Lata, however, stood close by and watched with an attentive mixture of fascination and dismay. The two bare-chested priests, one very fat and one fairly thin, both apparently immune to the cold, were locked in mildly insistent competition as to who knew a more elaborate form of the service. So, while the stars stayed their courses in order to keep the auspicious time in abeyance, the Sanskrit wound interminably on. Even the groom’s parents were asked by the fat priest to repeat something after him. Mahesh Kapoor‘s eyebrows were quivering; he was about to blow his rather short fuse.
Lata tried to imagine what Savita was thinking. How could she have agreed to get married without knowing this man? Kindhearted and accommodating though she was, she did have views of her own. Lata loved her deeply and admired her generous, even temper; the evenness was certainly a contrast to her own erratic swings of mood. Savita was free from any vanity about her fresh and lovely looks; but didn‘t she rebel against the fact that Pran would fail the most lenient test of glamour? Did Savita really accept that Mother knew best? It was difficult to speak to Savita, or sometimes even to guess what she was thinking. Since Lata had gone to college, it was Malati rather than her sister who had become her confidante. And Malati, she knew, would never have agreed to be married off in this summary manner by all the mothers in the world conjoined.
In a few minutes Savita would relinquish even her name to Pran. She would no longer be a Mehra, like the rest of them, but a Kapoor. Arun, thank God, had never had to do that. Lata tried ‘Savita Kapoor’ on her tongue, and did not like it at all.
The smoke from the fire - or possibly the pollen from the flowers - was beginning to bother Pran, and he coughed a little, covering his mouth with his hand. His mother said something to him in a low voice. Savita too looked up at him very quickly, with a glance, Lata thought, of gentle concern. Savita, it was true, would have been concerned about anyone who was suffering from anything; but there was a special tenderness here that irritated and confused Lata. Savita had only met this man for an hour! And now he was returning her affectionate look. It was too much.
Lata forgot that she had been defending Pran to Malati just a short while ago, and began to discover things to irritate herself with.
‘Prem Nivas’ for a start: the abode of love. An idiotic name, thought Lata crossly, for this house of arranged marriages. And a needlessly grandiloquent one: as if it were the centre of the universe and felt obliged to make a philosophical statement about it. And the scene, looked at objectively, was absurd: seven living people, none of them stupid, sitting around a fire intoning a dead language that only three of them understood. And yet, Lata thought, her mind wandering from one thing to another, perhaps this little fire was indeed the centre of the universe. For here it burned, in the middle of this fragrant garden, itself in the heart of Pasand Bagh, the pleasantest locality of Brahmpur, which was the capital of the state of Purva Pradesh, which lay in the centre of the Gangetic plains, which was itself the heartland of India … and so on through the galaxies to the outer limits of perception and knowledge. The thought did not seem in the least trite to Lata; it helped her control her irritation at, indeed resentment of Pran.
‘Speak up! Speak up! If your mother had mumbled like you, we would never have got married.’
Mahesh Kapoor had turned impatiently towards his dumpy little wife, who became even more tongue-tied as a result.
Pran turned and smiled encouragingly at his mother, and quickly rose again in Lata‘s estimation.
Mahesh Kapoor frowned, but held his peace for a few minutes, after which he burst out, this time to the family priest: ‘Is this mumbo-jumbo going to go on for ever?’
The priest said something soothing in Sanskrit, as if blessing Mahesh Kapoor, who felt obliged to lapse into an irked silence. He was irritated for several reasons, one of which was the distinct and unwelcome sight of his arch political rival, the Home Minister, deep in conversation with the large and venerable Chief Minister S.S. Sharma. What could they be plotting? he thought. My stupid wife insisted on inviting Agarwal because our daughters are friends, even though she knew it would sour things for me. And now the Chief Minister is talking to him as if no one else exists. And in my garden!
His other major irritation was directed at Mrs Rupa Mehra. Mahesh Kapoor, once he had taken over the arrangements, had set his heart on inviting a beautiful and renowned singer of ghazals to perform at Prem Nivas, as was the tradition whenever anyone in his family got married. But Mrs Rupa Mehra, though she was not even paying for the wedding, had put her foot down. She could not have ‘that sort of person’ singing love-lyrics at the wedding of her daughter. ‘That sort of person’ meant both a Muslim and a courtesan.