Tisara's arrival in the middle Nilgiris was coincident with the huge to-do that Mr. Shankar Iyengar orchestrated at his capacious bungalow for the resident colonial planters and their memsahibs. The event was scheduled to begin at a quarter past seven pm "for a quick drop before dinner and the festivities," as Mr. Iyengar gushed. The owner of Glen Ivor estate, his fortunes had been on the upswing for several months now; the demand for his special curled, twisted and cut tea proving to be insatiable down in the plains. The local government had naturally claimed its quota; Mr. Iyengar duly cooked the books and come pay-up time, submitted a pittance with a resignation that threw the bearing of every martyr ever known at their hour of reckoning into question. Of course the government knew all about the charade, but the fact of Mr. Iyengar was far more important than his taxable revenue, and so it condescended to play the game with solemnity, and sent its bona fide citizenry to his parties. The colonial community of Coonoor, for its part, revelled in this opportunity to test the current fashions from the home country and, of course, current events, not least the piquant matter of Great Britain's on-going hostilities with that "accursed Kaiser." This evening would indubitably occasion just such a moment.

II

A sumptuous banquet was in mid-flow when a white-liveried bearer consequentially announced, "Mr. and Mrs. Brooks."

The conversation stalled. Heads turned automatically, curiously, caught in an inhalation stop.

The American they knew. They had not known of a wife.

"Ladies, Gentlemen?" said Hunter Brooks, genially, then with almost absent pride, " may I present Tisara!"

An audible gasp betrayed the seated guests. They stared transfixed at the apparition so lately welcomed into their midst and by sight, so immediately unwelcome. The colour flared, spread, high roasted crimson to the coffee of her cheeks.

Mrs. Iyengar rose rapidly. A hesitant heartbeat later, her husband followed suit.

"So good of you to have come, Mr. Brooks. Mrs. Brooks, a great honour. Please, please, sit down."

How dare he, thought the ladies with silent indignation, how dare he inflict one of them on us. Was this the American way then, a consummate lack of shame? Consorting with an obvious slave. A strumpet. And vitiating this their hour with the pollution of her nearness.

And the men wondered, what is she like? Is the experience different? Who was she, this slight, wholesome, wholly arresting, wholly disturbing phantasm? How like a gazelle, thought James Crawford wistfully. The comparison was fair, he'd seen the species in South Africa, a teenager in the Boer War, now thirteen years past. With the memory came a pressure to perform, to break the uneasy enchantment that glinted off the chandelier and held the table enshackled.

"It must take a little getting used to things around here, when one is so far away from home, Mrs. Brooks," he said, awkwardly.

She bowed her head, graceful, acquiescent.

Does she speak, the women wondered? And if she does, will she spout some unintelligible patois? Oh dear, thought Maureen Grange, it will be all I can do to keep from sputtering. Oh I hope, I hope I won't.

Janet Crafter spoke, deliberately slow, through thin lips. "It must, of course, be so different from your home in America."

Tisara flashed an unexpected grin, dazzling, catching at the throats of the assemblage, yearningly for the men, unsettlingly for the women.

"Oh, it certainly is different," she murmured, the accent soft, mellifluous Surrey. "Though America's far from being home."

A dawning apprehension settled on the group, a sickening blow to the collective stomach.

Good God, thought James Crawford weakly, she speaks like us.

III

Years later, I moved to Coonoor and wasted no time in calling on Anu Aunty. She had been a close friend of my grandparents in Bombay, having moved there in the wake of her husband's precipitate demise. After six years of playing bridge indefatigably yet unsuccessfully at the Brabourne Cricket Club, she decided that attempted profiteering over cards was a risky business and there was more merit to watching tea pickers pick your tea for your fortune at 4:00 am. Before she left, she managed to inveigle my grandparents into visiting her every summer, and the tradition continued, two generations down, home through the dapper silver oaks and over the tea bushes to a largely anachronistic residence. Only Anu Aunty lived there now; one child was married, with three children, in Stockholm, the other was making his life-statement in the relative warmth of Atlanta. Understandably, Anu Aunty was delighted to see me, young voice from her near past.

