Shikasta

Oh I can't wait to see you again! But I have been so busy, all day and half the night as usual, I haven't had time to be sad. I know this is what you would want to hear from me when we meet.

But I do allow myself one little indulgence... I remember... do you remember? - that jewel of a night after the Conference at Simla

...one day nights like that will be the heritage of all mankind, and so I don't feel selfish when I think of this jewel of a night. Oh George, when will I see you again? The bearer will be returning here before going on to Peking and will bring me your letter. Which will agree, I hope and trust, to my proposals.

Your Sharma.

GEORGE SHERBAN to SHARMA PATEL

I have read your letter very carefully. I will see you during my visit to India and I will tell you then why I will not allow myself to be put forward, as you suggest. But Sharma, I did tell you, I explained everything to you.

I have been dreaming. Would you like to hear my dream?

There was a civilisation once - where? - it doesn't matter. The Middle East perhaps, China, India... It lasted a long long time. Thousands of years. We can't think like that now: continuity, cultures not changing very much, generation after generation. It was a civilisation where there were rich and poor, but not great extremes. It was well balanced, too, trade and agriculture, and the use of minerals, all in harmony with each other. People lived a long time, perhaps a thousand years. Perhaps five hundred. But it doesn't matter, a long time. Of course now we despise the past and think that children were mostly born to die because of ignorance. But these people were not ignorant. They knew how not to have too many children and to live at peace with their land, and their neighbours.

Imagine what a marriage might have been then, Sharma. Nothing frantic and desperate, no fear of death as we all have it, making us rush to mate and marry and the having and holding because we know that everything may so suddenly be taken away.

And lifetimes stretching in front of you... a young man may have parents two hundred years old, think of that Sharma, how sensible and experienced they must be... he sees this marriage, and its strength and its sense, and he knows he wants the same. And there is a girl like him. They may have known each other all their lives. Or have heard of each other, for there is plenty of time to hear of this one and that one - to listen to someone growing up nearby, and to wonder, would we be right with each other? But there is no hurry, no rush, no desperation. Behind them stretches their civilisation, and the wise men and the historians and the storytellers tell them of it, and in front of them stretches their world, and will go on and on...

But marriages are made young, of course, for that is the time for marriage. The families make slow and thoughtful approaches to each other. What they are thinking of is how they can carry the best they know into the future of the race, their culture. They see themselves, feel themselves, as the bearers of culture. Yes, they discuss family characteristics - this is a good family, the mother is good and balanced and beautiful enough, and the father is also these things, and his line too. When these young people know these things are being discussed, it is not with a sense of personal affront, which is how we would, now, in these days, experience a discussion about - not our wonderful and precious selves - but our importance as representatives. When they meet, it is without panic and grasping. They talk and they visit and they wait and they get to know each other's families, and all this may take a long time, years even, for there is no hurry. And they know that if they decide not to marry, then in any case they will be friends for so long they ca

Can we even begin to imagine, in our feverishness, our consumption of possibilities, the slow, full texture of their days, their years?

They marry, when the time has come for it. What is he? A merchant perhaps and she will travel with him and work with him, or a farmer? A maker of artefacts, these two, tiles, household vessels, everything satisfying and good in their hands, and to look at. Or they will choose to live in a house near their bakery, or is it a leather goods shop, or is he a carpenter, or does he work with metals. What they do with their hands brings them satisfaction, pleasure, every gesture they make must have use, and necessity. There is no hurry. No fear. Of course people die, but after long lives. Of course there are accidents and even, sometimes wars, but these are skirmishes along the edges of their civilisation, bordering another just as fine and old as their own. There is respect between these two cultures, and often marriage and much trading.

This couple have their children and educate them and they are absorbed into the stream of inheritance which carries them like a river. I can see these two young things - like us, Sharma - in love, and loving, but not in the service of some "cause," and not grabbing love as a shield against horrors. Which is what we are doing, Sharma. They are kind, and playful... I can see them doing simple pleasant things like walking along a riverbank, and swimming naked in fresh good water with their friends. And visiting each other's houses, visiting friends. Can you imagine what friendship must have been like in those days? Now our friends are usually in another continent, or are going to move away next week. I like to think of what friendship must have been then.

And I can see these two with their young children, enjoying them, enjoying every minute, because there is not the sort of pressure we know. And watching how they grow and show this trait or that, show the past which they are carrying into the future.

And I can see them, still young people, very young, a hundred, two hundred years old, vigorous and lively, and their family is grown and self-supporting but not flown as we take for granted must happen. Imagine the relations between children and parents who may know each other for hundreds of years? I wonder what kind of bond that might be. Imagine, it might take three hundred years or more for a person to reach maturity. You can think about it, and think about it all and not really grasp it, it is too hard for us. The high marriage. A real marriage. It happened once, I am sure of that.

Do you like this dream, Sharma? I wonder...

Or, if you don't, how about this... we are back in time, back, back... people are physically very different from these I have just written about, and of course different from us, with our diseases and our degenerating organs and our pitiful little lives.

That was a time when this earth had close links with the stars and their forces... does this a