‘There’s no must about it. Go and marry him yourself,’ said Lata, her cheeks red. ‘No – don’t! Don’t! I’ll never forgive you. Please don’t talk about Kabir, Malu, please.’
‘You’re going to regret it bitterly,’ said Malati. ‘I’m telling you that!
‘Well, that’s my look-out,’ said Lata, struggling to control herself.
‘Why didn’t you ask me before you decided?’ demanded Malati. ‘Whom did you consult? Or did you just make up your silly mind by yourself?’
‘I consulted my monkeys,’ said Lata calmly.
Malati had the strong urge to slap Lata for making stupid jokes at such a time.
‘And a book of poetry,’ added Lata.
‘Poetry!’ said Malati with contempt. ‘Poetry has been your complete undoing. You have too good a brain to waste on English literature. No, perhaps you don’t, after all.’
‘You were the first person to tell me to give him up,’ said Lata. ‘You told me. Or have you forgotten all that?’
‘I changed my mind,’ said Malati. ‘You know I did. I was wrong, terribly wrong. Look at the danger caused to the world by that sort of attitude –’
‘Why do you think I’m giving him up?’ asked Lata, turning towards her friend.
‘Because he’s Muslim.’
Lata didn’t answer for a while. Then she said: ‘It’s not that. It’s not just that. There isn’t any single reason.’
Malati gave a disgusted snort at this pathetic prevarication.
Lata sighed. ‘Malati, I can’t describe it – my feelings with him are so confused. I’m not myself when I’m with him. I ask myself who is this – this jealous, obsessed woman who can’t get a man out of her head – why should I make myself suffer like this? I know that it’ll always be like this if I’m with him.’
‘Oh, Lata – don’t be blind –’ exclaimed Malati. ‘It shows how passionately you love him –’
‘I don’t want to,’ cried Lata, ‘I don’t want to. If that’s what passion means, I don’t want it. Look at what passion has done to the family. Maan’s broken, his mother’s dead, his father’s in despair. When I thought that Kabir was seeing someone else, what I remember feeling was enough to make me hate passion. Passionately and forever.’
‘It’s my fault,’ said Malati bitterly, shaking her head from side to side. ‘I wish to God I’d never written that letter to Calcutta. And you’re going to wish the same.’
‘It isn’t, Malati. And I’m not. Thank God you did.’
Malati looked at Lata with sick unhappiness. ‘You just don’t realize what you’re throwing away, Lata. You’re choosing the wrong man. Stay unmarried for a while. Take your time to make up your mind again. Or simply remain unmarried – it’s not so tragic.’
Lata was silent. On the side that Malati could not see, she let a handful of sand pass through her fingers.
‘What about that other chap?’ said Malati – ‘that poet, Amit? How has he put himself out of the running?’
Lata smiled at the thought of Amit. ‘Well, he wouldn’t be my undoing, as you put it, but I don’t see myself as his wife at all. We’re too alike. His moods veer and oscillate as wildly as mine. Can you imagine the life of our poor children? And if his mind’s on a book I don’t know if he’ll have any time for me. Sensitive people are usually very insensitive – I should know. As a matter of fact, he’s just proposed to me.’
Malati looked shocked and angry. ‘You never tell me anything!’
‘Everything happened all of a sudden yesterday,’ said Lata, fishing Amit’s acrostic out of the pocket of her kameez. ‘I brought this along, since you usually like to see the documents in the case.’
Malati read it in silence, then said: ‘I’d marry anyone who wrote me this.’
‘Well, he’s still available,’ laughed Lata. ‘And I won’t veto that marriage.’ She put her arm around Malati’s shoulder before continuing: ‘For me, marrying Amit would be madness. Quite apart from everything else, I get more than enough of my brother Arun. To live five minutes away from him would be the ultimate lunacy!’
‘You could live somewhere else.’
‘Oh no –’ said Lata, picturing Amit in his room overlooking the laburnum in bloom. ‘He’s a poet and a novelist. He wants things laid on for him. Meals, hot water, a running household, a dog, a lawn, a Muse. And why not? After all, he did write “The Fever Bird”! But he won’t be able to write if he has to fend for himself away from his family. Anyway, you seem to be happy with anyone but Haresh. Why? Why are you so dead-set against him?’