Three Sisters And The Cock Of Windsor
"Who is this man Arthur Windsor and why has he come here?" Savitri asked.
The three young women sat in a small, public courtyard with only a few other people walking about. The day was very hot, as were most days in that region. Despite the great heat the women preferred to be outside than inside of their crowded home. This was because they shared their two-level house with their grandmother, their parents, their in-laws and their unmarried sisters. Every bedroom contained an entire family.
Nipa and Savitri were true sisters, while Pritam was their sister in-law. The women were all in their early twenties, married, and each had one child to take care of. Actually, the consensus was that Pritam was estranged from her husband. The man had gone to the city one too many times and had not come back for several weeks. The biggest reason why the three women stuck together was because the townsfolk unfairly blamed Pritam for her husband's running away. Nipa and Savitri would not stand for this because they knew how bad a husband their blood brother had been to his wife.
Pritam was the most heavyset and curviest of the three. Her skin was dark and her face homely, but she made up for these deficiencies with her heart of gold. The sisters were of much fairer skin tone, having come from a once proud family that had long ago fallen out of favor and into obscurity. Savitri was very pretty, but also smart and curious enough to want to know everything about everything. By far, Nipa was the biggest prize for a husband to catch. She was a beautiful girl; with eyes that sparkled and a smile warm enough to melt ice, if any ice were to be found in that hot, humid place.
All three women wore loose blouses and the traditional saris, which were long strips of fabric that wrapped around their entire bodies. Their saris ranged in soft colors of blue, yellow and orange.
The women lived in what is properly called a cantonment. Originally, these were neighborhoods built for the British, set up near rural villages or cities but not within them. This particular cantonment was located on the outskirts of Chennai, far enough not to be part of the big city's hustle and bustle, but not completely out in the country either. It boasted of large, pleasant bungalows, streets lined with pretty trees, and also electricity and plumbing. Important Britons: politicians, military sorts or the wealthy retired to such places.
When the majority of the British had either moved away or died out, the cantonment became populated with native Indians. Also, the cantonment had been expanded with all manner of brick and concrete structures and even boasted a small, Western-styled shopping district with a cinema.
The biggest problem was that these young women quickly grew bored with their surroundings. The heat was oppressive and there was simply nothing at all to do. Most of the young men were off working the fields to the west, unless they were lucky enough to find stable and better paying employment in Chennai. The husbands of the sisters would board a bus early in the morning, along with a number of other local men, so they would be taken to their jobs in the city. The older and younger men of their cantonment went into the farms to work the fields and were also gone from nearly sun up until sun down.
Younger women would always pick up the bad habits from the older women, and our three ladies were no exception. They spent hours contemplating and deliberating over the latest movies from the cinema, or they complained about the heat, or they would walk over to the textile store to consider whatever new fabrics had come in. If a cow wandered into the cantonment, they would talk about that and wonder what had caused the cow to end up there and so far away from its ilk. Most of all, and just like the older local women would, these three ladies like to gossip about other people.
"I don't think his last name is Windsor." Pritam admitted.
"Of course it isn't." Savitri shook her head as if that was clearly obvious. "That man is using a false name. He must have been involved in a great scandal to end up here. He is using a false name so that whoever is looking for him will not easily find him."
"Do you suppose someone is looking for him?" Pritam asked.
"There must be." Savitri replied. "Otherwise there would be no need for using a false name."
"What do you think he did?"
Nipa, who was the quietest of the three, spoke up. "Certainly he didn't embezzle any money or he wouldn't have come to such a worthless place as this."
"I think he is a British bastard." Pritam said, causing the sisters to break out in laughter. "Think of it. What do we know about this man?"
"He's an old man." Savitri said. "Certainly he is over sixty years old."
"He speaks good English." Nipa added.
"Well, of course he speaks good English because he is English!" Pritam scolded.
"That isn't what I meant." Nipa made a face. "I mean that he speaks a cultured form of English, as if he is an educated man."
"He has to be an educated man because he teaches the children here English!"
