Amit shot her a grateful glance, even though he wondered whether the novel he was engaged on – or even poetry – was different from inspection reports to quite the extent that she imagined.
Dipankar came in from the garden, fairly wet. He did, however, wipe his feet on the mat before he entered. He was reciting, indeed, chanting, a passage from Sri Aurobindo’s mystic poem Satvitri:
‘Calm heavens of imperishable Light,
Illumined continents of violet peace,
Oceans and rivers of the mirth of God
And griefless countries under purple suns…
He turned towards them. ‘Oh, the tea,’ he said, and fell to wondering how much sugar he ought to have.
Amit turned to Lata. ‘Did you understand that?’ he asked.
Dipankar fixed a look of gentle condescension upon his elder brother. ‘Amit Da is a cynic,’ he said, ‘and believes in Life and Matter. But what about the psychical entity behind the vital and physical mentality?’
‘What about it?’ said Amit.
‘You mean you don’t believe in the Supramental?’ asked Dipankar, beginning to blink. It was as if Amit had questioned the existence of Saturday – which, as a matter of fact, he was capable of doing.
‘I don’t know if I believe in it or not,’ said Amit. ‘I don’t know what it is. But it’s all right – no, don’t – don’t tell me.’
‘It’s the plane on which the Divine meets the individual soul and transforms the individual to a “gnostic being”,’ explained Dipankar with mild disdain.
‘How interesting,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, who from time to time wondered about the Divine. She began to feel quite positive about Dipankar. Of all the Chatterji children he appeared to be the most serious-minded. He blinked a lot, which was disconcerting, but Mrs Rupa Mehra was willing to make allowances.
‘Yes,’ said Dipankar, stirring a third spoon of sugar into his tea. ‘It is below Brahma and sat-chit-ananda, but acts like a conduit or conductor.’
‘Is it sweet enough?’ asked Mrs Rupa Mehra with concern.
‘I think so,’ said Dipankar with an air of appraisal.
Having found a listener, Dipankar now expanded into several channels that interested him. His interests in mysticism were wide-ranging, and included Tantra and the worship of the Mother-Goddess besides the more conceptual ‘synthetic’ philosophy he had just been expounding. Soon he and Mrs Rupa Mehra were chatting happily about the great seers Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. Half an hour later it was Unity, Duality, and the Trinity, on which Dipankar had recently had a crash-course. Mrs Rupa Mehra was trying her best to keep up with Dipankar’s free flow of ideas.
‘It all comes to a climax in the Pul Mela at Brahmpur,’ said Dipankar. ‘That is when the astral conjunctions are most powerful. On the night of the full moon of the month of Jeth the gravitational pull of the moon will act with full force upon all our chakras. I don’t believe in all the legends, but one can’t deny science. I will be going this year, and we can immerse ourselves in the Ganga together. I have already booked my ticket.’
Mrs Rupa Mehra looked doubtful. Then she said: ‘That is a good idea. Let us see how things turn out.’
She had just recalled with relief that she would not be in Brahmpur at the time.
7.28
AMIT, meanwhile, was talking to Lata about Kakoli. He was telling Lata about her latest beau, the German nutcracker. Kuku had even got him to paint a diplomatically unsuitable Reichsadler above her bathtub. The tub itself had been painted inside and out with turtles, fish, crabs and other watery creatures by Kuku’s more artistic friends. Kuku loved the sea, especially at the delta of the Ganges, the Sundarbans. And fish and crabs reminded her of delicious Bengali dishes, and enhanced the wallowing luxuriousness of her bath.
‘And your parents didn’t object?’ asked Lata, recalling the stateliness of the Chatterji mansion.
‘My parents may mind,’ said Amit, ‘but Kuku can twist my father around her little finger. She’s his favourite. I think even my mother is jealous of the way he indulges her. A few days ago there was talk of letting her have a telephone of her own rather than just an extension.’
Two telephones in one home seemed utterly extravagant to Lata. She asked why they were necessary, and Amit told her about Kakoli’s umbilical linkage to the telephone. He even imitated her characteristic greetings for her A-level, B-level and C-level friends. ‘But the phone holds such magic for her that she will readily desert an A-level friend who’s taken the trouble to visit her in order to talk to a C-level friend for twenty minutes if he happens to be on the line.’