—20—
Talwarpur Palace
[In Urdu]
Dear Elsie,
Your letters take longer to arrive than they did in the past, which is to be expected. I’ve just read the letter in which you feared invasion and were planning to find chicks for eggs.
I hope by now you have found that Betty is healthy and well. I hope you have found hens. I pray there will be no invasion. For all my criticisms, the British are a stalwart lot, and I cannot see how Churchill would countenance an invasion of London.
I wish most desperately that you had been able to flee back here to Talwarpur before it was impossible to escape. Or even not here, but somewhere safer.
Although what land is safe now? Each day I think the news cannot be worse, and each day it is.
Your painting stirred a memory of when you painted the flowers at Herewich so long ago. What a rich pocket of peace those days were! Did we know how precious they were? I hope we did.
Here is a small beauty from my life: Last night I went to the roof to study the stars through my telescope.
It was a clear, dry night, and I felt I could see into the farthest reaches of the universe.
At such times, the petty dramas and sorrows of humankind seem very small, and I find reassurance in that vastness of space, and time, and the uncountable multitudes of stars.
All my best,
Tanveer