A Suitable Boy

  Each day at the rehearsal she feared and hoped that Kabir would come up to her to say something or do something that would begin to unravel once again the unfamiliar, too-solid fabric that she had woven—or that had been woven—around her. But rehearsals passed, and visiting hours came, and matters remained as unspoken and unresolved as ever.

  Plenty of people came in to look at the baby: Imtiaz, Firoz, Maan, Bhaskar, old Mrs Tandon, Kedarnath, Veena, the Nawab Sahib himself, Malati, Mr and Mrs Mahesh Kapoor, Mr Shastri (bearing a law-book he had promised Savita), Dr Kishen Chand Seth and Parvati, and many others, including a troop of Rudhia relatives whom Savita did not know. Clearly, the baby had been born not to a couple but to a clan. Dozens of people cooed above her (some acclaiming her looks, others deprecating her sex) and great exception was taken to any proprietary instincts displayed by the mother. Savita, imagining that she had certain special rights to the baby, attempted to protect her from the mist of appreciative droplets that formed a continuous haze around her head for two days. But she gave up at last, and accepted that the Kapoors of Rudhia and Brahmpur had the right to welcome in their own way this freshly minted member of their tribe. She wondered what her brother Arun would have made of the Rudhia relatives. Lata had dispatched a telegram to Calcutta, but so far nothing had been heard from that branch of the Mehras.

  13.13

  ‘No, really, Didi—I’m enjoying it. It’s no bother at all. I like reading things I don’t understand sometimes.’

  ‘You’re strange,’ said Savita, smiling.

  ‘Yes. Well, as long as I know they do actually make sense.’

  ‘Would you hold her for a while?’

  Lata put the book on tort down, went over to Savita, and took over the baby, who smiled at her for a while and then went off to sleep.

  She rocked the baby, who appeared to be quite content in her arms.

  ‘Now what’s all this, baby?’ said Lata. ‘What’s all this now? Wake up a little and speak to us, speak to your Lata Masi. When I’m awake you go off to sleep, when I’m asleep you wake up, let’s do things straight for a change, shall we, this won’t do at all, will it, will it now?’

  She moved the baby from one arm to the other surprisingly skilfully, cradling her head all the while.

  ‘What do you think about my studying law?’ said Savita. ‘Do you think I have the temperament for it? Savita Mehra, Government Counsel; Savita Mehra, Senior Advocate; good heavens, I forgot for a moment I’m a Kapoor. Savita Kapoor, Advocate-General; Mrs Justice Savita Kapoor. Will I be called “My lord” or “My lady”?’

  ‘Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched,’ said Lata, laughing.

  ‘But they might never get hatched,’ said Savita. ‘I may as well count them now. Ma, you know, doesn’t think law is such a bad idea. She feels that if she had had a profession it might have helped.’

  ‘Oh, nothing’s going to happen to Pran,’ said Lata, smiling at the baby. ‘Is it, now? Nothing’s going to happen to Papa, nothing, nothing, nothing. He will play his silly, silly April fool jokes for many, many years to come. Do you know, you can actually feel her pulse through her head?’

  ‘How amazing!’ said Savita. ‘It’s going to be very difficult for me to get used to being slim again. When you’re pregnant and bulge, you are popular with all the cats on the university campus, and people tell you intimate things about themselves.’

  Lata crinkled her nose. ‘But what if we don’t want to hear intimate things?’ she inquired of the baby. ‘What if we are quite happy to paddle our own canoe in a pleasant little backwater—and are not interested in the Niagara Falls and the Barsaat Mahal?’

  Savita was quiet for a few moments, then she said: ‘OK, I’ll take her back now. And you can read to me a bit more. What’s that book?’

  ‘Twelfth Night.’

  ‘No, the other one—the one with the green and white cover.’

  ‘Contemporary Verse,’ murmured Lata, blushing for some unaccountable reason.

  ‘Oh, read me some of that,’ said Savita. ‘Ma thinks poetry is good for me. Soothing. Calming.

  It was a summer evening,

  Old Caspar’s work was done.’

  Lata took up the recitation:

  ‘And he beside his cottage door

  Was sitting in the sun.

  There’s a skull in that poem somewhere, I remember. Oh yes, and Ma also loves that grisly “Casabianca” with the boy burning on the deck—and “Lord Ullin’s Daughter”. There has to be some death and heartbreak in it somewhere or it isn’t real poetry. I don’t know what she’d make of the poetry in this book. All right, what do you want to hear?’

