2 February

In her first diary entry the first person narrator describes her arrival and her first night in Bombay. She has come to India to retrack and relive the steps of Olivia, her grandfather´s first wife who lived in the British conlony in the 1920ties.

The first person narrator arrives in India for the first time about 40 or 50 yers later.  All she knows about the country is what Olivia has written in her letters, so of course the modern India is strange to her. She spends the night in the S.M. hostel, where she sleeps in one room with six other woman. When she wakes up at night and cannot find her watch, she immediately suspects one of the woman of having stolen it. This points at the -maybe typical- prejudices she has. However, the watch isn´t stolen, but her neighbour has taken it to show her carelessness. The woman, also European, has been living in India for about thirty years and knows the country and its people very well as she tells the narrator a lot about it. For example she warns her against the food and the water.

Further on she shows the narrator the life on the streets by explaining her what she can see through the window. The narrator sees the poor and rundown people, many of them Europeans who have failed in their search for spirituality. The neighbour has seen so many terrible sights in India, that she thinks living there is impossible without Jesus Christ, who besides plays a very important role in her live. Having seen all the people on the streets the narrator agrees with her neighbour in one big point: they look like souls in hell.

24 February

In this diary entry the I-narrator describes her excursion with Inder Lal to the Nawab´s Palace. By bus they travel to Khatm, the small town where the Palace is build. Until they reach the city they do not see anything but sand and dust. The town of Khatm is almost as empty and lifeless as the Palace is now exept for all the beggars on the streets.

The Palace which is set in spacious ground and has like a park surrounding it hasn´t been used since 1953, the year the Nawab died. From this day on the Nawab´s family tries to sell it without success.

An Indian man guides Inder Lal and the narrator through the inner part of the Palace. However, all the hall, rooms and galleries are empty because the furniture is all sold.

Inder Lal isn´t interested in the Palace and its history at all, but keeps on talking about the problems he has in his office.

His interest is first caught as the watchman shows them a shrine of a Hindu god. The small room in which it is fixed up is crowded with people.  Only because she wants to be polite, the narrator says she likes the statue and takes the bits of rock sugar and flower petals which are given to her. Later, feling unobserved she throws it away.

20 February

The first person narrator visits Inder Lal´s wife and his mother at his place. She is surprised by the untidiness of the roomwhich is swiftly cleared when she arrives. Instead of sitting on the ground as the others do it, the narrator is the only one who has to take her seat an a bench. Because of her not speaking Hindi, the women have big problems in understnding each other. Inder Lal´s mothers appraises the narrator as most Indians do. As the narrtor supposes, the English must look strange to them wearing Indian clothes and living the Indian way of life. Also the narrator has adaped to the Indian society by getting dressed like an Indian woman.

Further on the narrator explains the word hijra (=transvestite), which is often called after her. She knows it from Olivia´s letters, who had learned its meaning from the Nawab.

Hijras seem to be a very common thing in India. When the first person narrator saw them first, she was amused on the one hand, but a little depressed by the sad expressions on their faces on the other.

16 February

The narrator has travelled to Satipur now, where she has found a small apartement, which her landlord Inder Lal, has sub-let to her. It´s part of a house which is divided and sub-divided. Because she likes to feel spacious the narrator has not much furniture and no decoration in her apartement. She just doesn´t feel a need for anything like photographs and pictures. However, Inder Lal doesn´t like her way of living as he doesn´t like her to carry her luggage on her own. Nevertheless he is too polite to voice his disappointment.

As there´s a little slot of Olivias diary the reader gets to know that the I narrator is very different from Olivia, who had decorated her house with rugs, pictures and flowers.

The narrator has already seen the house of her relatives, which is not far from the place she´s living in. It also turns out, that Inder Lal´s department is in the house the Crawfords lived in in 1923.