According Sir Mohan all, "the mirror was obviously made in India " why did sir Mohan lal say so?
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Sir Mohan Lal looked at himself in the mirror of a first-class waiting room at the railway station. The mirror was obviously made in India. The red oxide at its back had come off at several places and long lines of translucent glass cut across its surface. Sir Mohan smiled at the mirror with an air of pity and patronage.
“You are so very much like everything else in this country—inefficient, dirty, indifferent,” he murmured.
The mirror smiled back at Sir Mohan.
“You are a bit all right, old chap,” it said. “Distinguished, efficient—even handsome. That neatly trimmed mustache, the suit from Saville Row with the carnation in the buttonhole, the aroma of eau de cologne, talcum powder and scented soap all about you! Yes, old fellow, you are a bit of all right.”
Sir Mohan threw out his chest, smoothed his Balliol tie for the umpteenth time, and waved a good-by to the mirror.
He glanced at his watch. There was still time for a quick one.
“Koi hai?”
A bearer in white livery appeared through a wire-gauze door.
“Ek chota,” ordered Sir Mohan and sank into a large cane chair to drink and ruminate.
Outside the waiting room Sir Mohan Lal’s luggage lay piled along the wall. On a small gray steel trunk, Lachmi, Lady Mohan Lal, sat chewing a betel leaf and fanning herself with a newspaper. She was short and fat and in her middle forties. She wore a dirty white sari with a red border. On one side of her nose glistened a diamond nose ring and she had several gold bangles on her arms. She had been talking to the bearer until Sir Mohan had called him inside. As soon as he had gone, she hailed a passing railway coolie.
“Where does the zenana stop?”
“Right at the end of the platform.”
The coolie flattened his turban to make a cushion, hoisted the steel trunk on his head, and moved down the platform. Lady Lal picked up her brass tiffin carrier and ambled along beside him. On the way she stopped by a hawker’s stall to replenish her silver betel-leaf case, and then joined the coolie. She sat down on her steel trunk (which the coolie had put down) and started talking to him.
“Are the trains very crowded on these lines?”
“These days all trains are crowded, but you’ll find room in the zenana.”
“Then I might as well get over the bother of eating.”
Lady Lal opened the brass carrier and took out a bundle of cramped chapattis and some mango pickle. While she ate, the coolie sat opposite her on his haunches, drawing lines in the gravel with his finger
“Are you traveling alone, sister?”
“No, I am with my master, brother. He is in the waiting room. He travels first class. He is a vizier and a barrister, and meets so many officers and Englishmen in the trains—and I am only a native woman. I can’t understand English and don’t know their ways, so I keep to my zenana interclass.
Lachmi chatted away merrily. She was fond of a little gossip and had no one to
talk to at home. Her husband never had any time to spare for her. She lived in the upper story of the house and he on the ground floor. He did not like her poor, illiterate relatives hanging about his bungalow, so they never came. He came up to her once in a while at night and stayed for a few minutes. He just ordered her about in anglicized Hindustrani and she obeyed passively. These nocturnal visits had, however, borne no fruit.
The signal came down and the clanging of the bell announced the approaching train. Lady Lal hurriedly finished off her meal. She got up, still licking the stone of the pickled mango. She emitted a long, loud belch as she went to the public tap to rinse her mouth and wash her hands. After washing, she dried her mouth and hands with the loose end of the sari, and walked back to her steel trunk, belching and thanking the gods for the favor of a filling meal.
The train steamed in. Lachmi found herself facing an almost empty interclass zenana compartment next to the guard’s van, at the tail end of the train. The rest of the train was packed. She heaved her squat, bulky frame through the door and found a seat by the window. She produced a two-anna bit from a knot in her sari and dismissed the coolie. She then opened her betel case and made herself two betel leaves charged with a red-and-white paste, minced betel-nuts, and cardamons. These she thrust into her mouth until her cheeks bulged on both sides. Then she rested her chin on her hands and sat gazing idly at the jostling crowd on the platform.