On the day Anuradha Patwardhan left Udaipur for Bombay to marry a man she had never met in her twenty-one years of life, her mother stretched her beautiful hand through the window of the black Victoria and whispered, “In this life, my darling, there is no mercy.” Anuradha nodded respectfully, longing to ask her what exactly she meant by that. But before she could utter her question, Mrs. Patwardhan’s large, oval eyes, the color of liquid soot, misted over and she closed them with graceful restraint. At that moment, young Anuradha decided that her mother had never looked more beautiful: she wore a cobalt blue sari with gold leaf border, was a woman of rank if not imposing, slender but with relevant parts of her biology strikingly endowed, and with a certain gift for singing that was, to say the least, legendary in Udaipur.

It was this simple yet inexplicably seductive beauty that her daughter had inherited. In fact, Anuradha Patwardhan’s looks were so fabled that more than a few young Romeos of the Udaipur Sonnets Society categorically called her their muse. Was it her hair, that thick, wild mane – a poem in itself? Was it Anuradha’s red lips, as thin and drawn as those of Urvashi – the seductress of the gods? Or was it her appearance itself: poised, composed and elegant, like a hymn in a sari – which was a soft pearly white on that January morning in the deep spleen of Rajasthan. It duly complemented the pale yellow duranta blossoms she encased in her thick chignon, flowers with such a gift for fragrance that several bees became dizzy and promptly fainted in mid-air.

“Maa… I will always cherish everything you have given me…” she burst out as the rider struck the black stallions with a whip made of carefully braided camel eyelashes.

“Never forget the songs,” advised Mrs. Patwardhan as the elegant Victoria jumped forward.

In the carriage, Anuradha sat opposite her father, a man she loved but did not like. Mr. Patwardhan, a small, plump creature with thinning grey hair and a nose curved like the beak of a macaw (Anuradha often thanked Lord Shreenathji for sparing her the awkward features of her father), grinned at her with a politeness bereft of warmth. In any case, she paid no attention to the awkward, hollow manoeuvres of male sympathy and turned hastily to catch the fading sight of her mother. Mrs. Patwardhan stood on the last step of the marble portico, erect as an obelisk but with the grace of a swan, the silk pallo of her sari drawn over her head: a sigh of the grace of her dress. As the carriage trotted down the winding drive, the wind grew fiercer, reducing to dust the image Anuradha was taking in with the fervour of a raging cyclone: ​​it consumed every detail. She captured the grandeur of the house, its ornate windows, the long, shaded veranda as comforting as a paragraph from a favourite novel. She captured the glittering belly of Lake Pichola that surrounded her property, the pergola under which she always sat to watch the shimmering saffron rays of winter sunsets. She captured the texture of the air, its depth of character, the songs the women of her family had sung in it.

A cry gathered in her chest like the white crest of a wave.

The grand old Marwar Express, painted black and trimmed in gold, would take her to Bombay in two days. The platform itself was narrow, long, and strewn with a cluster of cadaverous beggars and lifeless Britons. Several travellers stopped to catch a glimpse of Anuradha, the animal suppleness of her movements, her noble gait, the carriage of her beautiful head, all the various aspects of a fascinating concert. Her handsome leather luggage stood beside her; her father had fallen into conversation with an acquaintance. She folded her arms and thought of how her mother had promised to come to Bombay as soon as she had attended the birth of her youngest daughter-in-law—her due date and Anuradha’s departure had crossed like the tributaries of two rivers: unknowingly, wildly.

Mrs Patwardhan had assured her that she would definitely be in Bombay (“I will grow wings and fly if I have to”) when Anuradha’s marriage was decided, which of course seemed the most likely thing: only a huge fool would ever turn down someone like her. The irony, of course, was that Anuradha had no idea of ​​her own charms: she thought all women inspired sonnets; all women had received marriage proposals since they were four years and thirty-nine days old. So she was the most dignified chaperone at her candlelit tryst with destiny, and it was this modest modesty, a naive unpretentiousness, that took her from merely attractive to—yes, let us bow our heads and admit it—downright irresistible.

A little further ahead she noticed someone pushing coal onto the train, and a minute later a boastful smoke cockade billowed over its haughty metal head. Behind the iron fence of the station stood a clump of sturdy acacias, hammered by the sun and bitten by wandering camels. Now, shortly after she and her father had boarded the train and stowed their luggage under the seat, everyone on the platform began whispering and pointing at the clump of trees: of course even Anuradha stood up to see what all the commotion was about. Her gaze fell again on the acacias behind the station, where peacocks had gathered—not one or two, mind you, but dozens of them. A pageant of peacocks, which, just as the Marwar Express snorted out of Udaipur, unleashed their rain-inducing calls of “Megh-awuu, Megh-awuu, Meghawuu”… Little by little, the sounds of the train, its metallic spite and romantic whistle, the awestruck gasps of the passengers, the sweet tones of the itinerant flute player – all sounds, in fact – were drowned out by peacocks, which unleashed a melody one would not normally associate with such pavonian boasters.

Anuradha’s father looked at her with narrowed eyes; his daughter had been feeding these birds from the high balcony of her bedroom for the past sixteen years.

“I assume you have come to say goodbye?” he said before he Times of India.

“Actually,” she clarified, placing her hand on her sternum, “I called her.”

It was only much later, after a terrible twist in Anuradha Patwardhan’s fortunes, when she returned to Udaipur, heartbroken and in gloomy despair, that the peacocks again sought her audience. But then, as if to honour the agony she had stumbled into, like an animal running into the metal teeth of a poacher’s trap, they were disturbingly silent in her presence.

Excerpt courtesy of The last song of twilight, Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi, HarperCollins India.