A Suitable Boy(206)
‘She’s quite secretive these days,’ said her mother.
‘On the contrary, she’s very open,’ said Mr Justice Chatterji.
‘It’s the same thing,’ said Mrs Chatterji. ‘We hear about so many friends and special friends that we never really know who the real one is. If indeed there is one at all.’
‘Well, dear,’ said Mr Justice Chatterji to his wife, ‘you worried about the commie and that came to nothing, and about the boy with the hand, and that came to nothing. So why worry? Look at Arun’s mother there, she’s always smiling, she never worries about anything.’
‘Baba,‘ sad Meenakshi, ‘that’s simply not true, she’s the biggest worrier of all. She worries about everything – no matter how trivial.’
‘Is that so?’ said her father with interest.
‘Anyway,’ continued Meenakshi, ‘how do you know that there is any romantic interest between them?’
‘He keeps inviting her to all these diplomatic functions,’ said her mother. ‘He’s a Second Secretary at the German Consulate General. He even pretends to like Rabindrasangeet. It’s too much.’
‘Darling, you’re not being quite fair,’ said Mr Justice Chatterji. ‘Kakoli too has suddenly evinced an interest in playing the piano parts of Schubert songs. If we‘re lucky, we may even hear an impromptu recital tonight.’
‘She says he has a lovely baritone voice, and it makes her swoon. She will completely ruin her reputation,’ said Mrs Chatterji.
‘What’s his name?’ asked Meenakshi.
‘Hans,’ said Mrs Chatterji.
‘Just Hans?’
‘Hans something. Really, Meenakshi, it’s too upsetting. If he’s not serious, it’ll break her heart. And if she marries him she’ll leave India and we’ll never see her again.’
‘Hans Sieber,’ said her father. ‘Incidentally, if you introduce yourself as Mrs Mehra rather than as Miss Chatterji, he is liable to seize your hand and kiss it. I think his family was originally Austrian. Courtesy is something of a disease there.’
‘Really?’ breathed Meenakshi, intrigued.
‘Really. Even Ila was charmed. But it didn’t work with your mother; she considers him a sort of pallid Ravana come to spirit her daughter away to distant wilds.’
The analogy was not apt, but Mr Justice Chatterji, off the bench, relaxed considerably the logical rigour he was renowned for.
‘So you think he might kiss my hand?’
‘Not might, will. But that’s nothing to what he did with mine.’
‘What did he do, Baba?’ Meenakshi fixed her huge eyes on her father.
‘He nearly crushed it to pulp.’ Her father opened his right hand and looked at it for a few seconds.
‘Why did he do that?’ asked Meenakshi, laughing in her tinkling way.
‘I think he wanted to be reassuring,’ said her father. ‘And your husband was similarly reassured a few minutes later. At any rate, I noticed him open his mouth slightly when he was receiving his handshake.’
‘Oh, poor Arun,’ said Meenakshi with unconcern.
She looked across at Hans, who was gazing adoringly at Kakoli surrounded by her circle of jabberers. Then, to her mother’s considerable distress, she repeated: ‘He’s very good-looking. Tall too. What’s wrong with him? Aren’t we Brahmos supposed to be very open-minded? Why shouldn’t we marry Kuku off to a foreigner? It would be rather chic.’
‘Yes, why not?’ said her father. ‘His limbs appear to be intact.’
Mrs Chatterji said: ‘I wish you could dissuade your sister from acting rashly. I should never have let her learn that brutal language from that awful Miss Hebel.’
Meenakshi said: ‘I don’t think anything we say to one another has much effect. Didn’t you want Kuku to dissuade me from marrying Arun a few years ago?’
‘Oh, that was quite different,’ said Mrs Chatterji. ‘And besides, we’re used to Arun now,’ she continued unconvincingly. ‘We’re all one big happy family now.’
The conversation was interrupted by Mr Kohli, a very round teacher of physics who was fond of his drink, and was trying to avoid bumping into his reproving wife on his way to the bar. ‘Hello, judge,’ he said. ‘What do you think of the verdict in the Bandel Road case?’
‘Ah, well, as you know, I can’t comment on it,’ said Mr Justice Chatterji. ‘It might turn up in my court on appeal. And really, I haven’t been following it closely either, though everyone else I know appears to have been.’
Mrs Chatterji had no such compunctions, however. All the newspapers had carried long reports about the progress of the case and everyone had an opinion about it. ‘It really is shocking,’ she said. ‘I can’t see how a mere magistrate has the right –’