"Any fool can teach English here." Savitri said. "But I think my sister is correct. This man is a cultured man. Not only does he teach English, but he teaches the children manners and art as well. Yet he is still keeping his head low. Mr. Windsor is obviously more intelligent than the English teacher we already have, Mrs. Knobbs. He only assists her when he could very well teach on his own. The panchayat would grant him a larger stipend if he only showed his credentials, but he refuses to do this."
"What else do we know about Mr. Windsor?" Pritam asked.
"He knows how to fix things that are broken." Nipa said. "He even knows how to make things that none of the other men around here can make."
"He is educated and he is an inventor." Savitri concluded. "I believe he was taught in a university."
"No, he's much too strong to be a scholar." Pritam refuted. "I've seen him carrying heavy logs on those broad shoulders of his. There are strong men here, but they are young men when compared to Windsor. That man is building a house for himself out by the river! What sort of scholar would do that?"
"That's because nobody likes sharing a bungalow with Mrs. Knobbs." Nipa said. "That old woman is crotchety!"
"I think he was a military man." Pritam suspected. "I think he has retired from the military and come out here to settle."
"Perhaps he was thrown out of the military." Savitri theorized. "Perhaps he has been shamed. This could explain why he is using a false name and taking great pains to keep his identity concealed."
"Then you agree with me that he is a British bastard?" Pritam asked.
"He is some sort of bastard!" Savitri laughed, prompting the other two to giggle.
"We must get to the bottom of this." Pritam decided. "We must find out Windsor's secrets."
"But how?" Nipa wondered.
"We can become sleuths." Savitri looked animated all at once. "We'll follow him and see what he does and who he talks to. We will make a list of clues until we know everything!"
"I will help you." Pritam said. "What about you, Nipa?"
The prettiest of the three ladies said simply, "It will give us something new to do, other than to sit here and melt into puddles every day."
After several days of investigation, the three women were no closer to unraveling the mystery of Arthur Windsor than they'd been at the start. Oh, they had the man's routine down to a predictable schedule. Windsor assisted Mrs. Knobbs at the school during the morning and could be seen piddling about sometimes before noon. After that, the man simply disappeared until the next morning. It was theorized that Windsor spent the rest of his day out by the river where he was building his house.
There was one Saturday when Windsor boarded the morning bus with all of the other local men. He was gone until sundown when all of the men returned. Because Savitri and Nipa were married women, they couldn't simply ask their husbands what Windsor had been up to because it would arouse suspicion.
Most of the locals knew that Pritam's husband was gone, even though some of the man's family members still held hope that he would come back. Since Pritam was considered less than married, it was easier for her to mingle among the unmarried men. These men all tolerated Pritam's many questions, as they simply thought she was trying to entice one of them into marrying her once her divorce was deemed official.
The weather was so warm that many of the locals had taken their cots out of doors to sleep. The sisters were eager to see if Pritam had learned anything at all, but they had to keep up appearances until most of their family members had lain down. Together, they made their way over to Pritam's cot, as their sister in-law and her child slept separate from the others.
"Will you tell us what you've found out?" Savitri asked. She was clearly eager for any new information.
"No one knows a thing." Pritam frowned. "The local men went to their usual places and had nothing to report regarding Windsor. They hardly paid any attention to him at all. The nearest I can tell is that Windsor exited the bus between the fisheries and the city. When he boarded the bus in the afternoon it was from Chennai, so obviously he got from one place to the other while the men were working. They said he brought two bags of groceries with him, but no one knew what was in those bags."
"That could be a clue." Savitri said, hopefully. "We must find out what was in those bags!"
"This tells us nothing!" Nipa balked, quietly so her nearby relatives wouldn't hear her.
"What can we do, short of walking up to Windsor and demanding an explanation from him?" Savitri sounded perturbed.
"The two of you can't ask the man directly because you're both married." Pritam thought things over. "On the other hand, I can walk all over and ask any man anything I wish. No one will think ill of me for doing this, because everyone knows my husband ran off from me."
