Read The Weary Generations for Free Online

it has to be presented as sacred and confidential. Can’t be printed.’
    The Englishman nodded doubtfully, staring sadly into the flame of his candle. All the candles having been lit and put back in place, the dinner began in earnest. Great oval dishes of steaming rice were brought out from the degs. There were four different kinds of cooked rice: three brown pulao, with chicken, partridge and quail, and the fourth a multicoloured biryani of young lamb. The eating was done in silence. The sky of mid-May was half-lit by a misshapen late moon. The wind had stopped in the trees and half the population of the great city had taken to their beds. Tall eucalyptus trees stood like stilled ghosts. A fountain at the other end of the lawn was noiselessly pumping up thin streams of drops, joined together and yet separated along lines curving down with the force of gravity in the regular shape of a fan. Naim looked up from his plate and was struck by the fragrant, dimly lit atmosphere that seemed as if suspended in a magic spell, its silence punctuated only by the sound of masticating jaws, or, at intervals, by the quiet, sated voice of the man with a wooden leg.
    â€˜Hunger,’ he was saying, ‘being the wildest passion of man, makes the act of eating the noblest human activity.’
    The man sitting on the left of Naim leaned over. ‘I heard what you said about Tilak,’ he said. It was the same Englishman Naim had seen earlier pacing the ground before his friends. ‘Are you aware of Tilak’s activities against the Muslims? The Society to Ban Cow Slaughter? Permission to play music in front of a mosque and all that?’
    Receiving no reply from Naim, the man changed tack. ‘You see these candles? They say this particular wax has been in the family’s possession for a hundred years. I wonder what they will burn when it is finished.’
    Naim stopped eating. Putting his spoon down, he asked, ‘How did you know I was a Muslim?’
    â€˜Oh, easy,’ the man said, moving his head, ‘you wore a tarboosh earlier in the evening. Right?’
    Naim gave no response to this. It discouraged the Englishman from continuing his conversation. Instead, he was spoken to by another foreign guest sitting on the other side of him.
    â€˜I say, did you say something about this wax? Damn unusual stuff, wonder where it comes from, what?’
    â€˜Came from the beehive from which the honey came,’ answered the Englishman.
    â€˜What honey?’
    â€˜No idea. Apparently there is talk of some honey along the line.’
    â€˜Damn unusual stuff.’
    The feast was nearing its end. People were getting up and crossing over to the seating area, to sit in sofas and easy chairs, smoke and sip cardamom-flavoured kahwa brought to them by servants. Nawab Ghulam Mohyyeddin, now ‘become’ Roshan Agha, was finally left alone in his chair at the dining table. He got up. Staring in a grave mood for a long minute at the candle in front of him, he looked, in those clothes, at once graceful and ridiculous. Then he bent low and blew out the flame. Immediately his special servant appeared and began blowing out all the other candles one after the other and collecting them in the black wooden tray. Carrying a cup of kahwa in his hand, Naim wandered into the shade of a low, fat-trunked tree the thick branches of which spread out horizontally into the air without bending downwards. He balanced his cup of kahwa carefully on a branch and looked around. Just then, once again, Azra appeared unseen by his side.
    â€˜Why are you loitering all by yourself?’ she asked, a mischievous glint in her eyes.
    Startled, Naim didn’t know what to say. Instead he picked up his cup and drank a mouthful of scalding kahwa.
    â€˜This is my favourite tree,’ said Azra, stroking a branch. ‘I spend whole days in it during our summer holidays. Before we go to Simla.’
    In the weak, flickering light