‘Should I come back later?’ asked Mateen.
‘No, I’ll do them now. Wait a minute.’ She got out a blue pencil and looked at the lists of purchases. Doing the accounts had become much more of a strain since Mateen’s return from his village. Quite apart from his odd variant of the Hindi script, Mateen was more experienced than his son at cooking the books.
‘What is this?’ asked Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘Another four-seer tin of ghee? Do you think we are millionaires? When did we order our last tin?’
‘Must be two months ago, Burri Memsahib.’
‘When you were away loafing in the village, didn’t Mansoor buy a tin?’
‘He may have, Burri Memsahib. I don’t know; I didn’t see it.’
Mrs Rupa Mehra started riffling back through the pages of the account book until she came upon the entry in Mansoor’s more legible hand. ‘He bought one a month ago. Almost twenty rupees. What happened to it? We’re not a family of twelve to go through a tin at such a rate.’
‘I’ve just returned, myself,’ Mateen ventured, with a glance at the sweeper-woman.
‘You’d buy us a sixteen-seer tin of ghee a week if given half the chance,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘Find out what happened to the rest of it.’
‘It goes in puris and parathas and on the daal – and Memsahib likes Sahib to put some ghee every day on his chapatis and rice –’ began Mateen.
‘Yes, yes,’ Mrs Rupa Mehra interrupted. ‘I can work out how much should go into all that. I want to find out what happened to the rest of it. We don’t keep open house – nor has this become the shop of a sweetseller.’
‘Yes, Burri Memsahib.’
‘Though young Mansoor seems to treat it like one.’
Mateen said nothing, but frowned, as if in disapproval.
‘He eats the sweets and drinks the nimbu pani that is kept aside for guests,’ continued Mrs Rupa Mehra.
‘I’ll speak to him, Burri Memsahib.’
‘I’m not sure about the sweets,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra scrupulously. ‘He is a self-willed boy. And you – you never bring my tea regularly. Why does no one take care of me in this house? When I am at Arun Sahib’s house in Calcutta his servant brings me tea all the time. No one even asks here. If I had my own house, it would have been different.’
Mateen, understanding that the accounts session was over, went to get Mrs Rupa Mehra her tea. About fifteen minutes later, Savita, who had emerged from her afternoon nap looking groggily beautiful, came onto the verandah to find her mother re-reading Arun’s letter in tears, and saying, ‘Ear-drops! He even calls them ear-drops!’ When Savita found out what the matter was she felt a rush of sympathy towards her mother and indignation towards Meenakshi.
‘How could she have done that?’ she asked. Savita’s fierce defensiveness towards those whom she loved was masked by her gentle nature. She was independent-spirited but in such a low key that only those who knew her very well got any sense that her life and desires were not entirely determined by the easy drift of circumstance. She held her mother close and said, ‘I am amazed at Meenakshi. I will make sure that nothing happens to the other medal. Daddy’s memory is worth a great deal more than her small-minded whims. Don’t cry, Ma. I’ll send a letter off immediately. Or if you want we can write one together.’
‘No, no.’ Mrs Rupa Mehra looked down sadly at her empty cup.
When Lata returned and heard the news, she too was shocked. She had been her father’s darling and had loved looking at his academic medals; indeed she had been very unhappy when they had been given to Meenakshi. What could they mean to her, Lata had wondered, compared to what they would mean to his daughters? She was now most unpleasantly being proved right. She was angry too with Arun who, she felt, had permitted this sorry business by his consent or indulgence and who now made light of the event in his fatuously casual letter. His brutal little attempts to shock or tease his mother made Lata fume. As to his suggestion that she go to Calcutta and cooperate in his introductions – Lata decided that that would be the last thing in the world she would do.
Pran returned late from his first meeting of the student welfare committee to a household that was clearly not itself, but he was too exhausted to inquire immediately what the matter was. He sat in his favourite chair – a rocking-chair requisitioned from Prem Nivas – and read for a few minutes. After a while he asked Savita if she wanted to go for a walk, and during the course of it he was briefed on the crisis. He asked Savita whether he could look over the letter she had written to Meenakshi. It was not that he lacked faith in his wife’s judgment – quite the contrary. But he hoped that he, not being a Mehra and therefore less taut with a sense of injury, might be of help in preventing irretrievable words from exacerbating irretrievable acts. Family quarrels, whether over property or sentiment, were bitter things; their prevention was almost a public duty.