Vastupal, Tejpal and Anupama

The opening of the story

Long after the other lamps of Mandali had gone out, one still burned in a small house near the Jain temple. Kumaradevi sat beside it with the family account book open on her knees, and her two youngest sons sat with her. Their father, Ashvaraj, had served the kings of Patan as a minister, and the king had once granted him a town of his own. But Ashvaraj had died, and his widow had brought her children to this quiet town to live on what was left. There was enough, but only just. Vastupal, the elder of the two boys, kept the accounts. Tejpal, the younger, was learning to ride a horse and to read a ledger at the same time, and he was better at the riding.

"Count every coin," their mother told them, "and then remember that none of it is yours to keep." She had seen her husband build tanks and wells where travellers were thirsty, and she had taken the whole family on pilgrimage to the holy hill of Shatrunjay. Vastupal never forgot the first sight of it: the white temples of Bhagwan Adinath standing above the plain, and his mother climbing the steps slowly, singing under her breath. He grew into a young man who loved poetry as much as arithmetic, and who wrote verses in the margins of his ledgers. Tejpal grew broad and quick, the kind of man other men followed without being told to.