A Suitable Boy(214)
‘Is that what they said to Rabindranath Tagore?’ asked Amit.
‘I’m sure you’ll admit there’s a difference between you and Tagore,’ said his father, looking at his eldest son in surprise.
‘I’ll admit there’s a difference, Baba,’ said Amit. ‘But what’s the relevance of the difference to the point I’m making?’
But at the mention of Tagore, Mrs Chatterji had entered a mode of righteous reverence.
‘Amit, Amit,’ she cried, ‘how can you think of Gurudeb like that?’
‘Mago, I didn’t say –’ began Amit.
Mrs Chatterji broke in. ‘Amit, Robi Babu is like a saint. We in Bengal owe everything to him. When I was in Shantiniketan, I remember he once said to me –’
But now Kakoli joined forces with Amit.
‘Please, Mago, really – we‘ve heard enough about Shantiniketan and how idyllic it is. I know that if I had to live there I’d commit suicide every day.’
‘His voice is like a cry in the wilderness,’ continued her mother, hardly hearing her.
‘I’d hardly say so, Ma,’ said Amit. ‘We idolize him more than the English do Shakespeare.’
‘And with good reason,’ said Mrs Chatterji. ‘His songs come to our lips - his poems come to our hearts –’
‘Actually,’ said Kakoli, ‘Abol Tabol is the only good book in the whole of Bengali literature.
The Griffonling from birth
Is indisposed to mirth.
To laugh or grin he counts a sin
And shudders, ‘Not on earth.”
Oh, yes, and I like The Sketches of Hutom the Owl. And when I take up literature, I shall write my own: The Sketches of Cuddles the Dog.’
‘Kuku, you are a really shameless girl,’ cried Mrs Chatterji, incensed. ‘Please stop her from saying these things.’
‘It’s just an opinion, dear,’ said Mr Justice Chatterji, ‘I can’t stop her from holding opinions.’
‘But about Gurudeb, whose songs she sings – about Robi Babu –’
Kakoli, who had been force-fed, almost from birth, with Rabindrasangeet, now warbled out to the tune of a truncated ‘Shonkochero bihvalata nijere apoman’:
‘Robi Babu, R. Tagore, O, he’s such a bore!
Robi Babu, R. Tagore, O, he’s such a bore!
O, he’s su-uch a bore.
Such a, such a bore.
Such a, such a bore,
O, he’s such a, O, he’s such a, O, he’s such a bore.
Robi Babu, R. Tagore, O, he’s such a bore!’
‘Stop! Stop it at once! Kakoli, do you hear me?’ cried Mrs Chatterji, appalled. ‘Stop it! How dare you! You stupid, shameless, shallow girl.’
‘Really, Ma,’ continued Kakoli, ‘reading him is like trying to swim breaststroke through treacle. You should hear Ila Chattopadhyay on your Robi Babu. Flowers and moonlight and nuptial beds…’
‘Ma,’ said Dipankar, ‘why do you let them get to you? You should take the best in the words and mould them to your own spirit. That way, you can attain stillness.’
Mrs Chatterji was unsoothed. Stillness was very far from her.
‘May I get up? I‘ve finished my breakfast,’ said Tapan.
‘Of course, Tapan,’ said his father, ‘I’ll see about the car.’
‘Ila Chattopadhyay is a very ignorant girl, I‘ve always thought so,’ burst out Mrs Chatterji. ‘As for her books – I think that the more people write, the less they think. And she was dressed in a completely crushed sari last night.’
‘She’s hardly a girl any more, dear,’ said her husband. ‘She’s quite an elderly woman - must be at least fifty-five.’
Mrs Chatterji glanced with annoyance at her husband. Fifty-five was hardly elderly.
‘And one should heed her opinions,’ added Amit. ‘She’s quite hard-headed. She was advising Dipankar yesterday that there was no future in economics. She appeared to know.’
‘She always appears to know,’ said Mrs Chatterji. ‘Anyway, she’s from your father’s side of the family,’ she added irrelevantly. ‘And if she doesn’t appreciate Gurudeb she must have a heart of stone.’
‘You can’t blame her,’ said Amit. ‘After a life so full of tragedy anyone would become hard.’
‘What tragedy?’ asked Mrs Chatterji.
‘Well, when she was four,’ said Amit, ‘her mother slapped her – it was quite traumatic – and then things went on in that vein. When she was twelve she came second in an exam… It hardens you.’
‘Where did you get such mad children?’ Mrs Chatterji asked her husband.