AustLit

'Like her travel agent in New Delhi, she had expected The Bird Lover’s Inn in Bharatpur to be no more than a one-star hotel: a sparse room with a dusty fan, a tap with a bucket in the bathroom, a bed with a thin foam mattress, and perfunctory accessories. But this time the brochure had not lied when it had offered her a ‘newly appointed room, off the well-beaten road close to the bird lover’s paradise’—well, as far as she knew anyway. It was dark when she arrived from Agra, so she did not know if the road was well-beaten or close to any kind of paradise. But she is both charmed and relieved by the attractive freshness of the new rooms at The Bird Lover’s Inn, the marble floors, the blue linen curtains and matching bed covers, especially the size of the bathroom. Her eyes water when she sees the deep bathtub, the shiny new faucets, the stand-up shower. After two months in India she is beginning to be able to smell her own hair, the dust and grime that have settled in its thickness, the premature greyness endowed upon her by the layers of mist and smog through which she has walked every day. The usual handheld showers never offered enough pressure to properly penetrate her thicket of amber curls; for a month now she has relied on surface moisture, perfunctory cleansing and leave-in conditioner. Her hair has developed textures that have nothing to do with hair: inorganic, hybrid, with smells and consistencies that have changed its colour more uniformly than any dye she might have used.'  (Introduction)