Page 31 of A Thousand Painted Hours

A Summer of Our Own

1911

—15—

The maharani, Tanveer, and Gurdaya returned to Nainital with our party to take up residence for the hot months. We played cards and drank chai and made up word games.

Tanveer and I became split beings—the selves we had been as children, all the days we had been together over years, best of friends, sparring intellectually and rambling through the forest like little animals, and the new selves we had discovered, the parts of us that had blended with our kisses in the tiger shed, and only wove more tightly together with each moment we spent in secret, exploring this new and dazzling thing.

It was not as easy to escape alone together as it had been. My mother only allowed the three of us to go together, and blocked any suggestion of Tanveer and me on our own. It wasn’t seemly, and I did know the eyes of the village always watched us.

But we found ways. When the three of us hiked up to the pond, we waited until Gurdaya napped and slipped away into the trees, where we kissed ourselves into a fever. My skin felt as if it would melt right off my bones, and my fingers were greedy for the feeling of his body, the muscles along his shoulders, the tensity of his slim waist. We slid and twisted around each other until we had to halt or burn to cinders.

The rest of the time, when we played games with our mothers, when we all ate together in the hot evenings, telling stories, we wereonly ourselves, our secret connection hidden and humming at a frequency only we could hear.

In the hottest days of August, a summer virus swept through the village. It was not fatal, but entire households were stricken, servants and families alike. For a time, the maharani’s household servants held strong, and Tanveer and I were pressed into delivery service, carrying jugs of soup to leave on the doorsteps of households laid low by the virus.

Including both of our own, in the end. Gurdaya and our mothers fell ill, and our servants. Tanveer and I kept up our deliveries, fetching food from the market to bring to the sick, making sure water jugs were filled, that the cool breezes could be captured.

In the still of the afternoon one day, we sat in the courtyard beneath the shade of the laburnum tree, tossing rocks in a desultory contest to see who could hit a crack in the pavement. “It’s so hot,” I whined, pushing hair off my head. “I wish we could escape to the pond.”

Tanveer straightened, hands on his thighs as he looked around to the empty grounds. “Who will know?”

I widened my eyes. “Is it terribly wicked, do you think?”

“Terribly.” A tiny smile belied the word.

“Then we must. Let’s pack a picnic.”

We filled a basket with a flask of lemonade, bread and butter, the last of a batch of shortbread baked before this Great Summer Flu of 1911, and a pile of apricots. I donned a hat to protect my face, and we set off in the heat.

We barely talked until we made it into the trees. As we dived under the shade, we talked about the book we were currently reading together,Silas Marner. “I suggest we read in Urdu next,” Tanveer said.

“I am not proficient enough,” I protested.

“It will be good for you,” he said with a grin. “It will give us much to discuss in our letters.”

A pain threaded between my ribs. I tried to keep my voice neutral. “When do you return to school?”

He reached for my hand, laced his fingers in mine. “Three weeks’ time.”

I leaned into him momentarily. “I shall hate it.”

“As will I.”

“No,” I said, straightening. “You’ll be engrossed in your studies and polo and your friends.”

He met my smile with one of his own. “I shall. But I will also miss you terribly.”

I took a breath. “I’m weary of the things I study in school—I can read on my own, and study languages, and study history because I find it interesting.” I swung our hands. “I wish I enjoyed classwork as much as you do.”

“But your path is clear.”

We had to pause speaking for a bit as the trail traveled uphill for a long stretch. We picked our way through tree roots and over rocks. Overhead, birds called and shouted. A breeze stirred the leaves around us. “What is my path?” I asked at the top of the hill.

“You’re a painter,” he said with a quizzical shift of his brows. “Of course.”

A swell of longing moved through me, a life of canvases and exploration, something freer than I could see from here. “If I were a man, perhaps. I do not see how it is my path as a female.”