The Darjeeling Affair and other stories

By Leela Devi Panikar

There are 14 stories in Leela’s third short-story collection. It begins with The Darjeeling Affair and ends with The Sexy Send-Off. In between, there’s love and calligraphy, a Hong Kong murder, a drunken Welshman, an Indian student studying in England, a Vietnamese boy on the wrong side of war, the challenge of burying a husband, and more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Leela Devi Panikar
• Release date: Apr 11, 2018
• ISBN: 9789889994181

Leela Devi Panikar

Leela Devi Panikar is a fiction writer currently living in Penang, Malaysia. Her passion for writing clearly shows in her short story collections -- The Darjeeling Affair, Bathing Elephants, and Floating Petals -- that reflect her extensive travels and knowledge of various cultures. She has won awards from the BBC and Turner in the UK, and the South China Morning Post and Radio Three in Hong Kong. Individual stories have appeared in various journals and periodicals.

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The Darjeeling Affair

and other stories

Leela Devi Panikar

Copyright © 2017 by Leela Devi Panikar

All rights reserved.

Enquiries for usage other than brief excerpts for review may be emailed to [e-mail]

Smashwords edition published in 2018

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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For Shanta, Kashna and Esina.

The title story The Darjeeling Affair

was inspired by the love Don and I have

for Darjeeling.

The Darjeeling Affair

third collection

Leela Devi Panikar’s brilliance is in catching extraordinary moments in ordinary lives which we see but rarely notice. Spread over continents and cultures, the stories in The Darjeeling Affair offer their own unique observations of life and its vagaries. She grabs the reader’s attention with the first sentence and draws them into plots that defy conventional wisdom; yet, it all seems like the natural order of things.

She weaves together, seamlessly, a range of concerns, and writes with the simplicity, ease, and purity that is the hallmark of a master storyteller. Her sensuous prose evokes a dreamlike quality and the end result is that it is impossible to put a story down before one reaches the end. And even after the story is over, her characters refuse to leave the memory.

Atiya Bansal, writer

Leela’s stories go straight to the heart of unvarnished human nature – fear, need and the meaning of our existence. In our globalized but increasingly fragmented world, she helps us realize that if West and East are ever to connect, we must open our eyes, our minds and our hearts. Only then can we bridge the gap.

Alf Inge Friborg, reader of the classics

Leela’s writing shows a range in terms of cultures, content and styles that refreshes and delights with every turn of the page. The poignancy of Tsuru-ran, where a writer mourns his lost painter wife, is pure poetry.

Edmund Price, editor, Tales of Two Cities and Hong Kong Gothic

Leela captures those small moments and quiet images of relationships and nature, each illuminating the other to give a deeper understanding of both.

Wendy Evelyn McTavish, author of Expat

Contents

The Darjeeling Affair

Tsuru-ran

Retaliation

Ginger Lily Lady

Green

The Gravedigger

The Boy from Afar

The Phantom Visitor

A Tin Basin of Warm Ash

An Extraordinary Ordinary Day

The Singeing Shadow

A Special Gift

The Other Side of the Hedge

The Sexy Send-off

About the Author

Other Books

The Darjeeling Affair

I fell asleep to an imagined deluge on my roof. I dreamt I was curled up in bed with someone special.

The next morning when I woke, I was annoyed with my dream. Why had ‘someone special’ crept into my thoughts? I have never needed a someone special.

It was the driest month since the May of 1988. The lack of rains earlier in the year had destroyed much of the tea plantation, no first flush. Now it looked as if second flush would suffer too. Trees began shedding foliage as if it were autumn. The small pool, where the pregnant neighbourhood cow came every day to drink, dried up. The earth cracked, the dry mud skin peeled. Dust everywhere.

I looked out from the kitchen window. I was almost certain the air had the enticing sting of rain. Below the high cliff paths wound to villages further down. Prayer flags fluttered mantras in this new scent of moistness. The tea fields were dotted with women moving about with baskets on their backs against lush green, gem-like in their colourful attire. Heavy clouds raced to blot out the blue sky – the June monsoon had arrived. Windows banged, heralding the approaching change. Trees leaned, stretching at their roots. Soon the downpour would follow the gravity of the slopes and reveal hidden threats of landslides.

Rain came, gentle at first. Warm earth smells rose as the ground sucked in the first large drops of water. The plop of each dust mushroom rose and fell. On the peg by the back door hung the raincoat. An oversized yellowing raincoat, a tattered black umbrella, and this cliffside home my father left to me. A sooty kitchen full of mice and a love of books my mother left to me. Their only child, Susheela.

As I was about to close the windows, I heard a crash outside. I paid no attention, assuming a tree branch breaking in the gale. I could already feel the first warm rain on my back and the squelch of mud puddles between the toes of my bare feet.

A knock on the door. My first thought was not to answer. No one would spoil this day for me. The knocking continued, muffled but more insistent. I could not ignore it.

I opened the door and found myself pushed back, enveloped in material like that of a car airbag. I beat at it frantically, trying to extricate myself from this jellyfish-like creature with tentacles all around me.

A voice, a man’s amused voice. ‘Can you help me out of this?’

