From the book
Open it anywhere
“But the names,” said Caetano. “Somebody wrote their names?” Pryce turned his head and looked at him as if Caetano had trodden on something of his. “Your priests didn’t,” he said. “They weren’t Portuguese. Our lot didn’t. They weren’t on our side of the line.” He put the flask back inside his coat and buttoned the coat over it, although it was very hot. “They were labour, old chap.”
The Seventh Tunnel · The Ghats, January 1888
From Karachi the North Western runs to Kotri, then up both banks of the Indus to Sukkur and Rohri. There the banks come together on the paper. North of them the lines go on to Multan and towards the passes; east of them the desert is mostly white. Across Rajputana the Bombay, Baroda and Central India is red. The red passes through Ajmer and comes down to Ahmadabad, where several lines crowd into a knot. It leaves the knot for Bombay in the same colour, but now it is ticked. At Ahmadabad the rails stood two feet further apart. The colour gives no warning.
Plate 24 · Imperial Gazetteer Atlas of India, 1931
“Hatvanki,” said Pritamdas, when he caught him looking. “My father had a cloth shop in Shikarpur. He kept a book for the Collector in English, and his own book in this.” “And what was the difference?” “The Collector’s book said my father was a poor man.” Pritamdas snapped the string back round the little book. “His own book said so also. But less.”
The Padlock · Rohri and Sukkur, 1888–89
Nobody could hurry a bebinca. The women of Salcete said that you could tell the temper of a household by its bebinca: a quarrelsome house had thick uneven layers, a sad house pale ones, and a happy house layers so thin and so even that when you cut a slice it looked like the page edges of a closed book. The bebinca, when it was turned out that night, had sixteen layers so fine and so even that José, cutting the first slice, held it up to the lamp and said he could read the newspaper through it.
Ancur · Salcete, December 1939
The story
Two families, two empires
Goa
Portuguese India
The Dourados of Carmona, parishioners of the Church of Our Lady of Succour, subjects of the King of Portugal. Their names are written in the parish registers in Portuguese, in a hand that does not change for sixty years.
Sindh
British India
The Hiranands of Rohri, merchants on the Indus, subjects of the Queen-Empress. Their names are written in the family bahi-khata in Hatvanki, in a hand only the family can read.
Volume I
1880 – 1942
- Opening The Platform
- Prelude Plate 24
- One Because She Did Not Know How to Write
- Two Salt
- Three The First Train
- Four The Seventh Tunnel
- Five The Padlock
- Six The Godowns
- Seven The Ledger
- Eight The Crossing
- Nine The Monsoon Shed
- Ten The Telegram
- Eleven The Widow’s Walk
- Twelve The Survey
- Thirteen The Petition
- Fourteen The Durbar
- Fifteen The Night Train
- Sixteen The Registrar
- Seventeen The Wedding Drum
- Eighteen The Other Wedding
- Nineteen The Break
- Note Author’s Note
- Note A Note on Sources
Sources
Built from the record
The novel grew out of one family’s papers: parish registers from Goa, a file in the National Archives of India, memories of the railway recorded in Sindhi, passports, certificates and letters. Where the record speaks, the book follows it. Where it is silent, the book says so.
Each volume ends with a Note on Sources that separates what is documented from what is remembered and what is imagined.
Begin
Start in Carmona, 1880.
The audiobook is free. The book is the record, read aloud.