strange flora and fauna, giving things nonsense names.
Gurdaya liked using pretend Latin names to make us laugh.
She and I had become better friends in Tanveer’s absence.
She was a year older than me, but I had been pushed into higher forms when I arrived, so we shared a handful of classes, one of which was Latin.
I despised it, but she was as clever as her brother with languages.
She named trees Barkius grumpii and Stickius cratchii and Sneezia allergica.
Tanveer liked climbing to the top of a hill and declaring all he saw to belong to the Land of Maharaja Tanveer Singh.
“You are not the heir,” Gurdaya said disdainfully.
He retorted, “And there are no trees named Barkius grumpii.”
Her comment made me pause. “Is a maharaja the same as a king?”
They both looked at me as if I’d lost all my brains. “What else?”
I frowned, choosing words carefully. “Well, it seems there are rather a lot of maharajas, while in England there is only one queen, and she is queen of all the lands, including the empress of India, yes?”
“And?”
“If there are so many maharajas, how can any of them be really kings? Aren’t they more like dukes and suchlike?”
Gurdaya snorted, but Tanveer held up a hand to still her. “It is a good question, Elsie, and complicated. It was not always this way, one country under an empress. We had our own lands, each of us, some quite large, some very small, only a village, but each one is ruled by its own maharaja or raj.”
“Does your father rule a large country or a small one?”
“It is smallish. Only a small city, a few villages, and much desert.”
“But we are still royalty,” Gurdaya said. “And very rich.”
Tanveer snorted. “We are hardly rich.”
“Still royal.”
I gave her the eye. “Perhaps, then, I am too ordinary and poor for you.”
She laughed, and leaned hard into my shoulder. “Your father is the younger son of an earl, so you’re hardly ordinary.”
“How do you even know that about my father?”
She blinked. “I know the status of everyone.”
It would never occur to me to collect such information, but it impressed me nonetheless.
On those hot summer days, I brought along my sketchbook and logged hours drawing the leaves and flowers and tree bark we encountered.
I hardly knew the names of any of them, while often the two of them knew the names in several languages, a fact that amazed me and challenged me.
They switched between them all the time, arguing in Punjabi, melding a mix of Hindustani and English for casual conversation, telling jokes in English.
My Hindustani was improving, but I could understand more than I could speak. The Punjabi was their own.
My gift to the group was a sense of adventure, as I was the least fearful. It was my suggestion to hike the trails in the forest, keeping a compass in hand at Tanveer’s insistence. Gurdaya made sure we had lunch and water.
One of our great discoveries was a small pond, hidden away in the forest. It was fed by a waterfall, and flowed out the other side, so it stayed fresh and cool, even at midday when the sun poured down like molten gold.
The first time we came upon it, we were hot and tired from the hike.
“We shall have our picnic here!” Gurdaya declared.
“I’m going wading.” I sat on the ground and tugged off my shoes and socks. Sweat itched down my back and across my chest. The air felt good against my hot toes. Wading into the water was instantly cooling. In delight, I called back, “You must try!”
Tanveer was already wading in beside me, his pants rolled up to his knees. He kicked water at me. It hit my back with a shocking splash, and I turned around with a shriek. “Not fair!”
I kicked water back at him, and he laughed. In moments, we were soaked, my dress and pinafore and chemise, Tanveer’s kurta. Gurdaya sat on the blanket she’d unpacked, legs stretched out in front of her. “You shall never get dry.”
Tanveer gave me wicked look, one I interpreted exactly.
We moved as a unit, dashing toward Gurdaya and grabbing each of her arms. She screeched and yanked back, but together we were too much for her.
We dragged her to the pond, and we all fell in with a great splash, sending water high in the blue sky.
Furiously, she pulled free. “I hate you both!” she cried, trying to wade out with her tunic clinging to her legs.
“Wait!” I said, catching her arm. “Notice how it feels!”
She halted in water to her hips. The end of her braid floated on the water. I could see she was about to cry and was trying not to. “It is not the same for me as it is for you!”
I looked at Tanveer. He moved toward his sister. “Gudiya, we will be dry by the time we return. No one shall be the wiser.”
She slapped at her tunic. “How?”
He skimmed off his tunic, leaving him standing in an undergarment that clung to his thin chest. “We shall lay our clothes in the sunshine.”
“I am not a boy!”
“But you are not a big girl yet, either,” he said.
She wavered. Even though she was older, she often deferred to his advice.
To encourage her, I turned and offered the ties of my pinafore to him. When I was free, I tugged it off, leaving me in my thin muslin dress. I shed it, too, and stood in my shift and drawers. Covered well enough. “We are siblings!” I said. “And come, once we spread out our clothes, we can swim.”
“I don’t know how.”
“I do,” Tanveer said. “I’ll teach you.”
Gurdaya could hardly resist after that. She waded to shore and spread her tunic on a wide, flat rock in the sunshine.
She wore a shift below, as I did. I spread my dress beside hers on a shrub, and Tanveer shed his tunic and pajamas, leaving him standing in shorts that showed his long thin legs. Free, we splashed into the pond.
It was one of the most wonderful things I ever felt, floating in that water, sun hot on my head, moving easily.
Tanveer showed us how to move our arms and legs.
Gurdaya took to it quickly, skimming across the top of the pond like a dragonfly, her arms strong.
I was less coordinated, but Tanveer was patient, correcting me and practicing beside me until it clicked.
“Oh!” I said at last, and propelled myself like a puppy through the water, splashing loudly but happily.
Tanveer laughed.
By the time we stopped, starving and weary, we had grown comfortable.
Gurdaya took down her braid to let the sun work its magic, and Tanveer unwound the bun on the top of his head, spreading it out across his shoulders.
It was much longer than I expected. I unwove my braid and combed my fingers through the heavy mass.
I fancied that we could be mistaken as siblings, given our dark hair, our long limbs.
We gobbled strawberries and cold ham, jam puffs and tinned cheese biscuits, drinking great gulps of lemonade in between.
“We are being very wicked,” Gurdaya said, but she said it with her legs crossed, her hair falling around her body, and seemed mostly unconcerned.
“No,” I said. “We only swam.”
“In our underclothes!”
“With our siblings!”
“We are not your siblings,” she countered.
“But Tanveer is yours.” I bit into a strawberry. “And I do not think you are concerned with what my parents will say.”
“Oh, what do I care?” She fell backward on the blanket, her shins bare to the sun, and closed her eyes. I glanced at Tanveer and he grinned.
“Next time, we shall prepare.”
“Next time!” I echoed.
“I hope so, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
And so it became our secret, the three of us. We learned to swim, and grew strong and brown in the sun. My father growled that I was going native, but my mother shushed him. “Let her be a child.”
It only lasted one summer. By the next, Gurdaya had developed breasts and a figure and was under the hawkish eye of her ayah, for she would be a fine prize on the bridal market. All of us would grow up far too quickly, our freedom curtailed.
But the taste of it could not be erased.