Selection Day

Начало книги

I, too, have a secret.

Pebbles and pen-tops; the gold tin-foil wrappers of chocolates; battered coins and the leather handles of cricket bats; cracked green buttons and two-inch needles full of rust: I understand them all.

Pen-tops, you are really lemons. Pebbles are sweeter. Rusty needles are vinegary. The floors of rooms are buttery. Good paper is milky and cheap paper becomes bitter. Orange rinds are tastier than oranges. Only one thing in this world is tasteless.

Plastic!

He was four years old. Every evening at five thirty his father would take Radha Krishna out for cricket practice, and then he would be alone in the room all three of them lived in; he was in Kattale.

Kattale is darkness in Kannada, his mother tongue: and so much darker than any English-language darkness.

In Kattale, his nose pressed against the mirror; he breathed on glass. His tongue grew: and he began understanding and reunderstanding.

Читать дальше →