welearned about farning翻译_百度作业帮
welearned about farning翻译
welearned about farning翻译
farning?只有farming这个单词啊 我们学了关于农业的知识
我们学习农学。farmingbur ning 这歌歌词是什么意思？拜托各位了 3Q_百度知道
bur ning 这歌歌词是什么意思？拜托各位了 3Q
突然听到的很好听的歌曲。希望大家解答下
提问者采纳
Passion is sweet
激情令人幸福
Love makes weak
爱情令人脆弱
You said you cherished freedom so You refuse to let it go
你曾说过自由至上 因此你不愿被束缚
Follow your fate
Love and hate
Never fail to seize the day But dont give yourself away
日夜追逐你的梦想 从未放弃
Oh when the night falls
噢 当夜暮降临时
And your all alone
你孤身一人
In your deepest sleep what Are you dreaming of
在你沉睡之时 你梦到了什么
My skin's still burning from your touch
肌肤之亲 让我陶醉
Oh I just can't get enough I
噢 我却无法满足
Said I wouldn't ask for much
曾答应不再向你索取
But your eyes are dangerous
然而 你的眼神摄人心魄
Oh the thought keep spinning in my head
对你的思念挥之不去
Can we drop this masquerade
我们可否坦诚相对
I can't predict where it ends
纵使结局无法预算
If your the rock I'll crush against
我仍旧甘愿飞蛾扑火
Trapped in a crowd
置身于人海茫茫之中
The music is loud 乐声嘈杂
I said I love my freedom to Now I'm not sure I do
我曾说过 我同样珍爱自由 现在却不可置否
All eyes on you
视线被你占据
Rings so true
我已看清一切
Better quit while you're ahead Now I'm not so sure I am
感情深入之时 却是分手之日 然而我却无法做到
My soul my heart
我的灵魂 我的芳心
If you're near if you're far
无论你近在咫尺或是远在天涯
My life my love
我的生命 我的挚爱
You can have it all....ooohaaaah
请一并带走希望采纳
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出门在外也不愁Buining 这首歌的中文意思是什么_百度知道
Buining 这首歌的中文意思是什么
楼主，是《burning》啦！！！Passion is sweet 激情令人幸福 Love makes weak 爱情令人脆弱 You said you cherished freedom so You refuse to let it go 你曾说过自由至上 因此你不愿被束缚 Follow your fate 命中注定 Love and hate 爱恨情仇 Never fail to seize the day But dont give yourself away 日夜追逐你的梦想 从未放弃 Oh when the night falls 噢 当夜暮降临时 And your all alone 你孤身一人 In your deepest sleep what Are you dreaming of 在你沉睡之时 你梦到了什么 My skin's still burning from your touch 肌肤之亲 让我陶醉 Oh I just can't get enough I 噢 我却无法满足 Said I wouldn't ask for much 曾答应不再向你索取 But your eyes are dangerous 然而 你的眼神摄人心魄 Oh the thought keep spinning in my head 对你的思念挥之不去 Can we drop this masquerade 我们可否坦诚相对 I can't predict where it ends 纵使结局无法预算 If your the rock I'll crush against 我仍旧甘愿飞蛾扑火 Trapped in a crowd 置身于人海茫茫之中 The music is loud 乐声嘈杂 I said I love my freedom to Now I'm not sure I do 我曾说过 我同样珍爱自由 现在却不可置否 All eyes on you 视线被你占据 Rings so true 我已看清一切 Better quit while you're ahead Now I'm not so sure I am 感情深入之时 却是分手之日 然而我却无法做到 My soul my heart 我的灵魂 我的芳心 If you're near if you're far 无论你近在咫尺或是远在天涯 My life my love 我的生命 我的挚爱 You can have it all....ooohaaaah 请一并带走
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其他2条回答
是《burning》啦，，，
Passion is sweet
激情令人幸福
Love makes weak
爱情令人脆弱
You said you cherished freedom so You refuse to let it go
你曾说过自由至上 因此你不愿被束缚
Follow your fate
Love and hate
Never fail to seize the day But dont give yourself away
日夜追逐你的梦想 从未放弃
Oh when the night falls
噢 当夜暮降临时
And your all alone
你孤身一人
In your deepest sleep what Are you dreaming of
在你沉睡之时 你梦到了什么
My skin's still burning from your touch
肌肤之亲 让我陶醉
Oh I just can't get enough I
噢 我却无法满足
Said I wouldn't ask for much
曾答应不再向你索取
我查不到这个的意思哦，真的有这个单词的吗，还是你拼错了
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出门在外也不愁by far, by no means 是什么意思_百度知道
by far, by no means 是什么意思
能不能举几个例子
请再用两个短语举几个例子:all the more , so much the better .多谢
提问者采纳
by far KK: [ ] DJ: [ ()] 1. (修饰比较级、最高级,强调数量、程度等)...得多;最...;显然 This book is by far the best. 这本书显然是最好的。 by far adv.到目前为止 例句: It is quicker by far to go by train. 乘火车要快得多. I've seen some slow workers in my time but this lot are the slowest by far. 我以前倒也见过一些笨工人，但是这群人可算是最笨的了。 She is the best by far/She is by far the best. 她显然是最好的. ============================================by no means ph. 1. 决不 by no means 决不,并没有 例句: She is by no means poor: in fact, she's quite rich. 她可不穷, 其实她很阔. This is by no means a good way to solve the problem. 这决非解决问题的好办法。 I'll by no means be a professor. 我肯定不会成为一名教授的。============================================all the moreph.1. 更;愈all the more
adv. 更加(愈加)例句:She is all the more beautiful for her shabby clothing (=because her clothing is shabby).即使她衣衫褴褛，却显得更美丽了。I respect him all the more because he has faults.因为他有缺点，我反而更尊敬他。The girl is all the more beautiful in her wedding gown.那个女孩穿着婚纱格外美丽动人。===========================================so much the better
&So much the better. His name?&“那更好。姓什么？”2.
