Historical romance: In 1906, an Englishwoman is infatuated by the handsome Indian groom of her horse

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15 hours ago

Norman Evans woke up at the crack of dawn each day with the muezzin's call to prayer. He was not a Muslim, not even a particularly devout Christian. Four years ago, when the Indian Public Works Department posted him to its survey and canal division in the small town of Jaunpur, somewhere in the eastern neck of the vast North Indian plains, he found the deeply sonorous voice of the crier atop the minaret of the Atala Mosque more to his taste than the shrill trilling of an alarm clock. In Jaunpur, it had become a personal ritual to wake up to the dawn cry that floated down from the minaret and cascaded through the sleeping settlement to rouse the faithful to prayer.
The trill of the alarm clock was a sound he was averse to. It took him back to the school siren of his boyhood in Northern Yorkshire, a poor miner's son struggling hard to better his lot. The foreign sounds of the call to prayer, rousing and majestic, reminded him each morning that he was in some place far away and exotic. At long last, he was a nobleman in his own domain.
Gobind, the bearer, his eyes still bleary with sleep, brought him a pot of Darjeeling tea, a sugar jar, a milk jug and two pieces of buttered toast, laid out on a tray with a white lace-edged cloth. Norman always took the same repast for his dawn tea. It felt pleasantly predictable and reassuring to him at the start of a varied working day, supervising the different projects under him. The mild, muscatel aroma of his tea from the misty, rain-drenched green mountains of Northeast India never failed to remind him of the goodness of his life here. Later, when he returned from his ride, Abdul, the cook, would lay out a more substantial breakfast for him, with porridge, fruit, eggs, ham or bacon and more toast served with marmalade and preserves. Or upon rare occasion, should Norman request it, there would be an Indian breakfast of aloo paratha and dahi with jalebis or halwa-pudding on the side.
Outside the bungalow, the horse groom waited for Norman with the pony readied for his morning ride. Every morning, since his move to Jaunpur, he rode a five-mile route along the banks of the Gomti river, enjoying the flat, compacted, dun-coloured mudbank, the gentle sounds of the water, the soft river breeze, and the tall, feathery kash reeds that swayed gracefully by the river. As a young engineer setting out to serve in British India, he was advised at the Cooper's Institute in Surrey that exercise was essential to an Englishman's long-term sanity and survival in the tropics, as vital as careful discipline and moderation in the consumption of alcohol. Norman had heeded the advice in good faith for all the fourteen years he had lived in the country.
This morning, he stopped to gaze at the 16th-century stone bridge across the Gomti. It had been built on the orders of the great Mughal emperor, Akbar, and was something of a marvel of engineering. The city of Jaunpur itself was a couple of centuries older than the bridge and associated with the Delhi Sultanate. It was named after the most eccentric sultan ever known to India, Jauna Khan or Muhammad Bin Tughlaq, a mercurial genius with many ideas ahead of his time and what was, by all accounts of his reign, a slapdash, disaster-prone approach to their implementation.
Norman had struck up a friendship with the current nawab, a descendant of the thirteenth-century Sharqi rulers of Jaunpur, a well-educated, affable man with varied pursuits. He was always invited as part of the nawab's party for shikars or picnics. They also played chess on occasion. Norman was at home in this forgotten medieval-era town in India as he had never felt in any place before, in either England or India. Its sparsely cultivated countryside, its humble villagers, its quiet, unassuming river and especially its old monuments spoke to him. The beauty of the strong, stoic, sandstone architecture made by the Sharqi kings had laid a claim on his heart and mind. It spoke to him of many things – of humankind's innate impulse to build magnificent structures on the earth's surface, of the shared quest of rulers of all persuasions to leave their mark on posterity through architecture that combined beauty with functionality, of the inevitable, unrelenting march of time, and of how power was ephemeral, however absolute it seemed in the moment.
He rode around the Shahi Qila, the ancient stone fortress atop a small hillock, and headed back towards his bungalow. His thoughts flew to the time Lord Curzon, the viceroy, had visited Jaunpur for a day two years ago. Norman was a part of the local entourage deputed to take him around. Norman had taken the opportunity to bring him to the fortress and to make an impassioned plea. It was shameful to let historic monuments of such majesty fall into total ruin, in the absence of proper attention. When the Ancient Monuments Preservation Act 1904 was passed by the government, Norman had felt in its passage a small moment of personal achievement and satisfaction.
Upon returning, he dismounted from his horse in the driveway and handed the reins to the waiting groom. He squared his shoulders and strode indoors, exhilarated yet again by the generous proportions and quiet dignity of the limewashed bungalow with pillared verandas, arched colonnades, high-ceilinged, cool, airy rooms and ample gardens that was allotted to him. Most of his earlier postings in India were in remote encampments and had come with more modest lodgings. It was only in Jaunpur that he had gained the privilege of such an ample residence – a bungalow that stood in a salubrious tree-lined avenue, an easy ride from both the nawab's palace and from his club.
Norman enjoyed both the responsibilities and the perks of his job equally. He travelled mostly on horseback, his pith helmet firmly on his head to safeguard against the harsh sun. It wasn't unusual for him to spend some nights in camp mode before returning to the comforts of his home. He headed a team of well-trained and competent Indian engineers. The department hired a sturdy force of eight hundred labourers, whose wage roster and wellbeing he commanded. It was a hard life, touring with his subordinates, the villages and irrigation schemes falling in his jurisdiction. A hard life, but not an unrewarding one.
Once Martha and Madeline moved to this place, Norman would have no other happiness to ask of life. Even after two decades of being married to Martha, Norman had not stopped marvelling at the thought that a woman of her breeding, education and high taste had agreed to marry him. Of course, he had been an engineer with some prospects, but he was an engineer trained in a small county technical institute, while she had graduated with honours from the University of London, his workingclass background no match for her family's status. Martha had confessed to him several times that she found his humility endearing, his eagerness to learn and get ahead in life lovable. She held that his flexible and amiable nature was too rare a quality in a man to not appreciate. She could not have lived her life with a domineering husband who expected from her obedience and a constant kowtowing to societal strictures. It was Martha's encouragement and connections that had got him into the Royal Indian Engineers College in Surrey. He was glad to have been recruited into the Indian service.
It was odd how Martha had insisted on taking up a teacher's job and living in a small townhouse in Middlesbrough, while he was here leading a lordly life in India, with cooks, bearers and attendants taking care of his every need. Over the years, he had pressed upon her to join him, but her dedication to Madeline's education came above every thought of comfort for herself. There was no denying that Madeline was an unusually gifted child and deserved the devoted mentoring her mother had provided her with by staying on in England. There was also the matter of his wife's increasing interest in the women's suffrage movement. He did not know what to make of it, but it did seem to be fashionable among a certain class of ladies in England.
Martha finally agreed to a year's visit to India. She was keen that Madeline should study at Oxford in 12 months. A year was a good start. Norman was hopeful that once they were here and saw for themselves the comforts and beauty on offer, their plans might change. It would have been good if they had come in November, at the start of the cold season, when ladies from home normally headed to India. A whole season of entertainment and engagements was planned out for them. But Martha needed to finish the school year and examinations, and thus they were delayed. The approaching warm weather could play spoilsport, of course, but Martha was a brisk, hardy woman and Madeline was young and eager. Norman was hopeful that they would adapt.