Chapter Text
“What’s India like?”
Adil paused at pouring Toby Hamilton’s next drink. The question hung in the air for a moment, and Adil didn’t quite know how to react. The man in front of him leaned on the counter in a mildly buzzed stupor. His suit was more wrinkled than usual, and there a barely-hidden shaken hurt and anger over his face that Adil tried not to notice, as if someone--and hardly anyone in the hotel didn't know who--had just fought with him and won. Not that there was much else to look at, as the ballroom surrounding them was near empty, too early for the night crowd. But the younger Mr. Hamilton was known to start early, as Adil has learned quite well in the several years he had been working there.
Wealthy Englishmen do not ask him about the country of his birth. Oh, they’ll tell him about it, in their typical polite tones; about their romps through the jungle and their prized tiger skins and their business deals and how Adil is so much more refined than the Indians over there, which they surely thought was a compliment. But they did not ask. They weren’t much interested in the India of Indians. At least, not farther than spouting their opinions on the independence movement. The most was an occasional mention of the good Indian soldiers fighting in the war. But, even then, only in passing.
“What do you mean?” he asked, continuing to pour.
“Where’re you from? Which city?”
“New Delhi.”
“Ah, the capital of the Raj?”
“Yes.” Adil’s limbs still felt stiff as he slid Mr. Hamilton his drink. The man nursed it for a few moments, running his finger over the rim--Adil caught his eyes following the movement. He flicked them back up to his face.
“Tell me about it,” Mr. Hamilton requested as he threw the scotch back faster than Adil had expected.
Adil nodded, “Well, the capital was moved from Calcutta in--”
“No no…” Hamilton waved his hand slowly in front of Adil’s face. “I know the history and dates and all that. I want to know what it was like for you.”
Adil’s mouth opened, then closed. He had no answers for that. No one had ever asked. In fact, in the early years he’d trained himself not to discuss India--both to starve off the homesickness and because the English weren’t the keenest on listening to it. Especially not these days, as their departure from "the Jewel" was so significantly growing in popularity. So he swallowed, straightening his jacket and his back. “Well then.”
He thought back to the days of his youth, before the age of fifteen when his father announced that they were moving to England.
“New Delhi is a...different city from London, to say the least. Not as tall, not as gray. Still quite crowded and loud. My father owned a textile shop,” he began. He fiddled with the glasses in front of him without doing much with them in particular, just to busy his hands. Mr. Hamilton stared at him expectantly, and Adil realized that he needed to hear someone talk about something far away from here. “Mother used to help him, as did my sister when she wasn’t in school. I had a little more freedom when I was young. Sometimes my friends and I would run errands for neighbors for a little extra money, like fetch fruit from the market, since we could run between the carts and get them back faster. We’d take them and get some food for ourselves, or if we had the patience to save, sometimes we’d go down to the theatre and see a movie. They were long and not all of them were interesting to me, but there was something about the way people would sing along and move that I quite enjoyed. My favorites were mysteries and crime stories...there was one I remember really liking, Jawani Ki Hawa .”
Mr. Hamilton smiled, and Adil’s hand fumbled on the glass. He cleared his throat and continued.
“I didn’t mind school though. I learned English along with Urdu. I had this friend, Hayder…he was two years older and we attended the same school and mo...had the same religious circle. His brother drove a rickshaw, so after school he would get him to ride us down to this sweet shop. I loved rasgullas. I haven’t had anything that sweet here. They’re balls of pan--um, cottage cheese in a sugar syrup.” His mouth watered slightly at the memory. Of all the things he let himself miss about India, the food was a primary one. He didn't think British food had quite earned its reputation, but it was still bland to his tongue compared to the foods of his memories.
“Sounds delicious,” Mr. Hamilton said in earnest. His tongue tried to form the word. “Rus-gul-la.” He frowned. “Not right at all. I’ll get it sometime.”
