CHAPTER 1
711 Words
(Five years earlier before Sakhi’s death)
The rooster's crow pulled George from sleep just as dawn light crept across his bedroom floor. For a moment, he lay there under the mosquito net, caught between dreams and the wrong sounds. No London traffic, no familiar church bells, just birds singing in languages he didn't recognize and the distant lowing of cattle somewhere beyond the walls.
Manipur.
He'd been here for three weeks, and the strangeness still hadn't worn off. When he was merely six years old, his parents had sent him to a British residency school in Kolkata. Later he was sent farther away, to London, where the children of the empire were educated together in cold stone schools and orderly classrooms. England had shaped nearly all of his life. Boarding schools, university, the same grey streets and familiar seasons.
After six years studying literature at Cambridge, he had come east again, expected to follow the same path as the men before him. A career in the civil service waited, and with it the quiet duty of carrying on the work of the empire.
He pushed aside the netting and crossed to the window. The British residency compound spread below him. Whitewashed buildings and manicured lawns, the Union Jack hanging limp in the morning calm. Beyond the walls, the real world was waking up.
Smoke from cooking fires carried the sharp smell of fermented fish. Children chased chickens through narrow lanes. Women balanced water pots on their heads with quiet grace. Bullock carts creaked toward Khwairamband market.
His father had warned him otherwise.
"The locals tolerate us," Jack had said during dinner last night, "but don't mistake tolerance for acceptance. There's been resistance. Small rebellions. You'll need to be careful."
George had nodded, only half-listening.
Now, watching the village beyond the walls, George wondered what lay beyond these neat colonial boundaries.
"George?" His mother's voice drifted up the stairs. "Breakfast is ready, darling."
He found her in the dining room, arranging fresh flowers in a vase. Orchids she'd somehow coaxed from the residency garden. Marina looked at home here.
"Did you sleep well?" she asked, smiling as he sat down.
"Well enough." George reached for the tea.
"Though I'm still not used to the sounds. Everything's so alive here."
"That's one way to put it." Marina set down the vase and took her own seat. "Your father's already at the office. He said he'd be late tonight. Some meeting with the local magistrates."
George nodded absently, his attention drawn back to the window. Beyond the compound walls, he could see the hills rising in the distance.
"Mum," he said suddenly, "would it be all right if I went for a ride? Just around the compound, maybe a bit beyond. I'd like to see more of the area."
Marina's hands paused over her teacup. When she looked at him, her expression was complicated.
"George, you don't speak Meiteilon yet. You don't know the roads, the customs, the people, how things work here."
"I know, but I won't go far. Just want to feel the morning air, see what's beyond these walls." He leaned forward. "Thirty minutes. I promise I'll stay on the main paths."
Marina studied his face. The same face that had begged for puppy dogs at age six, for a later curfew at sixteen. Some things never changed.
"All right," she said finally. "But take one of the horses. And if anyone approaches you, if there's any trouble at all, you come straight back. Understood?"
"Understood." George was already standing, his breakfast half-forgotten.
George guided one of the residency horses through the compound gates, nodding to the guard who watched him.
The moment he stepped onto the dirt road beyond, he could finally breathe. The morning was cool but not cold, with mist still clinging to the harvested rice stubble. The sun painted everything gold. In the distance, the Imphal valley spread out below.
George urged the horse into a trot, then a canter. Wind rushed past his face. The horse carried him along a narrow path that curved up into the hills. He didn't know where it led.
He was twenty-three years old and for once in his life, nobody was telling him what to do or where to go.
- Writer