If he will help us, so much the better.如果他愿意帮助我们，那就更好了。3.
If you have two single rooms, so much the better.如果你们有两个单人房，那就更好了。4.
If you like singing, music and sport, so much the better.如果你喜欢唱歌、音乐与运动，那将会更好。5.
The company will be one schock manager short. So much the better.这家公司少了一个草包经理，岂不更好。6.
Well, so much the better if you stay. All the treasure'll be mine!哈，你能坚持住就好。所有的宝藏是我的了！ 7.
&So much the better,& said the S &we shall fight in the shade.&「愈多愈好，」斯巴达人说道：「我们将在黑影之下和他们作战。」8.
If newcomers to this fine hobby find encouragement here, then so much the better!如果这方面的新手由此被拉下水，那就太好了！9.
The result is not very important to us, but if we do win, (then) so much the better.输赢对我们并不十分重要,但假如我们真赢了,（那）就更好了.10.
Well, if they can be easy with an estate that is not lawfully their own, so much the better.倘若叫我来接受这笔法庭硬派给他的财产，我才会害臊呢。”11.
Jeanne is delighted if she insists on bringing a cake,so much the better.珍妮很高兴来参加我们的聚会，要是她坚持要带蛋糕，那也好。12.
Eg. Jeanne is delighted to come to our party. If she insists on bringing a cake, so much the better.珍妮高兴得来参加我们的聚会。如果她能带盒蛋糕，就更好了。13.
If these human inputs arc assisted by special quality-control instruments machines, and scientific sampling procedures so much the better.如果人类的投入有特殊的质量控制机器和科学取样程序来帮助的话就更好了。14.
If these human inputs are assisted by special quality-control instruments machines, and scientific sampling procedures so much the better.如果这些人为因素有特殊的质量控制机和科学取样的程序帮助就更好了。15.
“So much the better. I hope they will not meet at all. But does not Jane correspond with the sister? She will not be able to help calling?“那就更好。我希望他们俩再也不要见面。可是吉英不过还在跟他妹妹通信吗？彬格莱小姐也许难免要来拜望呢。”16.
The point of learning is to improve an individual's chances of surviving and reproducing: if the experience and opinions of others can be harnessed to that end, so much the better.研究的重点是提高个人的生存和繁殖机会：如果可以利用他人的经验和意见达到这一目的，那就更好了。17.
If political Islam can blunt American triumphalism, then so much the better—even from the viewpoint of those who would never dream of donning a headscarf or upsetting a sexual minority.如果政治伊斯兰⑷可以给耀武扬威的美国浇上一盆冷水，那再好不过了——这样的想法甚至来自那些非伊斯兰信徒，他们从未披长袍戴面纱，也不曾骚扰性少数⑸者。18.
IMO, we were the better team, we bossed the midfield, didn't allow players like Pirlo/Seedorf to do much, and Mascherano marked Kaka so well!整体上来说，我觉得我们应该更乐观一些，我们又一次杀进了决赛，而且没有让米兰发挥的很好，这应该是一场势均力敌的比赛，那个糟糕的进球改变了场上的均势。
提问者评价
thanks more enough
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出门在外也不愁power什么意思
power什么意思
09-01-27 &匿名提问 发布
power-handling capability动力使用能力; 额定功率值
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power n. 能力, 力量, 动力, 权力, [数]幂, [物]功率 vt. 使...有力量, 供以动力, 激励
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power  ['pau?]  
n. 力量,势力,动力   v. 使...有力量,供以动力,激励 1. 电源
   数据载入中...... ...·Case：机箱 ·Power：电源 ·Moniter：屏幕，CRT为显像管屏幕，LCD为液晶屏幕 ...
       2. 功率
   在WCDMA中码字（Code）和功率（Power）是二个重要概念，码字是用来区分每一路通信的，而功率是对系统的干扰。
   
 3. 乘方
   数学名词中英文对照 ...指数，幂 exponent 乘方 power 二次方，平方 square ...
 4. 权利
   [转帖]职业经理人必须掌握的词汇 ...企业家 entrepreneur 权利 power 职权 authority
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力量，动力在不同得场合表达不同的意思
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power　　1.指电源　　2.键盘上的POWER键是用来一键关机的,也属于电源键.　　3.也指能量　　4.Pascal的一个系统单元保留函数：Function Power ( base, expon : Real) : R用于计算base^expon，相当于Pascal中Exp ( expon * Ln ( base));　　用于Free Pascal，在TP中为：**运算 　　5.指IBM公司开发的一种精简指令集处理器。　　6.POWER含有自动的意思。　　IBM POWER是RISC处理器架构的一种，由IBM设计，全称为Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC。POWER系列微处理器在不少IBM服务器、超级计算机、小型计算机及工作站中，广泛作为主CPU使用。而PowerPC架构也是源自POWER架构，并应用在苹果的麦金塔计算机及部份IBM的工作站上。此外，IBM通过Power.org网站，向其它开发者及制造商推广POWER架构及其它衍生产品。　　POWER同样也是一系列实施了同样架构指令集的微处理器的名字。POWER系列微处理器用于IBM的服务器，微电脑，工作站，超级电脑的主处理器。POWER3以及随后的POWER系列微处理器均全部实施了64-bit PowerPC架构。　　从POWER3开始及其之后的POWER处器都不再具备与支持更早之前的旧POWER指令集架构（Instruction Set Architecture，ISA），包括PowerPC指令集架构或任何POWER2所追加延伸的指令，如lfq或stfq等，都不再具备与支持。
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power n. 能力, 力量, 动力, 权力, [数]幂, [物]功率 vt. 使...有力量, 供以动力, 激励
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权力, 势力; 影响力This country extends its power and influence into neighbouring countries.这个国家将其势力与影响扩大至邻国。政权The new government will come into power next month.新政府将在下月开始执政。职权The powers of a judge are defined by law.法官的权限是由法律规定的。能力, 天赋; 体力, 力量We shall gladly lend every effort in our power toward its realization.我们很乐意在力所能及的范围内促使其实现。功力, 动力, 功率The engine is being specially adapted to increase its power.正在对这台引擎进行改装以增加它的功率。强国, 有权势的人[团体等]The future of the island is bound up with the fortunes of the ruling power.这个岛的前景与其掌权者的命运息息相关。幂, 乘方How much is the sixth power of nine?九的六次幂是多少?
