... Couldn't resist Sage's comments about the 1,000 petalled Lotus, shakti and the woman falling asleep on the Victorian sofa... hence this bit of deliberate archaism... K xx

FRUIT OF THE LOTUS


She was thinking of Kipling when they set out, nose to tail, descending again to the Plains from the Hill Station at Simla.

She was replete from stimulating discourse, rich feasting and fine wines and the intensity of sun – yet high in the sky – penetrated the flimsy linen of her parasol and burned her porcelain neck, making her head spin; the swaying of the howdah rocked her almost to a hypnotised sleep.

She was still amid the sights and sounds of High Places: the easy laughter, the fruity opulence of well-tuned, confident voices; the scents of privilege mixed with the spicy sweat of those who waited at table. The comfort of a relaxed, induced confusion where sensibility overpowers the mind.

They still had miles to go and she was thirsty, in need of water, a cooling oasis to restore her equilibrium. She considered the intrigue that would fill the pages of the Civil and Military Gazette on their return to Lahore; the salaciousness, the mind-games and gossip that would fuel dinner parties for the next few months of uneasy, overheated residence in the City – all born out of a month’s sojourn of polite society’s stay in a hothouse of the Hills.

She felt herself slipping consciousness. She fingered the locket around her neck, given to her by one who said he was “good jujube”, benevolent fortune, whose contrived nearness to her at dinner tables made her breathless, and whose presence caused her to forget noblesse oblige and bathe blissfully in balmy waters of indolence. On the steeply descending path, she felt the bull beneath her going down, sinking heavily with each footfall into, she imagined, an icy pool, throwing back his trunk and spraying her with refreshment and with lilies that revived her strength, like Ulysses. These thoughts raised a pillar within her, restoring her mind.

She dreamed she heard again that smiling whisper delicate behind her ear that said: “In Chinese, the phrase ‘to ride an elephant’ sounds the same as their word for happiness”. Suddenly now fully awake, her body and spirit were in a state of perfect harmony.