A Suitable Boy(243)
‘Our egg-shells,’ said Amit to Lata.
The audience applauded guardedly.
But now the venerable Professor Dutta-Ray, who had introduced the speaker so paternally at first, got up and, shooting glances of undisguised hostility at him, proceeded to demolish what he saw as the theories he had just propounded. (It was clear that the Professor saw himself as one of the ‘objectors’ referred to in the speech.) But were there any theories in the speech at all? There was certainly a tenor, but it was difficult to demolish a tenor.
At any rate, the Professor tried to, his voice, mild at first, rising to this hoarse-throated battlecry: ‘Let us not deceive ourselves! For whilst it may often be the case that the theses are intrinsically plausible, they are by the same token impossible to substantiate or refute with more than illustrative evidence; indeed, it is in practice difficult to know whether they come into the orbit of reference of the key question, which, although it may well shed light on the tendency, can scarcely tell us whether an answer can be couched convincingly in terms of what might broadly be called its evolving patterns; in this perspective, then, though admittedly the theory may appear – to the ignorant eye – well-founded, it is not compelling as an analysis of the basic difficulty, which traces to considerations We must descry elsewhere; to be quite specific, its failure to explain must make it seem irrelevant even if it does not, as it were, actually refute it; but to stipulate this is to remove the underpinnings of the entire analytical framework, and the most pertinent and cogent argument must be abandoned.’
He looked with triumph and malice at the speaker before continuing: ‘As a broad generalization, one might tentatively hazard a guess therefore, that, all other things being equal, one should not make particular generalizations when general particularizations are equally available – and available to far less idle effect.’
Dipankar was looking shocked, Amit bored, Lata puzzled.
Several people in the audience wanted to ask questions, but Amit had had enough. Lata was willingly, and Dipankar unwillingly, drawn out of the hall. She was feeling slightly dizzy, and not only because of the rarefied abstractions she had just breathed. It had been hot and stuffy inside.
For a minute or two none of them spoke. Lata, who had noticed Amit’s boredom, expected him to show his annoyance, and Dipankar to expostulate.
Instead, Amit merely said: ‘When faced with something like that, if I am caught short without paper and pencil, I amuse myself by taking any word that the speaker has used – like “bird” or “cloth” or “central” or “blue” – and try to imagine different varieties of them.’
‘Even words like “central”?’ asked Lata, amused by the idea.
‘Even those,’ said Amit. ‘Most words are fertile.’
He felt in his pocket for an anna, and bought a small, fragrant garland of fresh white bela flowers from a vendor. ‘Here,’ he said, giving it to Lata.
Lata, very pleased, said ‘Thank you,’ and after inhaling its fragrance with a delighted smile, put it unselfconsciously in her hair.
There was something so pleasing, natural and unpretentious about her gesture that Amit found himself thinking: She may be more intelligent than my sisters, but I’m glad she’s not as sophisticated. She’s the nicest girl I’ve met for a long time.
Lata for her part was thinking how much she liked Meenakshi’s family. They brought her out of herself and her stupid, self-created misery. In their company it was possible to enjoy, after a fashion, even such a lecture as she had just sat through.
7.36
MR JUSTICE CHATTERJI was sitting in his study. In front of him lay a half-completed judgment. On his desk stood a black-and-white photograph of his parents, and another of himself, his wife, and their five children that had been taken many years ago by a fashionable Calcutta studio. Kakoli, wilful child, had insisted on including her teddy-bear; Tapan had been too small at the time to have had an articulate will at all. .
The case involved the confirmation of the death sentence on six members of a gang of dacoits. Such cases caused Mr Justice Chatterji a great deal of pain. He did not like criminal work at all, and looked forward to being re-allocated civil work, which was both more intellectually stimulating and less distressing. There was no question that these six men had been found guilty according to law and that the sentence of the Sessions judge was not unreasonable or perverse. And so Mr Justice Chatterji knew that he would not set it aside. Not all of them may have intended specifically to cause the death of the men they were robbing but, under the Indian Penal Code, in a case of dacoity-cum-murder each criminal was severally liable for the act.