Page 7 of A Thousand Painted Hours

He wrote them out. “Shair,” he said, “which is Urdu.” The letters ran right to left like a vine. “Sherain Punjabi.” It was a word like little houses, left to right. “And this is Sanskrit,vyaghra.”

“How do you know so many languages?”

“I only know this word in all of them. I am given lessons in all of them, so I might be well versed in my father’s palace.”

“But you are not the crown prince?”

His smile flashed, showing a dimple in his right cheek. “True, but one must be prepared.”

“Teach me!”

“I will show you Urdu.”

The letters were nothing like English, but I carefully copied them, loving the shape of the script, the tails and accents. “Do you know the whole alphabet?”

“No. But I can show you the ones I do know.”

—5—

The tiger shaped our every move for months. Reports of its size and ferocity filtered back to us, more and more alarming. It was the biggest tiger that had been seen in a decade! The biggest seen in fifty years! None larger had been spotted since the British had arrived! Who knew what exaggerations were actually true.

What was known was that it had developed a taste for humans. First the girl, then a boy and his father from the forest when they were collecting figs. Their bag was abandoned, and only a blood smear, along with a hat and a single sandal left behind on the dry dirt showed where their bodies had been.

Adults shushed each other when we children were listening, or rather, when they knew we listened. That summer, Tanveer and I, and sometimes even Gurdaya, became adept at lurking around the edges of a gathering, imagining we were tigers stalking the ladies in their finery, the fat men with their cigars. We heard plenty.

Because our mothers had become fast friends, working on some project for the poor that we didn’t care about in the slightest, we were often together, and the nearness of our houses gave us easy access. The friendship between the maharani and Mother was not common, but it had been born of Mother’s healing arts. She was often called to any number of duties among the women of the community, low and high, but she had developed a reputation for treating an Indian of any caste.The maharani had heard of my mother’s talents with back pain, and had found some relief with her.

So the children became friends, too, sharing stories to terrify each other, playing games in the courtyards and pretending to be masters of the forest, with Tanveer’s cat and an old black dog, my pet birds—two parakeets and a mynah I was attempting to teach how to speak—and an orphaned baby monkey that my father had rescued.

I loved the cat wildly, her purr and long whiskers, her soft orange fur unlike any of the fur of the dogs my father kept for hunting. Because of the birds, my mother counseled me that I should not bring a cat home, so I loved when I could curl up withShera. She liked to come with us to the playroom and up to the roof. Once, she trotted into the room and proudly dropped a rat at my feet. When I bolted, terrified, Tanveer laughed. “It is a gift. She likes you!”

The cat helped me understand the body of the tiger. I drewSheraover and over, and then more drawings of the tiger. I was obsessed with her.

Every story, exaggerated or not, fueled my imagination. I drew a thousand tigers, and tiger paws, and tiger snouts. I found illustrations in storybooks to copy, tracing them out carefully, refining my knowledge. Tigers had a broad nose, with eyes tilted upward. Their paws were white, with claws marking each toe. It was a challenge to learn the structure of the nose, with odd compartments, until we studied Tanveer’s cat and mastered the triangle shape.

The maharaja’s summer residence was only a short distance from our house, both located in the hills to avail the inhabitants of the cooler temperatures up high, but when we traveled to and fro that spring, an army of servants traveled with us, all of them armed and watchful. A sepoy—an Indian solider serving with the British—few miles distant had seen the beast and reported it to be gigantic.

Just before the monsoons, there was to be a gathering of politicians and wives at the maharaja’s residence. My father would attend, along with many other officials and a handful of princes. To the east, the stateof Bengal had been divided, and the experiment was rocky. Of course, we children cared little for politics, and all I wanted was to play with my friends. I carried with me a satchel loaded with paints and sketchbooks and plums plucked from our trees, something to share as I’d been taught. As we traveled, I peered hard into the trees to see if I might catch a glimpse of the tiger, slinking through the shadows.

But we arrived without incident. Tanveer and Gurdaya met us at the door, and we children wheeled away to their playroom. In her own world, Gurdaya was far more friendly.

“I brought my paints and pencils,” I said.

“We have those things,” Gurdaya retorted. “Do you think us poor?”

“Gudiya,” Tanveer said, his nickname for her. “She’s only being kind, to share.” He turned his smile on me. “Isn’t that right?”

“Yes,” I said. “I also brought plums, but perhaps you have them as well.”

Gurdaya snatched a plum. “My favorite!” She sank her teeth into the flesh, swirling around in happiness. The light from the window caught in the thin tissue of her scarf, across the planes of her face.

I smoothed my hand over my sketchbook and picked up a pencil, struck by some magic in her spin, her braid flying out sideways, the scarf lifting in delicate purple light. Her face intrigued me, the angles and the planes and the softness of her lips. I tried to show it in spare lines, a curve, a sharp mark for her nose, the sidelong angle of her eye.

It wasn’t what I hoped. I missed some essential something, but by then she had collapsed near the table, legs akimbo. “Is that me?”

“I’ll do better,” I said, abjectly embarrassed at the poor attempt.

“Nonsense,” Tanveer said. “You’ve caught her movement. How did you do that?”