Vectors in the Void

By Giselle Mehta

Zara’s birth on a turbulent day during the Indian Freedom Struggle foretells an eventful life. The Holocaust and the Second World War in Europe reach her as a schoolgirl in Murree, pre-Partition India’s picturesque hill station with lasting consequences, turning a teenager into a mature woman. The births of three nations- India, Pakistan, and Israel touch her trajectory.

Zara moves on to a prudent marriage in the changed setting of Independent India. While Business and Swatantra Party politics engage her, external events cast their shadows. The Sino-Indian conflict leaves a family grappling with loss and mystery... Later, the Proclamation of Emergency spells terror and suffering.

She negotiates tumultuous family dramas. The contrasting needs of twin daughters are a tightrope walk- one of them being beautiful and brilliant, the other sickly and artistic. When equilibrium is in sight, an unexpected communication conveys a shocking truth. Connecting with a celebrity in London could revive a precious bond, or shatter a fragile family...

Zara and her family brim with compelling inclinations and adventurous impulses, audacious hope and autonomous choices, charting their routes to personal significance.

This is a compelling saga that ties together diverse events and elements, races and places, in a masterly display of story-telling art...

• Language: English
• Publisher: One Point Six Technologies Pvt Ltd
• Release date: Sep 26, 2022
• ISBN: 9789356109407

Giselle Mehta

Giselle Mehta has Masters’ degrees in International Relations and English Literature. For 10 years, she was an officer in the Indian Revenue Service. Thereafter, she made the shift to personal independence and the stimulation of a creative life.Her diverse interests and immersions shape her fiction. It reflects the passions and animations of an ever-evolving persona.Her debut novel ‘Blossom Showers’ was on the bestseller list for fiction with the Landmark chain of bookstores in India in 2011.‘Vectors in the Void’ is her second novel.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Quiet Cuckoo

The ‘Cuckoo of Karachi’ was quiet. In life too, grim silence alternated with her glorious songs.

Her molten music might eventually fade into faint echo. Her early flight out of the planet robbed the world of beauty and melody. An elusive woman had formed Evander Bastien’s world; her charms of face and voice ruled him. An exquisite enchantress teased and tantalised a yearning husband.

Dolores was his bride’s name in the marriage register. Everyone called her Dollie, in tacit acknowledgement of her delicate beauty. If Evander won a prize beyond his audacious aspiring, it was for circumstances beyond Dollie’s control. He never knew precisely what they were. The grapevine suggested the shadow of an Englishman who worked in one of Calcutta’s firms. Though an admirer of Dollie’s beauty and talent, he could not dodge the hungry net of ‘the fishing fleet’. He was speared by one of the single women sailing in from England, determined on marital prospects from the pool of young men the British Raj employed. The mere bond of calling the British Isles home made him easy catch.

Sometime earlier, Dollie’s elder sister Beverly/Birdie was jilted by a boy from an aristocratic Bengali family. Dollie’s was a similar predicament, the grapevine opined. The girls disdained young men in Calcutta who hailed from the enterprising town of Manjooran on the Western coast of India, some of whom were steadily climbing the ladder of business and services. They felt their superior beauty and talent deserved even better, that the wide world was open to them, not just members of their native community. Young men from Manjooran living in Calcutta were wary of serious involvements with uppity young ladies who hazarded their emotions elsewhere. Their father would have to look further afield.

The heartbroken Birdie was married off to an affluent businessman in their hometown of Manjooran. Though assured of a good life, she was exiled from Calcutta’s lively social scene. It was speculated that Dollie’s disappointment in love might make her similarly despondent and pliable to paternal plans.

Evander was smitten with Dollie ever since her mellifluous voice floated to him, seated in the audience of a community social. He was only a visitor to Calcutta, exploring the market for his business in tiles and timber. His heart carried lasting impressions of her beauty and talent.

