Interrupted by an intercom’s blinking purple light, the drone of its low-pitched hum like a call to instincts base (as in fundamental; to be beckoned by His Highness ought not to be termed degrading), Nana caps her pen, inserts it into the kidskin sheath that abuts her journal’s spine—hidebound covers locking, with a ‘click’, as belt and buckle mate—then stows her private thoughts inside the jaws of a snow-leopard throw rug.

            It is dawn (the hour of dew and piss-proud expectations) when often she is summoned to:

            rise,

            proceed like a sleepwalker (clad in the Varanasi silk of her pale grey negligee),

            brave the alpine chill (upon leaving her balmy quarters),

          skirt the compound’s courtyard (via its cloister and vine-bound colonnade),

            pass by chambers of former favourites on tiptoe (lest envious hearts awaken),

            exit under an archway (tile exchanged for rain-worn cobblestone),

            wend her way through a garden (forever in bloom by virtue of perennials),

            enter an aviary’s vestibule (one of two with inner-outer gates),

delight in trills of birdsong (en route to the opposite entry-exit),

where a second pair of gates conveys her (prettily serenaded) to her appointed assignation.