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The fishermen were here first. Before Mountbatten's ticktock, before monsters and
when underworld marriages were still unimagined and sp earlier than M longer ago than lady wrestlers who held up perfor- and back and back, beyond Dalhousie and Elphinstone, before the East India Company built its Fort, before the first William M at the dawn of time, when Bombay was a dumbbell-shaped island tapering, at the centre, to a narrow shining strand beyond which could be seen the finest and largest natural harbour in Asia, when Mazagaon and Worli, Matunga and Mahim, Salsette and Colaba were islands, too - in short, before reclamation, before tetrapods and sunken piles turned the Seven Isles into a long peninsula like an outstretched, grasping hand, reaching westward into the Arabian S in this primeval world before clocktowers, the fishermen - who were called Kolis - sailed in Arab dhows, spreading red sails against the setting sun. They caught pomfret and crabs, and made fish-lovers of us all. (Or most of us. Padma has succumbed to the but in our house, we were infected with the alienness of Kashmiri blood, with the icy reserve of Kashmiri sky, and remained meateaters to a man.)There were also coconuts and rice. And, above it all, the benign presiding influence of the goddess Mumbadevi, whose name -Mumbadevi, Mumbabai, Mumbai - may well have become the city's. But then, the Portuguese named the place Bom Bahia for its harbour, and not for the goddess of the pomfret folk ... the Portuguese were the first invaders, using the harbour to shelter their merchant ships and their men-of- but then, one day in 1633, and East Indian Company Officer named Methwold saw a vision. This vision - a dream of a British Bombay, fortified, defending India's West against all comers -was a notion of such force that it set time in motion. H M and in 1660, Charles II of England was betrothed to Catharine of the Portuguese House of Braganza - that same Catharine who would, all her life, play second fiddle to orange-selling Nell. But she has this consolation - that it was her marriage dowry which brought Bombay into British hands, perhaps in a green tin trunk, and brought Methwold's vision a step closer to reality. After that, it wasn't long until September 21st, 1668, when the Company at last got its hands on the island ... and then off they went, with their Fort and land-reclamation, and before you could blink there was a city here, Bombay, of which the old tune sang: Prima in Indis, Gateway to India, Star of the East With her face to the West.Our Bombay, Padma! It was very different then, there were no night-clubs or pickle factories or Oberoi-Sheraton Hot but the city grew at breakneck speed, acquiring a cathedral and an equestrian statue of the Mahratta warrior-king Sivaji which (we used to think) came to life at night and galloped awesomely through the city streets - right along Marine Drive! On Chowpatty sands! Past the great houses on Malabar Hill, round Kemp's Corner, giddily along the sea to Scandal Point! And yes, why not, on and on, down my very own Warden Road, right alongside the segregated swimming pools of Breach Candy, right up to huge Mahalaxmi Temple and the old Willingd on Club ...Throughout my childhood, whenever bad times came to Bombay, some insomniac nightwalker would report that he had se disasters, in the city of my youth, danced to the occult music of a horse's grey, stone hooves.And where are they now, the first inhabitants? Coconuts have done best of all.Coconuts are still' beheaded daily on C while on Juhu beach, under the languid gaze of film stars at the Sun'n'Sand hotel, small boys still shin up coconut palms and bring down the bearded fruit. Coconuts even have their own festival, Coconut Day, which was celebrated a few days before my synchronistic birth. You may feel reassured about coconuts. Rice h rice-paddies li tenements tower where once rice wallowed within sight of the sea. But still, in the city, we are great rice-eaters. Patna rice, Basmati, Kashmiri rice travels to
so the original, ur-rice has left its mark upon us all, and cannot be said to have died in vain. AS for Mumbadevi - she's not so popular these days, having been replaced by elephant-headed Ganesh in the people's affections. The calendar of festivals reveals her decline: Ganesh - 'Ganpati Baba' - has his day of Ganesh Chaturthi, when huge processions are 'taken out' and march to Chowpatty bearing plaster effigies of the god, which they hurl into the sea. Ganesh's day is a rain-making ceremony, it makes the monsoon possible, and it, too, was celebrated in the days before my arrival at the end of the ticktock countdown - but where is Mumbadevi's day? It is not on the calendar. Where the prayers of pomfret folk, the devotions of crab-catchers? ... Of all the first inhabitants, the Koli fishermen have come off worst of all. Squashed now into a tiny village in the thumb of the handlike peninsula, they have admittedly given their name to a district - Colaba. But follow Colaba Causeway to its tip - past cheap clothes shops and Irani restaurants and the second-rate flats of teachers journalists and clerks - and you'll find them, trapped between the naval base and the sea.And sometimes Koli women, their hands stinking of pomfret guts and crabmeat, jostle arrogantly to the head of a Colaba bus-queue, with their crimson (or purple) saris hitched brazenly up between their legs, and a smarting glint of old defeats and dispossessions in their bulging and somewhat fishy eyes. A fort, and afterwards a city, pile-drivers stole (tetrapods would steal) pieces of their sea. But there are still Arab dhows, every evening, spreading their sails against the sunset... in August 1947, the British, having ended the dominion of fishing-nets, coconuts, rice and Mumbadevi, were about
