‘Are you going to follow his prescription?
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘I was not brought up to waste money.’ She sounded as if she was irritated by their presence.
Throughout a long traffic jam on Howrah Bridge, while precious minutes ticked by, and the Humber inched its way forward through a raucous, horn-blowing, yelling, deafening throng of buses, trams, taxis, cars, motorcycles, carts, rickshaws, bicycles and – above all – pedestrians, Mrs Rupa Mehra, who would normally have been in a desperate, bangle-clutching panic, hardly seemed to be aware that her train would be leaving in less than fifteen minutes.
Only after the traffic had miraculously got moving and she was ensconced with all her suitcases in her compartment and had had a good chance to look at the other passengers did Mrs Rupa Mehra’s natural emotions reassert themselves. Kissing Lata with tears in her eyes she told her that she had to take care of Varun. Kissing Varun with tears in her eyes, she told him that he had to take care of Lata. Amit stood a little apart. Howrah Station with its crowds and smoke and bustle and blare and all-pervasive smell of decaying fish was not his favourite place in the world.
‘Really, Amit, it was very nice of you to let us have the car,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, attempting to be gracious.
‘Not at all, Ma, it happened to be free. Kuku, by some miracle, hadn’t reserved it.’
‘Yes. Kuku,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, suddenly flustered. Though she was in the habit of telling people that she was invariably called Ma and that she liked it, she was not happy at present to hear herself thus addressed by Amit. She looked at her daughter with alarm. She thought of Lata when she had been as old as Aparna. Who could have thought she would have grown up so quickly?
‘Give my best love to your family,’ she said to Amit in a voice that carried very little conviction.
Amit was puzzled by what seemed to be – but perhaps he had only imagined it? – an undercurrent of hostility. What, he wondered, had happened at the homoeopath’s to upset Lata’s mother? Or was she upset with him?
On the way back home, all of them agreed that Mrs Rupa Mehra had been in a most peculiar mood.
Amit said: ‘I feel I’ve done something to upset your mother. I should have brought you back on time that evening.’
Lata said: ‘It isn’t you. It’s me. She wanted me to go with her to Delhi, and I didn’t want to go.’
Varun said: ‘It’s because of me. I know it. She looked so unhappy with me. She can’t bear to see me waste my life. I’ve got to turn over a new leaf. I can’t disappoint her again. And when you see me going back to my old ways, Luts, you have to get angry with me. Really angry. Shout at me. Tell me I’m a damn fool and have no leadership qualities. None!’
Lata promised to do so.
Part Eight
8.1
NO ONE saw off Maan and his Urdu teacher Abdur Rasheed at the Brahmpur Railway Station. It was noon. Maan was in such unhappy spirits in fact that even the presence of Pran or Firoz or his more disreputable student companions would not have soothed him much. He felt that he was being exiled, and he was quite right: that was exactly how both his father and Saeeda Bai saw matters. His father’s ultimatum to get out of town had been direct, Saeeda Bai’s solution had been more artful. One had coerced him and one had cajoled him. Both liked Maan, and both wanted him out of the way.
Maan did not blame Saeeda Bai, or not much; he felt that his absence would be very hard on her, and that by suggesting that he go to Rudhia instead of back to Banaras, she was keeping him as close to herself as, under the circumstances, she could hope to. He was furious with his father, though, who had thrown him out of Brahmpur for hardly any reason at all, had refused to listen to his side of things, and had grunted in a satisfied way when told that he would be going off to his Urdu teacher’s village.
‘Visit our farm while you’re there – I’d like to hear how things are getting on,’ was what his father had said. Then, after a pause, he had added, needlessly: ‘That is, if you can make the time to travel a few miles. I know what an industrious student you will turn out to be.’
Mrs Mahesh Kapoor had merely hugged her son and told him to come back soon. Sometimes, thought Maan, bridling and frustrated, even his mother’s affection was unbearable. It was she who was unshakably set against Saeeda Bai.
‘Not before a month is over,’ countered Mahesh Kapoor. He was relieved that Maan, despite his chafing, was not going to defy him by remaining in Brahmpur, but annoyed that he himself would have to ‘deal with Banaras’ in both senses: with the parents of Maan’s fiancée, and with Maan’s assistant in the cloth business who – and he thanked heaven for medium-sized mercies – was tolerably competent. He had enough on his plate, and Maan was a drain on his time and patience.