A Suitable Boy(592)

Meenakshi went for a shower, and came out furious.

‘How dare you?’ she said

‘How dare I what?’ responded Billy, looking troubled.

‘How dare you let it slip off! I’m not going through all that again,’ said Meenakshi, and burst into tears. How horribly, horribly tawdry, she thought.

Poor Billy was very worried by now. He tried to console her by putting his arms around her wet shoulders, but she shook him off angrily. She was trying to work out if today fell within her most vulnerable week. Billy was a real fool.

‘Meenakshi, I just can’t go on with this sort of thing,’ he was saying.

‘Oh, do be quiet, and let me think. My headache’s come back,’ said Meenakshi.

Billy nodded contritely. Meenakshi was putting on her sari again – rather violently.

By the time she had worked out that she was probably safe anyway, she was in no mood to relinquish Billy. She told him so.

‘But after Shireen and I are married –’ began Billy.

‘What does marriage have to do with it?’ asked Meenakshi. ‘I’m married, aren’t I? You enjoy it, I enjoy it; that’s all there is to it. Next Thursday, then.”

‘But Meenakshi –’

‘Don’t gape, Billy. It makes you look like a fish. I’m trying to be reasonable.’

‘But Meenakshi –’

‘I can’t stay to discuss all this,’ said Meenakshi, putting the finishing touches to her face. ‘I’d better be getting home. Poor Arun will be wondering what on earth’s happened to me.’





16.17


‘PUT off the light,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra to Lata as she came out of the bathroom. ‘Electricity does not grow on trees.’

Mrs Rupa Mehra was seriously annoyed. It was New Year’s Eve and, instead of spending it with her mother as she ought to, Lata was behaving like a Young Person and going out with Arun and Meenakshi for a round of parties. Mischief was afoot, and Mrs Rupa Mehra could sense it.

‘Will Amit be going with you?’ she demanded of Meenakshi.

‘Well, Ma, I hope so – and Kuku and Hans too if we can persuade them,’ Meenakshi added as camouflage.

Mrs Rupa Mehra was not deceived. ‘Well, then, you will have no objection to Varun going as well,’ she asserted. She promptly instructed her younger son to go along with them. ‘And do not leave the party for a moment,’ she warned him sternly.

Varun was not happy at all with this state of affairs. He had hoped to spend his New Year with Sajid, Jason, Hot-ends and his other Shamshuing and gambling acquaintances. But there was that in Mrs Rupa Mehra’s eye which brooked no counter-squeak. ‘And I do not want Lata to go off by herself,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra when she got Varun by himself for a moment. ‘I do not trust your brother and Meenakshi.’

‘Oh, why not?’ asked Varun.

‘They will be having much too good a time to keep an eye on Lata,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra evasively.

‘I suppose I shouldn’t have a good time myself,’ said Varun with gloomy annoyance.

‘No. Not if your sister’s future is at stake. What would your father say?’

At the memory of his father Varun felt a sudden sense of resentment of the kind he often had towards Arun. Then, almost immediately, he felt bad about it, and was overcome by a sense of guilt. What kind of son am I? he thought.

Mrs Rupa Mehra and the rump of the family – Pran, Savita, Aparna and Uma – were to go over to Ballygunge that evening to spend New Year’s Eve with the senior Chatterjis, including old Mr Chatterji. Dipankar and Tapan would be at home too. It would be a quiet family evening, thought Mrs Rupa Mehra, not like this endless gallivanting that seemed to be the craze these days. Frivolous, that was the word for Meenakshi and Kakoli; and their frivolity was a disgrace in a city as poor as Calcutta – a city moreover where Pandit Nehru had just arrived to talk about the Congress and the freedom struggle and socialism. Mrs Rupa Mehra told Meenakshi exactly what she thought.

Meenakshi’s response was a couplet disguised as ‘Deck the hall with boughs of holly’, of which there had been a good deal too much on the radio recently:

‘End the year with fun and frivol

Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la!

All the rest is drab and drivel.

Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la!’



‘You are a very irresponsible girl, Meenakshi, I can tell you that,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘How dare you sing to me like that?’

But Mrs Arun Mehra was in too good a mood to be put off by her mother-in-law’s ill-temper and, surprisingly and suddenly, gave her a kiss for New Year. Such a sign of affection was rare in Meenakshi, and Mrs Rupa Mehra accepted it with glum grace.