The Moneylenders of Shahpur. Helen Forrester

      HELEN FORRESTER

       The Moneylenders of Shahpur

       DEDICATION

      To Dianne, with love.

      CONTENTS

       Cover

       Title Page

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

       Chapter Eight

       Chapter Nine

       Chapter Ten

       Chapter Eleven

       Chapter Twelve

       Chapter Thirteen

       Chapter Fourteen

       Chapter Fifteen

       Chapter Sixteen

       Chapter Seventeen

       Chapter Eighteen

       Chapter Nineteen

       Chapter Twenty

       Chapter Twenty-One

       Chapter Twenty-Two

       Chapter Twenty-Three

       Chapter Twenty-Four

       Chapter Twenty-Five

       Chapter Twenty-Six

       Chapter Twenty-Seven

       Chapter Twenty-Eight

       Chapter Twenty-Nine

       Chapter Thirty

       Chapter Thirty-One

       Chapter Thirty-Two

       Chapter Thirty-Three

       Chapter Thirty-Four

       Chapter Thirty-Five

       Chapter Thirty-Six

       Chapter Thirty-Seven

       Chapter Thirty-Eight

       Chapter Thirty-Nine

       Chapter Forty

       About the Author

       Also by the Author

       Copyright

       About the Publisher

       PROLOGUE

      ‘They’ll think I’m mad,’ muttered Dr John Bennett to himself, as he waited for the station porter to load his luggage into a tonga. ‘To come back to India, when so many Indians are trying to settle in the West. It won’t make sense to them, even though I was born and brought up here.’ He smiled wryly to himself. ‘Mad dogs and Englishmen …’

      For over a year now, he had been thinking seriously of returning to India. He was bored by his job as lecturer in Asian Studies. He was tired of Liverpool, its cold, its dampness, its depression; he longed for sunshine. Suddenly, he could stand it no longer. He had his Air Force pension and some savings; he had no family. At the end of the 1949/50 university year, he packed up his books and joyfully took a boat out to India.

      Now he stood unsteadily at the top of the imposing steps of Shahpur station, a thirty-four-year-old Englishman, whose war wounds in his legs ached abominably, and wondered if he would still be welcome; India had, after all, fought very hard to rid itself of the British, and it had had its freedom for only two years.

      People pushed and shoved past, their luggage perilously poised on the heads of porters. Where once there would have been a number of white faces amongst them, now there was none. Amid the crowds of Hindus and Muslims, a fair sprinkling of Jains stood out, distinguished by their plain white clothes and their more sedate movements.

      Looking across the railway lines,