A Suitable Boy(211)

7.15


THE Chatterji Parliament (including Kakoli, who normally found it difficult to wake up before ten) was assembled for breakfast the next day.

All signs of the party had been cleared away. Cuddles had been unleashed upon the world. He had bounded around the garden in delight, and had disturbed Dipankar’s meditations in the small hut that he had made for himself in a corner of the garden. He had also dug up a few plants in the vegetable garden that Dipankar took so much interest in. Dipankar took all this calmly. Cuddles had probably buried something there, and after the trauma of last night merely wanted to reassure himself that the world and the objects in it were as they used to be.

Kakoli had left instructions that she was to be woken up at seven. She had to make a phone call to Hans after he came back from his morning ride. How he managed to wake up at five – like Dipankar – and do all these vigorous things on a horse she did not know. But she felt that he must have great strength of will.

Kakoli was deeply attached to the telephone, and monopolized it shamelessly – as she did the car. Often she would burble on for forty-five minutes on end and her father sometimes found it impossible to get through to his house from the High Court or the Calcutta Club. There were fewer than ten thousand telephones in the whole of Calcutta, so a second phone would have been an unimaginable luxury. Ever since Kakoli had had an extension installed in her room, however, the unimaginable had begun to appear to him almost reasonable.

Since it had been a late night, the old servant Bahadur, who usually performed the difficult task of waking the unwilling Kuku and placating her with milk, had been told to sleep late. Amit had therefore taken on the duty of waking his sister.

He knocked gently on her door. There was no response. He opened the door. Light was streaming through the window onto Kakoli’s bed. She was sleeping diagonally across the bed with her arm thrown across her eyes. Her pretty, round face was covered with dried Lacto-calamine, which, like papaya pulp, she used to improve her complexion.

Amit said, ‘Kuku, wake up. It’s seven o‘clock.’

Kakoli continued to sleep soundly.

‘Wake up, Kuku.’

Kakoli stirred slightly, then said what sounded like ‘choo-moo‘. It was a sound of complaint.

After about five minutes of trying to get her to wake up, first by gentle words and then by a gentle shake or two of the shoulders, and being rewarded with nothing but ‘choo-moo’, Amit threw a pillow rather ungently over her head.

Kakoli bestirred herself enough to say: ‘Take a lesson from Bahadur. Wake people up nicely.’

Amit said, ‘I don’t have the practice. He has probably had to stand around your bed ten thousand times murmuring, “Kuku Baby, wake up; wake up, Baby Memsahib,” for twenty minutes while you do your “choomoo”.’

‘Ungh,’ said Kakoli.

‘Open your eyes at least,’ said Amit. ‘Otherwise you’ll just roll over and go back to sleep.’ After a pause he added, ‘Kuku Baby.’

‘Ungh,’ said Kakoli irritably. She opened both her eyes a fraction, however.

‘Do you want your teddy-bear? Your telephone? A glass of milk?’ said Amit.

‘Milk.’

‘How many glasses?’

‘A glass of milk.’

‘All right.’

Amit went off to fetch her a glass of milk.

When he returned he found that she was sitting on the bed, with the telephone receiver in one hand and Cuddles tucked under the other arm. She was treating Cuddles to a stream of Chatterji chatter.

‘Oh you beastie,’ she was saying; ‘oh you beastly beastie – oh you ghastly, beastly beastie.’ She stroked his head with the telephone receiver. ‘Oh you vastly ghastly mostly beastly beastie.’ She paid no attention to Amit.

‘Do shut up, Kuku, and take your milk,’ said Amit irritably. ‘I have other things to do than wait on you, you know.’

This remark struck Kakoli with novel force. She was well-practised in the art of being helpless when there were helpful people around.

‘Or do you want me to drink it for you as well?’ added Amit gratuitously.

‘Go bite Amit,’ Kakoli instructed Cuddles. Cuddles did not comply.

‘Shall I set it down here, Madam?’

‘Yes, do.’ Kakoli ignored the sarcasm.

‘Will that be all, Madam?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes what?’

‘Yes, thank you.’

‘I was going to ask for a good-morning kiss, but that Lacto-calamine looks so disgusting I think I’ll defer it.’

Kakoli surveyed Amit severely. ‘You are a horrible, insensitive person,’ she informed him. ‘I don’t know why women swoooooon over your poetry.’