An intermediary arranged a meeting with James Romano, Dollie’s father. Evander read his mind that if the young woman had to relocate, Karachi on the Western side was safely distant from Calcutta in the East.

The visit of Edward, Prince of Wales to India had evoked mixed feelings. Feted with lavish banquets and blood-soaked hunts by Maharajas, his presence excited protests and agitations with nationalists in British India. Karachi’s Christians chose to express their fealty with a reception in honour of the visiting Prince in the December of 1921. Evander’s involvement with the organising committee for the event gifted him an aura of social prominence that was surely not lost on James Romano. He would be assured that this eligible suitor offered Dollie the promise of a glamorous life in a cosmopolitan city of the British Raj.

Evander hadn’t seen Dollie perform in public since his last visit. The girl who shrugged her shoulders in silent acceptance of his suit was far removed from a mesmerising stage presence. She was a shadow of herself, a listless spirit grappling with an unbearable wound to the ego.

Evander told himself, Not caring one way or another, she’s no different from other girls married off by their families. She will enjoy a change of scene and start a new chapter of life with me.

Dollie made an exquisite bride in a gown of lace and gossamer. Her lifted veil revealed swollen eyes, lending her beauty a tragic and stirring depth. Evander guessed she must have wept copiously, perhaps yearning to be married to the Englishman who rejected her. He should have been peeved but felt apologetic for trespassing into her emotional terrain. He wished he could convey he was a sensitive man, that he was making allowances for her gush of girlish grief.

They undertook lengthy journeys together, bridging the distance from the East to the West of British India. They had a chance to be intimate, to get to know each other in the privacy of train compartments and ship’s cabins.

Though his sullen companion was lost in her world, Evander felt an irrepressible urge to talk aloud of things that interested him.

Conjecturing her anxiety about moving to a new city, he spoke of his deep love of Karachi, sharing highlights of its history. In ancient times, Karachi went by the name of Krokola. Alexander the Great himself camped here in the course of his conquests. Much later, it was called Debal. Pitched sea battles were fought between the Portuguese navy and the Ottoman Empire’s vessels stationed at this strategic spot. Its present name derives from the legend of Mai Kollachi, a fisherwoman whose family expanded into a settlement and a port for trading across the Persian Gulf. Its importance increased with Charles Napier’s annexation of Sind in 1843. It’s a gateway to Punjab, the western parts of British India and Afghanistan. Its location as a port was crucial in Britain’s competition with Imperial Russia.

In answer, his bride rolled her eyes in a calculated display of contempt for the history lesson and yawned.

He continued, Karachi will grow on you. Its public architecture, like the gothic grandeur of Frère Hall and the Merewether Clock Tower, is uplifting and inspiring. You will love shopping expeditions at Empress Market, built to commemorate Queen Victoria, situated quite close to our Mansfield Street home. And best of all, work is about to be completed for an aerodrome that may well become the main airport of entry into the British Raj. An elegant eyebrow lifted in a minuscule display of interest.

Evander narrated his warm connection with the city. "Back home, my elder brother completely controlled the family business, leaving me little scope for growth. I split from the parent firm, taking the depots of tiles and timber that I set up here as my share. I also spotted opportunities in townships to be built, and money to be made in construction. Having struck out on my own, I’m a tycoon of my trade!

Karachi is quite like Calcutta, a buzzing place with a strong European presence. It has an arresting mix of people from many parts of India and the geographical neighbourhood- Arabs, Africans, Armenians, Lebanese, Malays, Jews, and Zoroastrians, comprising quite a cultural mosaic. There are sufficient people from Manjooran and Goa settled here for us to have our community clubs and socials. Be sure of opportunities to sing and dance the way you did in Calcutta.

Evander was right in his prediction. After complaining that Karachi was smaller than Calcutta, Dollie opened up to its charms. He could tell she was able to distance herself from the personal debacle that oppressed her spirit. Its cultural complexion usually appealed to those with roots in Manjooran.

