As you say, memsaab. His childhood--in Nasik, where he was born to the widow Ashalata Devi in the third year of her mourning. What would a Brahmin’s widow know of the world? Sensibly, she found herself a rock to cling to–-Colonel Edward Yeames Cathcart of the Deolali Cantonment. in the moment of his death, I know him at last. Know both of them, in fact. His context--the clash and grind of one world against another. Of implacable West AGAiNST intransigent East. So strange. So perfect.