no dominion is everlasting.And on June 19th, two weeks after their arrival by Frontier Mail, my parents entered into a curious bargain with one such departing Englishman. His name was William Methwold.The road to Methwold's Estate (we are entering my kingdom now, coming into the h a little lump has appeared in my throat) turns off Warden Road between a bus-stop and a little row of shops. Chimalker's T Reader's P the Chimanbhoy Fat and, above all, Bombelli's the Confectioners, with their Marquis cake, their One Yard of Chocolates! N but there's no time now. Past the saluting cardboard bellboy of the Band Box Laundry, the road leads us home. In those days the pink skyscraper of the Narlikar women (hideous echo of Srinagar's radio mast!) had not
the road mounted a low hillock, no higher than a two- it curved round to face the sea, to look down on Breach Candy Swimming Club, where pink people could swim in a pool the shape of British India without fear of rubbing up
and there, arranged nobly around a little roundabout, were the palaces of William Methwold, on which hung signs that would - thanks to me - reappear many years later, sig just two, but they lured my unwitting parents into Methwold's peculiar game: FOR SALE.Methwold's Estate: four identical houses built in a style befitting their original residents (conquerors' houses! R three-storey homes of gods standing on a two-storey Olympus, a stunted Kailash!) -large, durable mansions with red gabled roofs and turret towers in each corner, ivory-white corner towers wearing pointy red-tiled hats (towers, fit to lock princesses in!)- houses with verandahs, with servants' quarters reached by spiral iron staircases hidden at the back - houses which their owner, William Methwold, had named majestically after the palaces of Europe: Versailles Villa, Buckingham Villa, Escorial Villa and Sans Souci. Bougainvilla goldfish swa cacti grew in rock- tiny touch-me-not plants huddled be there were butterflies and roses and cane chairs on the lawns. And on that day in the middle of June, Mr Methwold sold his empty palaces for ridiculously little - but there were conditions. So now, without more ado, I present him to you, complete with the centre-parting in Ms hair ...a six-foot Titan, this Methwold, his face the pink of roses and eternal youth.He had a head of thick black brilliantined hair, parted in the centre. We shall speak again of this centre-parting, whose ramrod precision made Methwold irresistible to women, who felt unable to prevent themselves wanting to rumple it up ... Methwold's hair, parted in the middle, has a lot to do with my beginnings. It was one of those hairlines along which history and sexuality moved. Like tightrope-walkers. (But despite everything, not even I, who never saw him, never laid eyes on languid gleaming teeth or devastatingly combed hair, am incapable of bearing him any grudge.)And his nose? What did that look like? Prominent? Yes, it must have been, the legacy of a patrician French grandmother - from Bergerac! - whose blood ran aquamarinely in his veins and darkened his courtly charm with something crueller, some sweet murderous shade of absinthe.Methwold's Estate was sold on two conditions: that the houses be bought complete with every last thing in them, that the entire contents be retain and that the actual transfer should not take place until midnight on August I5th.'Everything?' Amina Sinai asked. 'I can't even throw away a spoon? Allah, that lampshade ... I can't get rid of one comb?''Lock, stock and barrel,' Methwold said, 'Those are my terms. A whim, Mr Sinai ... you'll permit a departing colonial his little game? We don't have much left to do, we British, except to play our games.''Listen now, listen, Amina,' Ahmed is saying later on, 'You want to stay in this hotel room for ever? It' fantastic, absolutely. And what can he do after he's transferred the deeds? Then you can throw out any lampshade you like. It's less than two months ...''You'll take a cocktail in the garden?' Methwold is saying, 'Six o'clock every evening. Cocktail hour. Never varied in twenty years.''But my God, the paint... and the cupboards are full of old clothes, janum...we'll have to live out of suitcases, there's nowhere to put one suit!''Bad business, Mr Sinai,' Methwold sips his Scotch amid cacti and roses, 'Never seen the like. Hundreds of years of decent government, then suddenly, up and off. You'll admit we weren't all bad: built your roads. Schools, railway trains, parliamentary system, all worthwhile things. Taj Mahal was falling down until an Englishman bothered to see to it. And now, suddenly, independence. Seventy days to get out. I'm dead against it myself, but what's to be done?''... And look at the stains on the carpets, for two months we must live like those Britishers? You've looked in the bathrooms? No water near the pot. I never believed, but it's true, my God, they wipe their bottoms with paper only! ...''Tell me, Mr Methwold,' Ahmed Sinai's voice has changed, in the presence of an Englishman it has become a hideous mockery of an Oxford drawl, 'why insist on the delay? Quick sale is best business, after all. Get the thing buttoned up.''... And pictures of old Englishwomen everywhere, baba! No place to hang my own father's photo on the wall! ...''It seems, Mr Sinai,' Mr Methwold is refilling the glasses as the sun dives towards the Arabian Sea behind the Breach Candy pool, 'that beneath this stiff English exterior lurks a mind with a very Indian lust for allegory.''And drinking so much, janum ... that's not good.''I'm not sure - Mr Methwold, ah - what exactly you mean by ...''... Oh, you know: after a fashion, I'm transferring power, too. Got a sort of itch to do it at the same time the Raj does. As I said: a game. Humour me, won't you, Sinai? After all: the price, you've admitted, isn't bad.''Has his brain gone raw, janum? What do you think: is it safe to do bargains if he's loony?''Now listen, wife,' Ahmed Sinai is saying, 'this has gone on long enough. Mr Me