To Evander’s delight, ‘The Cuckoo of Calcutta’ became ‘The Cuckoo of Karachi’, and he was her proud husband. Dollie, his beautiful young wife was the cynosure of eyes, centre stage as the leading lady of ‘Gilbert and Sullivan’ operas staged by enthusiastic amateur groups. No less than a Governor’s wife in the audience commended her performance. Dollie’s prominence transformed her. When she wasn’t on stage, she still managed to be supremely eye catching in pretty dresses that reflected the reigning fashions in Europe, impeccably copied by Karachi’s skilled tailors.

Evander had read undue cues into Dollie’s seductive stage persona. He should have been content to be her husband in name and admire her from afar. Dollie liked her life well enough except for his part in it. She barely tolerated the touch of his hand on hers. The rare occasion she welcomed proximity was when they entered a formal gathering, and exquisitely dressed, she actively slipped her hand through the crook of his arm. She enjoyed the glittering balls that took place with the cream of their social circle around. When they moved on the Club’s glossy wooden dance floor, their bodies synchronised with unspoken ease. Evander wished those moments could be carried forward to the bedroom, for the normal performance of married couples.

He was pursued previously as an eligible bachelor. Women’s eyes followed his well-cut figure with yearning admiration. Her rejection chipped away at his self-confidence, implying he was a repulsive old man. Fifteen years separated them because Dollie’s father preferred a son-in-law who enjoyed economic independence and social prominence.

In the seaside neighbourhood of Clifton, a palatial structure with minarets and cupolas and intricate embellishments was imprinting itself on Karachi as an emerging landmark of the grand and opulent. It was intended as Seth Shivratan Mohatta’s summer residence, to give the tycoon’s ailing wife salubrious wafts of seaside air. Evander’s three storied Portuguese style home on Mansfield Street with balconies of ornamental wrought iron and wooden lattice work was comparatively modest. He was proud of it nevertheless, as a statement of comfortable affluence. Fruit trees dotted its grounds. Evander dreamed of fathering children with Dollie who would enjoy the play area thoughtfully envisaged for their fun and games.

In a rare concession to roots, his home was named ‘Jasmine Mansion’, after the prized and aromatic white flower cultivated in his hometown, the emblem of purity adorning a virgin bride. The name’s chaste symbolism would stick; the many rooms of ‘Jasmine Mansion’ did little to promote their togetherness. Dollie promptly marked out her living quarters and kept to herself after more than two years of marriage.

Evander toyed with annulment on the grounds of an unconsummated marriage and moving on to a woman who would actually want him.

I can’t get down to it; she completely obsesses me. Dollie’s coldness inflamed him. Evander’s desire was ignited in a way that could only be quenched by complete possession of her resistant body.

They were a striking pair on the Club’s dance floor that evening. Dollie dazzled in a fringed and beaded flapper dress that was the current rage of the 1920s. Her curly hair was bobbed; a sequinned headpiece furthered the fashion statement. It was a departure from the demure long dresses of the ‘Gibson Girl’ look favoured by ladies of their set. The sleeveless outfit with its raised hem and a plunging neckline was daring and flirtatious. With a touch of make-up to match her trendy attire, Dollie looked a confident woman of the world, on par with any counterpart in London or Paris or New York. Evander’s frustrations mounted.

Dollie must be ravished. Being courteous makes her act up and things will take forever. I must be decisive and daring! At the end of it, he was sure she would beg for more, wanting to make up for lost time.

Remembering what followed made Evander acutely uncomfortable. The needle of self-accusation pierced him with guilt that her untimely exit from the world owed itself to a despicable time. He was merely a husband claiming his due rights, initiating his partner into the pleasures of marriage. He should have backed off when she flinched violently at the touch of his scorching hand on her breast. Her involuntary gesture of rejection had maddened him.

Do you think you can fob me off forever? I’m your husband. Your bloody body belongs to me!

