A Suitable Boy(474)

‘Why have you been avoiding me?’ said Kabir to Lata in a low voice the moment Malati had gone.

Lata shook her head, unable to look at his face. But there was no avoiding a conversation that would not be in the least casual.

‘What do you expect?’ she said.

‘Are you still angry with me – about that?’

‘No – I’m getting used to it. Today you acted very well.’

‘I don’t mean the play,’ said Kabir. ‘I meant our last real meeting.’

‘Oh, that –’

‘Yes, that.’ He was determined to have it out, it seemed.

‘I don’t know – so much has happened since then.’

‘Nothing has happened except a vacation.’

‘I meant, I’ve thought so much about things –’

‘Do you think I haven’t?’ he said.

‘Kabir, please – what I meant was that I’ve thought about us as well.’

‘And no doubt you still think I was unreasonable.’ Kabir sounded slightly amused.

Lata looked at his face, then turned away. She didn’t say anything.

‘Let’s take a walk,’ said Kabir. ‘At least it’ll give us something to do in our silences.’

‘All right,’ said Lata, shaking her head.

They walked along the path that led from the auditorium to the centre of the campus – towards the jacaranda grove, and beyond that, to the cricket nets.

‘Do I deserve an answer?’ asked Kabir.

‘It was I who was unreasonable,’ said Lata after a while.

This took the wind out of Kabir’s sails.

He looked at her in astonishment as she continued: ‘You were quite right. I was being unfair and unreasonable and everything else you said. It’s not possible – it never was – but not because of time and careers and studies and other practical things.’

‘Why then?’ said Kabir.

‘Because of my family,’ said Lata. ‘However much they irritate me and constrain me, I can’t give them up. I know that now. So much has happened. I can’t give up my mother –’

Lata halted, thinking of what effect this last remark might have on Kabir, but decided that she had to explain herself now or never.

‘I just see how much she cares about everything and how she would be affected by this,’ she said.

‘By this!’ said Kabir. ‘You mean, by you and me.’

‘Kabir, do you know of any mixed marriages that have worked out?’ said Lata. But even as she said it she thought that perhaps she had gone too far. Kabir had never explicitly mentioned marriage – he wanted to be with her, to be close to her – but marriage? Perhaps he had implied it when he had asked her to wait for a year or two – when he had mentioned his plans for future study, for the Foreign Service, for Cambridge. But now he didn’t retreat from the word.

‘Do you know of any that haven’t?’ he said.

‘I don’t know of any at all in our family,’ said Lata.

‘Unmixed marriages aren’t always ideal either.’

‘I know, Kabir; I’ve heard –’ said Lata, miserably, and with such sympathy that Kabir understood that she was referring to his mother.

He stopped, and said: ‘Does that also have something to do with it?’

‘I can’t say –’ said Lata. ‘I don’t know – I’m sure my mother would be affected by that as well.’

‘So what you are saying is that my heredity and my religion are insuperable factors – and it doesn’t matter if you care for me or not.’

‘Don’t put it like that, Kabir,’ cried Lata. ‘That’s not how I feel.’

‘But it’s the basis on which you’re acting.’

Lata was unable to reply.

‘Don’t you care for me?’ asked Kabir.

‘I do, I do –’

‘Then why didn’t you write? Why don’t you talk to me –’

‘Just because of that –’ she said, completely overcome.

‘Will you always love me? Because I know I will –’

‘Oh, please stop, Kabir – I can’t take this –’ she cried. What she might just as well have said was that she was trying to convince herself as much as him that their feelings were nothing but futile.

He would not allow her to do this, however.

‘But why should we stop meeting?’ he persisted.

‘Meeting? Kabir, you don’t see the point. Where would it lead to?’

‘Does it have to lead to something?’ he said. ‘Can’t we just spend time together?’ After a pause: ‘Do you “mistrust my intentions”?’