Take 2 in Aimee Liu's new blog series

Out takes from a novel:

Take 2
In which Thea and Shep arrive in Calcutta, 1936

In Calcutta Shep was to be briefed by the Director-General, in from Delhi for a meeting of the specialist medical appointees for Bengal. For the week that this induction required they'd been booked into the Fairhaven Hotel, a verdant oasis in the city center run by the redoubtable Mrs. Sark. Ruby, as she insisted they call her, immediately took Thea under her wing. "Don't you worry," she'd shoo Shep off to his meetings each morning. "Your pigeon be safe with me."

Thea was eager to set out and discover the "deep, full-throated boom of life and motion and humanity" that Kipling had promised in his City of Dreadful Night. From the carriage they'd taken to the hotel, she'd smelled India�s famous dung smoke, mustered a smile for the filthy children pleading lugubriously with hands outstretched, and marveled at the spice-tinged colors that seemed to drape the air. But Shep made her promise