Her disdainful silence was infuriating. He burned with curiosity. Perhaps she was still emotionally committed to the foreigner who jilted her; yielding to her husband would betray a precious past.

Yet another fear gripped Evander. Did her reticence hide a shameful secret? Dollie could be involved with someone in Karachi. The amateur theatricals were a cloak for something seamier. She was surrounded by handsome young actors. He didn’t think they would breach the boundaries of marriage, their own or hers, but one could never tell.

Tell me, witch. Is there someone else? Dollie shrugged.

Ice statue! Cold as the grave! Blood or ice water in the veins, you frigid female? Let me find out…

Dollie’s arms flailed helplessly against Evander as he forcibly carried her to his forlorn bedroom. She had obstinately refused to share this space for its intended intimacy, but he was determined she would dodge him no longer. He was startled at the obscene language that issued from his lips. A primitive persona had taken over, concerned only with satiating thwarted need. The chronic ache in his drawers demanded relief. He ripped apart the flimsy fabric that made up her fashionable flapper dress. Left wearing only her rayon stockings, Dollie cowered before him, naked and exposed.

Evander had always dreamed of taking her tenderly, making allowances for her unsullied girlhood. He rammed into her savagely.

You beast, you brute, you bloody bastard, you’re hurting me. Stop, Stop. Stop!!! Dollie resisted, kicking and struggling, but she was no match for a long-stoppered force, its magnitude fed on the grievance of deprivation. She crumbled at the assault. He took her again and again, as if to make up for lost time. His great relief was the blood trickling out of her. Wherever her affections wandered, she had still been a virgin.

Deep sleep overpowered Evander’s body when there was nothing left to spill out. In his fevered dreams, he no longer saw himself as battering an unwilling woman. He was confident that his ardent lovemaking won Dollie over into enjoying the activity she had shunned. He observed with disappointment that she was not in his bed the next morning. She must have slipped back to her quarters after his frenzied exertions.

He meant to apologise for his rough behaviour over breakfast and reassure her of his ardent love and regard. They had faithfully taken their meals together, even if their conversation was limited to passing each other dishes. But Dollie refused to come down for breakfast, or lunch, or dinner. Not that day, or those that followed. She might have eaten when he left, or had her meals brought up on a tray. She would recover with time, he supposed. It might have been easier if she had close friends to advise her on what to expect in marriage. But she was a newcomer to Karachi; she would be inhibited in opening up to the acquaintances of their social circle. Keeping up appearances was an unspoken rule.

She is lost to a world of brooding silence… Evander recalled the innuendo in Calcutta about her mother’s mental problems. It was hinted they could be her hidden inheritance, that the heady combination of talent and beauty inviting admiration might come with emotional instability. He had dismissed these perceptions as the malice of those threatened on their turf. He had read no particular meaning in her father’s anxiety to send her far away from Calcutta.

Evander told himself they lived in a man’s world. A woman had to endure her marital lot. He had been rough. She was bruised, but all wounds heal, whether of body or mind.

Miraculously, she appeared at breakfast one morning. He rubbed his eyes to assure himself he wasn’t dreaming. There’s going to be a new Gilbert and Sullivan production- ‘Iolanthe’. They want me in.

What if I say ‘no’? Evander was testing her.

The sullen glaze returned to her eyes. If there was any hope of things returning to normal, he had to play along and permit her prima donna days. Better the formality of marriage than a woman in virtual stupor.

Evander said hastily, All right.

Things got back to being the way they were. The prospect of a future audience invariably animated her. For the time it lasted, he had to be relieved Dollie was somewhat her former self.

Things continued in uneasy equilibrium, but Evander was jolted by the verbal assault punctuating their wary peace. Filthy fucking bastard! I can’t do it now.

His language inflicting brute power on Dollie’s resistant body had not been gentlemanly. That she emerged from her usual sullen silence to communicate stunned Evander as much as the language expressing her candid assessment of him. He said weakly, What?