  ‘Open it at random,’ suggested Savita. And the book opened to Auden’s ‘Law, Say the Gardeners’.

  ‘Apt,’ said Lata, and began to read. But as she turned the page to the last few lines, and read the poet’s similitude between law and love, her face grew pale:

  ‘Like love we don’t know where or why

  Like love we can’t compel or fly

  Like love we often weep

  Like love we seldom keep.’

  She shut the book.

  ‘Strange poem,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Savita carefully. ‘Let’s go back to tort.’

  13.14

  Meenakshi Mehra arrived in Brahmpur three days after the birth of the baby. She came with her sister Kakoli but without her daughter Aparna. She was tired of Calcutta and needed a break, and the telegram provided her with an excuse.

  She was tired, for a start, of Arun, who was being very boring and covenanted these days, and appeared to have lost interest in anything but premiums on tea to Khurramshahr. She was exhausted with Aparna, who had begun to get on her nerves with her ‘Mummy this’ and ‘Mummy that’ and ‘Mummy you aren’t listening’. She was sick of arguing with the Toothless Crone and Hanif and the part-time mali. She felt she was going mad. Varun would slope and slither guiltily in and out of the house, and every time he went ‘heh-heh-heh’ in his furtive Shamshu way she would feel like screaming. Even occasional afternoons with Billy and canasta with the Shady Ladies seemed to have lost their savour. It was too too awful. Truly, Calcutta was nothing but tinsel in the mouth.

  And then came this telegram informing them that Arun’s sister had had a baby. Well, it was nothing less than a godsend. Dipankar had filled postcard after postcard with descriptions of what a beautiful place Brahmpur was, and how nice Savita’s in-laws were. They were bound to be hospitable and she would be able to lie under a fan and calm her fraught nerves. Meenakshi felt she needed a holiday, and this was a wonderful opportunity to pounce upon Brahmpur with the intention of helping out. She could give her sister-in-law excellent advice on how to take care of her daughter. She had successfully managed Aparna, and this gave her the authority to manage her niece.

  Meenakshi was quite pleased to be an aunt, even if only through her husband’s sister. Her own brothers and sister had not provided her with a single nephew or niece. Amit was the most culpable in this regard; he should have got married at least three years ago. In fact, thought Meenakshi, he should make up for his error at once: by marrying Lata.

  Here was another reason for going to Brahmpur; she would prepare the ground when she got there. Of course there was no question of mentioning her plan to Amit; he would have hit the roof in so far as he was capable of it. Sometimes she wished he would hit the roof. Surely poets should be more passionate than Amit was. But she could certainly imagine him saying acidly: ‘Do your own wooing, Meenakshi darling, and let me do mine.’ No, she had better not mention anything to Amit.

  Kakoli, however, when she came to visit Sunny Park late one afternoon, was let into the plot, and was delighted. She considered Lata to be quiet but nice, with sudden surprising sparks here and there to leaven things. Amit appeared to like her, but he was incapable of doing anything determined for himself, being content simply to contemplate things and let the years roll on. Kakoli felt that Lata
and Amit were well matched but that each needed prodding. She rolled off a Kakoli-couplet to consecrate their match:

  ‘Luscious Lata, born to be

  Lady Lata Chatterji.’

  She was rewarded by the tinkle of Meenakshi’s laughter, and the return of her service:

  ‘Luscious Lata, is it hard

  Being wife of famous bard?’

  Kakoli, giggling, volleyed the ball low across the net:

  ‘Oh, so hard it is in rhyme:

  Loving, doving, all the time.’

  And Meenakshi continued the rally:

  ‘Kissing, missing, every day,

  Cuddling, muddling all the way.’

  Kakoli, suddenly remembering that she had left Cuddles tied up to her bedpost, told Meenakshi she had to go home immediately. ‘But why don’t both of us go to Brahmpur together?’ she suggested. ‘To the provinces,’ she added airily.

  ‘Why not?’ said Meenakshi. ‘We could chaperone each other. But wouldn’t you miss Hans?’

  ‘We need only go for a week. It’ll be good for him to miss me. It’ll be well worth the pain of my missing him.’

  ‘And Cuddles? It really is very tiresome of Dipankar not to say when he’s coming back. He’s been gone for years, and now that he’s run out of postcards, we’ll never hear from him.’

  ‘It’s just typical of him. Well, Amit can be Cuddles’ keeper.’

