‘I shivered in the midnight heat,’ thought Lata. Aloud she said: ‘What sort of view do you get of that amaltas from here?’
Amit opened the window. ‘Not a very good view. Dipankar’s room is the best for that; it’s just above his hut. But enough to see its shadow –’
‘– Shake slightly on the moonlit grass.’
‘Yes.’ Amit didn’t normally like his poetry quoted back at him, but with Lata he didn’t mind. ‘Well, come to the window, sweet is the night-air.’
They stood there together for a while. It was very still, and the shadow of the amaltas did not shake at all. Dark leaves and long dark podded beans hung from its branches, but no yellow clusters of flowers.
‘Did it take you long to write that poem?’
‘No. I wrote it out in a single draft when that damn bird kept me awake. Once I counted sixteen desperate triplets building upwards to fever pitch. Can you imagine: sixteen. It drove me crazy. And then I polished it over the next few days. I didn’t really want to look at it, and kept making excuses. I always do. I hate writing, you know.’
‘You – what –?’ Lata turned towards him. Amit really puzzled her at times. ‘Well, then, why do you write?’ she asked.
Amit’s face grew troubled. ‘It’s better than spending my life doing the law like my father and grandfather before me. And the main reason is that I often like my work when it’s done – it’s just the doing that is so tedious. With a short poem there’s the inspiration of course. But with this novel I have to whip myself to my desk – To work, to work, Macbeth doth shirk.’
Lata remembered that Amit had compared the novel to a banyan tree. Now the image seemed somewhat sinister. ‘Perhaps you’ve chosen too dark a topic,’ she said.
‘Yes. And perhaps too recent.’ The Bengal Famine had taken place less than a decade ago, and was a very present memory to anyone who had lived through those times. ‘But anyway, I can’t go back now,’ continued Amit. ‘Returning is as tedious as go o’er – I’m two-thirds of the way through. Two-thirds, two-thirds; the fever-birds. Now, those books I promised to show you –’ Amit stopped short suddenly. ‘You have a nice smile.’
Lata laughed. ‘It’s a pity I can’t see it.’
‘Oh no,’ said Amit. ‘It would be wasted on you. You wouldn’t know how to appreciate it – certainly not as much as me.’
‘So you’re a connoisseur of smiles,’ said Lata.
‘Far from it,’ said Amit, suddenly plunged into a darker mood. ‘You know, Kuku’s right; I’m too selfish. I haven’t asked you a single question about yourself, though I do want to know what’s happened since you wrote to thank me for the book. How was your play? And your studies? And singing? And you said you had written a poem “under my influence”. Well, where is it?’
‘I’ve brought it along,’ said Lata, opening her purse. ‘But please don’t read it now. It is very despairing, and would only embarrass me. It’s only because you’re a professional –’
‘All right,’ nodded Amit. He was completely tongue-tied all of a sudden. He had hoped to make some sort of declaration or indication of his affection to Lata, and he found that he did not know what to say.
‘Have you written any poems recently?’ asked Lata after a few seconds. They had moved away from the window.
‘Here’s one,’ said Amit, looking through a pile of papers. ‘One that does not bare my soul. It’s about a family friend – you might even have met him at that party the last time you were in Calcutta. Kuku asked him upstairs to see her painting, and the first two lines suddenly occurred to her. He’s rather fat. So she commissioned a poem from the resident poet.’
Lata looked at the poem, which was titled ‘Roly Poly’:
Roly Poly Mr Kohli
Toiling slowly up the stairs.
Holy souly Mrs Kohli
Tries to catch him unawares.
Finger-wagging, fuming, frowning:
‘Why you have not said your prayers?
What means all this upping, downing?
What is magic in the stairs?’
Mr Kohli is Professor,
Always doing complex sums.
Answers mildly to aggressor,
‘On the stairs the theory comes.’
‘What a nonsense. Stop this summing.
Come and eat. Your food is cold.’
‘Just now only I am coming,’
Says her husband, meek as gold.
Lata could not help smiling, though she thought it very silly. ‘Is his wife all that fierce?’ she asked.