Get on stage, play the lead role. Bloody swine, when you attacked me that night, you did more than injure me. You left me with something so much worse. Your wretched baby! I’m pregnant, and that’s the last thing I’d possibly want to be.

Mind the language with which you refer to my child! Evander said sternly. You’re a married woman; you must accept your marital responsibilities. I can’t understand your aversion to being pregnant.

Having let loose her tongue, Dollie briefly made her point. My mother. She never got well after I was born. I don’t want the same thing happening. I just want to sing and act and look beautiful.

What happened to your mother doesn’t have to happen to you. For most women, it’s the most natural thing in the world.

I’m not most women. Evander was attracted by a girl who stood out from the crowd, but her sense of being different was hard on their marital life.

Her violent bouts of nausea came in the way of rehearsals. When her bump began to show, it was discreetly suggested she wasn’t quite right for the part. A fresh voiced debutante was waiting in the wings as a replacement. Dollie was predictably devastated.

A true dark mood descended: the fog of depression Evander was warned about. There had been desperate anxiety in her to see things through with the performance in mind; she was now left with the bleakly dismal.

As Dollie’s belly swelled, she refused to leave her room. She no longer came to the piano in the drawing room where she ordinarily sang and played to fill the day at home. Often, the sound of her weeping penetrated the silence.

The fear of social opinion, especially if his contribution to Dollie’s troubled state of mind were to be exposed, inhibited Evander from getting her the help she needed.

Talk to me, Dollie! Evander begged. If I’ve done you wrong, I’m sorry. I just loved and wanted you so much, that I couldn’t help myself. Can you blame any other man in my position with a beautiful and gifted wife?

Dollie stared at him blankly, but he felt compelled to continue.

Whom do you hate more, me or the baby? She glanced at her ballooning stomach and grimaced. Both were equally culpable, the cause and the consequence, for displacing her from the limelight and imposing dreary obligations.

It will pass- the discomfort and clumsiness, if at all. You will look lovelier than ever. The Mona Lisa was pregnant when Da Vinci painted her. There will be other exciting roles. A lifetime of talent display ahead of you, my darling.

Like an angry and elegant cat, Dollie hissed. Evander sighed. He told himself Dollie’s unfounded fears would be history once the baby came. Her true womanly persona would then emerge.

Would you like to have the baby back home? After all, it was a time-honoured tradition to deliver a first child at a parental home. She shook her head; he guessed it was with the sad knowledge that her mentally disturbed mother was in no position to pitch in and mentor her daughter about childbirth.

The uneasy silence of their home was shattered by Dollie’s screams as their child commenced to be born. It was the norm in their circle for births to happen at home, to demonstrate a capacity to have a doctor on call, while equally screening out exposure to germs in a hospital setting. Karachi’s leading gynaecologist was summoned out of his slumber to deliver the baby.

Dollie showed no interest whatever in their newborn daughter, grimacing and gesturing for her to be taken away when placed near her to suckle. Evander could understand she was in pain from the brutal exertions of childbirth. Her silky voice was hoarse with screams. He guessed she fretted about whether she would ever sing after the ordeal.

It should have been a beautiful moment of finding each other, the joint joy of becoming parents obliterating memories of the child’s conception. But she pulled away from his tentative touch, less inclined to relent than ever after what she had undergone.

The women attendants hired for traditional caregivers’ skills in childbirth’s aftermath were taking over; Evander’s male presence was an intrusion. He would have liked to linger and enjoy the moment, but it was just another fantasy gone awry. A message had been conveyed about a problem on one of his construction sites- a wall had unexpectedly collapsed in a house he was building in Cincinnatus town. Such lapses wouldn’t do his reputation much good; the turbulence in his personal life was no excuse for shoddy concentration. Whatever be his wife’s mood, he had to restore his professional focus.