  When Mrs Chatterji heard of the trip, she was more concerned with Kakoli missing classes than missing Hans.

  ‘Oh, Ma,’ wailed Kakoli, ‘don’t be such a bore. Weren’t you ever young? Didn’t you ever want to flee from the chains of life? I have excellent attendance at college, and a week won’t make any difference. We can always get a doctor to certify that I’ve been ill. With a wasting sickness.’ She quoted two snowy lines from Winterreise about the Inn that represented Death. ‘Or malaria,’ she continued. ‘Look, there’s a mosquito.’

  ‘We will do no such thing,’ said Mr Justice Chatterji, looking up from his book.

  But Kakoli, while conceding this point, wore her parents down on the general question of the Brahmpur jaunt. ‘Meenakshi needs me to accompany her. Arun’s too busy with work. The family needs us,’ she pleaded. ‘Babies are so complicated. Every pair of hands helps. And Lata’s such a nice girl, her company will improve me. Ask Amit if she isn’t nice. And improving.’

  ‘Oh shut up, Kuku, leave me to Keats,’ said Amit.

  ‘Kuku, Keats, Kuku, Keats,’ said Kakoli, sitting down at the piano. ‘What shall I play for you, Amit? La-La-Liebestraum?’

  Amit fixed her with a Look.

  But Kakoli rippled on:

  ‘Amit lying on his bed,

  Dreams of Lata in his head.

  Weeping, weeping on his sheets,

  Cannot concentrate on Keats.’

  ‘You are by far the stupidest girl I know,’ said Amit. ‘But why do you advertise your stupidity?’

  ‘Perhaps because I am stupid!’ said Kakoli, and giggled at her idiotic answer. ‘But don’t you like her—a teeeeny weeeeny bit? A soupcon? A little? A tittle?’

  Amit got up to go to his room, but not before another Kakoli-couplet had been shot at him.

  ‘Kuku-clock chimes out her name.

  Poet fleeing, red with shame.’

  ‘Really, Kuku!’ said her mother. ‘There are limits.’ She turned to her husband. ‘You never say anything to her. You never set any limits. You never stop her from doing anything. You always give in. What is a father for?’

  ‘To say no at first,’ said Mr Justice Chatterji.

  13.15

  Most of the Brahmpur news had already got through to Calcutta via the informative letters of Mrs Rupa Mehra. But her last letter had been overtaken by the telegram. So when Meenakshi and Kakoli got to Brahmpur with every intention of plonking themselves and their baggage down at Pran’s doorstep, they were shocked to find that he wasn’t there at all, but ill in hospital. With Savita in hospital herself, and Lata and her mother fussing about with Pran and Savita, it was clear that Meenakshi and Kuku could not be put up and fussed over in the style to which they were accustomed.

  Meenakshi found it hard to believe that the Kapoors had timed their affairs so badly as to have husband and wife bedridden at the same time.

  Kakoli was more sympathetic, accepting the fact that baby and bronchii could not confer in advance. ‘Why don’t we stay at Pran’s father’s place, what is it called, Prem Nivas?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s impossible,’ responded Meenakshi. ‘The mother doesn’t even speak English. And they won’t have western-style toilets—just those dreadful holes in the ground.’

  ‘Well, what are we to do?’

  ‘Kuku, how about that old dodderer whose address Baba gave us?’

  ‘But who wants to stay with someone who’s full of senile reminiscences?’

  ‘Well, where is it?’

  ‘He gave it to you. It must be in your bag,’ said Kakoli.

  ‘No, Kuku, he gave it to you,’ said Meenakshi.

  ‘I’m quite sure he didn’t,’ said Kakoli. ‘Do check.’

  ‘Well—oh, yes, here it is. Maybe it’s on that. Yes, it is: Mr and Mrs Maitra. Let’s land on them.’

  ‘Let’s see the baby first.’

  ‘What about our luggage?’

  So Meenakshi and Kakoli freshened up, changed into a mauve and a red cotton sari respectively, ordered Mateen to provide them with a fortifying breakfast, and set off in a tonga for Civil Lines. Meenakshi was astonished that it was so difficult to hail a taxi in Brahmpur, and shuddered every time the horse farted.

  Meenakshi and Kakoli quickly imposed themselves on Mr and Mrs Maitra and then rushed off, waving from the back of the tonga, towards the hospital.

  ‘Well, they claim that they’re Chatterji’s daughters,’ said the old policeman. ‘His children seem to be very restless. What was the name of that other boy, their son?’

