A Journey to the West by Lance Mason
#
Jehan Arjani longed for Poona town and the peace of the Fire Temple’s cloistered gardens. He was gutted by the loss of his close comrade Lt. “Kit” Christopher Hale, killed in the Siege of Jhansi. Now Thomas Lowe, Sir Hugh Rose’s chief medical officer, had summoned Arjani and the other Army doctors into his tent from their infirmary sessions with the wounded, sick, and shattered, soldiers who had suffered greatly in taking Jhansi Fort, and then routed the enemy at Betwa River.
“General Rose is sending a group of you to escort the seriously ill and wounded to the rear,“ said Lowe, “and on to Poona.” Arjani dared not to think about this possible route to salvation until Lowe took him aside. “Doctor Arjani, General Rose would like you to report to his tent at once.”
A favourable turn of fortune? Arjani doubted it, but walked to Rose’s tent, where a jemadar stood on guard. “I believe the general wants to see me.”
Inside the tent, the strain of the marches through Central India, the military sieges, and Rose’s own bouts of sunstroke and illness had each etched into his face its own map of the damage done. “Doctor Arjani, I hope you’ll hear me out.” Rose’s diction was brisk, despite the toll of war.
“I believe you know I’ve admired your methods.” Rose paused, verifying Arjani’s attention. “You will now be in charge of moving the wounded to the rear. Reassess tactics once you reach Mhow, and send back to me those who are able to continue the fight, decisions I leave in your hands.” He picked up a quill pen and twirled it in his fingers. “You will accompany the others home to Poona.” The relief of this hit Arjani like a tumbling wave, and Rose continued.
“I intend to have the mess out here cleaned up by June, after which I’ll pass through Poona before sailing for Britain, a journey I encourage you to consider, as well. Fine medical institutions there. Cambridge, my old haunt, hasn’t one, but London, Bristol, Edinburgh, they’ll do.” Wiping his spectacles, he then fitted them back on his face. “Need to think of these things—where you can do your best work. We’ll discuss this before I leave India, who you should meet, all that.”
Later, all Arjani really grasped was that a great weight had been lifted from his neck.
#
After his return to Poona, as the months passed, Arjani’s mental and emotional scars of war grew less livid, his lease on his Zoroastrian faith renewed. Newly minted as Major Arjani, Senior Surgeon, he once again sat opposite Sir Hugh Rose, commander-in-chief of the Bombay Army, who had read Arjani’s report on a special assignment Rose had given him.
“As you surmised, sir, the need for a medical college in Poona is great,” Arjani said, “and the town well suited for it. But the current situation might hamper progress.”
Rose had one mistress, the Army, and was its regional commander. “What the devil? What situation do you mean?”
“Well, sir, with the fated demise of the East India Company, reorganization means that command decisions, so natural to you, may no longer fall to such capable leaders.”
Rose drummed his fingers on his desk, his smile almost a smirk, his tone warm. “Major, are all of your Parsi tribe so oily with their praise?”
Now Arjani smiled as well. “We value truth, sir, as we see it.”
“Yes, yes, but the point of this is that progress will drag out. Correct?”
“Extremely well put, sir.”
Rose’s focus seemed to dawdle a bit, then he said. “In that case, we should accelerate the other matter.”
Arjani’s mouth formed an O. “The other matter…?”
“Of your going to Britain. I can provide letters to the right people.”
As usual, Rose’s direct manner swept Arjani off his feet. “General, may I collect my thoughts and discuss this with you in a week’s time.” Rose and Arjani agreed on lunch the following Tuesday.
& & &
Pieces of the Puzzle
Before the week was out, Jehan Arjani met Jock Gough-Martin at Poona Horse Officers’ Mess for drinks, a mutual habit. The loss of their mate Kit Hale had settled in but not vanished.
Jock sipped his whiskey. “When are you meeting with the general again?”
“Funny you should ask,” Arjani replied, and recounted his conversation with Rose.
“So, Britain, you’re thinking?” Jock examined his glass. “Not the worst place in the world.”
“So I’ve heard,” Arjani replied.
On the appointed day, he arrived at General Rose’s offices for a catered lunch.
“What’s your decision, young man?” Direct, as usual.
“I see clear arguments for my pursuing medical experience in Great Britain.”
“Famous, Major, famous.”
“And not before long, sir. I’m a bit stretched, but have some funds set aside—“
“I can help you. A job, something you can do for the Army.” Rose was sincere, but started with humour. “Maybe spying on the Russians, eh? That Alexander II has tyranny in his blood.”
