A Suitable Boy(405)

Pran, Savita, and Mrs Rupa Mehra all looked up. Mrs Rupa Mehra paused in her sewing and took in her breath sharply.

‘Wonderful,’ said Pran enthusiastically. ‘Well done!’

‘Which part?’ asked Savita.

‘No,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra vehemently, shaking her needle for emphasis. ‘My daughter is not going to act in any play. No.’ She glared at Lata over the top of her reading-glasses.

There was silence all around. After a while Mrs Rupa Mehra added: ‘Not at all.’

After a further while, not encountering any response, she went on: ‘Boys and girls together – acting!’ It was obvious that such a tawdry, immoral thing could not be countenanced.

‘Like in Julius Caesar last year,’ ventured Lata.

‘You be quiet,” snapped her mother. ‘No one has asked you to speak. Have you ever heard of Savita wanting to act? To act on the stage with hundreds of people staring? And going to those nightly gatherings with boys –’

‘Rehearsals,’ prompted Pran.

‘Yes, yes, rehearsals,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra impatiently. ‘It was on the tip of my tongue. I won’t have it. Think of the shame. What would your father have said?’

‘Now, now, Ma,’ said Savita. ‘Don’t get upset. It’s just a play.’

Having invoked her late husband, Mrs Rupa Mehra had reached an emotional climax, and it was possible now to pacify her and even to reason with her. Pran pointed out that the rehearsals would take place during the day except in an emergency. Savita said that she’d read Twelfth Night at school, and it was a harmless play; there was nothing scandalous in it.

Savita had read the bowdlerized version that was approved as a school text, but it was very likely that Mr Barua would have to cut out certain passages anyway to avoid causing shock and distress to the parents who attended Annual Day. Mrs Rupa Mehra had not read the play; if she had, she would certainly have thought it unsuitable.

‘It is Malati’s influence, I know it,’ she said.

‘Well, Ma, it was Lata’s decision to attend the auditions,’ said Pran. ‘Don’t blame Malati for everything.’

‘She is too bold, that girl,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, who was continually struggling between her fondness for Malati and her disapproval of what she saw as her overly forward attitude to life.

‘Malati said I needed something to distract me from other things,’ said Lata.

It did not take long for her mother to see the justice and weight of this argument. But even while conceding the point, she said, ‘If Malati says so, it must be so. Who am I to say anything? I’m just your mother. You’ll only value my advice when I’m burning on my pyre. Then you’ll know how much I cared for your welfare.’ This thought cheered her up.

‘Anyway, Ma, there’s a good chance that I won’t get the part,’ said Lata. ‘Let’s ask the baby,’ she added, placing her hand on Savita’s stomach.

The litany, ‘Olivia, Maria, Viola, nothing,’ was recited slowly several times over, and the fourth time around the baby obliged with a sharp kick on the word ‘nothing’.





12.6


TWO or three days later, however, Lata received a note assigning her the part of Olivia and asking her to attend the first rehearsal on Thursday afternoon at three-thirty. She rushed off in high excitement towards the women’s hostel, only to meet Malati on the way. Malati had been given the part of Maria. Both of them were equally pleased and astonished.

The first rehearsal was to be merely a reading-through of the play. Again it was not necessary to book the auditorium; a classroom was sufficient. Lata and Malati decided to celebrate by having a preparatory ice-cream at the Blue Danube, and arrived at the classroom in high spirits, just five minutes before the reading was due to begin.

There were about a dozen boys, and only one girl, presumably Viola. She was sitting apart from them, contemplating the empty blackboard.

Also sitting apart from the main knot of actors, and not participating at all in the general air of masculine excitement when the two girls walked in, was Kabir.

At first Lata’s heart leapt up when she saw him; then she told Malati to stay where she was. She was going over to talk to him.

His behaviour was too casual to be anything but deliberate. Clearly, he had been expecting her. This was intolerable.

‘Who are you?’ she said, anger below the low level of her voice.

He was taken aback, both by the tone and by the question. He looked rather guilty.

‘Malvolio,’ he said, then added: ‘Madam.’ But he remained seated.

‘You never told me you had the least interest in amateur dramatics,’ said Lata.