A Suitable Boy(15)

Another was the servant who acted as an intermediary for the sale of the houses. He would contact property agents or other prospective buyers in the towns where the houses were located, and make deals with them. He had something of a reputation as a cheat.

Yet another was her father’s younger brother, who still lived in the Lucknow house, with his wife downstairs and a dancing girl upstairs. He would happily have cheated them, if he had been able to, over the sale of that house. He needed money to spend on the dancing girl.

Then there was the young – well, twenty-six-year-old – but rather sleazy college teacher who had lived downstairs in a rented room when Malati was fifteen or so. Malati’s mother wanted her to learn English, and had no compunction, no matter what the neighbours said (and they said a great deal, not much of it charitable) about sending Malati to learn from him – though he was a bachelor. Perhaps in this case the neighbours were right. He very soon fell madly in love with Malati, and requested her mother for permission to marry her. When Malati was asked by her mother for her views on the matter, she was amazed and shocked, and refused point-blank.

At the medical college in Brahmpur, and before that, when she had studied Intermediate Science in Agra, Malati had had a lot to put up with: teasing, gossip, the pulling of the light chunni around her neck, and remarks such as ‘She wants to be a boy.’ This was very far from the truth. The remarks were unbearable and only diminished when, provoked by one boy beyond endurance, she had slapped his face hard in front of his friends.

Men fell for her at a rapid rate, but she saw them as beneath her attention. It was not as if she truly hated men; most of the time she didn’t. It was just that her standards were too high. No one came near the image she and her sisters had of their father, and most men struck her as being immature. Besides, marriage was a distraction for someone who had set her sights upon the career of medicine, and she was not enormously concerned if she never got married.

She over-filled the unforgiving minute. As a girl of twelve or thirteen, she had been a loner, even in her crowded family. She loved reading, and people knew better than to talk to her when she had a book in her hands. When this happened, her mother did not insist that she help with cooking and housework. ‘Malati’s reading,’ was enough for people to avoid the room where she lay or sat crouched, for she would pounce angrily on anyone who dared disturb her. Sometimes she would actually hide from people, seeking out a corner where no one would be likely to find her. They got the message soon enough. As the years passed, she guided the education of her younger sisters. Her elder sister, the tomboy, guided them all – or, rather, bossed them around – in other matters.

Malati’s mother was remarkable in that she wished her daughters to be independent. She wanted them, apart from their schooling at a Hindi medium school, to learn music and dancing and languages (and especially to be good at English); and if this meant that they had to go to someone’s house to learn what was needed, they would go – regardless of what people said. If a tutor had to be called to the house of the six women, he would be called. Young men would look up in fascination at the first floor of the house, as they heard five girls singing along undemurely together. If the girls wanted ice-cream as a special treat, they would be allowed to go to the shop by themselves and eat it. When neighbours objected to the shamelessness of letting young girls go around by themselves in Agra, they were allowed occasionally to go to the shop after dark instead which, presumably, was worse, though less detectable. Malati’s mother made it clear to the girls that she would give them the best education possible, but that they would have to find their own husbands.

Soon after she came to Brahmpur, Malati fell in love with a married musician, who was a socialist. She remained involved with the Socialist Party even when their affair ended. Then she had another rather unhappy love affair. At the moment she was unattached.

Though full of energy most of the time, Malati would fall ill every few months or so, and her mother would come down from Agra to Brahmpur to cure her of the evil eye, an influence that lay outside the province of western medicine. Because Malati had such remarkable eyes herself, she was a special target of the evil eye.

A dirty, grey, pink-legged crane surveyed Malati and Lata with its small, intense red eyes; then a grey film blinked sideways across each eyeball, and it walked carefully away.

‘Let’s surprise the kids by buying some of that spun candy for them,’ said Lata as a vendor went past. ‘I wonder what’s keeping them. What’s the matter, Malati? What are you thinking of?’