The word was indeed butchered, but Hamilton had at least tried. An infectious warmth spread through Adil’s chest. He tried to force it down. One memory in particular hung on his mind in that moment, one he most certainly couldn't relay to his employer. He didn’t remember what age he was exactly, twelve or thirteen. But the sweetshop, like most of the businesses around, was owned by a Hindu family (in fact, his father's shop was the only one on its street to be owned by a Muslim). Their young daughter would always perk up when he came in. Her dark eyes would crinkle into a bright smile as she scooped him his rasgullas, and sometimes if he was lower on money she’d let him off a few rupees with a wink. Adil appreciated her friendliness, though he tried not to take advantage. He’d smile and joke with her back, and she'd return with a perky laugh and perhaps slipping him an extra candy from behind the counter if her father wasn't looking.
The sun was setting when Neha finally let him go. Abba wouldn’t be happy, but he didn’t usually raise his voice. Just look at him with disapproval and return to his newspaper, and perhaps tell his mother later so she could fret if she wanted.
“Watch yourself,” Hayder said with a chuckle as they’d left the shop, rasgullas in tow. “Don’t get as attached to that Hindu girl as she is to you. Her father would throw a fit, and you’d be as good as dead. Not to mention what your family would do.”
Adil blinked in surprise. He chose not to point out that his last name is Brahmin, so they’d probably mind less than Hayder is assuming. Instead, he lead with, “She likes me?”
Hayder turned to gawk at him. He laughed out loud before taking a bite out of his sweet, chewing thickly as he talked through it. “Adil, she stares at you the entire time you’re in the store. Haven’t you seen it when she talks to you? And the way she gives you discounts all the time?”
“I thought she was just being nice.”
“Sure she is. Just only to you.” Hayder fished for another rasgulla and shook his head. “But now that you know, don’t get any ideas. I know if a girl that pretty had eyes for me, I’d go for her Hindu or not. But I think you’re smarter than me.” Hayder winked at him, but Adil still felt nothing but bewilderment. He thought of her face, with it’s big brown eyes and her enthusiastic smiles and long dark hair braided over her shoulder. He perhaps understood what Hayder meant by pretty. He just didn’t feel anything about it.
It was that moment that he started to wonder if something was different about him.
“Could you maybe speak a little Urdu to me, Mr. Joshi? If you don’t mind? I’d love to hear it.”
Adil almost laughed out loud. Who knew what other surprises Mr. Hamilton had under his sleeve? He scraped his mind for something interesting to give him...a poem, a song, anything. But it was like everything about his native tongue had gone blank.
“Yeh din khoobsurat hai,” he said dumbly. But Mr. Hamilton smiled nonetheless.
“What does it mean?”
“This is a beautiful day.”
Mr. Hamilton’s smile spread a little wider. “It’s lovely."
Adil recognized the song Betsey was rehearsing on the other end of the ballroom--the one that had always stuck in his head at the end of the night. He’d hum it as he helped clean the bar after hours, along with an Urdu love song from his childhood that it somehow reminded him of. Adil hardly remembered the lyrics, but the melodies were clear as day in his head. The longer he hummed them, the more the songs seemed to bleed into each other, until they became a lovely new song of both worlds. In any case, they made the time go faster. And lately, when he hummed them, his mind tended to wander towards certain subjects.
He looked back to Toby Hamilton, leaning languidly on the bar with a crooked smile on his face and the glass twisting in his fingers. Adil noted how relaxed he seemed, when usually his mouth was turned down in a tense frown and his shoulders were slumped in a whole other fashion. It was a rare moment that he saw Mr. Hamilton in this kind of state. But oh, how Adil enjoyed them. Mr. Hamilton set his chin on his fist and hummed slightly as he started trailing his finger over his glass once again. Hayder’s warning played once more in his head, to not get attached to someone that he had no hope to be with. His assumption that Adil is smarter than to do so anyway.
Oh, how wrong he was.
“Anything more to tell me?"
Adil stared at him for a long while. With a bitter laugh, he simply shook his head. “Mujhe lagta ki main aapse pyaar kartha hoon.” He quickly looked away, knowing Mr. Hamilton would not understand, but feeling absurdly bold anyway.
Hamilton cocked his head. “What does that mean?”
In a moment of God’s grace, Tom's voice rang from the back to help stock the liquor for later in the evening.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Hamilton, but it seems I must leave you.” Adil turned and walked away from the bar before he could protest, taking a deep breath to steady his nerves before disappearing behind the door.