The Grammarian by Annapurna Potluri Read Free Book Online

England the year before the last, doing research in the libraries of Cambridge in summer and early fall, and while there met with English philologists, many of whom were at the forefront of Indian language studies, having at their disposal the conveniences of colony. Silk-bound copies of Schleicher’s maps of the Tarim basin, a handwritten note from William Jones. Love and life forgotten in that library to the comfort of a beloved and solitary labor of sound, word, syntax, grammar. The quiet comfort of study, half-empty cups of tea, hours of his life spent behind endless shelves of books. His stay in England was one of stately buildings, their medieval style so familiar to him, wildflowers, riots of yellow leaves in autumn, quiet reading rooms, outside their windows damp green grass, the sweet smell of rain in the air. His Cambridge colleagues, many of whom by virtue of their studies in religion, anthropology, history and of course linguistics had friends in this part of the world, had helped him fix his stay in India. It had taken three months of letters between Paris, Cambridge and Waltair to make the arrangements.
    Alexandre, the most promising professor in the Sorbonne’s philology department, was given a paid research sabbatical. His department had commissioned him to continue his interest in Dravidian studies, to write a grammar of Telugu.
    The world grew smaller through the reach of empire, and Alexandre was told that Indians were nothing if not hospitable.
    H IS KURTA DIRTY with the city dust, Alexandre arrived at the sprawling residence of the family of Shiva Adivi. Adivi was a man that Alexandre had been told was an aristocrat sympathetic to Europeans, a man with family money in fields of wheat and coffee, rice and fabric mills. And to own rice in south India was to own gold. It was the common starch of the land, and everyone, from street beggars to those with royal blood, sat down twice or thrice daily to a meal centered around a steamed vat of white rice.
    The home was a grand one of the old fashion with an inner court.
    It was from the coach that he descended, on the occasion of his thirty-fourth birthday, into the place where he planned to stay until he had a viable manuscript for his Parisian textbook publisher.
    When Lautens arrived at the daunting mansion—cut in white marble and with guarded steel gates—he was at once impressed and comforted. Subba Rao shooed beggars from the gates of the home as the striking white guest took in the house. Servants in red waistcoats and spotless white cummerbunds welcomed him and waited for instructions from Subba Rao before moving, then took his cases and called the family. His trunks being taken to what was to be his room, he sat on a stone bench in the garden to wait for Adivi and his family. Bougainvilleas climbed the pillars supporting the house in explosions of orange and pink. There were lime and guava trees, and tomato vines heavy with orange and red fruit. Organized squares of rose beds and jasmine were separated with concrete pathways that met at a semicircle of marble where stood a wrought-iron gate outside of which Alexandre could see the city.
    From some near corridor, Alexandre heard Subba Rao shouting commands in Telugu. Alexandre was gratified that he understood theorder for coffee, and the female voice answering back in equal irritation. Alexandre rose when he saw the family.
    Adivi was a handsome man, with refined features and a strong nose and the full mustache preferred by the men—or was it the women?—of India, large piercing eyes with heavy lashes and a neat, stern mouth. He, too, was wearing a kurta, though his was much finer than Alexandre’s, cut from silk. Some varieties of silk here were so fine that they ruffled under the gentle touch of a woman’s hand.
    Behind Adivi, equally regal, stood four women: one old, in a simple white sari of cotton, with a look of benevolence and world-weariness upon her handsome face; the next, likely