CHAPTER IX
Calutta is singularly lacking in all the stage prop- erties that poets provide as the correct environment for young lovers. The groves of blossoming asok and bakul trees, the canopied foliage of the madabhi, and the song of the tawny-throated cuckoo are con- spicuous by their absence; and yet Love the magician does not retire discomfited from the arid, unlovely modern city. Who can follow the youngest and oldest of the gods on all his courses as he darts in and out with his bow through the thronging traffic, dodging the steel-armoured trams and evading the eye of the red-turbaned policeman?
Ramesh and Hemnalini dwelt in apartments, let off from houses in Kalutola opposite a shoemaker's, next door to a grocer's, and yet the course of their love ran as smoothly as if they dwelt in romantic bowers. The circumstance that their rendezvous was Annada Babu's shabby little table with tea-stains on the cloth and not a lotus-studded lake did not trouble Ramesh. No swain of legend caressed his mistress's tame fawn with more ardent affection than Ramesh displayed when he tickled the throat of Hemnalini's favourite cat; and when pussy arched his back and roused him- self to perform his toilet, he seemed to the infatuated youth the most beautiful creature that ever licked fur.
At the time when all her thoughts were concen- trated on the examination Hemnalini had neglected her sewing, so for some time past she had been tak- ing lessons in needlework from a friend. Ramesh
regarded sewing as a wholly unnecessary pursuit un-
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