Fumbling about, I grabbed the sheath and pull it off my face and body and stepped out. The wind rushed through my home with great gusto, happy to have been let in at last.

A man lay at my feet … ridiculously laughing at my predicament. A wayward visitor on my doorstep, a para-glider and his wings. I had half a mind to leave him there and shut the door, teach him to be amused at my expense. However, my kinder side took over.

‘Are you hurt, can you stand up?’

‘No, I don’t think so. I mean I don’t think I am hurt. My ankle is twisted.

‘You’re supposed to be out there soaring somewhere, doing the bird-thing. What are doing here like an earthling … and at my door?’

He laughed, a guffaw, deep, throaty. I looked at him lying there in a tangle of ropes, and pulleys and nylon gewgaws, stuff only a para-glider could name. We managed to get him unentangled. The helpless man-creature stood up, towering over me. I gave him my shoulder.

‘Kind of you to drop by, sorry you can’t stay. I have a date with a storm,’ I said.

He looked baffled for a moment. Then comprehension dawned on him. His infuriatingly amused look returned.

‘Me too, I wanted to catch the approach of the storm. Big disappointment.’

‘I can imagine. Can you try to fly out with this thing?’ I pointed to the tangled web by the door.

‘Nope, I’m grounded for now.’

Just then a thunderclap shook my fragile home. The rain came in urgent sheets. I stepped out into the downpour. He hobbled out after me.

We tilted our faces to the sky and stood there with our eyes closed and arms outstretched, welcoming the rain. We looked at each other, drenched, hair a wet tangled mass, clothes stuck to our bodies. How silly we looked. We laughed.

He held out both his hands. ‘Shall we?’ he said, and I took them. We hobbled in a circle in the ooze of the grass, a dance of our own, the downpour our music. After a while, we went in. I rummaged in an old trunk, found some of my father’s clothes and handed them to him. I showed him the bathroom. ‘You can dry and change in there.’

While he was in the bathroom, I rushed about tidying, aware of splintered wood walls, peeling paint and cat fur on the sofa. I made us tea and brought out some soggy biscuits. He came into the kitchen, a comical sight in my father’s clothes, the kurta tight and salwar short. He moved around, limping. He looked about, admired the brass pots of ferns on wooden stands, the ragged antique Tibetan carpets, the walls lined with shelves of books and framed black-and-white and sepia photos on the walls.

‘Charming home you have here. These stained-glass windowpanes are still in great shape, must be worth a fortune.’

‘It’s a heritage home, my parents’.’ We still have a brass street lamp at the gate, an old gas lamp. I moved here only recently. Can I get you something for your ankle?’

‘Oh, don’t bother. It’ll heal. Where from?’ he said.

‘Where from?’

‘Where did you move from?’

‘Oh, Calcutta. I was teaching there.’

‘Where are your parents?’

‘They were killed in a landslide some years ago. My mother was a teacher; my father, a professor. The college building collapsed during a landslide.

‘I’m sorry. And you still love the monsoon?’ His kind look, almost intimate, travelled over me. I shivered.

‘I’m not superstitious.’

He changed the subject. ‘I learned to paraglide in England – Dover, the White Cliffs. Sorry, I haven’t introduced myself. Colin.’ He proffered his hand.

‘Sheela, short for Susheela.’ I was reluctant to take his hand but did. His warm hand gave a feeling of new comfort. His next sentence broke my slipping equilibrium.

‘I now live in Kurseong.’

My heart lost a few beats. Kurseong, so close. I said nothing.

He said, ‘Close to you, about 50 kilometres from here.’

He must have noticed my discomfort for he turned the conversation to himself. ‘My father had a tea import business.’

I noticed had but did not interrupt him.

‘He did business with Sri Lanka … Ceylon then. As a child, I became fascinated with the East. When my father died, my mother went to live with her older sister. I took over the business. But what I really wanted to do was travel. I sold the business and came to Nepal. There, I heard about the Kurseong Paragliders and decided to take up my hobby seriously.

For lack of something better to say, I rattled on about how much I liked it here, how good it was to be back in Darjeeling, my home. I told him I loved the quaint restaurants, especially the ‘Flavours of Tibet’ that my mother’s friend owned, where I spent evenings with friends. Glenary’s Bakery and The Oxford Book Shop. All within walking distance on the Mall. And all the tea I could drink. I went on breathlessly and stopped, realising I had talked too much.

After a pause, I said, ‘Big difference between the White Cliffs of Dover and here.’

He thought I was referring to paragliding.

‘Yes, the cliffs with winds from the sea, and easy thermals. Here mountains and valleys and surprisingly dangerous changes of wind direction.’

He talked but I wasn’t listening. I watched his face, his eyes, his lips. Then I heard: ‘Actually, luck changed and I crashed. I would not call it an accident.’

‘There are no accidents,’ I said, and wished I had not.

‘I’ll take you up sometime,’ and when I began to protest, ‘There’s nothing to it. We’ll go tandem. The canopy can hold both our weights. I’ll handle the lines.’

I smiled, and he said, ‘Promise not to crash. I’ve found you, don’t have to crash anymore.’

I flushed.

The rain stopped.

‘I need to contact someone to see if I can get my gear back from the mountain over on the other side. I left my things in my tent in a