The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [197]
There can be little doubt that the Nautch-girl derived a certain malicious satisfaction from seeing the Feringhi-Rani's daughter dancing attendance upon her own offspring, but Kairi-Bai had enjoyed the sudden sense of responsibility. Her days were no longer empty or aimless, for this latest of Janoo's children was a sickly and fretful little creature and its attendants had been only too willing to let someone else do their work for them – even when that someone was only a six-year-old child. Kairi-Bai was kept fully occupied, and it was not surprising that as the years went by Shushila should have come to look on her less as an older sister than a combination of nurse, playfellow and slave.
Kairi had been all those things: but her reward was love. A selfish, clinging, demanding love, it is true; but love all the same, which was something she had never had before – the poor Feringhi-Rani having died too soon to be remembered; and though Ashok had been kind to her and Sita had given her affection and understanding, she knew that those two loved only each other while Shushila, on the other hand, not only loved her, but needed her. To be needed was an equally novel experience, and such a comforting one that she did not begrudge the long hours of servitude that the idleness of the child's servants thrust upon her.
Had Kairi been given a free hand, it is even possible that she might have succeeded in bringing up her baby sister to be a tolerably healthy and well-adjusted young woman. But she was far too young and inexperienced to be able to combat the pernicious influence of the Zenana women, whose anxiety to curry favour with Janoo-Rani led them to make much of little Shushila, and vie with each other to pet and spoil the child.
The Nautch-girl's own treatment of her daughter was governed entirely by her moods. As these were unpredictable, little Shushila could never be certain if she would be received with a caress or a slap, and as a result she developed a morbid sense of insecurity which was aggravated by the fact that she admired her mother even more than she feared her, and craving as she did for her affection, the careless caresses could not compensate for the misery of being rebuffed. It was this that bred in her a passionate attachment for anything that was safe and familiar: the privacy and protection of the Zenana walls, the faces and voices of all those who peopled her small world, and the unchanging routine of each day. She had no interest in anything that lay beyond the Women's Quarters or in the world outside the Palace of the Winds, and no desire to venture there.
Kairi, who had watched her grow up, was aware of this, and perceptive enough to divine the reason for it, though Shushila herself would never have been able to put it into words, even supposing she had recognized the forces that drove her, which she did not. She was not given to analysing her emotions, any more than the women who pandered to them and by doing so encouraged her to be hysterical and selfish. It was only Kairi-Bai, made wise by harsh experience, who came to realize that her little sister's headaches and the attacks of nervous hysteria that caused so much anxiety in the Zenana were largely imaginary and always self-induced; and that these, together with her fear of the unfamiliar and her high-handed treatment of servants and the humbler members of the Zenana who were incapable of retaliation, were a form of revenge for the lack of interest that her fascinating and imperious mother showed towards her.
Nevertheless it seemed quite natural to Kairi, who was devoid of vanity, that Shu-shu's love for her mother should be immeasurably greater than her love for so unspectacular a person as herself – even though Janoo-Rani, apart from giving birth to her, had done nothing to earn it, while she herself had watched over her and waited on her with tireless devotion, played with her, comforted her and encouraged her, understood her and loved her. Yet with all her understanding, Kairi had