Arjani smiled. “If caught, sir, will I be hung?”
“Shot, more likely,” Rose said. “Damnable waste of Army pay, so don’t get caught.”
“I’ll do my best, sir.” Arjani said.
A more sincere plan followed.
#
The Gifts of Travel
Three months later, Jehan Arjani, aged 32 years, sailed from Victoria Dock, Bombay, bound for Aden and Suez, and then overland to Port Said. From Alexandria, he sailed the Med to Marseille aboard P&O’s new ship Poonah, coincidentally named for Arjani’s birthplace. During the crossing, the odd medical matter among the passengers led to pleasant conversations with Arjani on his field of practice and reasons for travel. Yet he never felt pressed by such courtesies, and the days moved with the flow of a gentle river, a splash here, a ripple there.
Arjani welcomed the unremarkable pace of the voyage and, shortly after dawn on 12 May, 1862, Poonahdocked at La Joliette, the newer harbour of Marseille, an ancient, pulsing, scrambling city of 300,000. The scenes of intense humanity, the expanse of sky above the surrounding hills, nearly overwhelmed Arjani’s thoughts of goals and destination. The city’s odors and aromas were as piquant and varied as in Sharbatwala Chowk, Poona’s open market. Some were familiar—cumin, fennel, sesame oil—and others born of the sea and the flora of many parks and gardens. Yet Arjani didn’t fool himself. He felt his misgivings in this foreign city, as sure as any fear in such a place facing the sea. Now was the time, if he must, to turn his back, board the next outbound ship, and return to India.
No. He would see it through. Mahrukh and Arshan had raised him to honour himself and his heritage. Uncle Zubin had trained him well in medicine, and he had done his best to live a life that saw things through. The world was out there for him to embrace and, yes, dissect, and he would honour the path that Ahura Mazda had set him on.
The ship’s gangways gushed its passengers ashore, and a dozen horse-drawn carriages dockside were offering transport to the city. By noon, he and five of his fellow passengers were in transit, their immediate luggage lashed to the back of the wagon, the atmosphere redolent with horse’s sweat, seabreeze, and coal smoke. Arjani couldn’t help but notice, not for the first time, two lovely young women, with sable hair and perfect skin, who sat nearby. On the trip from Alexandria, he had caught glimpses of them now and then, but they kept much to themselves. As the carriage lurched along, and Arjani drank in the color and commotion between the harbour and the station, someone tapped his arm.
“I beg your pardon, sir, but we noticed you on the ship. May we ask your destination?”
The voice was a hymn from heaven, pure, lyrical, as melodious as birdsong in the evening. Its owner was the taller of the two ladies, and they both looked at him now as if he held the keys to their futures.
“How do you do?” he said with difficulty. For someone who had reconstructed shattered limbs and put others in their graves, how could he feel so unprepared for a social encounter? “My name is Jehangir Arjani. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
The two women smiled gleefully at each other, and then back at him. “Be assured, sir, it is our pleasure. I am Valeria Concello, and this is my cousin, Anna Maria Tagliapietra.”
He would always wish he had said, As lovely as both your names are, they fail to do you justice. Instead he said, “I hope you’re enjoying your travels.”
“Delightful,” Valeria said, “and I hope yours, also. May I ask then, your destination?”
“From here,” Arjani said, “I will catch the train, the Bombay Mail, to Paris and on to London. And you?”
The women exchanged glances again. “A few days here, and then to Milan.”
Arjani was desperate to be nonchalant. “Visiting friends, I suppose?”
“Family.” Valeria, smiling, did all the talking. “We are Italian, of course, and with big families, so we have good travels—Egypt, Marseille, Milan.”
“You boarded at Alexandria?”
“We did, yes. We are three weeks in Egypt, but not our first time.”
“Your English is excellent” Arjani said.
“Thank you.”
“I have no Italian.”
“Anna Maria has little English,” Valeria said, “but understands everything. Your English is also excellent. You are from where, if I may ask?”
“India, from the western region. English is our second language.”
“We see Indians in Egypt, and in Marseille. But, well, you are different, yes?”
“A bit. I am Parsi.” They were well away from the docks now, and Arjani had an eye out for the St. Charles station. “A small community, but India is our home over many centuries now.” Arjani could hear Arabic dialects spoken by passersby, an indication of France’s colonial reach.
“Parsi? You are a Zoroastrian, then?”
Suddenly Arjani felt out of his depth. “How could you possibly know that?”
