Mahesh Kapoor muffed his responses, and the priest repeated them gently.
‘Yes, yes, go on, go on,’ said Mahesh Kapoor. He glowered at the fire.
But now Savita was being given away by her mother with a handful of rose-petals, and all three women were in tears.
Really! thought Mahesh Kapoor. They‘ll douse the flames. He looked in exasperation at the main culprit, whose sobs were the most obstreperous.
But Mrs Rupa Mehra was not even bothering to tuck her handkerchief back into her blouse. Her eyes were red and her nose and checks were flushed with weeping. She was thinking back to her own wedding. The scent of 4711 eau-de-Cologne brought back unbearably happy memories of her late husband. Then she thought downwards one generation to her beloved Savita who would soon be walking around this fire with Pran to begin her own married life. May it be a longer one than mine, prayed Mrs Rupa Mehra. May she wear this very sari to her own daughter‘s wedding.
She also thought upwards a generation to her father, and this brought on a fresh gush of tears. What the septuagenarían radiologist Dr Kishen Chand Seth had taken offence at, no one knew: probably something said or done by his friend Mahesh Kapoor, but quite possibly by his own daughter; no one could tell for sure. Apart from repudiating his duties as a host, he had chosen not even to attend his granddaughter’s wedding, and had gone furiously off to Delhi ‘for a conference of cardiologists’, as he claimed. He had taken with him the insufferable Parvati, his thirty-five-year-old second wife, who was ten years younger than Mrs Rupa Mehra herself.
It was also possible, though this did not cross his daughter’s mind, that Dr Kishen Chand Seth would have gone mad at the wedding had he attended it, and had in fact fled from that specific eventuality. Short and trim though he had always been, he was enormously fond of food; but owing to a digestive disorder combined with diabetes his diet was now confined to boiled eggs, weak tea, lemon squash, and arrowroot biscuits.
I don’t care who stares at me, I have plenty of reasons to cry, said Mrs Rupa Mehra to herself defiantly. I am so happy and heartbroken today. But her heartbreak lasted only a few minutes more. The groom and bride walked around the fire seven times, Savita keeping her head meekly down, her eyelashes wet with tears; and Pran and she were man and wife.
After a few concluding words by the priests, everyone rose. The newly-weds were escorted to a flower-shrouded bench near a sweet-smelling, rough-leafed harsingar tree in white and orange bloom; and congratulations fell on them and their parents and all the Mehras and Kapoors present as copiously as those delicate flowers fall to the ground at dawn.
Mrs Rupa Mehra‘s joy was unconfined. She gobbled the congratulations down like forbidden gulab-jamuns. She looked a little speculatively at her younger daughter, who appeared to be laughing at her from a distance. Or was she laughing at her sister? Well, she would find out soon enough what the happy tears of matrimony were all about!
Pran’s much-shouted-at mother, subdued yet happy, after blessing her son and daughter-in-law, and failing to see her younger son Maan anywhere, had gone over to her daughter Veena. Veena embraced her; Mrs Mahesh Kapoor, temporarily overcome, said nothing, but sobbed and smiled simultaneously. The dreaded Home Minister and his daughter Priya joined them for a few minutes, and in return for their congratulations, Mrs Mahesh Kapoor had a few kind words to say to each of them. Priya, who was married and virtually immured by her in-laws in a house in the old, cramped part of Brahmpur, said, rather wistfully, that the garden looked beautiful. And it was true, thought Mrs Mahesh Kapoor with quiet pride: the garden was indeed looking beautiful. The grass was rich, the gardenias were creamy and fragrant, and a few chrysanthemums and roses were already in bloom. And though she could take no credit for the sudden, prolific blossoming of the harsingar tree, that was surely the grace of the gods whose prized and contested possession, in mythical times, it used to be.
1.6
HER lord and master the Minister of Revenue was meanwhile accepting congratulations from the Chief Minister of Purva Pradesh, Shri S.S. Sharma. Sharmaji was rather a hulking man with a perceptible limp and an unconscious and slight vibration of the head, which was exacerbated when, as now, he had had a long day. He ran the state with a mixture of guile, charisma and benevolence. Delhi was far away and rarely interested in his legislative and administrative fief. Though he was uncommunicative about his discussion with his Home Minister, he was nevertheless in good spirits.
Noticing the rowdy kids from Rudhia, he said in his slightly nasal voice to Mahesh Kapoor: ‘So you’re cultivating a rural constituency for the coming elections?’