I will not have his name... And besides, the other purchasers aren't making so much noise, I'm sure... Anyway, I have told him yes, so there's an end to it.''Have a cracker,' Mr Methwold is saying, proffering a plate, 'Go on, Mr S., do.Yes, a curious affair. Never seen anything like it. My old tenants - old India hands, the lot - suddenly, up and off. Bad show. Lost their stomachs for India.Overnight. Puzzling to a simple fellow like me. Seemed like they washed their hands - didn't want to take a scrap with them. &Let it go,& they said. Fresh start back home. Not short of a shilling, none of them, you understand, but still, Rum. Leaving me holding the baby. Then I had my notion.' '... Yes, decide, decide,' Amina is saying spiritedly, 'I am sitting here like a lump with a baby, what have I to do with it? I must live in a stranger's house with this child growing, so what? ... Oh, what things you make me do ...' 'Don't cry,' Ahmed is saying now, flapping about the hotel room, 'It's a good house. You know you like the house. And two months... less than two... what, is it kicking? Let me feel... Where? Here?' 'There,' Amina says, wiping her nose, 'Such a good big kick.' 'My notion,' Mr Methwold explains, staring at the setting sun, 'is to stage my own transfer of assets. Leave behind everything you see? Select suitable persons - such as yourself, Mr Sinai! - hand everything over absolutely intact: in tiptop working order. Look around you: everything's in fine fettle, don't you agree? Tickety-boo, we used to say. Or, as you say in Hindustani: Sabkuch ticktock hai. Everything's just fine.' 'Nice people are buying the houses,' Ahmed offers Amina his handkerchief, 'nice new neighbours ... that Mr Homi Catrack in Versailles Villa, Parsee chap, but a racehorse-owner. Produces films and all. And the Ibrahims in Sans Souci, Nussie Ibrahim is having a baby, too, you can be friends... and the old man Ibrahim, with so-big sisal farms in Africa. Good family.' '... And afterwards I can do what I like with the house ... ?'
'Yes, afterwards, naturally, he'll be gone ...' '... It's all worked out excellently,' William Methwold says. 'Did you know my ancestor was the chap who had the idea of building this whole city? Sort of Raffles of Bombay. As his descendant, at this important juncture, I feel the, I don't know, need to play my part. Yes, excellently... when d'you move in? Say the word and I'll move off to the Taj Hotel. Tomorrow? Excellent. Sabkuch ticktock hai.' These were the people amongst whom I spent my childhood: Mr Homi Catrack, film magnate and racehorse-owner, with his idiot daughter Toxy who had to be locked up with her nurse, Bi-Appah, the most fearsome woman I also the Ibrahims in Sans Souci, old man Ibrahim Ibrahim with his goatee and sisal, his sons Ismail and Ishaq, and IsmaiPs tiny flustery hapless wife Nussie, whom we always called Nussie-the-duck on account of her waddling gait, and in whose womb my friend Sonny was growing, even now, getting closer and closer to his misadventure with a pair of gynaecological forceps ... Escorial Villa was divided into flats. On the ground floor lived the Dubashes, he a physicist who would become a leading light at the Trombay nuclear research base, she a cipher beneath whose blankness a true religious fanaticism lay concealed - but I'll let it lie, mentioning only that they were the parents of Cyrus (who would not be conceived for a few months yet), my first mentor, who played girls' parts in school plays and was known as Cyrus-the-great. Above them was my father's friend Dr Narlikar, who had bought a flat here too ... he was a had the ability of glowing brightly whenever he becam hated children, even though he broug and would unleash upon the city, when he died, that tribe of women who could do anything and in whose path no obstacle could stand. And, finally, on the top floor, were Commander Sabarmati and Lila - Sabarmati who was one of the highest flyers in the Navy, and his wife with
he hadn't been able to believe his luck in getting her a home so cheaply. They had two sons, aged eighteen months and four months, who would grow up to be slow and boisterous and to be nicknamed Eyeslice and H and they didn't know (how could they?) that I would destroy their lives ... Selected by William Methwold, these people who would form the centre of my world moved into the Estate and tolerated the curious whims of the Englishman - because the price, after all, was right. ... There are thirty days to go to the transfer of power and Lila Sabarmati is on the telephone, 'How can you stand it, Nussie? In every room here there are talking budgies, and in the almirahs I find moth-eaten dresses and used brassieres!' ... And Nussie is telling Amina, 'Goldfish, Allah, I can't stand the creatures, but Methwold sahib comes himself to feed... and there are half-empty pots of Bovril he says I can't throw... it's mad, Amina sister, what are we doing like this?'... And old man Ibrahim is refusing to switch on the ceiling fan in his bedroom, muttering, 'That machine will fall - it will slice my head off in the night - how long can something so heavy stick on a ceiling?'... and Homi Catrack who is something of an ascetic is obliged to lie on a large soft mattress, he is suffering from backache and sleeplessness and the dark rings of inbreeding around his eyes are being circled by the whorls of insomnia, and his bearer tells him, 'No wonder the foreign sahibs have all gone away, sahib, they must by dying to get some sleep.' But they are and there are advantages as well as problems. Listen to Lila Sabarmati ('That one - too beautiful to be good,' my mother said)... 'A pianola, Amina sister! And it works! All day I'm sitting sitting, playing God knows what-all! &Pale Hands I Loved Beside The Shalimar&... such fun, too much, you just push the pedals!'... And Ahmed Sinai finds a cocktail cabinet in Buckingham Villa (which was Methwold's own house before it was ours); he is discovering the delights of fine Scotch whisky and cries, 'So what? Mr Methwold is a little eccentric, that's all - can we not humour him? With our ancient civilization, can we not be as civilized as he?'... and he drains his glass at one go. Advantages and disadvantages: 'All these dogs to look after, Nussie sister,' Lila Sabarmati complains. 