"The Little Goddess" - читать интересную книгу автора (McDonald Ian)

great chakra of traffic around Connaught Place. In Awadh you drive with your
ears. The roar of horns and klaxons and cycle-rickshaw bells assailed from all
sides at once. It rose before the dawn birds and only fell silent well after
midnight. The driver skirted a saddhu walking through the traffic as calmly as
if he were wading through the Holy Yamuna. His body was white with sacred ash, a
mourning ghost, but his Siva trident burned blood red in the low sun. I had
thought Kathmandu dirty, but Delhi’s golden light and incredible sunsets spoke
of pollution beyond even that. Huddled in the rear seat of the autorickshaws
with Deepti, I wore a smog mask and goggles to protect my delicate eye make-up.
But the fold of my sari flapped over my shoulder in the evening wind and the
little silver bells jingled.
There were six in our little fleet. We accelerated along the wide avenues of the
British Raj, past the sprawling red buildings of old India, toward the glass
spires of Awadh. Black kites circled the towers, scavengers, pickers of the
dead. We turned beneath cool neem trees into the drive of a government bungalow.
Burning torches lit us to the pillared porch. House staff in Rajput uniforms
escorted us to the shaadi marquee.
Mamaji had arrived before any of us. She fluttered and fretted among her birds;
a lick, a rub, a straightening, an admonition. “Stand up stand up, we’ll have no
slumping here. My girls will be the bonniest at this shaadi, hear me?” Shweta,
her bony, mean-mouthed assistant, collected our smog-masks. “Now girls, palmers
ready.” We knew the drill with almost military smartness. Hand up, glove on,
rings on, hook behind ear jewelry, decorously concealed by the fringed dupattas
draped over our heads. “We are graced with Awadh’s finest tonight. Crиme de la
crиme.” I barely blinked as the rйsumйs rolled up my inner vision. “Right girls,
from the left, first dozen, two minutes each then on to the next down the list.
Quick smart!” Mamaji clapped her hands and we formed a line. A band struck a
medley of musical numbers from Town and Country, the soap opera that was a
national obsession in sophisticated Awadh. There we stood, twelve little
wives-a-waiting while the Rajput servants hauled up the rear of the pavilion.
Applause broke around us like rain. A hundred men stood in a rough semi-circle,
clapping enthusiastically, faces bright in the light from the carnival lanterns.
When I arrived in Awadh, the first thing I noticed was the people. People
pushing people begging people talking people rushing past each other without a
look or a word or an acknowledgement. I had thought Kathmandu held more people
than a mind could imagine. I had not seen Old Delhi. The constant noise, the
everyday callousness, the lack of any respect appalled me. You could vanish into
that crowd of faces like a drop of rain into a tank. The second thing I noticed
was that the faces were all men. It was indeed as my palmer had whispered to me.
There were four men for every woman.
Fine men good men clever men rich men, men of ambition and career and property,
men of power and prospects. Men with no hope of ever marrying within their own
class and caste. Men with little prospect of marrying ever. Shaadi had once been
the word for wedding festivities, the groom on his beautiful white horse, so
noble, the bride shy and lovely behind her golden veil. Then it became a name
for dating agencies: lovely wheat-complexioned Agarwal, U.S.-university MBA,
seeks same civil service/military for matrimonials. Now it was a bride-parade, a
marriage-market for lonely men with large dowries. Dowries that paid a hefty
commission to the Lovely Girl Shaadi Agency.
The Lovely Girls lined up on the left side of the Silken Wall that ran the