‘I’ll give them no ideas that they don’t have already,’ was the cool response.
‘You are a mischief-maker, Meenakshi, I won’t have it,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra.
‘My dear Ma,’ said Meenakshi, amused. ‘Don’t fly off the handle. Neither is it mischief, nor have I made it. I’d just accept things as they come.’
‘I have no intention of accepting things as they come,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, the unsavoury vision of sacrificing yet another of her children on the altar of the Chatterjis making her flush with indignation. ‘I will take her back to Brahmpur at once.’ She stopped. ‘No, not to Brahmpur. Somewhere else.’
‘And Luts will traipse after you obediently?’ said Meenakshi, stretching her long neck.
‘Lata is a sensible and a good girl, and she will do as I tell her. She is not wilful and disobedient like girls who think they are very modern. She has been well brought up.’
Meenakshi stretched back her head lazily, and looked first at her nails and then at her watch. ‘Oh, I have to be somewhere in ten minutes,’ she said. ‘Ma, will you look after Aparna?’
Mrs Rupa Mehra silently conveyed her irked consent. Meenakshi knew too well that her mother-in-law would be pleased to look after her only grandchild.
‘I’ll be back by six-thirty,’ said Meenakshi. ‘Arun said he’d be a little late at the office today.’
But Mrs Rupa Mehra was annoyed, and did not respond. And behind her annoyance a slow panic was beginning to build and take hold of her.
7.41
AMIT and Lata were browsing among the innumerable bookstalls of College Street. (Kuku had gone to meet Krishnan at the Coffee House. According to her he needed to be ‘appeased’, though to her irritation Amit did not ask what she meant by that.)
‘One feels so bewildered among all these millions of books,’ said Lata, astonished that several hundred yards of a city could actually be given over to nothing but books – books on the pavement, books on makeshift bookshelves out in the street, books in the library and in Presidency College, first-, second-, third- and tenth-hand books, everything from technical monographs on electroplating to the latest Agatha Christie.
‘I feel so bewildered among these millions of books, you mean.’
‘No, I do,’ said Lata.
‘What I meant,’ said Amit, ‘was “I”, as opposed to “one”. If you meant the general “one”, that would be fine. But you meant “I”. Far too many people say “one” when they mean “I”. I found them doing it all the time in England, and it’ll survive here long after they’ve given up that idiocy.’
Lata reddened but said nothing. Bish, she recalled, referred to himself exclusively and incessantly as ‘one’.
‘It’s like “thrice”,’ said Amit.
‘I see,’ said Lata.
‘Just imagine if I were to say to you: “One loves you,” Amit went on. Or worse still, “One loves one.” Doesn’t that sound idiotic?’
‘Yes,’ Lata admitted with a frown. She felt he was sounding a bit too professional. And the word ‘love’ reminded her unnecessarily of Kabir.
‘That’s all I meant,’ said Amit.
‘I see,’ said Lata. ‘Or, rather, one sees.’
‘I see one does,’ said Amit.
‘What is it like to write a novel?’ asked Lata after a pause. ‘Don’t you have to forget the “I” or the “one” –?’
‘I don’t know exactly,’ said Amit. ‘This is my first novel, and I’m in the process of finding out. At the moment it feels like a banyan tree.’
‘I see,’ said Lata, though she didn’t.
‘What I mean is,’ continued Amit, ‘it sprouts, and grows, and spreads, and drops down branches that become trunks or intertwine with other branches. Sometimes branches die. Sometimes the main trunk dies, and the structure is held up by the supporting trunks. When you go to the Botanical Garden you’ll see what I mean. It has its own life – but so do the snakes and birds and bees and lizards and termites that live in it and on it and off it. But then it’s also like the Ganges in its upper, middle and lower courses – including its delta – of course.’
‘Of course,’ said Lata.
‘I have the feeling,’ said Amit, ‘that you’re laughing at me.’
‘How far have you got so far with writing it?’ she said.
‘I’m about a third of the way.’
‘And aren’t I wasting your time?’
‘No.’