Valeria waved her hand. “We are descended from Marco Polo.” She said this with no pretense. “He wrote favourable things about your ancestors from his travels to the East.”
“I have heard this,” Arjani said.
“It is in all the Italian schools. You are famous there.” She and Anna Maria laughed at this. “And what is for you in merry old England?”
“I will be teaching there.”
“You have a young face,” Valeria said, “but a wise one. You have seen some of the world. You are a professor?”
“No, not at all. A junior lecturer at a London hospital, St. Bartholomew’s.”
Valeria wore a look of pleased surprise. “You are a doctor? Of medicine? Of course, we heard talk of you on the ship. I expected someone…”
“Older?”
“Yes, older. Please excuse me,” she said. “And what is your—how do you say it—discipline?”
“Surgery, though most of my experience has been in battlefield medicine.”
This seemed to confuse Anna Maria and Valeria a little. “Cirurgia? Battaglia? In the war? You fight in the war?”
Arjani’s smile was gone, and he shook his head. “I care for the sick and wounded who fight, who come from the battlefield.”
Now Anna Maria and Valeria showed very solemn looks, spoke under their breath, and nodded to each other. “You are a very good man,” Valeria said. “You are a hero.”
Arjani had known many doctors in the field, some heroes, some not.
The horses had brought them to the station, and their travel bags were being offloaded.
Valeria spoke again. “Then, Dr. Arjani, you will leave today?”
“Please, call me Jehan. No, I am in Marseille two nights, as my things on the ship—my books, instruments, remaining clothes—are shifted to the rail station.”
Anna Maria glanced at Valeria, but Valeria kept her eyes on Jehan’s. “As well as evidence of your sins, Doctor?”
Arjani held his expression, and then turned to Anna Maria, whose blush rose from her throat to her cheeks. He smiled. “Perhaps nothing to discuss politely with a stranger.”
Valeria looked a bit sullen. “Surely, we are no longer strangers.” Then, like a playful child, she said, “Are we, Jehan?”
Arjani tried to keep his feet, but Valeria was sweeping him off them. “No, Valeria, certainly not.”
At this, Anna Maria took Valeria’s hand, her full smile back, and Valeria said, “So good to know. Then you will perhaps join us for dinner tonight, with our family here in Marseille?”
“That is most gracious,” Arjani said, “but shouldn’t you ask them first?”
“Not at all,” said Valeria, “our uncle denies us nothing.”
“How are you related to him?”
“Giancarlo is the younger brother of my father Paolo, and the older brother of Giulio, the father of Anna Maria. Giancarlo’s business is wine, bringing it from Spain, Italy, and Corsica to France, and selling the wine of France to these countries. He lives there.” She pointed to a low, verdant hill a little east of the station. “In a small, beautiful house, near the Palais Longchamps and the zoo.”
Arjani’s face showed a pleased resignation. “And you insist?”
Now, to his surprise, Anna Maria spoke. “Si! We inseest!”
This mild outburst brought laughter all around, and so Arjani consigned one traveling case to left-luggage at the station and dropped a second at his pension nearby. In India, Poona displayed a somewhat cosmopolitan, international flavor, but now Arjani recognized that display as distinctly and narrowly British. Marseille flaunted its ancient, polyglot, hybridized dynamism as the refinement it was, a long, gradual ferment distilled by commerce and pride in the mixture.
The evening was everything Valeria promised—the small, lovely house, Giancarlo’s obedience to her wishes, his gracious welcome to “the stranger,” and the uncommonly delicious mélange of Italian and Moroccan foods made whole by the subtle brilliance of the wines.
“It will sound like a cliché,” Arjani said to his host, “but I can’t recall a more satisfying evening than this.”
“It was our pleasure,” said Giancarlo, in robust English, “I and my nieces. We hope you will come and visit us again.”
“And perhaps,” said Arjani, “you may come to England and visit me there.”
“Yes, of course,” the uncle said, “a great venture. Great wine drinkers, the English.”
“Indeed, they are,” Arjani said, “and now I must take my leave.”
The ladies were immediately on their feet. “We will walk you,” Valeria said.
Arjani shook his head. “That’s not necessary. I saw a few horse cabs on the street. You stay in where you are comfortable.”
“Oh, no,” Valeria said, “we’re not lodging here. This tiny place?” She and Anna Maria and Giancarlo all laughed together, probably a family joke. “Giancarlo has a large country villa outside the city, and we will go to him there in a day or two.” Her eyes still on Jehan, she leaned in and kissed her uncle on each cheek. Anna Maria did the same. “But for now, we have rooms not far from your pension.” And so they walked through the deepening dark, their way lit by gas lamps or public houses along the route.
