‘Don’t talk like that about Daddy!’ cried Varun, livid and cowering. ‘Can’t you give Ma some mental satisfaction?’
‘Mental? Sentimental!’ said Arun with a snort.
Varun didn’t talk to his brother for days and slunk around the house, glaring balefully; not even Aparna could cheer him up. Every tune the phone rang he pumped. Eventually it got on Meenakshi’s nerves, and at last even Arun in his native-proof casing began to feel slightly ashamed of himself.
Finally Varun was allowed to feed a single pandit in the garden. He donated the rest of the money to a nearby temple with instructions that it should be used to feed a few poor children. And he wrote to Brahmpur to tell his mother that everything had been performed properly.
Mrs Rupa Mehra read the letter to her samdhin, translating as she went along, with tears in her eyes.
Mrs Mahesh Kapoor listened sadly. Her annual battle was fought not with her sons but with her husband. The shraadh for her own parents was satisfactorily performed each year by her late brother’s eldest son. What she wanted now was that the spirits of her father-in-law and mother-in-law should be similarly propitiated. Their son, however, would have nothing to do with it and rebuked her in his usual manner: ‘Oh, blessed one, you’ve been married to me for more than three decades and you have become more ignorant with each passing year.’
Mrs Mahesh Kapoor did not answer back. This encouraged her husband.
‘How can you believe in such idiocy? In those grasping pandits and their mumbo-jumbo? “So much food I set aside for the cow. So much for the crow. So much for the dog. And the rest I will eat. More! More! More puris, more halwa.” Then they belch and hold out their hands for alms: “Give according to your grace and your feelings for the departed one. What? Only five rupees? Is that the extent of your love for them?” I even know of someone who gave snuff to a pandit’s wife because his own dead mother liked snuff! Well, I won’t disturb my parents’ souls with such mockery. All I can say is that I hope no one dares to perform shraadh for me.’
This stung Mrs Mahesh Kapoor into protest. She said: ‘If Pran refuses to perform shraadh for you, he will be no son of mine.’
‘Pran has too much good sense,’ said Mahesh Kapoor. ‘And I’m beginning to think that Maan is a sensible boy too. Don’t talk just of me – they wouldn’t even perform it for you.’
Whether Mahesh Kapoor took delight in baiting and hurting his wife or not, he certainly couldn’t stop himself. Mrs Mahesh Kapoor, who could bear much, was almost in tears. Veena was visiting when this argument broke out, and her mother said to her: ‘Bété.’
‘Yes, Ammaji.’
‘If such a thing happens, you will tell Bhaskar that he is to perform shraadh for me. Invest him with the sacred thread if necessary.’
‘Sacred thread! Bhaskar will not wear a sacred thread,’ said Mahesh Kapoor. ‘He’ll use it to fly a kite with. Or as Hanuman’s tail.’ He chuckled rather maliciously at the sacrilege.
‘That is for his father to decide,’ said Mrs Mahesh Kapoor quietly.
‘He is too young anyway.’
‘That also is for his father to decide,’ said Mrs Mahesh Kapoor. ‘Anyway, I’m not dying yet.’
‘But you certainly sound determined to die,’ said Mahesh Kapoor. ‘This time every year we go through the same stupid kind of talk.’
‘Of course I am determined to die,’ said Mrs Mahesh Kapoor. ‘How else can I go through my rebirths and finally end them?’ Looking down at her hands she said, ‘Do you want to be immortal? I can imagine nothing worse than to be immortal, nothing worse.’
Part Fifteen
15.1
LESS than a week after her letter from her younger son, Mrs Rupa Mehra received a letter from her elder son. It was, as always, illegible – and illegible to the extent that it seemed almost to amount to contempt for any possible reader. The news it contained was important, however; and it did no good to Mrs Rupa Mehra’s high blood pressure as she tried desperately to decipher bits of it through a forest of random curves and spikes.
The surprising news related mainly to the Chatterji children. Of the two women, Meenakshi and Kakoli, one had lost a foetus and the other had gained a fiancé. Dipankar had returned from the Pul Mela still uncertain, ‘but at a higher level’. Young Tapan had written rather an unhappy but unspecific letter home – typical adolescent blues, according to Arun. And Amit had let it drop when he had called around one evening for a drink that he was rather fond of Lata, which, given his extreme reticence, could only mean that he was ‘interested’ in her. Making sense of the next few squiggles, Mrs Rupa Mehra was shocked to understand that Arun did not think this was such a bad idea. Certainly, according to him, it would take Lata out of the orbit of the entirely unsuitable Haresh. When the idea was put before Varun, he had frowned and said, ‘I’m studying,’ as if his sister’s future mattered not at all to him. But then, Varun was becoming moodier and moodier since his IAS preparations had restrained his Shamshuing. He had behaved most oddly over Daddy’s shraadh, attempting to turn the Sunny Park house into a restaurant for fat priests, and even asking them (Meenakshi had overheard him) if shraadh could be performed for a suicide.