"Come in, come in." she said, giving me a hug. "So lovely to see you."

As always, when I entered the drawing room I wondered what she must have seen. Was it the transparent veneer of self-consciousness made manifest in the high polish of the teak floor, the brilliant buff of silver truncheons masquerading as candlesticks, the emollient red of recumbent sofas dressing the room in an elaborate slouch, carefully careless? I don't know if I shall ever have the answer, all that Anu Aunty remembers is one look of ineffable longing and following the gaze, resting on the piano. She had meant to ask her then if she played, but the duties of hostess weighed practically upon her; two spoons of sugar for Mr. Saunders, no milk for Mrs. Grange, a drop of lemon for Patricia Landon, and smiling all the while in gracious acknowledgement of the murmur of approval attending the tea. It was only after a full quarter of an hour had passed that Mrs. Foster made the saccharine suggestion that Penelope Carter play. "She is divine on the keys, the little genius." Penelope had the decency to blush, look down, whisper a half-meant refusal, and then perform the necessary unwilling lamb-lead to the piano-stool. Apparently she had played appallingly, the Dowland attempted went unrecognised, the men winced, the women clapped encouragingly, this spurred the worthy Penelope on, the men tried cricket talk, weather, the price of tea, the women moved from fashion in New Delhi to secrets traded in the boudoir of Her Majesty's seventh cousin once removed ..."the Lady Josephine is so strait-laced, it's unbearable," disguised Dowland ceded place to camouflaged Chopin, maddeningly, maddeningly, while unctuous bearers served little samosas, pakodas, and always, more tea. Every time they stopped where Tisara sat, they hesitated before offering the savouries, as if it were somehow incongruous that they be servile to a fellow purveyor of colour. There was no contempt in the action, merely confusion. Mrs. Iyengar considered saying something sharp in Tamil, then thought the better of it. She closed her eyes for an instant, then propped them wide open. Fatigue was a friend to be held in abeyance.

They were saying to Hunter Brooks, "Have you considered enlisting?"

That war again!

"No," he replied, simply. "It's not my fight."

"Even after the Lusitania?"

He repeated, mechanically, "It's not my fight."

The music had lulled. Everyone was straining to listen to what he was saying. Some had turned an apoplectic purple. Mr. Iyengar looked distressed. He turned imploringly to his wife.

Anu Aunty had murmured, "And do you play the piano then, Mr.Brooks?"

The question, a gentle non sequitur, fell unsuspected like dousing water; somewhere a splinter smouldered, somewhere an ember glowed, then went black. "No, Ma'am!" Hunter admitted. "But Tisara does."

As I guessed, thought Mrs. Iyengar. "Will you give us the pleasure, Mrs. Brooks?"

As she assumed the vacated piano stool, Ian Helm grunted, "No Bach, if you please, Missus, we're boycotting the Germans."

The stone crept into her gaze.

"As you wish."

Abruptly, she began, her fingers flying over the keys in mystical two-time. The assemblage lay still, captivated.

"What music is this?" inquired Mrs. Crafter of Mrs. Grange, in an undertone?

There was awe in the response. "Never heard the kind before."

"It's magic!" exulted Patricia.

The finger play ceased. The torrent held. The applause was enthusiastic.

"Mrs. Brooks," said James Crawford. "You are an unmitigated delight."

Mrs. Foster sniffed. She resented seeing her protege relegated to second light.

"Very pretty, yes. But unconventional. Most unconventional."

The words had desired effect. Unconventional flew in the face of stiff upper lip. The colonial community resumed its reserve in an instant.

"And who did you say was the composer?"

"Scott Joplin," beamed Hunter. "The most famous black composer in ragtime from my country. He's an institution."

The smiles lay frozen on his auditors' faces. Black. Black, black, black. Where will this end, mused Gloria Hart, vexed. If it wasn't the Germans, it was the blacks. Her irritation mounted. Music should really be regulated, she thought, righteously. It must be redeemed, brought back and only to those worthy to practise it. Of who those were, Mrs. Hart had no doubt.

