A Suitable Boy

  ‘Who listens to my words?’ said Mrs Mahesh Kapoor in her quiet way. ‘You know how it is.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Mrs Rupa Mehra, shaking her head in vehement agreement. ‘I know exactly how it is. No one listens to their parents these days. It’s a sign of the times.’ Lata and Savita glanced at each other. Mrs Rupa Mehra went on: ‘Now with my father, no one dares to disobey him. Or he slaps them. He slapped me once even after Arun was born because he said I wasn’t handling him properly; Arun was being very difficult, crying for no reason, and it disturbed my father. I began crying of course when he slapped me. And Arun, who was only one at the time, began crying even louder. My husband was on tour at the time.’ Her eyes misted over, then cleared up as she remembered something.

  ‘My father’s car—the Buick—what has happened to it?’ she asked.

  ‘It was requisitioned to help with the casualties at the Pul Mela,’ said Veena. ‘I think it’s been returned; it should have been returned by now. But we haven’t followed things up these days, we’ve been so worried about Bhaskar.’

  ‘Worried? Whatever for?’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra.

  ‘What’s happened to Bhaskar?’ said Lata, simultaneously.

  Veena, her mother and Savita were all greatly surprised that Mrs Rupa Mehra hadn’t been informed fully by Pran within minutes of her arrival the previous night of Bhaskar’s accident and its aftermath. Each filled in the picture with eagerness and distress, and Mrs Rupa Mehra’s cries of alarm and sympathy added to the concern, excitement and noise.

  If five of us can make the racket we’re making, Birbal really did see a miracle under that tree, said Lata to herself, and her thoughts turned temporarily from Bhaskar to Kabir at the very moment that the conversation itself did the same.

  Veena Tandon was saying: ‘And, really, if it hadn’t been for that boy who recognized Bhaskar, God knows what we would ever have done—or who would ever have found him. He was still unconscious when we saw him—and when he came to, he couldn’t even remember his own name.’ She began to tremble at the thought that an even worse disaster had been so close, so almost unavoidable. Even in her waking hours, even when holding her son’s hand by his bedside, she often remembered with frightening distinctness the sense of his fingers slipping out of her grasp. And the return of that hand had depended on so tenuous a chance that there could be no possible explanation for it but the goodness and grace of God.

  ‘Ah, the tea,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra in a rush of tenderness now that she had three young women to mother. ‘You must have a cup immediately, Veena, no, you must, even if your hands are trembling. It will do you good instantly. No, Savita, you sit down, it isn’t sensible for you in this condition to insist on acting as hostess. What is a mother for, don’t you agree?’ This last phrase was addressed to Mrs Mahesh Kapoor. ‘Lata, darling, give this cup to Veena. Who was this boy who recognized Bhaskar? One of his friends?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Veena, her voice a little steadier. ‘He was a young man, a volunteer. We didn’t know him, but he knew Bhaskar. He’s Kabir Durrani, the son of Dr Durrani, who has been so good to Bhaskar—’

  But Mrs Rupa Mehra’s own hands, suddenly grown unsteady with shock, spilled the tea that she had just been pouring.

  Lata had grown very still upon hearing the name.

  What could Kabir have been doing down by the Pul Mela—and as a volunteer—at a Hindu festival?

  Mrs Rupa Mehra put down the teapot and looked towards Lata, the original cause of her distress. She was about to say: ‘Now look what you’ve made me do!’ when some better instinct prevented her. After all, Veena and Mrs Mahesh Kapoor had no idea about Kabir’s interest in Lata. (She preferred to think of it in that direction.)

  Instead she said: ‘But he’s—well, he’s—I mean, he must be from his name—what was he doing at the Pul Mela? Surely—’

  ‘I think he was just a volunteer from the university,’ said Veena. ‘They sent an appeal for volunteers after the disaster, and he went to help. What a decent young man. He refused to leave his duty at the first-aid centre even to oblige a Minister—you know how abrupt Baoji can be on the phone. We had to go down ourselves to see Bhaskar. That was good, because Bhaskar shouldn’t have been moved. And though Durrani’s son was tired, he spoke to us for quite a long time, reassuring us, telling us how Bhaskar had been brought in, how he did not appear to have any external injury. I was almost beside myself with worry. It makes you think there is God in all of us. He comes quite often to Prem Nivas these days. His father, who knows Bhaskar, often comes along as well. None of us have any idea what they talk about. It makes Bhaskar happy, though, so we just leave them alone with paper and pencil.’

