A Suitable Boy(11)

The Nawab Sahib did not notice that anything was the matter, but Veena did, and quickly changed the subject even at the cost of appearing rude. ‘Where’s Bhaskar?’ she asked her husband.

‘I don’t know. I think I saw him near the food, the little frog,’ said Kedarnath.

‘I wish you wouldn’t call him that,’ said Veena. ‘He is your son. It’s not auspicious…’

‘It‘s not my name for him, it’s Maan’s,’ said Kedarnath with a smile. He enjoyed being mildly henpecked. ‘But I’ll call him whatever you want me to.’

Veena led her mother-in-law away. And to distract the old lady she did in fact get involved in looking for her son. Finally they found Bhaskar. He was not eating anything but simply standing under the great multicoloured cloth canopy that covered the food tables, gazing upwards with pleased and abstract wonderment at the elaborate geometrical patterns – red rhombuses, green trapeziums, yellow squares and blue triangles – from which it had been stitched together.





1.9


‘THE crowds had thinned; the guests, some chewing paan, were departing at the gate; a heap of gifts had grown by the side of the bench where Pran and Savita had been sitting. Finally only they and a few members of the family were left - and the yawning servants who would put away the more valuable furniture for the night, or pack the gifts in a trunk under the watchful eye of Mrs Rupa Mehra.

The bride and groom were lost in their thoughts. They avoided looking at each other now. They would spend the night in a carefully prepared room in Prem Nivas, and leave for a week’s honeymoon in Simla tomorrow.

Lata tried to imagine the nuptial room. Presumably it would be fragrant with tuberoses; that, at least, was Malati’s confident opinion. I’ll always associate tuberoses with Pran, Lata thought. It was not at all pleasant to follow her imagination further. That Savita would be sleeping with Pran tonight did not bear thinking of. It did not strike her as being at all romantic. Perhaps they would be too exhausted, she thought optimistically.

‘What are you thinking of, Lata?’ asked her mother.

‘Oh, nothing, Ma,’ said Lata automatically. ‘You turned up your nose. I saw it.’

Lata blushed. ‘I don’t think I ever want to get married,’ she said emphatically.

Mrs Rupa Mehra was too wearied by the wedding, too exhausted by emotion, too softened by Sanskrit, too cumbered with congratulations, too overwrought, in short, to do anything but stare at Lata for ten seconds. What on earth had got into the girl? What was good enough for her mother and her mother’s mother and her mother’s mother’s mother should be good enough for her. Lata, though, had always been a difficult one, with a strange will of her own, quiet but unpredictable – like that time in St Sophia’s when she had wanted to become a nun! But Mrs Rupa Mehra too had a will, and she was determined to have her own way, even if she was under no illusions as to Lata’s pliability.

And yet, Lata was named after that most pliable thing, a vine, which was trained to cling: first to her family, then to her husband. Indeed, when she was a baby, Lata’s fingers had had a strong and coiling grasp which even now came back with a sweet vividness to her mother. Suddenly Mrs Rupa Mehra burst out with the inspited remark: ‘Lata, you are a vine, you must cling to your husband!’

It was not a success.

‘Cling?’ said Lata. ‘Cling?’ The word was pronounced with such quiet scorn that her mother could not help bursting into tears. How terrible it was to have an ungrateful daughter. And how unpredictable a baby could be.

Now that the tears were running down her checks, Mrs Rupa Mehra transferred them fluidly from one daughter to the other. She clasped Savita to her bosom and wept loudly. ‘You must write to me, Savita darling,‘ she said. ‘You must write to me every day from Simla. Pran, you are like my own son now, you must be responsible and see to it. Soon I will be all alone in Calcutta – all alone.’

This was of course quite untrue. Arun and Varun and Meenakshi and Aparna would all be crowded together with her in Arun’s little flat in Sunny Park. But Mrs Rupa Mehra was one who believed with unformulated but absolute conviction in the paramountcy of subjective over objective truth.





1.10


THE tonga clip-clopped along the road, and the tonga-wallah sang out: ‘A heart was shattered into bits – and one fell here, and one fell there…’

Varun started to hum along, then sang louder, then suddenly stopped. ‘Oh, don’t stop,’ said Malati, nudging Lata gently. ‘You have a nice voice. Like a bulbul.’