Mr. Iyengar sat paralysed. He saw the lily-white of his evening beginning to betray too much the semblance of a coal-mine. Colour was real to him. Here he was, exalted in stature, borne in triumph on the laurels of his tea, an honorary admittee to the realms of Mrs. Hart's select. To belong, you had to exclude. The riff-raff. The hoi polloi. The Tisara Brooks. His throat was dry. He felt his guests looking at him intently. He gulped. A strange exhilaration came over him. A burst of patriotism.

"Sherry," he bleated. "Sherry for everyone. A toast. A toast to the King Emperor." Tunelessly he began singing, "God save our gracious King."

Cheering, the assemblage clinked glasses and lustily joined in. The piano stayed silent.

When they were done, Edgar Hart inquired, "You didn't play?"

"This King's welfare is of little concern to me," came the off-hand response.

"I beg your pardon?" asked a shocked Trevor Jenkins. Even Hunter Brooks was looking uneasy.

"It's merely my way of saying that I protest."

"Why?" asked Edgar Hart, nonplussed.

"The fact that our people fight your battles on account of an accident of history. A circumstance that enslaves us just as surely as ever my husband's country wrought indignities upon their African charges."

"Sedition is a dangerous business," suggested Mrs. Hart. "Little nobodies have hanged for less."

"Hey, steady on," said Hunter Brooks, rising."

"In fact," said Mrs. Hart, warming to the venom "you could be tried on just that count, you little..."

"Please!" The murmur, torn, was amplified anguish; the assemblage, stupefied, lay mute. Mrs. Iyengar rocked gently, head in her hands, shoulders gently convulsing.

"Anu," said Mr. Iyengar, helplessly, and he reached out a hand. She did not take it.

"Mrs. Iyengar," began James Crawford."

"No,,," she murmured, brokenly. "It's not your war or ours. Only our loss. Only our loss..."

The silence deepened, the silence of shamefaced schoolboys caught in the act of tying tin cans to the tail of a mongrel.

"The fireworks," said Mr. Iyengar, desperately. "Please. Bring the sparklers, Balu. The rockets, Come, please. It will be a grand spectacle. A jolly good show, I assure you." The plea became hysterically insistent, "Please!"

Presently the shouts began, the immediacy of excitement, the cauliflower lights striving in a riot of colour to obliterate the stars.

And Mrs. Iyengar said to Tisara, "Will you play again? Another song?"

"Yes," replied Tisara, softly. "Another Scott Joplin. My favourite. It's called Weeping Willow."

She thought about Gallipoli, of Basra and Baghdad, of white men, and black boys, and brown and intergradations, all lost in servitude to an imperial dream. She thought of an over-run Belgium, a shattered Serbia, a depauperate France. She thought of German losses on the Marne.

She thought of a man she knew as a husband who longed for a colour he could never possess.

And as the refrain searched the silence, she thought of a set of settled colonials, insular and insufferable, who had lost Bach.

This was when she cried.

John Mathew was born in Kottayam, Kerala, on the 26th of June, 1970, to Dr. Chona and Mrs. Elizabeth Mathew, his early years were spent in the Middle East - specifically, Iraq, Jordan and Libya. At the age of 10, he returned to India and completed his schooling in Coonoor, tucked away in the Nilgiri Mountains. John read Zoology through three degrees (B.Sc., M.Sc. and M.Phil.) at Madras Christian College, before taking a short break to work as a copy-writer in an advertising agency in Madras, whilst co-ordinating the production of a musical he had written and originally scored on sea turtles. In 1995, he went to Old Dominion University to commence a Ph.D. programme in Ecology and is currently conducting research on the topic of carnivory among the caterpillars of a particular group of butterflies as a visiting graduate student at Harvard University. His abiding interests are theatre, music, writing (particularly plays), sports (cricket, chess, and the 20 km walk), history, the English Language and species/habitat conservation.

Email to: John Mathew.