A paragraph for my father. . .
Dear reader, please allow me to share with you another bit from my novel Love's Garden (forthcoming September 2020) that I think my father would have enjoyed. Here's to you, Baba!
Sir Naren Mitter has made a fortune in military and food supplies during this Great War that’s going on. How much exactly, who can say. But those who claim to know say that in this war a sixth of the British forces are Indian men. Hapless fathers, husbands, sons and brothers from bleary villages. Of them, they say, at least thirty thousand have already died fighting, and another thirty thousand have returned home maimed, penniless and without a future. Thousands are missing. No one will look for them. Sir Naren supplies jute, cement, iron, steel, ammunition, garments and provisions to the British war effort in India. They say he makes a thousand rupees a day. That’s a lot of money. Like the fifty million British pounds that Indians have already paid in taxes to save civilization from the Hun. Even four-legged Indians are going to war for England. All hundred thousand of those patriotic cattle need provisions, so grain and supplies have had to be diverted to them from starving villagers by enterprising men, brave lords, like Sir Naren.