Excerpt from The Secret Keeper of Jaipur by Alka Joshi, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

As always, I'm watching and listening, something Auntie-Boss taught me to do well. In my next letter to her and Nimmi in Shimla, I'll be able to tell them what the moviegoers thought of the leading lady's hairstyle or the color of her sari (I'll wager Nimmi has never seen a movie in her life!). I'll also be able to tell them that most of the ladies of Jaipur would marry the handsome Dev Anand given half a chance.

I see Sheela coming back to join our group, waving her fan in front of her face. Parvati reaches up to lift damp curls away from the sleeping baby's forehead. Sheela is looking past her mother-in-law. Suddenly, her face hardens. I follow her gaze to the corner of the cinema house. That's when I notice Ravi discreetly escorting the younger actress out the side door of the building. Sheela's eyes narrow as her husband and the starlet disappear in the darkness, away from the throng. I know there's a loading dock there. It's also where the drivers for the maharani and the actors are waiting to whisk them away. Perhaps he's taking her to her car.

We hear the bell announcing that intermission is almost over. The second half of the film is about to begin. I check my watch. It's now 9:30 p.m. Sheela's girls should be in bed, but Ravi had insisted that the family be present and seen by the public at his big moment. I'm sure Sheela fought him on it. She prefers to have the ayah look after the girls.

The crowd files back into the lobby and through the open doors of the theater. I hand the empty tea glasses to the chai-wallas making their rounds. Banana leaves on which chaat was sold litter the ground. A fragrance of food served and eaten—not wholly unpleasant—lingers in the air. I lift up Rita, Ravi's other daughter, whose eyes have started to droop, and hoist her onto my shoulder.

I follow the rest of the group inside the lobby.

Before we make it through the doors, we hear a yawning creak, then a complaining groan, and then suddenly the roar of a thousand pounds of cement, brick, rebar and drywall crashing down. Within seconds, the earsplitting sounds of a building collapsing, screams of agony and howls of pain are coming from inside the theater.

TWO MONTHS BEFORE THE COLLAPSE

1

NIMMI

March 1969
Shimla, State of Himachal Pradesh, India

I stop walking to look at the mountains rising from their sleep. Winter in Shimla is coming to an end. The men and women wrap themselves in two, sometimes three, pashmina shawls, but the hills are casting off their blankets. I hear the plunk, plunk, plunk of melting snow hitting the hard ground as I make my way carefully to Lakshmi Kumar's house.

Yesterday, I saw the first pink anemones in the valley below us, brazenly pushing their noses through the thin air. In the distant hills to the north, I imagine my tribe herding their goats and sheep through the Kangra Valley to the village of Bharmour, in the upper Himalayas, as I would be doing were my husband, Dev, still alive. It is hard to believe it's been a year since he's been gone. My daughter, Rekha, would be running beside her father, waving her tiny arms in an effort to help him shepherd the goats and sheep, while I carried our baby, Chullu, on my back. We would be accompanied by the other families of our tribe who had wintered in the lower Himalayas to secure food for their herds. As soon as the snows started melting in early spring, we always made our way back up the mountains to start cultivating our fields with the sheep manure that had matured into rich fertilizer over the winter months.

I haven't seen my family since I left my tribe last spring after Dev's fatal accident. They don't come down south as far as Shimla, but not a day goes by that I don't think about them with fondness.

As we walked, Old Suresh used to tell us jokes. Did you hear the one about the flatulent goat and the shepherd without a nose? No, tell us that one, we would laugh.

Excerpted from The Secret Keeper of Jaipur by Alka Joshi. Copyright © 2021 by Alka Joshi. Excerpted by permission of Mira. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.