THE IMMIGRANT Read Online Free Page A

even the basic things—a phone, a car, a house—took a lifetime. Now this golden chance had landed uninvited on Ananda’s doorstep.
    Opportunities are very insistent. If you neglect them they promise to retaliate by filling you with regret for the rest of your life. A lost opportunity refuses to hide, it pops out at every low moment, dragging you even lower.
    It took six months to settle things. Clothes and household goods were dispersed among people in order of their importance to the Sharma family. First Alka took her pick, then relatives, then friends and neighbours, and lastly the servants. Nothing was thrown away, nothing wasted. The practice was sold, and tenants found for their former home.
    His sister came from Agra to see him off. ‘Remember if you don’t like it, you can always come back,’ she repeated many times. Ananda was mostly silent. His situation had changed so much that he already had the mind-set of an immigrant, departing with no desire to return.
    Ananda landed in Halifax on the 15th of August, his country’s day of independence, as well as his own liberation from it. His uncle, waiting to receive him at the small and dazzlingly empty airport, remarked on this in a distant, nostalgic way.
    During the twenty three mile drive from the airport, the uncle expanded at great length on Ananda’s goals. The orphaned boy needed to get ahead, brooding was not going to help. He had made a smart move in coming, even though it meant more years of study. Take his own example: hard work and the right profession had made him worth half a million dollars. ‘Why do you think there is such a brain drain in India?’ he demanded. ‘India does not value its minds—unlike here. Otherwise you think we are not patriots? But there even the simple tasks of daily life can bleed you dry.’ The uncle shook his head sadly, while his expensive car slid smoothly along the road as though greased with butter. In the undulating landscape, lakes gleamed for a moment, then vanished. Ananda had never seen such empty spaces.
    ‘Where are all the people?’ he asked.
    ‘They will come—once we enter the city. But don’t expect many, the whole country has barely twenty million—and Halifax only eighty thousand.’
    Now eighty thousand and one.
    ‘There, there we are,’ said the uncle, pride in his voice as they rose slightly onto a hill which offered a momentary vista of the city sprawled before them. His tone implied that this was the first of many gifts on offer to his nephew. Then came pretty wooden houses, set in green gardens, followed by the high-rises of downtown, all strangely deserted.
    ‘Where are the people?’ repeated Ananda.
    ‘Always the first thing to strike our countrymen,’ laughed the uncle. ‘You’ll get used to it.’
    Again the spread out generosity of the residential areas, and finally Young Avenue. As they approached, the uncle switched conversational gears; this was one of the poshest areas in town, the Olands, liquour barons, lived right across the street in a huge mansion that made his own place look like an outhouse, but neighbours, nevertheless, neighbours. He could afford to live here because one plot had been divided into three.
    The car drew upto its companion outside a garage attached to a yellow house with a black roof. They climbed the steps, Ananda’s eager gaze registering the large picture window, the smaller windows, one strangely set just above a flower bed. The uncle unlocked the front door to reveal four more steps that led up to a carpeted expanse, filled with lamps, deep sofas, silk cushions, shining wooden tables, gilt edged pictures. All this belonged to a doctor like himself.
    His first cousins, Lara and Lenny, fifteen and sixteen, were introduced. He was to share the basement with Lenny. The den or the open area between the laundry and Lenny’s room had a pull-out sofa which was to be his bed. They had prepared it for him, they thought he might need to rest. Would he like