  Mrs Maitra, who was scandalized by the fact that she could see almost four inches of their waists, shook her head and wondered what Calcutta had come to. Her own son’s letters did not contain any mention of waistlines.

  ‘When will they be back for lunch?’

  ‘They didn’t say.’

  ‘Well, since they are our guests, we should wait for them. But I get so hungry by noon,’ said old Mr Maitra. ‘And then I have to tell my beads for two hours, and if I begin late, that puts everything out. We’d also better get some more fish.’

  ‘We’ll wait till one, and then eat,’ said his wife. ‘If they can’t come, they’ll telephone us.’

  And so the two considerate old people accommodated themselves to the two young women, who had no intention of eating with them, and to whom the thought of a telephone call would certainly not occur.

  Mrs Rupa Mehra was transporting the baby from Pran’s room to Savita’s when she saw the mauve Meenakshi and the crimson Kakoli bearing down upon her along the corridor. She all but dropped the baby.

  Meenakshi was wearing those little gold horrors that never failed to upset Mrs Rupa Mehra. And what was Kakoli doing here during term-time? Really, thought Mrs Rupa Mehra, the Chatterjis impose no discipline upon their children. That is why they are all so peculiar.

  Aloud she said: ‘Oh, Meenakshi, Kakoli, what a lovely surprise. Have you seen the baby yet? No, of course you couldn’t have. Just look at her, isn’t she sweet? And everyone says she has my nose.’

  ‘How adorable,’ said Meenakshi, thinking that the baby looked rather like a red rat, not at all as beautiful as her Aparna had looked a few days after birth.

  ‘And where is my sweetheart?’ demanded Mrs Rupa Mehra.

  For a second Meenakshi thought Mrs Rupa Mehra was referring to Arun. Then she realized that it was Aparna whom her mother-in-law was talking about.

  ‘In Calcutta, of course.’

  ‘You didn’t bring her with you?’ Mrs Rupa Mehra could hardly conceal her amazement at this maternal callousness.


  ‘Oh, Ma, one can’t drag the whole world with one when one travels,’ said Meenakshi coolly. ‘Aparna does get on one’s nerves sometimes, and I’d be much less help here if she was with me.’

  ‘You’ve come to help?’ Mrs Rupa Mehra could hardly keep the astonishment and displeasure out of her voice.

  ‘Yes, Ma,’ said Kakoli simply.

  But Meenakshi elaborated: ‘Yes, of course, Ma, darling. What a sweet little thing. Reminds me of a, of a—well, she’s unique, she doesn’t remind me of anything but herself.’ Meenakshi laughed a tinkly laugh. ‘Now where is Savita’s room?’

  ‘Savita is resting,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra.

  ‘But she’ll be so pleased to see us,’ said Meenakshi. ‘Let’s go and see her. It must be feeding time. Six, ten, two, six, ten, as Dr Evans recommended with Aparna. And it’s just about ten o’clock now.’

  And they descended upon Savita, who was still fairly exhausted, and in quite a lot of pain because her stitches were pulling. She was sitting up in bed, though, and reading a women’s magazine rather than a law-book.

  Savita was astonished, but pleased to see them. Lata, who had been keeping her company, was very pleased. She enjoyed Meenakshi’s attempts to beautify her; and Kuku’s flightiness would, she hoped, lighten everyone’s mood. Savita had met Kuku only twice since Arun’s wedding.

  ‘How did you get here outside visiting hours?’ Savita asked, looking rather warrior-like now, with bright lipstick on both her cheeks.

  ‘Oh, Kakoli and I were more than a match for the reception desk,’ said Meenakshi. And indeed, the dumbfounded clerk had not known how to prevent these glamorous, waist-bare ladies from breezing past him.

  Kakoli had blown him a kiss with casual hauteur. He was still recovering.

  13.16

  Calcutta and Brahmpur news was exchanged rapidly. Arun was extremely busy with work, Varun showed no signs of studying seriously for the IAS exams, and there were lots of rows between the brothers, with Arun threatening periodically to throw Varun out of the house. Aparna’s vocabulary was increasing apace; a few days ago she had said: ‘Daddy, I’m in the doldrums.’ Meenakshi suddenly began to miss Aparna. Seeing the baby snuggling up to Savita’s breast, she thought of Aparna’s own babydom, the lovely feeling of closeness she had experienced when she was suckling her, the sense of ‘myness’ that she had had towards her before Aparna had grown into a clearly differentiated, and often contrary, individual.