Word: tusker
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...year is 1972, and Colonel "Tusker" Smalley (Indian Army, ret.) is ensconced at an out-of-the-way Indian hill station called Pankot. Unlike most of the British, Tusker never pulled up stakes. He and his wife Lucy, "the last survivors of Pankot's permanent retired British residents," coexist amiably with most of the natives-but not so well with each other. Tusker's irascibility has been honed by questionable health and the approach of his 71st birthday. Lucy, whose chief diversion in recent years has been local showings of Hollywood movies, has begun to feel that life...
Both are, in fact, a little dotty, to the delight of their native servant Ibrahim. Constantly being fired by the colonel and rehired by the Memsahib, Ibrahim cherishes Tusker's curses and colorful tirades ("I'll have both their guts for garters!") and repeats them to himself for days afterward. An unabashed Anglophile, he even admires the way his employers age. "The English," he thinks, "once they began falling physically apart, did so with all their customary attention to detail, as if fitting themselves in advance for their own corpses to make sure they were going...
...what Tusker and Lucy are living through is a tiny version of the ex perience so central to The Raj Quartet...
...hairdo. Then came salutes from the King's loyal subjects, starting with three-year-old Prince Deependra decked out in a miniature military uniform. For the afternoon parade-music was provided by regimental bands, including one of Nepalese bagpipers-the royal couple rode on the King's tusker elephant, Prem Prasad, while the other 22 elephants carried many of the distinguished guests through the city...
...encounters, including a puffadder handling exhibition. So far he has demonstrated his cool by dangling at the end of a rope over the face of a sheer, 250-ft. cliff to inspect a vulture's nest. Then, wearing a bracelet of elephant's hair to deter a tusker's charge, he stepped out to meet the warriors in a Masai village. Recognizing Bobby right away as a brother, the ocher-smeared men shared a gourd of ox blood and milk with him. But he may have to do something about his hair. "The Masai men have elaborate...