A Suitable Boy(402)

‘But it’s more than the letter, Malati,’ she said. ‘He’s going to be mentioned by Pran’s family all the time. And in a few months the cricket season will start and it’ll be impossible to avoid reading about him. Or hearing about him. I’m sure I’ll be able to pick out his name from fifty yards away.’

‘Oh, do stop moaning, Lata, in that feeble way,’ said Malati with as much impatience as affection.

‘What?’ exclaimed Lata, outraged out of her mournfulness. She glared at her friend.

‘You need to do something,’ said Malati decisively. ‘Something outside your studies. Anyway, your final exams are almost a year away, and this is the term when people take things easy.’

‘I do sing now, thanks to you.’

‘Oh, no,’ said Malati, ‘that’s not what I meant at all. If anything, you should stop singing raags and start singing film songs.’

Lata laughed, thinking of Varun and his gramophone.

‘It’s a pity this isn’t Nainital,’ continued Malati.

‘You mean, so that I could ride and row and skate?’ said Lata.

‘Yes,’ said Malati.

‘The problem is,’ said Lata, ‘if I row I’ll only think of the frangrant waters, and if I ride I’ll think of him riding his bicycle. And anyway I can neither ride nor row.’

‘Something that is active and takes you out of yourself,’ continued Malati, partly to herself. ‘Some society – how about a literary society?’

‘No,’ said Lata with a shake of her head and a smile. Mr Nowrojee’s soirées or anything resembling them were too close for comfort.

‘A play, then. They’re putting on Twelfth Night. Get a part in the play. That’ll make you laugh at love and life.’

‘My mother wouldn’t stand for my acting in a play,’ said Lata.

‘Don’t be such a mouse, Lata,’ said Malati. ‘Of course she’ll agree. After all, Pran produced Julius Caesar last year and there were a couple of women in it. Not many, not important parts perhaps, but real girl students, not boys dressed up as girls. He was engaged to Savita at the time. Did your mother object? No, she didn’t. She didn’t see the play, but she was delighted at its success. If she didn’t object then, she can’t now. Pran will be on your side. And the students in Patna University and in Delhi too have mixed casts now. This is a new age!’

Lata could only imagine what her mother might have to say about the new age.

‘Yes!’ said Malati with high enthusiasm. ‘It’s being put up by that philosophy teacher, what’s his name – it will come back to me – and auditions are in a week. Female auditions one day, male auditions two days later. Very chaste. Perhaps they’ll even rehearse separately. Nothing that a cautious parent could object to. And it’s for Annual Day, so that lends it an additional stamp of respectability. You need something like that or you’ll just wilt away. Activity – furious, unmeditative activity, in lots of company. Take my word for it, that’s what you need. That’s how I got over my musician.’

Lata, though she felt that Malati’s heartbreaking affair with a married musician was hardly a matter to make light of, was grateful to her for trying to cheer her up. After the unsettling strength of her feelings for Kabir, she could understand better what she had not understood before: why Malati had allowed herself to get involved in something as complicated and hazardous as she had.

‘But anyway,’ Malati was saying, ‘I’m bored with Kabir: I want to hear about all the other men you’ve met. Who is this Kanpur prospect? And what about Calcutta? And didn’t your mother plan to take you to Delhi and Lucknow too? They should have been worth at least one man apiece.’

After Lata had rendered her a full account of her voyage, which turned out not to be a catalogue of men so much as a lively description of events, omitting only the indescribable episode in Lucknow, Malati said: ‘It seems to me that the poet and the paan-eater are neck and neck in the matrimonial stakes.’

‘The poet?’ Lata was dumbfounded.

‘Yes, I don’t consider his brother Dipankar or the covenanted Bish to be in the running at all.’

‘Nor do I,’ said Lata, annoyed. ‘But nor, I assure you, is Amit. He is a friend. just as you are. He was the one person whom I felt I could really talk to in Calcutta.’

‘Go on,’ said Malati. ‘This is very interesting. And did he give you a copy of his poems?’

‘No, he did not,’ said Lata crossly. After a while she reflected that Amit had in fact promised in a vague manner to give her a copy. But if he had really meant to, he could surely have sent one through Dipankar, who had been in Brahmpur and had met Pran and Savita. Lata felt, though, that she was not being quite honest with Malati, and now appended the remark: ‘At least he hasn’t yet.’