The Moors Last Sigh

Prison (Is Jailko Todkar Rehengé) , but also called, mockingly, by its detractors, ‘Women Who Sleep Together Probably’ – was doing battle against half-a-dozen Goliaths. She had spoken of her high regard for Aurora’s painting, but also of the importance of the work being done by highly motivated groups such as Mynah’s in exposing the evils of bride-burning, in setting up women’s patrols against rape, and in a dozen other areas. Her passion and knowledge charmed my notably hard-nosed sister; hence her presence at our little family reunion on Mahalaxmi turf.
    So much for what was beyond dispute. What was truly remarkable was that during that morning amble at Mahalaxmi the newcomer found a way to spend a few private minutes with each of us in turn, and after she departed, saying modestly that she had already intruded for too long on our family gathering, every one of us had a fiercely held opinion about her, and many of these opinions contradicted each other utterly and were incapable of being reconciled. To Sister Floreas, Uma was a woman from whom spirituality seemed to flow like a river; she was abstinent and disciplined, a great soul who saw through to the final unity of all religion, whose differences she was convinced would dissolve under the blessed brilliance of divine light; whereas in Mynah’s opinion she was hard as nails – this, from our Philomina, was a high compliment – and a dedicated secularist marxian feminist whose inexhaustible commitment to the struggle had renewed Mynah’s own appetite for the fray. Abraham Zogoiby dismissed both these views as ‘so much foolishness’ and praised Uma’s razor-sharp financial brain, and her mastery of the very latest in modern deal-making and takeover theory. And Jamshed Cashondeliveri, he of the bulging eye and dropping jaw, confessed in hushed tones that she was the living reincarnation of gorgeous departed Ina, Ina as she had been before the burgers of Nashville ruined her, ‘only she’, he blurted out, like the fool he had always been, ‘is like an Ina with a singing voice, and also brains.’ He had just begun to explain that Uma and he had slipped away behind the grandstand for a few moments, and there the young girl had sung to him in the sweetest country voice he had ever heard; but Aurora Zogoiby had had enough. ‘Everybody here has gone to pot today,’ she thundered. ‘But Jimmy boy, you just passofied the point of no return. Be off with you! Get going ek-dum and never darken our door.’
    We left Jimmy standing in the paddock with a stunned-fish glaze in his eye.
    Aurora resisted Uma from the start; she alone left the racecourse with a sceptical twist to her lip. Permit me to emphasise this point: she never gave the younger woman a chance, though Uma was unfailingly modest about her own artistic abilities, volubly worshipful of my mother’s genius, and asked no favours. Indeed, after her triumph at the 1978 Documenta show in Kassel, when the most illustrious of London and New York dealers snapped her up, she telephoned Aurora long-distance from Germany and shouted through the international crackle, ‘I made Kasmin and Mary Boone promise to show your work as well. Otherwise, I said, I could not permit them to show mine.’
    Like a goddess from the machine she came among us, speaking to our inmost selves. Only godless Aurora failed to hear. Uma came diffidently to Elephanta two days later and Aurora locked her studio door. Which was – to put it mildly – neither adult nor polite. To make up for my mother’s rudeness, I offered to show Uma around the old place, and said hotly, ‘You are welcome in our home as often as you like.’
    What Uma said to me at Mahalaxmi I repeated to no-one. For public consumption she had said laughingly, ‘So if this is a racecourse then I want to race,’ kicked off her chappals, picked them up in her left hand, and gone flying down the track, her long hair zooming out behind her like speed-lines in strip cartoons, marking the air through which she had passed as jet trails mark the sky. I had run after her, of course; it had not occurred to her that I would not. She was a speedy runner, faster than me, and finally I had to give up, because my chest commenced to heave and wheeze. I leaned gasping against the white rails, with both hands pressing against my lungs, trying to calm the spasm. She came back to me and placed her hands over mine. As my breathing settled down she caressed my mangled