“Do not be concerned,” Valeria said. “We know Marseille well, and there is no danger. My uncle is well known here. No one will harm us.”
How “no one” would know that these women were nieces of the “well-known uncle” was not a question in Arjani’s mind. Perhaps it was the wine. At Boulevard Voltaire, Arjani now felt oriented, his small hotel to the left, two turns and five minutes’ walk.
“Valeria, Anna Maria, I have not the words to thank you adequately for—”
“No, no,” Valeria insisted, waving a finger, both her modus operandi and a charming habit. “The evening is not fully gone, Jehan, and you must walk us to our rooms for a small refreshment before we part.”
“Another invitation,” said Arjani, with mock annoyance, “that I’m unable to decline.”
Valeria guided him, and they came shortly to a row of two-story wood-and-plaster townhouses in the Mediterranean style, tiny gardens in front, with low, black wrought iron fences. At No. 28, Valeria tugged Arjani’s elbow.
“We are here. Informal, but quite friendly.” She steered him up the walk, but then Anna Maria stopped, crooked her finger at Valeria, and whispered something Arjani couldn’t hear. Valeria replied a bit louder, but in Italian, then turned back to Arjani.
“She is concerned you will misunderstand.” Valeria paused and looked down the road a moment, then at her feet, and then at Arjani. “You are our guest here. It is very old but very clean. Sometimes a woman brings a man here… for business. But it is a respectable house, all the same. We lodge here always in Marseille, and they know us well. You must not worry. Anna Maria and I have not brought you here for business.”
#
Strangers No More
Arjani was certain his face portrayed every bit of the embarrassed confusion he felt. “Business?”
“No business with you, Doctor.” Valeria said with drama and humour, then faced Anna Maria and cocked her head, as if verifying some secret agreement. Valeria opened the front door of No. 28, showing a short, narrow foyer and a modest parlor to the left with a loose collection of armchairs and sofas around a large, low table. Velour curtains and lace doilies made the room seem overdressed. Two couples sat separately, perhaps, thought Arjani, “for business.” Yet they were properly turned out, and he dismissed any awkward suspicions.
A matronly woman appeared in the foyer, at the foot of a staircase, greeting the two cousins warmly. To Arjani, perhaps she also was overdressed. Valeria beckoned him over.
“Madame Rivette, may we introduce our new friend, Dr. Jehan Arjani, from India, on his way to Great Britain as a professor of medicine.”
“Valeria, please! Madame Rivette, you must excuse the young lady for her wild exaggerations. I have a junior teaching post in London, my first. Any professorship is many years away.”
“Mssr. Doctor,” the woman said, “a pleasure to meet any friend of my darling girls. Welcome, and I hope you enjoy your time in Marseille.” Then she said something sotto voce to the cousins before strolling to the parlor and her other guests. Valeria said, “Come,” and led Jehan up the stairs. Anna Maria smiled and waited, gesturing for him to go ahead, and she followed.
Halfway up the staircase, turning at the landing, Valeria briefly caught Arjani’s eye, and he read something enigmatic, even guarded, in her expression. Likewise, a moment later, turning on the next landing, he glanced back at Anna Maria, and her joyful face was now subdued. At the top, Valeria led them through an apartment door, darkly paneled, into a large, square room. At a far corner, two large, stoutly framed windows met, giving expansive views onto the Cathédrale La Major to the west and back to Palais Longchamps to the east, both sparsely lit under the evening stars.
Before he realized it, Arjani was standing at the windows, entranced. He knew the vista in daylight would be stunning, with Marseille sprawling below. “Small wonder you return here when you can,” he said, almost to himself.
“We are prisoners of the city’s beauty,” Valeria said.
He nodded. “It has so much to show you.” As he turned from the window, Anna Maria handed him a snifter holding a generous portion of what he recognized, from the gleam and aroma, as cognac. She then passed one to Valeria.
Lifting her own, Anna Maria said, “Alla nostra salute.”
Valeria offered Arjani a small, almost probing smile. “To the health of us all, Doctor, and the work that you do.”
Did Arjani feel signs of something shifting between him and these women? Rather than search for a verbal reply, Arjani raised his glass, too, and took a mouthful of the rich and fumey liquor. As he brought his glass down, Anna Maria slipped her hand between his upper arm and his body, closed her fingers around his bicep, and rested her head against his chest. Half shocked by such intimacy from this woman, and half intoxicated by her warmth, Arjani tilted his head to see her face. As he did, Valeria placed her hand on his other shoulder and put her lips to his ear.