'I hate dogs, completely. And my little choochie cat, cho chweet she is I swear, terrified absolutely!' ... And Dr Narlikar, glowing with pique, 'Above my bed! Pictures of children, Sinai brother! I am telling you: fat! Pink! Three! Is that fair?'... But now there are twenty days to go, things are settling down, the sharp edges of things are getting blurred, so they have all failed to notice what is happening: the Estate, Methwold's Estate, is changing them. Every evening at six they are out in their gardens, celebrating the cocktail hour, and when William Methwold comes to call they slip effortlessly into their imitation O and they are learning, about ceiling fans and gas cookers and the correct diet for budgerigars, and Methwold, supervising their transformation, is mumbling under his breath. Listen carefully: what's he saying? Yes, that's it. 'Sabkuch ticktock hai,' mumbles William Methwold. All is well. When the Bombay edition of the Times of India, searching for a catchy human-interest angle to the forthcoming Independence celebrations, announced that it would award a prize to any Bombay mother who could arrange to give birth to a child at the precise instant of the birth of the new nation, Amina Sinai, who had just awoken from a mysterious dream of flypaper, became glued to newsprint. Newsprint was thrust beneath Ahmed Sinai' and Amina's finger, jabbing triumphantly at the page, punctuated the utter certainty of her voice. 'See, janum?' Amina announced. 'That's going to be me.' There rose, before their eyes, a vision of bold headlines declaring 'A Charming Pose of Baby Sinai - the Child of this Glorious Hour!' - a vision of A-1 top-quality front-page jumbo-sized baby- but Ahmed began to argue, 'Think of the odds against it, Begum,' until she set her mouth into a clamp of obstinacy and reiterated, 'B it' I just know it for sure. Don't ask me how.' And although Ahmed repeated his wife's prophecy to William Methwold, as a cocktail-hour joke, Amina remained unshaken, even when Methwold laughed, 'Woman's intuition - splendid thing, Mrs S.! But really, you can scarcely expect us to...' Even under the pressure of the peeved gaze of her neighbour Nussie-the-duck, who was also pregnant, and had also read the Times of India, Amina stuck to her guns, because Ramram's prediction had sunk deep into her heart. To tell the truth, as Amina's pregnancy progressed, she had found the words of the fortune-teller pressing more and more heavily down upon her. shoulders, her head, her swelling balloon, so that as she became trapped in a web of worries about giving birth to a child with two heads she somehow escaped the subtle magic of Methwold's Estate, remaining uninfected by cocktail-hours, budgerigars, pianolas and English accents ... At first, then, there was something equivocal about her certainty that she would win the Time's prize, because she had convinced herself that if this part of the fortune-teller's prognostications were fulfilled, it proved that the rest would be just as accurate, whatever their meaning might be. So it was not in tones of unadulterated pride and anticipation that my mother said, 'Never mind intuition, Mr Methwold. This is guaranteed fact.' To herself she added: 'And this, too: I'm going to have a son. But he'll need plenty of looking after, or else.' It seems to me that, running deep in the veins of my mother, perhaps deeper than she knew, the supernatural conceits of Naseem Aziz had begun to influence her thoughts and behaviour - those conceits which persuaded Reverend Mother that aeroplanes were inventions of the devil, and that cameras could steal your soul, and that ghosts were as obvious a part of reality as Paradise, and that it was nothing less than a sin to place certain sanctified ears between one's thumb and forefinger, were now whispering in her daughter's darkling head. 'Even if we're sitting in the middle of all this English garbage,' my mother was beginning to think, 'this is still India, and people like Ramram Seth know what they know.' In this way the scepticism of her beloved father was replaced by the creduli and, at the same time, the adventurous spark which Amina had inherited from Doctor Aziz was being snuffed out by another, and equally heavy, weight. By the time the rains came at the end of June, the foetus was fully formed inside her womb. Knees a and as many heads as would grow were already in position. What had been (at the beginning) no bigger than a full stop had expanded into a comma, a word, a sentence, a paragraph, now it was bursting into more complex developments, becoming, one might say, a book -perhaps an encyclopaedia - even a whole language ... which is to say that the lump in the middle of my mother grew so large, and became so heavy, that while Warden Road at the foot of our two-storey hillock became flooded with dirty yellow rainwater and stranded buses began to rust and children swam in the liquid road and newspapers sank soggily beneath the surface, Amina found herself in a circular first-floor tower room, scarcely able to move beneath the weight of her leaden balloon. Endless rain. Water seeping in under windows in which stained-glass tulips danced along leaded panes. Towels, jammed against window-frames, soaked up water until they became heavy, saturated, useless. The sea: grey and ponderous and stretching out to meet the rainclouds at a narrowed horizon. Rain drumming against my mother's ears, adding to the confusion of fortune-teller and maternal credulity and the dislocating presence of strangers' possessions, making her imagine all manner of strange things. Trapped beneath her growing child, Amina pictured herself as a convicted murderer in Mughal times, when death by crushing beneath a boulder had been a common punishment ... and in the years to come, whenever she looked back at that time which was the end of the time before she became a mother, that time in which the ticktock of countdown calendars was rushing everyone towards August 15th, she would