2. Exercise: at least 15 minutes each morning. How to find the time?
3. Make 1951 the deciding year of my life.
4. Pay off debts to Umesh Uncle in full.
5. Learn to control temper. Must learn to suffer fools, gladly or not.
6. Get brogue scheme with Kedarnath Tandon in Brahmpur working properly.
This he later crossed out and transferred to the work-related list.
7. Moustache?
This he crossed out, and then rewrote together with the question mark.
8. Learn from good people, like Babaram.
9. Finish reading major novels of T.H.
10. Try to keep my diary regularly as before.
11. Make notes of my five best and live worst qualities.
Conserve latter and eradicate former.
Haresh read over this last sentence, looked surprised, and corrected it.
9.21
IT WAS LATE when he got back to Elm Villa. Mrs Mason, however, who sometimes complained when Haresh came late for meals (on the grounds that it would upset the staff), was very welcoming.
‘Oh, you look so tired. My daughter has been telling me how busy you have been. And you didn’t leave word that you would be gone for more than a day. We prepared lunch for you. And dinner. And lunch again today. But no matter. You’re here, back at last, and that’s the main thing. It’s mutton. A good, hearty roast.’
Haresh was glad to hear it. Mrs Mason was bursting with curiosity, but refrained from asking questions while he ate his dinner. He had eaten nothing since morning.
After dinner Mrs Mason turned to Haresh to speak.
‘How is Sophie?’ interposed Haresh deftly. Sophie was the Masons’ beloved Persian cat, an unfailing subject of animated discourse.
After five minutes of the Sophie saga, Haresh yawned and said, ‘Well, goodnight, Mrs Mason. It was very kind of you to keep my dinner warm for me. I think I’ll turn in.’
And before Mrs Mason could veer the conversation around to Simran or the two visitors, Haresh had gone to his room.
He was very tired, but he kept awake long enough to write three letters. The rest he was forced to leave unwritten till the next day.
He was about to write to Lata when, sensing Simran’s eyes on him, he turned to a shorter and easier letter – a postcard in fact.
It was to Kedarnath Tandon’s son Bhaskar.
Dear Bhaskar,
I hope all is well with you. The words you want, according to a Chinese colleague of mine, are wan (to rhyme with ‘kaan’) and ee (to rhyme with ‘knee’). That will give you, in order of powers of ten: one, ten, hundred, thousand, wan, lakh, million, crore, ee, billion. A special word for ten to its own power you will have to invent for yourself. I suggest bhask.
Please give my regards to Dr Durrani, to your parents, and to your grandmother. Also, ask your father to send me the second sample of brogues that I was promised by the man in Ravidaspur. They should have arrived more than a week ago. Perhaps they are already on their way.
Affectionately,
Haresh Chacha.
Next he wrote a short letter of a page-and-a-half to his father, in which he enclosed the small snapshot of Lata he had got off the Mehras. He had wanted to take a photograph of them himself, but they had felt a bit embarrassed, and he had not pressed the matter.
To Lata he wrote a three page letter on his blue writing pad. Though he had almost been at the point of telling her (or, more strictly, them) over the cold chocolate that he knew that she was the right wife for him, something had held him back. Now he was glad of it. Haresh knew that despite his pragmatism he was highly impulsive. When he had decided to leave home at fifteen it had taken him a minute to decide and ten minutes to leave; it had been months before he had returned. In the market the other day he had almost hired Mr Lee, the designer, on the spot, though he had no real authority to do so; he knew that he was the right man to help design the new orders that he felt sure he could bring in.
So much for decisions that were (or would have been) if not laudable, at least admirable. The money that he once lent a friend of his in Pariala, however, was lent equally impulsively. It had been a good third of his assets, and he now knew that he would never get it back. But the decision that faced him at the present time dealt not with his assets but with himself. If he gave himself away he would not be able to retrieve himself.
He looked at Simran’s photograph – nothing would induce him to turn it away even while writing his first letter to Lata. He wondered what she would have said, what advice she would have given him. Her kindness and purity of heart would have led him in the right direction, he knew. She wanted his good as much as he wanted hers.
‘Look at it this way, Simran,’ he said. ‘I am twenty-eight. There is no possibility of anything between us. I will have to settle down one day. If I have to marry I may as well go ahead and do it. They like me. At least I’m confident the mother does; and that makes a change.’