“Madame knows our family, knows we are… free in the mind, and in the heart, free in the way we see life. You comprehend?”
Arjani said, “Yes,” not at all sure that he did, that he grasped those things that Valeria meant, what she was trying to say, to show him. And when she replied “I’m glad you do,” he wondered if he’d deceived her, and deceived Anna Maria, as well.
In the end, it didn’t matter whether Arjani had fully comprehended Valeria’s words because she and Anna Maria expressed all of it to him in a vividness and harmony that defined her meaning in ways that speech alone could never do. Valeria was, it seemed, a teacher to her cousin, a knowing and gentle guide through many of the unspoken, sometimes sacred, sometimes flesh-borne paths of life. Arjani was no rake, but neither was he a novice, so that his experiences in India and in his travels, and his basic kindness, helped to deepen the rewards for all of them, through the night and into the morning.
As agreed the previous evening, out of Arjani’s hearing, breakfast was set for four, including Madame Rivette.
“It seemed you were having a most indulgent evening,” the hostess said.
At this, Arjani froze, unsure of the protocol for such a conversation with a woman who was, regardless of Valeria’s contacts, still a stranger to him.
“Giancarlo is always at his best with us,” Valeria said. “His brothers are watching.”
Arjani relaxed. The madame had been referring to dinner with the uncle, not activities on these premises.
“And,” she asked, “what are your plans for the day?”
Valeria and Anna Maria chatted with their friend in Italian, French, and English. They would visit a few favourite Marseille shops, and then their uncle’s villa. They showed no obligation to include Arjani in their plans. The encounter had been happenstance, much to the enjoyment of all three, without tentacles of need or attachment.
“I am afraid,” Valeria said, “that we have made Doctor Arjani into our slave, forcing dinner on him, wine, cognac, so that he has not seen enough of Marseille to really speak of its charms.”
Smiling and shaking his head, Arjani said, “The charms I’ve seen here in Marseille have created memories that I will never forget.”
Madame Rivette turned her warm face to his. “One day you will understand that these girls are constantly—always— fishing for compliments. Try to ignore it.”
The four of them were laughing now, trading small jokes, and eating breakfast. By midmorning, they had all prepared for the day abroad. Arjani would check the transport of his ship-board baggage to Gare St. Charles, his own train booking, and catch up with his journal entries. The three said au revoir at the door of No. 28.
“You will always reach me,” Arjani said, “through St. Bartholomew’s, London. You are obligated to visit at the first opportunity.”
“And you will show us all of merry old England, yes?” Valeria said.
“Saudade,” said Anna Maria, and, once again, Arjani looked confused.
Valeria interpreted. “A lovely Portuguese word. We feel badly to see you go, and will miss you, but we look forward to the joy of seeing you again.”
This nearly brought Arjani to tears, embarrassed and a bit ashamed to only communicate with Anna Maria through another—at least in words.
#
The Seat of Empire
France’s chemin de fer and Provence-to-Paris service from Marseille were a triumph of Napoleon III’s 2nd Empire, now reliably on time and generally safe. The day his goodbyes to Valeria and Anna Maria, Arjani’s train left St. Charles on schedule, now steaming north at nearly 45 mph, Provence and the Languedoc slipping away to the south.
While Arjani had heard France made the world’s finest wines,he had never pictured how such an achievement would look. Now he was enthralled. The terrain of South-Central France rolled slowly toward Lyon, horizon to horizon in the spring growth of vineyards, lavender, sunflowers, and market gardens. Row after streaming row stretching away to the farthest hills, like the multi-colored rugs of the East, put Arjani in mind of the ancient fables of Scheherazade. He could now grasp the inbred arrogance of some French he’d met in Pondicherry and Cairo and the Crimea. When one’s country displays this grandeur, the outside world can seem devoid of color.
In the train, undistracted by society’s milieu, Arjani began to dwell on the structure of his life. His passions for medical pursuits would be indulged at St. Bartholomew’s, his career moving forward. His taste for exploration, fed by traversing the south of France, would continue in Great Britain and the Continent. With his recent—and lavish—indulgences with Valeria and Anna Maria, he felt no poverty of romance.
