A Suitable Boy(495)
‘Nothing very specific,’ she said. ‘But with Lata, a small comment goes a long way. And she mentioned you several times.’
‘Quite wistfully, I thought,’ said Kakoli.
‘How is it,’ said Amit, ‘that Dipankar and I – and Tapan – have turned out to be so honest and decent, and you girls have learned to lie so brazenly? It’s amazing that we belong to the same family.’
‘How is it,’ countered Kakoli, ‘that Meenakshi and I, whatever our faults, can make important decisions and make them fast, when you refuse to make them and Dipankar can never decide which one to make?’
‘Don’t get annoyed, Dada,’ said Dipankar, ‘they’re just trying to bait you.’
‘Don’t worry,’’said Amit. ‘They won’t succeed. I’m in too good a mood.’
13.37
Late, I admit, but better late than not, /never
A gift to one who can appraise its worth, /need not spare its
This book got ever lot /got /rot /hot /shot /over-shot /sot
comes to you from a word-drunk sot, flaws
A earth hackney bard and bachelor of laws laws.
Amit paused in his scribbling and doodling. He was attempting an inscription for Lata. Now that he had run out of inspiration he began to wonder which of his two books of poems he should send her. Or should he send her both? Perhaps the first one was not such a good idea. The White Lady of his sonnets might give Lata the wrong idea. Besides, the second, though it too contained some love-poems, had more of Calcutta in it, more of the places that reminded him of her, and might perhaps remind her of him.
Resolving this problem helped Amit get on with his poem, and by lunchtime he was ready to write his dédicace on the fly-leaf of The Fever Bird. His scrawled draft was legible only to himself, but what he wrote for Lata was easy enough to read. He wrote it out slowly, using the sterling silver fountain pen which his grandfather had given him on his twenty-first birthday, and he wrote in the comparatively handsome British edition of his poems, of which he had only three copies left.
Late, I admit, but better late than not,
A gift to one who need not spare its flaws,
This book comes to you from a verbal sot,
A babu bard and bachelor of laws.
Lest you should think the man you meet here seems
A lesser cynic than the one you knew,
The truth is that apart from wine and dreams
And children, truth inheres in poems too.
Lies too lie here, and words I do not say
Aloud for fear they savour of despair.
Thus, passionless, I wing my even way
And beat a soundless tattoo on the air.
Love and remembrance, mystery and tears,
A surfeit of pineapples or of bliss,
The swerve of empires and the curve of years,
Accept these in the hand that carves you this.
He signed his name at the bottom, wrote the date, re-read the poem while the ink dried, closed the dark blue and gold cover of the book, packed it, sealed it, and had it sent off by registered post to Brahmpur that same afternoon.
13.38
IT would have been too much to hope that Mrs Rupa Mehra would not have been at home when the post arrived two days later at Pran’s house. She hardly ever went out these days, what with Savita and the baby. Even Dr Kishen Chand Seth, if he wanted to see her, had to come to the university.
When Amit’s parcel arrived, Lata was at a rehearsal. Mrs Rupa Mehra signed for it. Since the mail from Calcutta carried nothing but disaster these days, and her curiosity about the contents was unassuageable (especially when she saw the sender’s name), she almost opened the parcel herself. Only the fear of being condemned jointly by Lata, Savita and Pran restrained her.
When Lata returned, it was almost dark.
‘Where have you been all this time? Why didn’t you get back earlier? I’ve been going mad with anxiety,’ said her mother.
‘I’ve been at rehearsal, Ma, you know that. I’m not much later than usual. How’s everyone? Baby’s sleeping, by the sound of it.’
‘This package arrived two hours ago – from Calcutta. Open it at once.’ Mrs Rupa Mehra was about to burst.
Lata was going to protest, but then, noticing the anxiety on her mother’s face and thinking of her volatility and tearfulness ever since she had received the news about the second medal, she decided that it was not worth asserting her right to privacy if it meant causing her mother further pain. She opened the package.
‘It’s Amit’s book,’ she said with pleasure: ‘The Fever Bird by Amit Chatterji. Very handsome – what a beautiful cover.’ Mrs Rupa Mehra, forgetting for a second the threat that Amit had once posed, picked up the book and was enchanted. The plain blue-and-gold cover, the paper, which appeared to be far superior to the stock they had seen during the war, the wide margins, the clear, spacious print, the luxury of it all delighted her. She had seen the smaller and shabbier Indian edition of the book in a bookstore once; the poems, which she had glanced through, had not seemed to her to be very edifying, and she had put it down. Mrs Rupa Mehra could not help wishing that the handsome book that she was now holding had been blank: it would have made a wonderful vehicle for the poems and thoughts that she often copied down.