A Suitable Boy(13)

‘I wish you were in Calcutta,’ said Varun.

‘Surely you must have some friends –’ said Lata.

‘Well, in the evening Arun Bhai and Meenakshi Bhabhi are often out and I have to mind Aparna,’ said Varun, smiling weakly. ‘Not that I mind,’ he added.

‘Varun, this won’t do,’ said Lata. She placed her hand firmly on his slouching shoulder and said: ‘I want you to go out with your friends – with people you really like and who like you – for at least two evenings a week. Pretend you have to attend a coaching session or something.’ Lata didn’t care for deception, and she didn’t know whether Varun would be any good at it, but she didn’t want things to continue as they were. She was worried about Varun. He had looked even more jittery at the wedding than when she had seen him a few months previously.

A train hooted suddenly from alarmingly close, and the tonga horse shied.

‘How amazing,’ said Varun to himself, all thoughts of everything else obliterated.

He patted the horse when they got back into the tonga.

‘How far is the station from here?’ he asked the tonga-wallah.

‘Oh, it’s just over there,’ said the tonga-wallah, indicating vaguely the built-up area beyond the well-laid-out gardens of the race-course. ‘Not far from the zoo.’

I wonder if it gives the local horses an advantage, Varun said to himself. Would the others tend to bolt? What difference would it make to the odds?





1.11


WHEN they got to the zoo, Bhaskar and Aparna joined forces and asked to ride on the children’s railway, which, Bhaskar noted, also went around anti-clockwise. Lata and Malati wanted a walk after the tonga ride, but they were overruled. All five of them sat in a small, post-box-red compartment, squashed together and facing each other this time, while the little green steam engine puffed along on its one-foot-wide track. Varun sat opposite Malati, their knees almost touching. Malati enjoyed the fun of this, but Varun was so disconcerted that he looked desperately around at the giraffes, and even stared attentively at the crowds of schoolchildren, some of whom were licking huge bobbins of pink spun candy. Aparna’s eyes began to shine with anticipation.

Since Bhaskar was nine, and Aparna a third of his age, they did not have much to say to each other. They attached themselves to their most-favoured adults. Aparna, brought up by her socialite parents with alternating indulgence and irritation, found Lata reassuringly certain in her affection. In Lata’s company she behaved in a less brat-like manner. Bhaskar and Varun got on famously once Bhaskar succeeded in getting him to concentrate. They discussed mathematics, with special reference to racing odds.

They saw the elephant, the camel, the emu, the common bat, the brown pelican, the red fox, and all the big cats. They even saw a smaller one, the black-spotted leopard-cat, as he paced frenziedly across the floor of his cage.

But the best stop of all was the reptile house. Both children were eager to see the snake pit, which was full of fairly sluggish pythons, and the glass cases with their deadly vipers and kraits and cobras. And also, of course, the cold, corrugated crocodiles onto whose backs some schoolchildren and visiting villagers were throwing coins – while others, as the white, serrated mouths opened lazily far below, leaned over the railings and pointed and squealed and shuddered. Luckily Varun had a taste for the sinister, and took the kids inside. Lata and Malati refused to go in.

‘I see enough horrifying things as a medical student,’ said Malati.

‘I wish you wouldn’t tease Varun,’ said Lata after a while.

‘Oh, I wasn’t teasing him,’ said Malati. ‘Just listening to him attentively. It’s good for him.’ She laughed.

‘Mm – you make him nervous.’

‘You’re very protective of your elder brother.’

‘He’s not – oh, I see – yes, my younger elder brother. Well, since I don’t have a younger brother, I suppose I’ve given him the part. But seriously, Malati, I am worried about him. And so is my mother. We don’t know what he’s going to do when he graduates in a few months. He hasn’t shown much aptitude for anything. And Arun bullies him fearfully. I wish some nice girl would take him in charge.’

‘And I’m not the one? I must say, he has a certain feeble charm. Heh, heh!’ Malati imitated Varun’s laugh.

‘Don’t be facetious, Malati. I don’t know about Varun, but my mother would have a fit,’ said Lata.

This was certainly true. Even though it was an impossible proposition geographically, the very thought of it would have given Mrs Rupa Mehra nightmares. Malati Trivedi, apart from being one of a small handful of girls among the almost five hundred boys at the Prince of Wales Medical College, was notorious for her outspoken views, her participation in the activities of the Socialist Party, and her love affairs – though not with any of those five hundred boys, whom, by and large, she treated with contempt.