Love Potion Number 10 , livre ebook

Random House Publishers India Pvt. Ltd. - Betsy Woodman

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151 pages

English

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In the newest Jana Bibi adventure, Hamara Nagar is rocked by an espionage scandal. Now that the dust has settled and the town is safe from the threat of being flooded by a planned government dam, all eyes are on Jana and her feisty parrot, now the target of a potential kidnapping-'birdnapping'-that puts Jana and her household on edge. Meanwhile, love is in the air and thanks to the appearance of an old flame and the intoxicating elixir Love Potion Number 10, Jana is giddy-headed with the possibilities. She sees love and connection all around her. Everyone in her bustling home, however, from her long-time ayah, Mary, to her 11-year-old errand boy Tilku, think that what's missing from her life is a husband. A visit from Jana's friends Lily and Cyrus, accompanied by Cyrus's recently widowed cousin and business partner Max King, lead to hopes that Max might fit the bill. But the trio's indulgence and hedonistic lifestyle clash with Jana's simple existence. Set in the 1960s, Love Potion is the second book in the series which debuted with Jana's Bibi's Excellent Fortunes. With its eclectic cast of loveable characters, gentle wisdom and good cheer, this charming tale of love, adventure and intrigue is sure to lift the most cynical of spirits.

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Love

Love (disambiguation)

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Publié par	Random House Publishers India Pvt. Ltd.
Date de parution	11 octobre 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9788184004939
Langue	English