He was gone a few hours but returned to find his house in chaos. They had attempted to convey Dollie’s disturbing health status to him but were obstructed by a political demonstration of freedom fighters demanding India’s Independence. The Viceroy, Lord Irwin was in town, taking part in a race organised by the Karachi Sailing Club. His presence was sufficient stimulus for spontaneous protests against British rule to erupt at various locations in Karachi.

In the meanwhile, they had tried to take the rapidly deteriorating new mother to the hospital. Her attendants noted she was bleeding profusely; scarlet rivulets were soaking sheets and mattresses. Though a skilled doctor delivered the baby, complications in the aftermath were quite common, especially since Dollie had birthed a large and sturdy child. The political demonstration equally delayed the carriage that sought to take the critically ill young woman to the hospital for the medical attention she urgently needed.

Dollie was already dead when Evander reached the hospital; the bleeding had gone on for too long and she slipped into unconsciousness sometime before.

The blame for her premature passing surely lay in a coerced coupling.

Dollie had never been his, but her shocking departure dashed every hope that with time they would both grow as a couple to greater understanding, that she might one day get over her complexes and compulsions.

Evander’s sole memory of compelled closeness filled him with terrible shame.

The teakwood coffin was ornate with carvings and rich with shiny satin. Its dark solidity imprisoned a beautiful and vivacious young woman, dressed in the white gown she wore on her wedding day. Dollie would indeed never breathe again. In her lifeless state, she was the ice statue of his cruel taunts. The chill of death completely consumed her.

Nothing could be farther from her soaring airy songs than the dull funeral dirges that accompanied her exit. Dismal hymns intoned the hope of her soul wafting into some unknown paradise. Evander, no stranger to loneliness, was gripped with despairing desolation. Even the illusion of possession was lost to him.

In the meanwhile, there is the baby… She was a lonely infant in the cradle, custom-made before her arrival. He ought to have embraced that tiny being as the lasting legacy of a lost life. Evander vowed to ensure the child would lack nothing by way of professional care. But he knew she would be a discomfiting reminder of his sordid behaviour. Circumstances left him with very little choice, but her presence would prick him with pained remorse. Marital rape had caused cells to fuse into forming this new human life. When her birth completed what an ugly episode had commenced, life was drained away, drop by bleeding drop, from her mother. He noted with irritation that her noisy bawling was a far cry from Dollie’s mellifluous music.

The christening would have been a dazzling social event with prominent people of their circle as guests. Evander keenly felt the irony of organising the final rites of his young and lovely spouse. In a simple ceremony that contrasted with Evander’s previously lavish plans, the baby girl was named Zara Bastien. Her name came up from the ladies who were helpful with Dollie’s funeral, as possessing the cross-cultural appeal that expressed the ethos of Karachi.

Preoccupied with the dead, Evander’s bleak mood didn’t permit him to go into the trivia of names.

I will always love you, my beautiful wife… It never previously made much impression on him, but Evander found himself in sympathy with a former Collector of Karachi who erected the domed monument dominating the cemetery of ‘Gora Qabristan’, in grieving remembrance of his young wife Phyllis Lawrence who died in a carriage accident in 1912. Dollie’s death was a similar tragic tale. No longer could Evander see her as perverse and narcissistic. His grieving heart transformed Dollie into a pure being he had been too gross to comprehend. A marble monument of sculpted angels would be a testament to the ethereal spirit who had briefly inhabited his realm.

Orn

Zara

I knew the void. Its emptiness enveloped me. I was always trying to break out of it, my arms stretched out to be held and cuddled, the way I saw other children with their parents. My father, Evander Bastien ignored the cue. I didn’t exist for him, and whenever he acknowledged me, his discomfort was hard to miss. The ayahs, Nazim and Sitabai obliged if they were in the mood or not caught up with other chores.