say: 'I don't know about any of that. To me, it was like time had come to a complete stop. The baby in my stomach stopped the clocks. I'm sure of that. Don't laugh: you remember the clocktower at the end of the hill? I'm telling you, after that monsoon it never worked again.' ... And Musa, my father's old servant, who had accompanied the couple to Bombay, went off to tell the other servants, in the kitchens of the red-tiled palaces, in the servants' quarters at the backs of Versailles and Escorial and Sans Souci: 'It's going to be a real ten- yes, sir! A whopper of a ten-chip pomfret, wait and see!' The s because a birth is a fine thing and a good big baby is best of all ... ... And Amina whose belly had stopped the clocks sat immobilized in a room in a tower and told her husband, 'Put your hand there and feel him ... there, did you feel? ... s our little piece-of-the-moon.' Not until the rains ended, and Amina became so heavy that two manservants had to make a chair with their hands to lift her, did Wee Willie Winkie return to sing in the circus-ring bet and only then did Amina realize that she had not one, but two serious rivals (two that she knew of) for the Times of India's prize, and that, prophecy or no prophecy, it was going to be a vey close-run finish. 'Wee Willie W to sing for my supper is my fame!' Ex-conjurers and peepshow-men and singers ... even before I was born, the mould was set. Entertainers would orchestrate my life. 'I hope you are com-for-table! ... Or are you come-for-tea? Oh, joke-joke, ladies and ladahs, let me see you laugh now!' Talldarkhandsome, a clown with an accordion, he stood in the circus-ring. In the gardens of Buckingham Villa, my father's big toe strolled (with its nine colleagues) beside and beneath the centre-parting of William Methwold... sandalled, bulbous, a toe unaware of its coming doom. And Wee Willie Winkie (whose real name we never knew) cracked jokes and sang. From a first-floor verandah, Amina
and from the neighbouring verandah, felt the prick of the envious competitive gaze of Nussie-the-duck. ... While I, at my desk, feel the sting of Padma's impatience. (I wish, at times, for a more discerning audience, someone who would understand the need for rhythm, pacing, the subtle introduction of minor chords which will later rise, swell, who would know, for instance, that although baby-weight and monsoons have silenced the clock on the Estate clocktower, the steady beat of Mountbatten's ticktock is still there, soft but inexorable, and that it's only a matter of time before it fills our ears with its metronomic, drumming music.) Padma says: 'I don't want to know about this W days and nights I've waited and still you won't get to being born!' But I everything in its proper place, I admonish my dung-lotus, because Winkie, too, has his purpose and his place, here he is now teasing the pregnant ladies on their verandahs, pausing from singing to say, 'You've heard about the prize, ladies? Me, too. My Vanita will have her time soon, soon- maybe she and not you will have her picture in the paper!'... and Amina is frowning, and Methwold is smiling (is that a forced smile? Why?) beneath his centre-parting, and my father's lip is jutting judiciously as his big toe strolls and he says, 'That' he goes too far.' But now Methwold in what looks very like embarrassment - even guilt! -reproves Ahmed Sinai, 'Nonsense, old chap. The tradition of the fool, you know. Licensed to provoke and tease. Important social safety-valve.' And my father, shrugging, 'Hm.' But he's a clever type, this Winkie, because he's pouring oil on the waters now, saying, 'A b two births are two fine! Too fine, madams, joke, you see?' And a switch of mood as he introduces a dramatic notion, an overpowering, crucial thought: 'Ladies, gentlemen, how can you feel comfortable here, in the middle of Mr Methwold sahib's long past? I tell you: but now it is a new place here, ladies, ladahs, and no new place is real until it has seen a birth. The first birth will make you feel at home.' After which, a song: 'Daisy, Daisy ...' And Mr Methwold, joining in, but still there's something dark staining his brow ... ... And here's the point: yes, it is guilt, because our Winkie may be clever and funny but he's not clever enough, and now it's time to reveal the first secret of the centre-parting of William Methwold, because it has dripped down to stain his face: one day, long before ticktock and lockstockandbarrel sales, Mr Methwold invited Winkie and his Vanita to sing for him, privately, in what is now my parents' and after a while he said, 'Look here, Wee Willie, do me a favour, man: I need this prescription filling, terrible headaches, take it to Kemp's Corner and get the chemist to give you the pills, the servants are all down with colds.' Winkie, being a poor man, said Yes sahib at and then Vanita was alone with the centre-parting, feeling it exert a pull on her fingers that was impossible to resist, and as Methwold sat immobile in a cane chair, wearing a lightweight cream suit with a single rose in the lapel, she found herself approaching him, fingers outstretched, felt f found centre- and began to rumple it up. So that now, nine months later, Wee Willie Winkie joked about his wife's imminent baby and a stain appeared on an Englishman's forehead. 'So?' Padma says. 'So what do I care about this Winkie and his.wife whom you haven't even told me about?' Some people but Padma will be, soon. And now she's about to get
because, pulling away in a long rising spiral from the events at Methwold's Estate -away from goldfish and dogs and baby contests and centre-partings, away from big toes and tiled roofs - I am flying across the city which is fresh and clean in the af leaving Ahmed and Amina to the songs of Wee Willie Winkie, I'm winging towards the Old Fort district, past Flora Fountain, and arriving at a large building filled with dim fustian light and the perfume of swinging censers because here, in St Thomas's Cathedral, Miss Mary Pereira is learning about the colour of God.