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Love Potion Number 10
ALSO BY BETSY WOODMAN
Jana Bibi s Excellent Fortunes
A Jana Bibi Adventure
Betsy Woodman
Published by Random House India in 2013
First published in 2013 by Henry Holt and Company, LLC
Published by arrangement with Henry Holt and Company, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, NY 10010,
USA
All rights reserved
Copyright Betsy Woodman 2013
Betsy Woodman has asserted her right to be identified as author of this Work.
Random House Publishers India Private Limited Windsor IT Park, 7th Floor, Tower-B A-1, Sector-125, Noida-201301, UP
Random House Group Limited 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road London SW1V 2SA United Kingdom
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel either are products of the author s imagination or are used fictitiously.
This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author s and publisher s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
EPUB ISBN 9788184004939
To Elizabeth Berg
AUTHOR S NOTE
I have set Love Potion Number 10 in 1961, and used the names current at the time, for example, Bombay instead of Mumbai.
The currency exchange rate was roughly 4.8 Indian rupees to the U.S. dollar. The rupee was divided into 100 naye paise ( new money ), but old coins were also still in use, 16 annas to a rupee.
Hamara Nagar is a fictional town; it would be somewhere in today s Uttarakhand, a state that got carved out of Uttar Pradesh in 2000. Similarly, Terauli is not on any real map.
The Thirty-eighth King s Own Scottish Borderers is a fictional regiment, and the Symphony Lovers Club of Bombay a made-up organization. Similarly, you will not find the tunes of Jana s family butler in any Scottish fiddle music collection.
To pronounce Jana Bibi s name, start to say Janet and change your mind. Bibi sounds like BB, as in the pellets.
Best Foot Forward
Drip, Drip, Drip
Jana awoke abruptly. Downstairs, in the fortune-telling salon, Mr. Ganguly was screeching something like Water! Cold! Help! She had not heard him put those words together before. She sat up in bed, still groggy, now hearing footsteps on the staircase and, next, a frantic knocking on the bedroom door.
Jana mem! came Mary s voice. Come now! Come quickly!
Jana pushed her feet into her bedroom slippers and grabbed her heavy wool dressing gown off the foot of the bed, hurriedly wrapping it around herself as she made her way down the stairs. In the salon, Mr. Ganguly was flapping and jumping, trying to avoid drops of water coming from the ceiling through the elaborate wrought-iron filigree of his enormous cage.
Bloody hell! Jana almost never used unladylike language, but this occasion called for it. Water was dripping down one wall, ruining last year s paint job, soaking the painting of Mughal ladies feeding parrots, and turning a deck of tarot cards that Jana had left on the side table into a soggy sponge.
She quickly got Mr. Ganguly out of his cage and onto her shoulder, then turned and ran up to the bathroom off her bedroom. There was no water to be seen there. She held the flowered enamel washbowl under the tap on the wall and twisted open the handle. A very few drops could be coaxed out.
She went downstairs again, and now the whole household was awake. Lal Bahadur Pun came running from his night watchman s post in the courtyard, small Tilku and old Munar from the room they shared in the basement. Mary was moving surprisingly fast for her bulk, hurrying to the kitchen building and calling for Lal Bahadur Pun to follow her. Between the two of them, they finally managed to turn off the main water line from the town water supply to the compound.
Jana went back into the salon. The water had stopped dripping, but it was puddling on the polished cement floor, and heading straight for the rug she had bought at the Kashmiri Palace. She quickly bent down and felt dampness on one corner of it. Not too bad, she thought, and began rolling it up. Mary and Lal Bahadur Pun arrived back with rags and started mopping here and there, Mary throwing a rag at Tilku and yelling at him to make himself useful. Munar fetched his broom of long soft sticks and swished it around, which merely served to make dirty swirls on the wet floor.
Finally, all five members of the household stood and stared and tried to assess the damage.
Pipe froze, said Lal Bahadur Pun.
Too cold in this place, said Mary.
We should turn the water off at night, said Lal Bahadur
Pun.
Now you are saying that, said Mary.
Jana mem, I thought the house was falling down, everyone was yelling so much! Tilku said.
At least we don t need to wash the floor today, said Munar, though that wasn t exactly true.
Water! Cold! Mr. Ganguly observed and flapped his wings as if shaking off the water from a birdbath.
It had to happen today , of course, said Jana.
Of course. It had to happen on the day that the reporter was coming from the Illustrated Weekly of India to interview Jana and photograph all of them.
I suppose we still have to do the photo shoot, said Jana. We ll just have to keep to the dry side of the salon. And perhaps take some of the pictures outside.
We will put our best foot forward, said Lal Bahadur Pun. Only show the good side.
Best foot forward. That should be our motto, thought Jana. All of a sudden, she was desperately in need of a good pot of tea. Some fried eggs and toast with butter and guava jelly wouldn t hurt, either.
The others, too, all seemed to be thinking suddenly of tea.
But tea requires water, said Lal Bahadur Pun.
There s still a full jug from yesterday, Mary said. Already boiled.
Bit of a waste to boil it again, Jana said, with fuel so expensive. Seeing the unanimously horrified looks, she added quickly, But better than going without tea.
Lal Bahadur Pun and Mary and Jana went out the side door and through the courtyard to the kitchen, where, as Mary had said, the big clay jug of water from the day before was still full. Mary put the kettle on the electric hot plate, and Jana filled a small bowl, found some parched grains in the food cupboard, and went to feed Mr. Ganguly.
Meanwhile, Lal Bahadur Pun went back and forth inspecting the pipes, figuring out how to allow the water to flow to the kitchen building without having it reach the broken pipe upstairs in the house. There must be a valve somewhere, he kept saying. Finally, he found an ancient rusty valve on the kitchen wall, which grudgingly allowed itself to be turned shut.
The Show Must Go On
By eleven A.M , when the reporter was due, there was a semblance of normality in the house, although half the salon was damp and forlorn. Mary and Jana had carried a couple of kerosene tins of water from the kitchen up to Jana s bathroom, allowing Jana to heat a bowlful with the immersion heater and take a makeshift sponge bath.
To think, Jana scolded herself, that she had been growing impatient with her bathing arrangements! She had been longing for a modern bathroom, with a large gleaming white tub like the one she d had at the nawab s, and hot and cold running water going to a lavabo with a drainpipe, not a bowl you had to empty down the hole in the corner of the floor. At least yesterday the water had come out of the tap on demand-better than today s situation. She should have known when she was lucky! A memory popped into her head of her grandfather boasting about the house having running water. The pipes are probably the original ones he put in, she thought; they should have been replaced long ago.
After washing up, she dressed in her green silk fortune-telling costume, complete with the emerald necklace she had thought was just costume jewelry when Ramachandran had given it to her from the storeroom at the Treasure Emporium. On discovering that it was genuine, she had considered locking it in a bank vault, but today she was glad that she didn t have to go fetch it. Really, why have an expensive necklace if it caused you a lot of bother?
Moreover, she had to admit (although vanity was not her habit) that the green of the gems brought out the green in her hazel eyes. Would the photos for the Weekly be taken in color? Surely so, if they wanted to make the best of Mr. Ganguly s brilliant green plumage and bright red beak.
It remained to do something with her mane of hair, which was long and curly to the point of unruliness. Oh dear, muttered Jana, looking in the mirror. This mop! Usually she tucked it into two simple braids, but with her fortune-telling garb, she needed something more formal.
Mary, can you do anything with this hair?
Of course, Jana mem. Mary took up the hairbrush and studied Jana s head.
When Jana s two little daughters were still alive, Mary had always made small feeder braids at their temples, then woven them back into the main braids. Now she did something similar to Jana s hair, but also concocted an elegant swirling chignon.
Jana mem, you tell that man from the Weekly that he is lucky that we are talking to him today, Mary said, brushing, twisting, and plaiting with deft flicks of her fingers, without even looking at what she was doing.
I think we ll just act as if everything is normal, Jana said.
A skeptical look crossed Mary s round, pockmarked face. Normal. Well, normal for this household is not normal for anyone else.
Would you want it to be? Jana asked.
Mary put the last few hairpins in Jana s hairdo. This house-and the people in it-are usually better than normal, she said. But pipes bursting is worse.
Jana sighed, and Mary went on: Not many other people s pipes burst