This left one dark place in his life. As a man of medicine, he would always confront death, his natural adversary. But there was another place where it roosted in his life—in the khukri murders, the five he knew of in India, plus the attack years before on Lieut. Christopher “Kit” Hale in Poona, all tied somehow to Poona Horse, the British regiment in Jehan’s home city. It had been 15 years since Hale’s assault, and it made no mathematical sense that a single person, Jehan Arjani, had discovered every death the killer had caused over such a spread of time and space. There must have been more. He knew of the one woman’s death through Uncle Zubin, and the others by happenstance and the trail of rumors. Even encountering Kit Hale, bleeding on the steps of Zubin’s clinic, was by chance. How many more might there have been? And who was the killer? And why didn’t he kill Hale, assuming “he” was a he?
Arjani had heard of no more such murders since the finish of the Sepoy Rebellion and the end of the East India Company’s reign in India. Still, that was no proof they had stopped. By his own logic, over those fifteen years, another five or ten killings may well have happened of which Arjani never knew, deaths never identified as murder. His ignorance of more didn’t prove the killer was finished.
But who was the killer, and why? Other than the woman, they were all British soldiers. Could Britain’s forced occupation of India be the primary motive of the knife-wielding killer, perhaps the motive?
#
“Dr. Arjani.” An echo rang faintly off the walls and ceiling of Charing Cross Station. “Dr. Arjani.”
At first, he struggled with the accent and his surprise at being hailed in public.
“Dr. Arjani, for St. Bartholomew’s.”
He saw the man, twenty paces away, in bowler hat and three-quarter coat. One hand raised, Arjani struggled with his two traveling cases. “I am Jehan Arjani.”
The man strode over. “How do you do, sir? Backens is the name, David Backens. I’ll take those, sir.” He deftly lifted the cases from Arjani’s hands. “Right this way.” He began to lead Arjani toward the street. “This is all you got, sir?”
“I consigned my other baggage by rail and sea, Mr. Backens, from the station in Paris.”
The man strode ahead. “Well done, sir. Your first time in London, Dr. Arjani?”
“Yes, my first time in Britain.”
“We’ll have you at the hospital in no time, sir. Just over to Fleet Street, and a left turning near the Cathedral, sir.”
Outside on the cobblestones were a string of horse-drawn carriages of a dozen designs – one-horse, two-horse, four-horse, two-wheeled, four-wheeled, open, enclosed.
“Here she be,” Backens said, “the hansom just there.” He held both bags with one arm, opening the door with the other hand. “You step in, sir, and I’ll hand up the bags.”
When all was secure, Backens closed the door and said through the window, “I’ll be up the back, sir, and never you mind the crowds. My mare Jenny will get this tidy wagon to your residence before the paint’s dry.” He saw Arjani’s curious look. “Just an old saying, sir. You’re all right, then?”
Arjani used an expression learned from Kit and Jock. “Crashing, Backens, crashing.” Now the cab driver seemed confused, so Arjani added, “Just an old saying.”
Backens nodded, tapped his hand on the door frame, and then stepped up onto the seat above. They were off, racing along the Strand, Trafalgar Square behind them, St. Paul’s in view ahead. Down Fleet Street, the springs in the cab smoothed out the bumps and, true to his word, Backens had them up Blackfriars Lane and past the Old Bailey in quick time, then around to the entry for the junior staff quarters. He made a dignified hop onto the street, retrieved Arjani’s bags from inside the cab, along with his passenger, and led him up to the door.
“Wishing you a rewarding stay here, Dr. Arjani. How long do you expect to be with us?”
“Thank you, Backens, for your kind assistance. I can’t tell you yet how long my stay will be. We’ll just have to wait and see.” He didn’t know just how true that would prove to be, or how close behind him the murderer was.
& & &
1. Thomas Lowe’s contributions in India and Britain can hardly be overstated. His treatise “Central India – During the Rebellion of 1857and 1858” is a masterful chronicle next to which this one may, I fear, pale in comparison.
2. While Arjani may have been flattering Rose, whose command skills were never in question, many with proven leadership did remain in India, including Jock Gough-Martin’s much respected father. Yet some would argue the East India Company still held too strong a hand.
3. Arjani and Rose would regret a teaching hospital was not established that year in Poona, much the better locale for climate and civic ambience than Bombay. Yet ground was broken in 1868, and the hospital established in 1869, where Zubin Dadachanji later became Professor of Surgery.
4. Opened in 1869, the Suez Canal has greatly facilitated the Crown’s administration of India, and may someday prove a key sea route for other countries, as well.
* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Lance Mason 2026
Image Source: Tiger on the Top of Me from Public Domain Image Archive