‘Was Savita sunny even as a baby?’ asked Lata a few minutes later when she returned with the tea. Lata knew the answer to her question not only because it was part of Mehra folklore but because there were plenty of photographs to attest to Savita’s sunniness: baby pictures of her wolfing down quarter-boiled eggs with a beatific grin, or smiling in her infant sleep. But she asked it anyway, perhaps in order to put her mother in a better mood.
‘Yes, very sunny,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘But, darling, you have forgotten my saccharine.’
7.27
A LITTLE later Amit and Dipankar dropped by in the Chatterji car, a large white Humber. They could tell that Lata and her mother were slightly surprised to see them.
‘Where’s Meenakshi?’ asked Dipankar, looking around slowly. ‘Nice spider-lilies outside.’
‘She’s gone with Arun to the races,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘They are determined to catch pneumonia. We were just having a cup of tea. Lata will make another pot.’
‘No, really, it isn’t necessary,’ said Amit.
‘That’s all right,’ said Lata with a smile. ‘The water’s hot.’
‘How like Meenakshi,’ said Amit, a bit irked and a bit amused. ‘And she said it would be fine to drop by this afternoon. I suppose we’d better be going. Dipankar has some work at the library of the Asiatic Society.’
‘You can’t do that,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra hospitably. ‘Not without having tea.’
‘But didn’t she even tell you we’d be coming?’
‘No one ever, tells me anything,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra automatically.
‘Setting off without a brolly,
Meenee-haha goes to Tolly,’
remarked Amit.
Mrs Rupa Mehra frowned. She always found it difficult to hold a coherent conversation with any of the younger Chatterjis.
Dipankar, having looked around once more, asked: ‘Where’s Varun?’
He liked talking to Varun. Even when Varun was bored, he was too nervous to object, and Dipankar construed his silence as interest. Certainly he was a better listener than anyone in Dipankar’s own family, who became impatient when he talked about the Skein of Nothingness or the Cessation of Desire. When he had talked about the latter subject at the breakfast table, Kakoli had listed his girlfriends seriatim and stated that she saw no marked Deceleration, let alone Cessation, in his own life so far. Kuku did not see things in the abstract, thought Dipankar. She was still trapped on the plane of contingent actuality.
‘Varun’s gone out too,’ said Lata, returning with the tea. ‘Should I tell him to phone you when he returns?’
‘If we are to meet, we will meet,’ said Dipankar thoughtfully. He then walked into the garden, though it was still drizzling and his shoes would get muddy.
Meenakshi’s brothers! thought Mrs Rupa Mehra.
Since Amit was sitting in silence, and Mrs Rupa Mehra abhorred silence, she asked after Tapan.
‘Oh, he’s very well,’ said Amit. ‘We’ve just dropped him and Cuddles at a friend’s place. They have a lot of dogs, and Cuddles, oddly enough, gets along with them.’
‘Oddly enough’ was right, thought Mrs Rupa Mehra. Cuddles had flown through the air on their first meeting and tried to bite her. Luckily, he had been tied to the leg of the piano, and had remained just out of range. Meanwhile Kakoli had continued to play her Chopin without missing a beat. ‘Don’t mind him,’ she had said, ‘he means well.’ Truly a mad family, reflected Mrs Rupa Mehra.
‘And dear Kakoli?’ she asked.
‘She’s singing Schubert with Hans. Or rather, she’s playing, he’s singing.’
Mrs Rupa Mehra looked stern. This must be the boy whom Purobi Ray had mentioned in connection with Kakoli. Most unsuitable.
‘At home, of course,’ she said.
‘No, at Hans’ place. He came to fetch her. A good thing too, otherwise Kuku would have beaten us to the car.’
‘Who is with them?’ asked Mrs Rupa Mehra.
‘The spirit of Schubert,’ replied Amit casually.
‘For Kuku’s sake you must be careful,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, startled as much by his tone as by what he had said. She simply could not understand the Chatterjis’ attitude to the risks their sister was running. ‘Why can’t they sing in Ballygunge?’
‘Well, for a start, there’s often a conflict between the harmonium and the piano. And I can’t write in that din.’
‘My husband wrote his railway inspection reports with four children shouting all around him,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra.
‘Ma, that’s not the same thing at all,’ said Lata. ‘Amit’s a poet. Poetry’s different.’