She didn’t remember anything, or at least, not with any part of mind or memory. Only her blood stirred strangely, recapturing some ancestral rapport. Not necessarily in affection; rather with a raising of hackles, aware of compulsions not altogether congenial. It was too bright, too dry, too clear, too open; there was nowhere to hide.
‘This way. We’re not supposed to park private stuff round here, but what can you do? These foreigners!’ Felder led the way briskly round the corner of the buildings to the blinding white concrete where the airport bus was filling up with plump ladies in saris and ponderous gentlemen in white cottons and European overcoats. The truck turned out to be a minibus, from which two unmistakable young Americans leaned to grin at them hospitably and offer large, amiable hands.
‘Tom Hoskins is our driver-cum-handyman. There isn’t much Tom can’t do. And this is Joe Salt, assistant cameramen. We’ve got it dead easy here, mostly we’re playing second-fiddle to the Indians, and believe me, Ganesh Rao knows exactly what he wants, and nine-tenths of the time he’s dead right, so ours is a sinecure. Get aboard, ladies, choose your seats, we’ll take you round through the city for a ride.’
They climbed aboard willingly, eyes round and attentive at the windows, intent on missing nothing.
‘Shouldn’t we at least check in at the hotel?’ asked Dominic.
‘So we will, laddie, so we will, on our way out to Mehrauli. Don’t want to haul this luggage around, do we? This will be a lightning tour specially for you, because we’ve got to go right in to the shopping centre at Connaught Circus to pick up one of the gang, and then we’re bound due south for the edge of the town, where we’re filming. We’ll be quite close to Keen’s on the way out, and drop your stuff off there. Straight to the town office, Tom, Ashok will be there by now, we’re a mite late.’
Tom drove with the verve and aplomb which they were later to associate with Sikh taxi-drivers, and in particular with the devoted virtuosi, also mostly Sikhs and invariably young, who drove the wappish little scooter- rickshaws around the town. Clearly he had been here long enough to know his way around and to have bettered the impetuous elan of the native motorists. They clung to their seats (though Anjli tended rather to cling to Dominic) and stared their fill; and Mr Felder, with wide shoulders braced easily against the panelling and long legs stretched across the gangway, commented spasmodically on the unfolding scene of Delhi.
On either side the steel-grey road the overwhelming brownness of North India, at first a monotone, dissolved, as they penetrated it, into a marvellous spectrum of shades and textures, which yet were all brown. Even the grass was brown, a dry, subtle shade with tints of green breathing through it, to indicate that against first appearances it still lived. Beyond all question the air was alive, the light was alive, the incredibly brilliant sky was alive, radiantly blue and flecked with a few sailing feathers of cloud to emphasize its depth of colour. At first they drove across the barren brown earth as over a dead calm sea, the steely road now growing russet with the reflected glow, its dusty fringes lined with curious crude baskets of rust-coloured iron, like fireless braziers. ‘Newly-planted trees,’ said Felder, forestalling the question; and then they could glimpse the tender green saplings just peering over their bars. ‘You’ll see ’em all over the new suburbs. They won’t always be eyesores.’ Then they were among scattered small houses, dropped almost accidentally about the dun-coloured plain, and abruptly the white buildings congealed into a residential road. On their left rose the heaving brown flank of the Ridge, on their right, from clustering trees, soared a phantasmagoria of imposing buildings of every possible design and style, regularly spaced like huge summer- houses in a giant’s garden. ‘The Diplomatic Enclave. They suggested every country should build its embassy in its own national style. See those dark-blue domes? Pakistan did that! You ought to walk through, some time, you won’t believe your eyes. And that huge palace beyond, that’s the Ashoka Hotel. Prestige job. You won’t believe that, either…’
From Willingdon Crescent they caught glimpses of the dome of Rashtrapati Bhavan and the twin blocks of the government secretariat, a brief rear view of the spacious buildings of the new city; then they were careering up Irwin Road, head over ears into the pandemonium of modern Delhi’s street life at last, between banks and restaurants and cinemas plastered with posters tall as towers and vivid as the rainbow, caught in a whirling current of cars, buses, bicycles, pedestrians and motorbikes and scooters towing canopied rickshaws, extravagantly painted with flowers, birds and garlands, like some wonderful hybrid between an old-fashioned hansom cab and the cabin of a canal-boat. This brilliant river brought them suddenly to the whirlpool of New Delhi’s shopping centre, the wheel of radiating streets they had seen from the air.
‘Drive round Connaught Place, Tom, just once, let them have a look at the nearest thing we’ve got to Piccadilly.’
It was much more spacious than Piccadilly, a large, regular circle of park in the centre, ringed with a broad road and a colonnade of white shops, and eight radial roads lancing away from the centre like the spokes of a wheel.
Tom made the circuit of it at speed, for here there was less traffic and more space, and the pedestrians had withdrawn to the raised sidewalk that was sheltered by the colonnade.
‘The outer ring is where we’re going… Connaught Circus. If you ever want to shop, you could do worse than start here. OK, Tom, make for the office.’
Tom took the nearest radial road, and turned left into Connaught Circus, the rim of the wheel. Banks, garages, restaurants, shops flickered past them in procession, then intervals of trees and grass, and curious quiet islands of older buildings cheek by jowl with the new. They halted before a low green hedge, a narrow strip of garden, and a tall, plain, Victorian colonial house.
‘Temporary headquarters. Down south, near Mehrauli, we’ve got a couple of villas for living quarters, but we shall only be there a few days, then we’re headed for Benares to do the Deer Park scenes at Sarnath, right where they happened. But this is where we keep our gear and do the office work.’
‘What is the film you’re making?’ Tossa asked curiously.
‘Didn’t Dorrie tell you? It’s an epic about the life of the Buddha. Time was when it would have been called:
‘I’ve
‘Ashok is the man you want, he’ll tell you everything you need to know. Give him a blast, Tom, he can’t have heard us come.’
Tom obliged. The fan-lighted door of the house opened promptly, and a small, slender man in close-fitting trousers and a grey achkan came dancing down the steps with a music-case tucked under his arm. His eyes were black and long-lashed, his smile aloof and courteous, and his colour palest bronze. Surprisingly the rest of his
