Lata wanted to visit a bookshop on Park Street, and spent about fifteen minutes there while Meenakshi chafed impatiently. When she found that Lata hadn’t in fact bought anything, she thought it very peculiar. Mrs Rupa Mehra was content to browse timelessly.
Upon their return home, Meenakshi found her cook in a flap. He was not sure about the exact proportions for the soufflé, and as for the hilsa, Meenakshi would have to instruct him about the kind of fire it needed to be smoked on. Aparna too was sulking because of her mother’s absence. She now threatened to throw a tantrum. This was too much for Meenakshi, who was getting late for the canasta which she played with her ladies’ club – the Shady Ladies – once a week, and which (Basil Cox or no Basil Cox) she could not possibly miss. She got into a flap herself and shouted at Aparna and the Toothless Crone and the cook. Varun locked himself in his small room and covered his head with a pillow.
‘You should not get into a temper for nothing,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra unhelpfully.
Meenakshi turned towards her in exasperation. ‘That’s a big help, Ma,’ she said. ‘What do you expect me to do? Miss my canasta?’
‘No, no, you will not miss your canasta,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘That I am not asking you to do, Meenakshi, but you must not shout at Aparna like that. It is not good for her.’ Hearing this, Aparna edged towards her grandmother’s chair.
Meenakshi made an impatient sound.
The impossibility of her position suddenly came home to her. This cook was a real incompetent. Arun would be terribly, terribly angry with her if anything went wrong this evening. It was so important for his job too – and what could she do? Cut out the smoked hilsa? At least this idiot Hanif could handle the roast chicken. But he was a temperamental fellow, and had been known even to misfry an egg. Meenakshi looked around the room in wild distress.
‘Ask your mother if you can borrow her Mugh cook,’ said Lata with sudden inspiration.
Meenakshi gazed at Lata in wonder. ‘What an Einstein you are, Luts!’ she said, and immediately telephoned her mother. Mrs Chatterji rallied to her daughter’s aid. She had two cooks, one for Bengali and one for western food. The Bengali cook was told that he would have to prepare dinner in the Chatterji household that evening, and the Mugh cook, who came from Chittagong and excelled in European food, was dispatched to Sunny Park within the half-hour. Meanwhile, Meenakshi had gone off for her canasta lunch with the Shady Ladies and had almost forgotten the tribulations of existence.
She returned in the middle of the afternoon to find a rebellion on her hands. The gramophone was blaring and the chickens were cackling in alarm. The Mugh cook told her as snootily as he could that he was not accustomed to being farmed out in this manner, that he was not used to working in such a small kitchen, that her cook-cum-bearer had behaved insolently towards him, that the fish and chickens that had been bought were none too fresh, and that he needed a certain kind of lemon extract for the soufflé which she had not had the foresight to provide. Hanif for his part was glaring resentfully, and was on the verge of giving notice. He was holding a squawking chicken out in front of him and saying: ‘Feel, feel its breast – Memsahib – this is a young and fresh chicken. Why should I work below this man? Who is he to boss me around in my own kitchen? He keeps saying, “I am Mr Justice Chatterji’s cook. I am Mr Justice Chatterji’s cook.” ’
‘No, no, I trust you, I don’t need to –’ cried Meenakshi, shuddering fastidiously and drawing back her red-polished fingernails as her cook pushed the chicken’s feathers aside and offered its breast for her to assay.
Mrs Rupa Mehra, while not displeased at Meenakshi’s discomfiture, did not want to jeopardize this dinner for the boss of her darling son. She was good at making peace between refractory servants, and she now did so. Harmony was restored, and she went into the drawing room to play a game of patience.
Varun had put on the gramophone about half an hour earlier and was playing the same scratchy 78-rpm record again and again: the Hindi film song ‘Two intoxicating eyes’, a song that no one, not even the sentimental Mrs Rupa Mehra, could tolerate after its fifth repetition. Varun had been singing the words to himself moodily and dreamily before Meenakshi returned. In her presence Varun stopped singing, but he continued to rewind the gramophone every few minutes and hum the song softly to himself by way of accompaniment. As he put away the spent needles one by one in the little compartment that fitted into the side of the machine, he reflected gloomily on his own fleeting life and personal uselessness.