‘That was Maan, Fran’s brother.’
‘Ah.’ The word spoke volumes of disapproval. Arun and Meenakshi had arrived just this morning by overnight train from Calcutta, where Arun worked as one of the few Indian executives in the prestigious and largely white firm of Bentsen & Pryce. He had had neither the time nor the desire to acquaint himself with the Kapoor family – or clan, as he called it – with whom his mother had contrived a match for his sister. He cast his eyes balefully around. Typical of their type to overdo everything, he thought, looking at the coloured lights in the hedge. The crassness of the state politicians, white-capped and effusive, and of Mahesh Kapoor’s contingent of rustic relatives excited his finely-tuned disdain. And the fact that neither the brigadier from the Brahmpur Cantonment nor the Brahmpur representatives of companies like Burmah Shell, Imperial Tobacco, and Caltex were represented in the crowd of invitees blinded his eyes to the presence of the larger part of the professional elite of Brahmpur.
‘A bit of a bounder, I’d say,’ said Arun, who had noticed Maan’s eyes casually following Lata before he had turned them elsewhere.
Lata smiled, and her meek brother Varun, who was a nervous shadow to Arun and Meenakshi, smiled too in a kind of stifled complicity. Varun was studying – or trying to study – mathematics at Calcutta University, and he lived with Arun and Meenakshi in their small ground-floor flat. He was thin, unsure of himself, sweet-natured and shifty-eyed; and he was Lata’s favourite. Though he was a year older than her, she felt protective of him. Varun was terrified, in different ways, of both Arun and Meenakshi, and in some ways even of the precocious Aparna. His enjoyment of mathematics was mainly limited to the calculation of odds and handicaps on the racing form. In winter, as Varun’s excitement rose with the racing season, so did his elder brother’s ire. Arun was fond of calling him a bounder as well.
And what would you know about bounding, Arun Bhai? thought Lata to herself. Aloud she said: ‘He seemed quite nice.’
‘An Aunty we met called him a Cad,’ contributed Aparna.
‘Did she, precious?’ said Meenakshi, interested. ‘Do point him out to me, Arun.’ But Maan was now nowhere to be seen!
‘I blame myself to some extent,’ said Arun in a voice which implied nothing of the sort; Arun was not capable of blaming himself for anything. ‘I really should have done something,’ he continued. ‘If I hadn’t been so tied up with work, I might have prevented this whole fiasco. But once Ma got it into her head that this Kapoor chap was suitable, it was impossible to dissuade her. It’s impossible to talk reason with Ma; she just turns on the waterworks.’
What had also helped deflect Arun’s suspicions had been the fact that Dr. Pran Kapoor taught English. And yet, to Arun’s chagrin, there was hardly an English face in this whole provincial crowd.
‘How fearfully dowdy!’ said Meenakshi wearily to herself, encapsulating her husband’s thoughts. ‘And how utterly unlike Calcutta. Precious, you have smut on your nose,’ she added to Aparna, half looking around to tell an imaginary ayah to wipe it off with a handkerchief.
‘I’m enjoying it here,’ Varun ventured, seeing Lata look hurt. He knew that she liked Brahmpur, though it was clearly no metropolis.
‘You be quiet,’ snapped Arun brutally. His judgment was being challenged by his subordinate, and he would have none of it.
Varun struggled with himself; he glared, then looked down.
‘Don’t talk about what you don’t understand,’ added Arun, putting the boot in.
Varun glowered silently.
‘Did you hear me?’
‘Yes,’ said Varun.
‘Yes, what?’
‘Yes, Arun Bhai,’ muttered Varun.
This pulverization was standard fare for Varun, and Lata was not surprised by the exchange. But she felt very bad for him, and indignant with Arun. She could not understand either the pleasure or the purpose of it. She decided she would speak to Varun as soon after the wedding as possible to try to help him withstand – at least internally – such assaults upon his spirit. Even if I’m not very good at withstanding them myself, Lata thought.
‘Well, Arun Bhai,’ she said innocently, ‘I suppose it’s too late. We‘re all one big happy family now, and we’ll have to put up with each other as well as we can.’
The phrase, however, was not innocent. ‘One big happy family’ was an ironically used Chatterji phrase. Meenakshi Mehra had been a Chatterji before she and Arun had met at a cocktail party, fallen in torrid, rapturous and elegant love, and got married within a month, to the shock of both families. Whether or not Mr Justice Chatterji of the Calcutta High Court and his wife were happy to welcome the non-Bengali Arun as the first appendage to their ring of five children (plus Cuddles the dog), and whether or not Mrs Rupa Mehra had been delighted at the thought of her first-born, the apple of her eye, marrying outside the khatri caste (and to a spoilt supersophisticate like Meenakshi at that), Arun certainly valued the Chatterji connection greatly. The Chatterjis had wealth and position and a grand Calcutta house where they threw enormous (but tasteful) parties. And even if the big happy family, especially Meenakshi’s brothers and sisters, sometimes bothered him with their endless, unchokable wit and improvised rhyming couplets, he accepted it precisely because it appeared to him to be undeniably urbane. It was a far cry from this provincial capital, this Kapoor crowd and these garish light-in-the-hedge celebrations – with pomegranate juice in lieu of alcohol!