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CHANDAN KHANNA/Getty Images 5
Santha Rama Rau

This is a 2018 photograph of students from a school in Dwarka, India. Behind them is a statue
of Queen Mary, who ruled the British Empire in the early 1900s and whose title also included
“Empress of India.”
What do you notice about the contrasts between the students and the statue? How might
Premila have reacted to seeing this statue?

It was a very tiring walk for a child of five and When we got to our house the ayah was 35
a half, and I dragged along behind Premila with just taking a tray of lunch into Mother’s room.
my pencils growing sticky in my hand. I can still She immediately started a long, worried ques-
remember looking at the dusty hedges, and the tioning about what are you children doing back
tangles of thorns in the ditches by the side of the here at this hour of the day.
road, smelling the faint fragrance from the euca- Mother looked very startled and very con-
lyptus trees and wondering whether we would cerned, and asked Premila what had happened.
ever reach home. Occasionally a horse-drawn Premila said, “We had our test today, and she
tonga passed us, and the women, in their pink made me and the other Indians sit at the back of
or green silks, stared at Premila and me trudging the room, with a desk between each one.”
along on the side of the road. A few coolies and Mother said, “Why was that, darling?”
a line of women carrying baskets of vegetables “She said it was because Indians cheat,”
on their heads smiled at us. But it was nearing Premila added. “So I don’t think we should go
the hottest time of day, and the road was almost back to that school.”
deserted. I walked more and more slowly, and Mother looked very distant, and was silent 40
shouted to Premila, from time to time, “Wait for a long time. At last she said, “Of course not,
me!” with increasing peevishness. She spoke to darling.” She sounded displeased.
me only once, and that was to tell me to carry We all shared the curry she was having
my notebook on my head, because of the sun. for lunch, and afterward I was sent off to the
Uncorrected proofs have been used in this sample. 145
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