A Suitable Boy(180)

Having exhausted all his other possibilities, Maan began to hang around the Rajkumar of Marh’s set and (though he did not visit Tarbuz ka Bazaar again) drank and gambled away much of the money that had been reserved for the business. The gambling – usually flush, but sometimes even poker, for which there was a recent craze among the more self-consciously dissolute students in Brahmpur – took place mainly in the students’ rooms, but sometimes in informal gambling dens in private houses here and there in the city. Their drink was invariably Scotch. Maan thought of Saeeda Bai all the time, and declined a visit even to the beautiful Rupvati. For this he was chaffed by all his new companions, who told him that he might lose his abilities permanently for lack of exercise.

One day Maan, separated from his companions, was walking up and down Nabiganj in a lovesick haze when he bumped into an old flame of his. She was now married, but retained a great affection for Maan. Maan too continued to like her a great deal. Her husband – who had the unlikely nickname of Pigeon – asked Maan if he would join them for coffee at the Red Fox. But Maan, who would normally have accepted the invitation with alacrity, looked away unhappily and said that he had to be going.

‘Why is your old admirer behaving so strangely?’ said her husband to her with a smile.

‘I don’t know,’ she said, mystified.

‘Surely he’s not fallen out of love with you.’

‘That’s possible – but unlikely. Maan Kapoor doesn’t fall out of love with anyone as a rule.’

They let it go at that, and went into the Red Fox.





6.21


MAAN was not the only target of old Mrs Tandon’s suspicions. Of late, the old lady, who kept tabs on everything, began to notice that Veena had not been wearing certain items of her jewellery: that though she continued to wear her in-laws’ pieces, she had ceased to wear those that came from her parents. One day she reported this matter to her son.

Kedarnath paid no attention.

His mother kept at him, until eventually he agreed to ask Veena to put on her navratan.

Veena flushed. ‘I‘ve lent it to Priya, who wants to copy the design,’ she said. ‘She saw me wear it at Pran’s wedding and liked it.’

But Veena looked so unhappy with her lie that the truth soon came out. Kedarnath discovered that running the household cost far more than she had told him it did; he, domestically impractical and often absent, had simply not noticed. She had hoped that by asking him for less household money she would reduce the financial pressure on his business. But now he realized that she had taken steps to pawn or sell her jewellery.

Kedarnath also learned that Bhaskar’s school fees and books were already being supplied out of Mrs Mahesh Kapoor’s monthly household money, some of which she diverted to her daughter.

‘We can’t have that,’ said Kedarnath. ‘Your father helped us enough three years ago.’

‘Why not?’ demanded Veena. ‘Bhaskar’s Nani is surely allowed to give him those, why not? It’s not as if she’s supplying us our rations.’

‘There’s something out of tune with my Veena today,’ said Kedarnath, smiling a bit sadly.

Veena was not mollified.

‘You never tell me anything,’ she burst out, ‘and then I find you with your head in your hands, and your eyes closed for minutes on end. What am I to think? And you are always away. Sometimes when you’re away I cry to myself all night long; it would have been better to have a drunkard as a husband, as long as he slept here every night.’

‘Now calm down. Where are these jewels?’

‘Priya has them. She said she‘d get me an estimate.’

‘They haven’t yet been sold then?’

‘No.’

‘Go and get them back.’

‘No.’

‘Go and get them back, Veena. How can you gamble with your mother’s navratan?’

‘How can you play chaupar with Bhaskar’s future?’

Kedarnath closed his eyes for a few seconds.

‘You understand nothing about business,’ he said.

‘I understand enough to know that you can’t keep “over-extending” yourself.’

‘Over-extension is just over-extension. All great fortunes are based on debt.’

‘Well we, I know, will never be greatly fortunate again,’ burst out Veena passionately. ‘This isn’t Lahore. Why can’t we guard what little we have?’

Kedarnath was silent for a while. Then he said: ‘Get the jewellery back. It’s all right, it really is. Haresh’s arrangement with the brogues is about to come through any day, and our long term problems will be solved.’