Raman, a college graduate, brings a sense of professionalism to his sign-painting, taking pride in his calligraphy and trying to create exactly the right sign, artistically, for each client. Living with his aged aunt, a devout, traditional woman whose days are spent running the house and tending to her nephew’s needs and whose evenings are spent at the temple listening to the old stories and praying, Raman prefers a rational approach to life, avoiding the explanations of life’s mysteries which religion provides. As he begins to write his aunt’s biography, which she is dictating, with all its portents and interventions by deities, Raman asks, “How could the Age of Reason be established if people were like this?” For his own life, he believes that “ultimately he [can] evolve a scheme for doing without money,” and that he can “get away from sex thoughts,” which he believes are “too much everywhere.”
Then he meets Daisy. A young woman devoted to improving the lives of women and the standard of living of the country through strict family planning, Daisy becomes his biggest customer, commissioning signs for all the family planning clinics she helps establish through the city and outlying rural areas. Accompanying her so he can select exactly the right location and style for the signs that are needed in the countryside, he finds himself totally bewitched by this liberated and high-minded young woman. Inevitably, his attraction to Daisy proves more powerful than this desire to avoid the entanglements of marriage.
R Raj Rao was born in Bombay, India. He studied in India (PhD in English from the University of Bombay, 1986) and received the Nehru Centenary British Fellowship for his post-doctoral research at the Centre for Caribbean Studies, University of Warwick, UK. In 1996, he attended the International Writing Program, Iowa. He is the author of Slide Show (poems), One Day I Locked My Flat in Soul City (short stories), The Wisest Fool on Earth and Other Plays and Nissim Ezekiel: The Authorized Biography. He has also edited Ten Indian Writers in Interview and co-edited Image of India in the Indian Novel in English (1960–1980). A professor of English at the University of Pune, Rao is also one of India’s leading gay-rights activists. He has traveled extensively, to read from his work and conduct writing workshops, in several cities in different parts of the world.
