A Suitable Boy(115)

4.10


A tall, good-looking fellow in cricket whites opened the door.

‘We’ve come to see Dr Durrani,’ said Haresh. ‘Do you think he might be free?’

‘I’ll just see what my father is doing,’ said the young man in a low, pleasant, slightly rough-edged voice. ‘Please come in.’

A minute or two later he emerged and said, ‘My father will be out in a minute. He asked me who you were, and I realized I hadn’t asked. I’m sorry, I should introduce myself first. My name’s Kabir.’

Haresh, impressed by the young man’s looks and manner, held out his hand, smiled in a clipped sort of way, and introduced himself. ‘And this is Bhaskar, a friend’s son.’

The young man seemed a bit troubled about something, but did his best to make conversation.

‘Hello, Bhaskar,’ said Kabir. ‘How old are you?’

‘Nine,’ said Bhaskar, not objecting to this least original of questions. He was pondering what all this was about.

After a while Kabir said, ‘I wonder what’s keeping my father,’ and went back in.

When Dr Durrani finally came into the drawing room, he was quite surprised to see his visitors.

Noticing Bhaskar, he asked Haresh: ‘Have you come to see one of my, er, sons?’

Bhaskar’s eyes lit up at this unusual adult behaviour. He liked Dr Durrani’s strong, square face, and in particular the balance and symmetry of his magnificent white moustache.

Haresh, who had stood up, said: ‘No indeed, Dr Durrani, it’s you we’ve come to see. I don’t know if you remember me – we met at Sunil’s party…’

‘Sunil?’ said Dr Durrani, his eyes scrunched up in utter perplexity, his eyebrows working up and down. ‘Sunil… Sunil…’ He seemed to be weighing something up with great seriousness, and coming closer and closer to a conclusion. ‘Patwardhan,’ he said, with the air of having arrived at a considerable insight. He appraised this new premise from several angles in silence.

Haresh decided to speed up the process. He said, rather briskly: ‘Dr Durrani, you said that we could drop in to see you. This is my young friend Bhaskar, whom I told you about. I think his interest in mathematics is remarkable, and I felt he should meet you.’

Dr Durrani looked quite pleased, and asked Bhaskar what two plus two was.

Haresh was taken aback, but Bhaskar – though he normally rejected considerably more complex sums as unworthy of his attention – was not, apparently, insulted. In a very tentative voice he replied: ‘Four?’

Dr Durrani was silent. He appeared to be mulling over this answer. Haresh began to feel ill at ease.

‘Well, yes, you can, er, leave him here for a while,’ said Dr Durrani.

‘Shall I come back to pick him up at four o’clock?’ asked Haresh.

‘More or less,’ said Dr Durrani.

When he and Bhaskar were left alone, both of them were silent, After a while, Bhaskar said: ‘Was that the right answer?’

‘More or less,’ said Dr Durrani. ‘You see,’ he said, picking up a musammi from a bowl on the dining table, ‘it’s rather, er, it’s rather like the question of the, er, sum of the angles in a – in a triangle. What have they, er, taught you that is?’

‘180 degrees,’ said Bhaskar.

‘Well, more or less,’ said Dr Durrani. ‘On the, er, surface of it, at least. But on the surface of this, er, musammi, for instance –’

For a while he gazed at the green citrus, following a mysterious train of thought. Once it had served his purpose, he looked at it wonderingly, as if he could not figure out what it was doing in his hand. He peeled it with some difficulty because of its thick skin and began to eat it.

"Would you, er, like some?’ he asked Bhaskar matter-of-factly.

‘Yes, please,’ said Bhaskar, and held out both hands for a segment, as if he were receiving a sanctified offering from a temple.

An hour later, when Haresh returned, he got the sense that he was an unwelcome interruption. They were now both sitting at the dining table, on which were lying – among other things – several musammis, several peels of musammis, a large number of toothpicks in various configurations, an inverted ashtray, some strips of newspaper stuck together in odd-looking twisted loops, and a purple kite. The remaining surface of the dining room table was covered with equations in yellow chalk.

Before Bhaskar left with Haresh, he took with him the loops of newspaper, the purple kite, and exactly sixteen toothpicks. Neither Dr Durrani nor Bhaskar thanked each other for the time they had spent together.

In the tonga back to Misri Mandi, Haresh could not resist asking Bhaskar: ‘Did you understand all those equations?’