The Temple

In India, when I was young, a laced-up collar and a new-spiced bun were the things I treasured most.  Not Karole, my half-sister whom I despised; nor strawberry laces, which all the British kids seemed to covet when I first came here to school.  I have never understood the appeal of these factory-boiled sweets, these fake imitations of enjoyment where fresh and handmade are a possibility.  You will be relieved, perhaps, to know that I now value my sister more than I did then.  In fact I have to say that Karole is my saving grace, whenever I have been at one of life’s many crossroads, she has been there to steer me away from the dangers and show me the way forwards.  We may not live in the same continent even but she is with me in so very many ways.

Granny-gee’s cooking was always a delight, she used plenty of clarified butter and her sweet baking always had rosewater, she said it had been denied to her by her father until she was nine as he thought her not yet able to appreciate its goodness and that ever since she had been unable to let more than a few days pass without using it in someway or another.  Her hair was rinsed in the sweet liquid every day before morning prayer.

I remember peeling the golden layer back off the top of one of her buns, feeling the warm steam caress my cheeks as I uncovered the plump and inviting dough beneath, then hiding in a cupboard up off the first floor balcony, so Karole wouldn’t find me and steal my prize.  She was a couple of years older than me and these things mattered; in-fact they still matter to this day.  I suppose an adult would see the two of us and hypothesise that it were only natural for us not to get-on; her father had died when Karole was two and my mother had been destroyed by fever when I was still in my infancy.  Our remaining parents had gotten together for numerous reasons, not least of which being support and shared-loss, and we had stayed apart for numerous reasons of our own.  We tolerated each other at mealtimes and family parties but I would not have allowed her my baked sweetmeat for all the tea in the world.  Granny-gee would have seen her right anyway, looking back I realise this now.  Granny-gee was not my granny, even though I looked upon her as such, Granny-gee was an employee of my father’s, yet she was granny-gee to me and a whole host of kids in the neighbourhood and there were many like me who knew where to get a cuddle and a sugar cube when we scraped our knees in the forested hills around Shimla.

Karole called me from the street, she was bored and I was her surest playmate.  Funny to think we played together so much when we were such sworn combatants.  Children have different rules you see.  She had discovered a cave up in the hills – or one of her lieutenants had – and we were to explore it.  I allowed her to search for me a bit as I devoured my confectionary find and then revealed myself at the top of the stairs like a Mogul Prince greeting his guide.  I was six at this point and Karole was nearer eight, only in my mind did I dare think of her as inferior, she would have had me crying ‘Uncle’ if she had caught a whiff.

The cave was on a slope located behind the railway bridge.  It had not been found by us before because to get to it you had to jump onto the tracks momentarily to access the ridge beyond.  As one might imagine, this was agreed as out-of-bounds to we children and it was only because of the exciting prospect of this being a goldmine or a haunted dragon’s lair that we plucked-up enough courage to disobey and venture forth.  Karole held my hand lest I slip down the incline and, stride by stride, we gained enough height up the slope to disappear from the view of any boatmen on the river below and climb onto the ridge.  It was a beautiful yet dreadful sight, the cave had been silent for so long, it was plain to see and whether dragons or gold diggers had been privy to it once, there were now none to be feared.  Fronds of native greenery half-obscured the entrance and Karole held these aside so we could look within. 

It looked like a temple had been hewn from the cliffs by a god. Strange faces leered down at us from columns at the side and at the doorstep was a shallow bowl dyed red from what I assumed to be blood offerings. Karole screamed and fell backwards, clutching vainly to the scraggy leaves she held but it was no use, her sandals had twisted about her feet and she was losing balance with every flailing movement.  Forgetting about the temple behind us I leapt forwards and wrapped my arms about her waist pulling her back-up to the safety of the cliff wall.  Panting, we sat still and cried for a moment, neither of us ready for another loss in our lives.  We must have sat there for a half-an-hour or more for we suddenly realised by the hooting of a train approaching that we were getting close to lunchtime.  I helped Karole back down the path and we ran for home hand-in-hand, breathless and happy in the sunlight.

That hillside cave became our place and we would leave messages for each other there whenever one of us had been home for the holidays and the other hadn’t.  We named it the temple of Shiva and left offerings of incense and dried fruit for him to appease the fear that had sent Karole tumbling that day in June one Summer back when we were children.  She never stumbled again but, if she did, I was always ready to catch her.