The ground, the tables, the umbrellas, were styled after a “french” cafe. Meena still had some trouble placing where France was in the world – across an ocean-river from where the Queen lived – As England was an Island similar to Ceylon. Well, more countries to it – or at least had the will to keep names of the old countries. Their tribes had decided to conquer other lands instead of each other – and they had the money, gunpowder and bodies to do it.
Though the Raj was as much a show of previous empires’ incompetence.
Dhaka was one of the inland ports of the Raj. Important. Cultured. Flooded with the pale tribes, who struggled to copy any culture but the one conquered. Still, the waitstaff wasn’t British. Nor French, like the food claimed to be. More people still worked their way form the fields every year, thinking pounds sterling were a better goal than actual food.
Meena Jadia – having lost the reason to carry that name a number of years back – had found a slightly different niche. A few wanted to preserve history – winnow it, make it acceptable for their babies. Scholars of pure Sanskrit were easy enough to draw out of their fervor with sterling; for many other dialects, the pale masters didn’t even know how to find who spoke what.
They still had orders that needed to be understood. Dispatches, time tables for the trains, the lessening number of dak runners of the mail.
They had histories to preserve – carefully trimmed of rebellion and vitality – save for the youngest christian child to pass their test and get patted on their blonde head.
Meena Jadia did not need their sterling, but it was a fine position to justify getting old records from. A translator needing context, preserving history – not an old woman trying to find just what had happened to the children of her parents hundreds of years ago.
This was a business call. An introduction. One of her frequent clients, one Lord awkward-on-the-tongue, was approached as a possible benefactor of a new movement… The higher education at the center of of the Raj was sorely lacking since the East India company had pulled out – and even when their school had been open decades ago, everyone taught for their own interests. The Raj needed a general university.
…Of course, Both Meena and Lord Awkward would argue against Dakara being the center of the Raj. Especially with tracks going in across it. Those tracks could easily be taken to other colleges with the Queen’s support.
Meena was not benefactor material. Indeed, without Master Lord’s presence, she would not have dared to come out in Don’t Say My Name’s presence. A Woman. A Dalit. The artifices of education were mostly Male diversions. She was merely there to be sure the English exchanged didn’t contain any major omissions, a backup translator.
The biggest memory of the occasion was how much sugar was in the food. The Victorians loved this. Lord Awkward enjoyed it – she often wondered if the sugar in their veins was what made the so pale. Don’t tolerated it. She guessed he was a Muslim – they at least had a history of allowing a few to be educated beyond usefulness. Not that any University would be limited to Muslims – If so, the Hindus would inevitably force their way in to make sure there was no plotting against them.
~
Even with intent, even with agreement, even with local baron’s promise of land, these things had to be announced. That is, there had to be a large party of the rich to brag about, possibly to catch a little more money.
Meena herself might find a place in some department, should she wish it – a somewhat permanent income grading and correcting papers in tandem with her research, any practical discovery signed off to an important professor.
It was an option. First she had to get through the night. A light blouse, with a few pleats and ruffles, a dark skirt, a few embroidered details on the hem and merely a slip to raise it off her hips. A fresh application of hairblack. Perfectly respectful for being seeing in public, and being ignored in a party unless some drunk confidant caught sight of you.
Everything reflected that it would be a Western University. The Sugar, the music, the dress. A few saree showed up at the edge of the crowd, hesitating to see if the current dance would make a fool of them, but the crowd was not so rich or cooled that there was any more than an extra petticoat beneath a skirt, or one of many fine hats that might have been strangled a week prior.
The smoking room? Filled too quickly. At least she could appreciate the smell of embers over sugar.
The dance floor? Could not really decide what era of dance it wanted to recreate. This was not a time of dusty wigs, but it was also not some school dance with wild abandon.
The gardens of the estate? The sun would leave too hot, she smell of manure out wreaked the flowers – and the smoke was not dense enough to drive away the flies, and the wind too still this time of year.
She came upon an unusual race in the carriage drive. Young ladies sat on the steps in the shadow of the house, commenting, while men mounted – some sort of wheeled steed. “Oh, I’d think I’d do well on a penny-farthing, but the boys think it some sort of knightly thing”, “I’ve been trying to get them to order me one of the safety-rattlers they’re making on the continent these days”
Meena was, admittedly, not very active among the young the past few years. But these were probably the one’s she would be critiquing should she take a position – children of the rich, the mixed blood, the boringly named Anglo-Indians. She stayed, listened to their musings. English. English English. No slipping into another language because it was the only way to express a thought, as she heard every day on the streets.
To think a dark-skinned child would come to “knights” before… The Nawab? But the losers can’t be taught as anything but losers to those who might decide otherwise.
These steeds charged each other a bit drunkenly on the cobbles, their riders apparently thinking going slow was either a feat in itself, or that they didn’t have the posteriors for going any faster.
After some not very satisfying clash of discarded tree branches, the steeds were abandoned. Those boys a bit more sober were happy to explain mechanics to the ladies who stepped up – a few who even tried to stick to certain groves in the driveway.
Her hair was properly blackened, right? She stiffened a few things up, and stepping from the shadows was a 20 something instead of a 40 something. “It it your turn, Miss, for a trial?”
He offered a steady knee to more easily transfer to a pedal – but once her weight was on the machine – something was wrong. Immediately wrong. Something like being on a boat, the land heaving back and forth beneath – but instead of adapting to the boat, thing thing was at war, trying to adapt both to her and gravity.
She was starting to stretch sideways. Somthing like a circus rider, but the bike was no steed to react, merely continuing to pitch. Meena desperately tried to push forward on the pedals as urged, but the bike just swung to the other side, a pendulum gaining momentum instead of lose it.
She should not let this happen here. On the third swing, she threw herself into the dip, and clattered to the cobblestones.
A few ladies, mirroring concerned mothers, were on her in an instant. A pinned arm seemed an acceptable injury – not broken, but certainly enough to sit out any more attempts. If fact, it seemed to make the attempt braver, other girls lining up for their second go after being assured of her condition.
A few men with stupid grins, unbidden, offered her retrieved drinks. Perhaps unfortunately for them, she could hold her liquor – so every one was accepted without further indecent, merely with trying to figure out who was who’s son. Not the networking she expected to do, today, but networking none the less.
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