My father, a wealthy businessman paid them well, so they were diverted from looking after the ‘baba log’ of British families, and worked as my caregivers. Whenever I was a ‘bad child’, the maids left me with the clues I was looking for. The aunties at birthday parties spoke admiringly of my beautiful mother. She had ‘gone to heaven’ they said, and was watching over me. What the ayahs said didn’t make me feel so certain, because surely, she was also angry with me? After all, my birth rudely chased her out of this world. I had been a big, bad selfish baby wanting my own space on earth. Or so the ayahs opined, whenever they thought I was getting above myself. No wonder, Papa avoided the sight of me. It wasn’t like I asked to be born, but I surely reminded him of his loss. It was natural- he had known Dollie Mama before, and everyone said she was beautiful and gifted.

He was dutiful in his way. He bought me beautiful dolls on his travels which were wordlessly handed over. I was dressed in pretty clothes. A horse carriage or motor car ferried me between home and school with an ayah in attendance. Rahim the Khansamah rustled up mouth-watering Pullaos and Biryanis, Kormas and Kebabs. Having apprenticed as a Club’s cook, he could equally turn out pies and puddings. My meals were solitary affairs supervised by the ayahs; Papa never joined me. The wonderful food at home didn’t stop my yearning for a meal at Frederick’s cafeteria or Café George, where class-fellows boasted of sumptuous family outings.

In school, we were told that nothing is impossible with God. We had to pray hard enough for our most difficult wish to be granted. At mass in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Karachi’s beautiful landmark with its soaring arches, flying buttresses and colourful stained-glass panels, I was hopeful that my prayers would float upwards to reach heaven high in the sky. Sometimes, I was told Mama was a flower in a heavenly garden, like the dainty beauty she had been in life. An opinion was also voiced that having been a celebrated singer on earth, she was an angel in a heavenly choir, like the marble statues surrounding her grave.

Dear God, please let me have my mother back! I begged.

She was an exquisite figure, gowned and jewelled, in the oil portrait that dominated the drawing room. Below it was a carved console, and every day, the maids had to pick up fresh flowers from the garden and place them in a porcelain vase. Dollie Bastien looked like a person who loved life’s glamorous side. She didn’t look like mothers fussing around their little ones like they were the crowning glory of their lives. Even so, I had to believe that had her life not ended so soon because I entered it, she would have cuddled me in the way I craved.

Prayers have an unusual way of being answered.

Papa came home from an evening outing; he was beaming for a change and very cheerful. On his arm was a good-looking young woman whom he introduced as Miss Kezia Smith.

Zara, my child, he said, Kezia will be your mum.

Orn

Chapter 2

Outside the Cocoon

Karachi’s chic Hotel Killarney was the venue for the wedding reception. It was a place with a certain sentiment for the couple because they enjoyed dancing to jazz at ‘Le Gourmet’, the hotel’s nightclub. Amidst the reception’s revelries, Evander overheard Karachi society referring to his new wife as ‘Colourful Kezia’.

It was precisely the exotic background she claimed that drew him to her. Kezia said she was the daughter of the Nawab of some upcountry place called Karimpore; her English mother was the tutor of the palace children. Placed in the proximity of the palace by the Nawab, life was comfortable for the tutor and Razia, the child born of their union. But it was precarious security. The Nawab was already old when the liaison commenced and couldn’t have expected to live forever. After his death, the new Nawab promptly terminated the arrangement. Kezia’s mother planned on employment in a palace elsewhere in Princely India. The plans died there because the lady unexpectedly fell ill and also died. Having grown up in the shadow of a palace, little Razia suffered the bleakness of an orphanage. But the fetching child soon found a home with a childless Eurasian family. Her adoptive father Robert Smith was a railway guard of limited means. So, following in the footsteps of her birth mother, a career woman, Razia (now Kezia) learned stenography and typewriting. Her employer Evander Bastien became quickly besotted with his attractive and efficient secretary.

It had nagged Evander that he didn’t do more for Zara than entrusting her to the care, however devoted, of paid ayahs. He