JAMILA GAVIN
When I am asked if the Surya trilogy is autobiographical, the answer is yes and no. Yes, that I couldn’t have written it had I not been born in India into the period leading up to the Second World War, independence and partition; yes, that as a child I lived both in a palace the Punjab and in a drab flat in a war-damaged London street; yes, that music, sea voyages, schools, friends were all part of my rich Anglo-Indian experience. But no – in any accurate sense to do with the plot or events described in the books. Everything I experienced simply became material with which I could overlay a complete fantasy. As a child can turn a table into a house or two chairs into a train, I turned my life into a fiction in which any resemblance to characters living or dead is purely coincidental – as they say in the movies.
With gratitude to my parents for their memories;
much love to Arthur, and to Geoff and Miriam for their endless support.
First published in Great Britain 1992 by Methuen Children’s Books
This edition published 2018 by Egmont UK Limited
The Yellow Building, 1 Nicholas Road, London W11 4AN
Text copyright © 1992 Jamila Gavin
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First e-book edition 2018
ISBN 978 1 4052 9174 3
Ebook ISBN 978 1 4052 9278 8
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
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‘The Body is the chariot,
Reason is the charioteer,
Mind is the reins.
The Horses are the five senses,
Their paths the objects of sense.
So the one whose chariot is driven by Reason
And holds the reins of his Mind,
Reaches the end of the journey.’
The Upanishads
Contents
PART TWO: Fire
NINE: Fire
TEN: Flight
ELEVEN: Into the Midnight Hour
TWELVE: The Edge of the World
THIRTEEN: The Ship
FOURTEEN: Changing
FIFTEEN: A House on the Heath
SIXTEEN: An Address in Whitechapel
SEVENTEEN: The Meeting
EIGHTEEN: A Sound from the Past
NINETEEN: Unwillingly to School
TWENTY: A Man in a Riley
PART THREE: Just as in the Wheel
TWENTY-ONE: Finding Out
TWENTY-TWO: Missing
TWENTY-THREE: Have You Ever Been Lonely?
TWENTY-FOUR: On the Run
TWENTY-FIVE: Deep and Dreamless Streets
Q & A with Jamila Gavin
Map
The Wheel of Surya: Fascinating Fact File
‘Swift and shining is the great God Surya,
Maker of light,
Illuminator of the universe;
Traversing the heavens in his twelve-wheeled chariot,
With flying sparks and seven horses.
Creating day
Ensuring birth
With the rays of his all-seeing sun.’
The Rig-Veda