Returning to my first impression of him, I was about to move away, when he added plaintively: "I tell it better than the baboo, Huzoor, but now-a-days he comes with the sahibs. So my stomach is often empty. May God silence his tongue!"
The desire pleased me. It matched my own. And as I paused, I noticed that the old man, who had squatted down again, had begun to thread the jasmine flowers on some link which was invisible from where I stood.
"What are you using to thread the flowers?" I asked curiously.
"A woman's hair, Huzoor. It is always the hair of a woman who has died, but whose child has lived, that is used for Mai Âtma's crown. Shall I tell the story, Huzoor?"
"Was she beautiful?" I asked irrelevantly, why I know not.
"I do not know, Huzoor," he replied. "Am I not blind?"
The answer struck me as irrelevant also, but I went on idly, feeling, in truth, but small interest in what I was convinced must be some hackneyed tale I had heard a hundred times before, since I was given to the hearing of tales.
"Is it about this place?" I asked.
He shook his head again. "I do not know, Huzoor. It is about Mai Âtma. Shall I tell the story?"
"You seem to know very little about the story, I must say. How do you know it is about Âtma?"