‘Do you think,’ Lata said, looking up a little sharply, ‘that men don’t chatter and babble as much as women?’
‘I do,’ said the young man airily, happy that she was talking at last. ‘It’s a fact of nature. Shall I tell you a folk-tale about Akbar and Birbal? It’s very relevant to this subject.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Lata. ‘Once I’ve heard it I’ll tell you if you should have told it.’
‘Well, maybe at our next meeting?’
Lata took this remark quite coolly. ‘I suppose there will be one,’ she said. ‘We seem to keep meeting by chance.’
‘Does it have to be by chance?’ asked the young man. ‘When I talked about you and your friends, the fact is that I had eyes mostly for you. The moment I saw you enter, I thought how lovely you looked – in a simple green sari with just a white rose in your hair.’
The word ‘mostly’ bothered Lata, but the rest was music. She smiled.
He smiled back, and suddenly became very specific. ‘There’s a meeting of the Brahmpur Literary Society at five o’clock on Friday evening at old Mr Nowrojee’s house – 20 Hastings Road. It should be interesting – and it’s open to anyone who feels like coming. With the university vacations coming up, they seem to want to welcome outsiders to make up the numbers.’
The university vacations, thought Lata. Perhaps we won’t see each other again after all. The thought saddened her.
‘Oh, I know what I wanted to ask you,’ she said.
‘Yes?’ asked the young man, looking puzzled. ‘Go ahead.’
‘What’s your name?’ asked Lata.
The young man’s face broke into a happy grin. ‘Ah!’ he said, ‘I thought you would never ask. I’m Kabir, but very recently my friends have started calling me Galahad.’
‘Why?’ asked Lata, surprised.
‘Because they think that I spend my time rescuing damsels in distress.’
‘I was not in such distress that I needed rescuing,’ said Lata.
Kabir laughed. ‘I know you weren’t, you know you weren’t, but my friends are such idiots,’ he said.
‘So are mine,’ said Lata disloyally. Malati had, after all, left her in the lurch.
‘Why don’t we exchange last names as well?’ said the young man, pursuing his advantage.
Some instinct of self-preservation made Lata pause. She liked him, and she very much hoped she would meet him again – but he might ask her for her address next. Images of Mrs Rupa Mehra’s interrogations came to mind.
‘No, let’s not,’ said Lata. Then, feeling her abruptness and the hurt she might have caused him, she quickly blurted out the first thing she could think of. ‘Do you have any brothers and sisters?’
‘Yes, a younger brother.’
‘No sisters?’ Lata smiled, though she did not quite know why.
‘I had a younger sister till last year.’
‘Oh – I am so sorry,’ said Lata in dismay. ‘How terrible that must have been for you – and for your parents.’
‘Well, for my father,’ said Kabir quietly. ‘But it looks as if Ustad Majeed Khan has begun. Maybe we should go in?’
Lata, moved by a rush of sympathy and even tenderness, hardly heard him; but as he walked towards the door, so did she. Inside the hall the maestro had begun his slow and magnificent rendition of Raag Shri. They separated, resumed their previous places, and sat down to listen.
3.7
NORMALLY Lata would have been transfixed by Ustad Majeed Khan’s music. Malati, sitting next to her, was. But her encounter with Kabir had set her mind wandering in so many different directions, often simultaneously, that she might as well have been listening to silence. She felt suddenly light-hearted and started smiling to herself at the thought of the rose in her hair. A minute later, remembering the last part of their conversation, she rebuked herself for being so unfeeling. She tried to make sense of what he had meant by saying – and so quietly at that – ‘Well, for my father.’ Was it that his mother had already died? That would place him and Lata in a curiously symmetrical position. Or was his mother so estranged from the family that she was unconscious of or not much distressed by the loss of her daughter? Why am I thinking such impossible thoughts? Lata wondered. Indeed, when Kabir had said, ‘I had a younger sister till last year,’ did that have to imply the conclusion to which Lata had automatically jumped? But, poor fellow, he had grown so tense and subdued by the last few words that had passed between them that he had himself suggested that they return to the hall.