'Blue,' the young priest said earnestly. 'All available evidence, my daughter, suggests that Our Lord Christ Jesus was the most beauteous crystal shade of pale sky blue.' The little woman behind the wooden latticed window of the confessional fell silent for a moment. An anxious, cogitating silence. Then: 'But how, Father? People are not blue. No people are blue in the whole big world!' Bewilderment of little woman, matched by perplexity of the priest ... because this is not how she's supposed to react. The Bishop had said, 'Problems with recent converts ... when they ask about colour they're almost always that ... important to build bridges, my son. Remember,' thus spake the Bishop, 'G and the Hindu love-god, Krishna, is always depicted with blue skin. T it will be a sort of bridg gently does it, and besides blue is a neutral sort of colour, avoids the usual Colour problems, gets you away from black and white: yes, on the whole I'm sure it's the one to choose.' Even bishops can be wrong, the young father is thinking, but meanwhile he's in quite a spot, because the little woman is clearly getting into a state, has begun issuing a severe reprimand through the wooden grille: 'What type of answer is blue, Father, how to believe such a thing? You should write to Holy Father Pope in Rome, he will sur but one does not have to be Pope to know that the mens are not ever blue!' The young fa counter-attacks. 'Skins have been dyed blue,' he stumbles. 'The P the blue A with the benefits of education, my daughter, you would see...' But now a violent snort echoes in the confessional. 'What, Father? You are comparing Our Lord to junglee wild men? ?Lord, I must catch my ears for shame!'... And there is more, much more, while the young father whose stomach is giving him hell suddenly has the inspiration that there is something more important lurking behind this blue business, a whereupon tirade gives way to tears, and the young father says panickily, 'Come, come, surely the Divine Radiance of Our Lord is not a matter of mere pigment?' ... And a voice through the flooding salt water: 'Yes, Father, you're
I told him just that, exactly that very thing only, but he said many rude words and would not listen ...' So there it is, him has entered the story, and now it all tumbles out, and Miss Mary Pereira, tiny virginal distraught, makes a confession which gives us a crucial clue about her motives when, on the night of my birth, she made the last and most important contribution to the entire history of twentieth-century India from the time of my grandfather's nose-bump until the time of my adulthood. Mary Pereira's confession: like every Mary she had her Joseph. Joseph D'Costa, an orderly at a Pedder Road clinic called Dr Narlikar's Nursing Home ('Oho!' Padma sees a connection at last), where she worked as a midwife. Things had bee he had taken her for cups of tea or lassi or falooda and told her sweet things. He had eyes like road-drills, hard and full of ratatat, but he spoke softly and well. Mary, tiny, plump, virginal, had revell but now everything had changed. 'Suddenly suddenly he's sniffing the air all the time. In a funny way, nose high up. I ask, &You got a cold or what, Joe?& B no, he says, he's sniffing the wind from the north. But I tell him, Joe, in Bombay the wind comes off the sea, from the west, Joe...' In a fragile voice Mary Pereira describes the ensuing rage of Joseph D'Costa, who told her, 'You don't know nothing, Mary, the air comes from the north now, and it's full of dying. This independence
the poor are being made to kill each other like flies. In Punjab, in Bengal. Riots riots, poor against poor. It's in the wind.' And Mary: 'You talking crazy, Joe, why you worrying with those so-bad things? We can live quietly still, no?' 'Never mind, you don't know one thing.' 'But Joseph, even if it's true about the killing, they're Hindu and M why get good Christian folk mixed up in their fight? Those ones have killed each other for ever and ever.' 'You and your Christ. You can't get it into your head that that's the white people's religion? Leave white gods for white men. Just now our own people are dying. W show the people who to fight instead of each other, you see?' And Mary, 'That's why I asked about colour, Father ... and I told Joseph, I told and told, fighting is bad, leave
but then he stops talking with me, and starts hanging about with dangerous types, and there are rumours starting up about him, Father, how he's throwing bricks at big cars apparently, and burning bottles also, he's going crazy, Father, they say he helps to burn buses and blow up trams, and I don't know what. What to do, Father, I tell my sister about it all. My sister Alice, a good girl really, Father. I said: &That Joe, he lives near a slaughterhouse, maybe that's the smell that got into his nose and muddled him all up.& So Alice went to find him, &I will talk for you,& but then, ?God what is happening to the world ... I tell you truly, Father... ?baba...' And the floods are drowning her words, her secrets are leaking saltily out of her eyes, because Alice came back to say that in her opinion Mary was the one to blame, for haranguing Joseph until he wanted no more of her, instead of giving him support in his patriotic cause of awakening the people. Alice was younger than M and after that there were more rumours, Alice-and-Joseph stories, and Mary came to her wits' end. That one,' Mary said, 'What does she know about this politics-politics? Only to get her nails into my Joseph she will repeat any rubbish he talks, like one stupid mynah bird. I swear, Father ...' 'Careful, daughter. You are close to blasphemy ...& 'No, Father, I swear to God, I don't know what I won't do to get me back that man. Yes: in spite of... never mind what he... ai-o-ai-ooo!' Salt water washes the confessional floor.,. and now, is there a new dilemma for the young father? Is he, despite the agonies of an unsettled stomach, weighing in invisible scales the sanctity of the confessional against the danger to civilized society of a man like Joseph D'Costa? Will he, in fact, ask Mary for her Joseph's address, and then reveal ... In short, would this bishop-ridden, stomach-churned young father have behaved like, or unlike, Montgomery Clift in I Confess? (Watching it some years ago at the New Empire cinema, I couldn't decide.) - B once again, I must stifle my baseless suspicions. What happened to Joseph would probably have happened anyway And in all likelihood the young father's only relevance to my history is that he was the first outsider to hear about Joseph D'Costa's virulent hatred of the rich, and of Mary Pereira's desperate grief. Tomorrow I'll h I am going to put on a brand new kurta, shining and starched, and pajamas to match. I'll wear mirrorworked slippers curling up at the toes, my hair will be neatly brushed (though not parted in the centre), my teeth gleaming... in a phrase, I'll look my best. ('Thank God' from pouting Padma.) Tomorrow, at last, there will be an end to stories which I (not having been present at their birth) have to drag out of the whirling because the metronome musk of Mountbatten's countdown calendar can be ignored no longer. At Methwold's Estate, old Musa is still ticking like a time- but he can't be heard, because another sound is swelling now, deafening, the sound of seconds passing, of an approaching, inevitable midnight.
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n. 力量,势力,动力v. 使...有力量,供以动力,激励[ 过去式powered 过去分词powered 现在分词powering 第三人称单数powers ]
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