18.5
‘WHAT were you thinking?’ Amit asked Lata after dinner, lingering over his coffee. The other guests were being seen to the door by Pran and Savita, and Mrs Rupa Mehra had gone into her room for a few minutes.
‘That I really liked your reading,’ said Lata. ‘It was very affecting. And I enjoyed the question-and-answer session afterwards. Especially the statistical appendix – and the tearing of the tomes. You should advise Savita to deal as brutally with her law-books.’
‘I didn’t know you knew young Durrani,’ said Amit.
‘I didn’t know he’d invited you.’
There was a few seconds’ pause. Then Amit said: ‘I meant, what were you thinking just now.’
‘When?’ said Lata. ‘When you were looking at Pran and Savita. Over the pudding.’
‘Oh.’
‘Well, what?’
‘I can’t remember,’ said Lata with a smile.
Amit laughed.
‘Why are you laughing?’ asked Lata. ‘I like making you feel uncomfortable, I suppose.’
‘Oh. Why?’
‘– Or happy – or puzzled – just to see your change of mood. It’s such fun. I pity you!’
‘Why?’ said Lata, startled.
‘Because you’ll never know what a pleasure it is to be in your company.’
‘Do stop talking like that,’ said Lata. ‘Ma will come in any minute.’
‘You’re quite right. In that case: will you marry me?’
Lata dropped her cup. It fell on the floor and broke. She looked at the broken pieces – luckily, it had been empty – and then at Amit.
‘Quick!’ said Amit. ‘Before they come running to see what’s happened. Say yes.’
Lata had knelt down; she was gathering the bits of the cup together and placing them on the delicately patterned blue-and-gold saucer.
Amit joined her on the floor. Her face was only a few inches away from his, but her mind appeared to be somewhere else. He wanted to kiss her but he sensed that there was no question of it. One by one she picked up the shards of china.
‘Was it a family heirloom?’ asked Amit.
‘What? I’m sorry –’ said Lata, snapped out of her trance by the words.
‘Well, I suppose I’ll have to wait. I was hoping that by springing it on you like that I’d surprise you into agreeing.’
‘I wish –’ said Lata, putting the last piece of the shattered cup onto the saucer.
‘What?’ asked Amit.
‘I wish I would wake up one day and find I’d been married to someone for six years. Or that I had a wild affair with someone and never got married at all. Like Malati.’
‘Don’t say that,’ said Amit. ‘Ma might come in at any moment. Anyway, I wouldn’t advise an affair with Malati,’ he added.
‘Do stop being idiotic, Amit,’ said Lata. ‘You’re so brilliant, do you have to be so stupid as well? I should only take you seriously in black and white.’
‘And in sickness and health.’
Lata laughed: ‘For better and for worse,’ she added. ‘Far worse, I suppose.’
Amit’s eyes lit up. ‘You mean yes?’
‘No, I don’t,’ said Lata. ‘I don’t mean anything. And nor, I assume, do you. But why are we kneeling here facing each other like japanese dolls? Get up, get up. Here comes Ma, just as you said.’
18.6
MRS RUPA MEHRA was less sharp with Amit, however, than he had expected, for she was having second thoughts about Haresh.
For fear of having her own judgment called into question, she did not speak her thoughts out aloud. But she was not skilled in dissimulation; and over the next few days, when Amit had left Brahmpur, it was her want of enthusiasm for, rather than her actual criticism of Haresh that indicated to Lata that all was not at ease in her mind with respect to her former favourite.
That he had been so upset by Lata calling him ‘mean’ bewildered Mrs Rupa Mehra. On the other hand, it must have been Lata’s fault in some way, she decided. What she could not understand was that Haresh had not said goodbye to her, Mrs Rupa Mehra, his self-appointed mother-in-law-to-be. Several days had passed between the altercation and their hurried return to Brahmpur; yet during that time he had not visited or telephoned or written. It was not right; she was hurt; and she did not see why he should have continued to treat her so insensitively. If only he had called, she would have forgiven him immediately and tearfully. Now she was not in a forgiving mood at all.
It also struck her that some of her friends, when she had mentioned that Haresh was involved in the shoe trade, had made remarks such as, ‘Well, of course, things have changed nowadays,’ and ‘Oh! Dear Rupa – but everything is for the best, and Praha is of course Praha.’ In the first flush of vicarious romance, such veiled or consolatory comments had not struck home. But now the memory of them caused her to suffer a rush of embarrassment. Who could have predicted that the daughter of the potential Chairman of the Railway Board might be linked to the lowly lineage of leather?