Farthest Field: An Indian Story of the Second World War. Raghu Karnad
the Indian Ocean, and the possibility at the same time of a German conquest of Egypt would have closed the ring, and the future would have been black.’4
From the government came more and more rules for hiding: vehicles must have their headlights shaded; no lights visible outside any building, from any angle. Rather than suffocating behind heavy drapes and blackened glass, Nugs simply left the electric lights off. Like a sinking ocean liner, the city descended into gloomy darkness, and thieves came out into the street. Hundreds of wells had been dug around the city for fire-fighting, and had curdled with larvae. Mosquitoes poured out thick as gas.
The air-raid sirens struck up their song in the evenings. They were signalling practice drills, which meant blackout without stoppage of civilian traffic. There was a siren chart to memorise, so you knew which combination of steady note and modulated wailing meant a real air raid, but Nugs’s mind went blank each time the sirens started.
Ganny arrived every day before sundown. As the light left through the window, they lit the kerosene lamp and slipped under their bed net together. The days were enervating, but at night their senses grew large, from the narcotic mix of heat, dark and dread. When the sirens fell silent, their hearts drummed in their ears. The skin hummed, and sweat ran down their necks with touch as sure as fingertips. At any moment, the world might go up in flames, and Nugs and Ganny made the most of that possibility.
As one of those nights turned to morning, they were woken at a quarter to five by the siren crying out a real air raid. The sound that had baptised half the world into war washed over them. They didn’t move, and Nugs, in secret, felt more at peace than she had in years. For as long as she’d been with Ganny, they’d both felt a ruining anxiety about leaving their homes and losing their families. Suddenly that feeling was universal. Everybody was afraid of losing everything. It was wonderful. It made their vulnerability seem less like the cost of a private passion, and more like the rule of a new age. Henceforth, all homes are forfeit, everyone will be afraid.
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