‘Ah, the tea,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra in a rush of tenderness now that she had three young women to mother. ‘You must have a cup immediately, Veena, no, you must, even if your hands are trembling. It will do you good instantly. No, Savita, you sit down, it isn’t sensible for you in this condition to insist on acting as hostess. What is a mother for, don’t you agree?’ This last phrase was addressed to Mrs Mahesh Kapoor. ‘Lata, darling, give this cup to Veena. Who was this boy who recognized Bhaskar? One of his friends?’
‘Oh no,’ said Veena, her voice a little steadier. ‘He was a young man, a volunteer. We didn’t know him, but he knew Bhaskar. He’s Kabir Durrani, the son of Dr Durrani, who has been so good to Bhaskar –’
But Mrs Rupa Mehra’s own hands, suddenly grown unsteady with shock, spilled the tea that she had just been pouring.
Lata had grown very still upon hearing the name.
What could Kabir have been doing down by the Pul Mela – and as a volunteer – at a Hindu festival?
Mrs Rupa Mehra put down the teapot and looked towards Lata, the original cause of her distress. She was about to say: ‘Now look what you’ve made me do!’ when some better instinct prevented her. After all, Veena and Mrs Mahesh Kapoor had no idea about Kabir’s interest in Lata. (She preferred to think of it in that direction.)
Instead she said: ‘But he’s – well, he’s – I mean, he must be from his name – what was he doing at the Pul Mela? Surely –’
‘I think he was just a volunteer from the university,’ said Veena. ‘They sent an appeal for volunteers after the disaster, and he went to help. What a decent young man. He refused to leave his duty at the first aid centre even to oblige a Minister – you know how abrupt Baoji can be on the phone. We had to go down ourselves to see Bhaskar. That was good, because Bhaskar shouldn’t have been moved. And though Durrani’s son was tired, he spoke to us for quite a long time, reassuring us, telling us how Bhaskar had been brought in, how he did not appear to have any external injury. I was almost beside myself with worry. It makes you think there is God in all of us. He comes quite often to Prem Nivas these days. His father, who knows Bhaskar, often comes along as well. None of us have any idea what they talk about. It makes Bhaskar happy, though, so we just leave them alone with paper and pencil.’
‘Prem Nivas?’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘Why not Misri Mandi?’
‘Well, Rupaji,’ said Mrs Mahesh Kapoor. ‘I have insisted that Veena stay with us until Bhaskar has quite recovered. It’s not good for him to move around too much, the doctor says.’ Mrs Mahesh Kapoor had in fact taken the doctor aside and insisted that he say this. ‘And for Veena too, it’s exhausting enough to take care of Bhaskar without having to run a household. Kedarnath and his mother are staying with us too, naturally. They’re both with Bhaskar now. Someone has to be.’
Mrs Mahesh Kapoor made no mention of any additional strain this arrangement imposed on her. Indeed, she did not consider the additional effort of putting four people up in her house to be anything out of the ordinary. The kind of household she ran – had always run – at Prem Nivas involved offering hospitality at all hours to all kinds of people – often strangers, political associates of her husband. If that was an effort she undertook willingly if not gladly, this was one which she undertook both gladly and willingly. She was happy that at a time of crisis like this one, she could be close enough to help. If there had been one silver lining to the dark cloud of Partition, it had been that it had brought her married daughter and her grandson back from Lahore to live in the same town as her. And now, by virtue of another trauma, they were back in Prem Nivas itself.
‘He misses his friends, though,’ said Veena. ‘He wants to go back to our neighbourhood. And once school begins it’ll be difficult to keep him away. And then there’ll be the rehearsals for the Ramlila – and he insists he wants to be a monkey this time. He’s too small to be Hanuman or Nal or Neel or any of the important ones, but certainly he can be part of the army.’
‘There’ll be plenty of time to catch up with studies,’ said Mrs Mahesh Kapoor. ‘And the Ramlila is far away. It doesn’t take much practice to be a monkey. Health is the main thing. When Pran was ill as a. child, he often had to skip his studies. But it hasn’t done him any harm.’
Talking of Pran turned Mrs Mahesh Kapoor’s thoughts to her younger son, but she had learned not to fret excessively about what it was pointless to fret about. She wished she could curb her anxieties completely. Mahesh Kapoor had insisted that Maan not be informed about the accident that had occurred, for fear that he would instantly return to Brahmpur in order to visit the little frog, and stay on in Brahmpur, entangled in the toils of ‘that’. Mahesh Kapoor’s spirits had been in turmoil since he had returned from the Congress session at Patna. It was hard enough to decide what he should do in the face of the disastrous turn taken by the affairs of the party and the country. He could do without the presence of Maan, an additional and equally ungovernable thorn in his side – and reputation.