A Suitable Boy(475)

Lata remembered their kisses in a daze of unhappiness. So intense was the memory that she half mistrusted her own intentions. ‘No,’ she said, more quietly, ‘but wouldn’t it all just be miserable?’

She realized that his questions were leading to further questions on her own part and in her own mind, and that every one of these caused a further knot in the huge tangle. Her heart ached for him, but everything told her that it had to come to nothing. She had wanted to tell him that she was writing to someone else, but she could not bring herself to do so now because of the pain she knew it would cause him.

They were passing by the steps outside the examination hall. Kabir looked up at them and frowned. The light was low, and the trees and benches below were casting long shadows on the grass.

‘So what do we do?’ he said, his mouth set in an attempt at decisiveness.

‘I don’t know,’ said Lata. ‘We have to spend some time together now, in a way, at least on stage. At least for another month. We’ve trapped ourselves into it.’

‘Can’t you wait for another year?’ he said with sudden desperation.

‘What will change?’ she said despondently, and walked off the path, away from him, towards a bench. She was almost too tired to think – emotionally exhausted, exhausted from watching over the baby, exhausted from the effort of acting – and she sat down on the bench, her head resting on her arms. She was too tired even for tears.

It was the same bench under the gul-mohur tree on which she had sat after the exam. He didn’t know what to make of this. Should he console her again? Was she even conscious of where she was sitting? She looked so forlorn that he wanted more than anything to put his arms around her. He could sense how close she was to tears.

Both had said what was inevitable, yet Kabir could not feel that they were adversaries. He felt that he had to try and understand her. The pressure of the family, the extended family that enforced a slow and strong acceptance on its members, was something that with his own father and mother he had never had to face. Lata had moved away from him in these last months, and was perhaps already out of reach. If he went up to her now and helped her overcome her unhappiness, could he retrieve some of what was lost? Or would he only burden her with a further and more painful vulnerability?

What was she thinking? He stood there in the late light, looking at her beyond his own long shadow. Her head had not moved from her hands. The strange kite was resting on the bench beside her. She looked weary and unreachable. After a minute or two he walked away sadly.





13.23


LATA sat still for about fifteen minutes, then got up, taking the kite with her. It was almost dark. She had found it hard to think. But now, through her own pain, she began to feel a sympathy for the difficulties of others. She thought of Pran and his anxieties. She reminded herself that it had been a long time since she had written to Varun.

She also thought, strangely enough, of her last letter to Haresh, and how curt she had been on the matter of Simran, which obviously had meant a great deal to him. Poor Haresh – he too had been pursuing an impossible relationship, and here too the difficulty was a similar one.

As for herself, there was another rehearsal tomorrow. Would she face that with more or less trepidation than before? How would it be for Kabir? At least they had talked; she would not be tensely anticipating the terrible moment. Anyway, perhaps it had been less terrible to suffer it than to await it. But how disheartening it had been. Or was it so disheartening after all in the scheme of things?

That evening was a quiet one: her mother, Pran, Savita, the baby, and herself. One of the topics of discussion was Haresh and why he hadn’t written yet.

In general, Mrs Rupa Mehra wanted to read every letter that came from Haresh, but Lata only passed on his news and greetings, keeping his agreeable comments to herself, and finding herself unable to share with her mother the more troubling ones.

Haresh had in fact been a little disappointed by Lata’s letter, but what had kept him from replying almost immediately was not this disappointment but his sudden status as a workless man. He was very worried about the effect that this news would have on Lata – and even more so on her mother, who, for all the goodwill she bore him, was – he judged – exacting and pragmatic in her criteria for a suitable boy for her daughter.

But when a week had passed, and James Hawley, despite his appeals, had not rectified their injustice, and Delhi too had borne no immediate fruit except Mr Mukherji’s promise of a meeting with Mr Khandelwal, he felt he could keep up his silence no longer, and wrote to Lata.

As it happened, Mrs Rupa Mehra had received a letter from Kalpana Gaur the day before Haresh’s letter finally arrived, and had come to know that he was out of a job. With Pran, Savita and the baby all back home, there was a great deal to be done, but this latest and somewhat shocking news occupied Mrs Rupa Mehra’s mind more than anything else. She talked about it to everyone including Meenakshi and Kakoli, who had dropped by to baby-gaze. She could not understand how Haresh could have dropped his job ‘just like that’; her husband had always believed in having two birds in the hand before leaving one in the bush. Mrs Rupa Mehra began to worry about Haresh in more ways than one; and she began to express her reservations to Lata.