  ‘Prem Nivas?’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘Why not Misri Mandi?’

  ‘Well, Rupaji,’ said Mrs Mahesh Kapoor. ‘I have insisted that Veena stay with us until Bhaskar has quite recovered. It’s not good for him to move around too much, the doctor says.’ Mrs Mahesh Kapoor had in fact taken the doctor aside and insisted that he say this. ‘And for Veena too, it’s exhausting enough to take care of Bhaskar without having to run a household. Kedarnath and his mother are staying with us too, naturally. They’re both with Bhaskar now. Someone has to be.’

  Mrs Mahesh Kapoor made no mention of any additional strain this arrangement imposed on her. Indeed, she did not consider the additional effort of putting four people up in her house to be anything out of the ordinary. The kind of household she ran—had always run—at Prem Nivas involved offering hospitality at all hours to all kinds of people—often strangers, political associates of her husband. If that was an effort she undertook willingly if not gladly, this was one which she undertook both gladly and willingly. She was happy that at a time of crisis like this one, she could be close enough to help. If there had been one silver lining to the dark cloud of Partition, it had been that it had brought her married daughter and her grandson back from Lahore to live in the same town as her. And now, by virtue of another trauma, they were back in Prem Nivas itself.

  ‘He misses his friends, though,’ said Veena. ‘He wants to go back to our neighbourhood. And once school begins it’ll be difficult to keep him away. And then there’ll be the rehearsals for the Ramlila—and he insists he wants to be a monkey this time. He’s too small to be Hanuman or Nal or Neel or any of the important ones, but certainly he can be part of the army.’

  ‘There’ll be plenty of time to catch up with studies,’ said Mrs Mahesh Kapoor. ‘And the Ramlila is far away. It doesn’t take much practice to be a monkey. Health is the main thing. When Pran was ill as a child, he often had to skip his studies. But it hasn’t done him any harm.’

  Talking of Pran turned Mrs Mahesh Kapoor’s thoughts to her younger son, but she had learned not to fret excessively about what it was pointless to fret about. She wished she could curb her anxieties completely. Mahesh Kapoor had insisted that Maan not be informed about the accident that had occurred, for fear that he would instantly return to Brahmpur in order to visit the little frog, and stay on in Brahmpur, entangled in the toils of ‘that’. Mahesh Kapoor’s spirits had been in turmoil since he had returned from the Congress session at Patna. It was hard enough to decide what he should do in the face of the disastrous turn taken by the affairs of the party and the country. He could do without the presence of Maan, an additional and equally ungovernable thorn in his side—and reputation.

  Apropos of nothing that had gone before, Mrs Mahesh Kapoor said, with a slightly embarrassed laugh: ‘I sometimes almost feel that Minister Sahib’s conversation of late has grown as incomprehensible as Dr Durrani’s.’

  Everyone was surprised at such a remark, coming as it did from the mild-spirited Mrs Mahesh Kapoor. Veena in particular sensed that only great pressure and anxiety could have wrung such a statement from her. She reproached herself now; in her own anxieties about Bhaskar, she had been unconscious of what her mother must have been undergoing, worried as she must have been by Pran’s asthma and Bhaskar’s injury, quite apart
from Maan’s behaviour and her husband’s increasing abruptness. She was not looking well herself, but this was probably the least of her worries.

  Mrs Rupa Mehra’s mind, meanwhile, had swerved on to quite another track as a result of the last comment. ‘How did Dr Durrani get to hear of Bhaskar?’ she asked.

  Veena, whose mind had been far away, said, ‘Dr Durrani?’ in a puzzled sort of voice.

  ‘Yes, yes, how did Bhaskar and Dr Durrani get together? This dutiful son of his, you say, recognized Bhaskar because of that connection.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Veena. ‘It began when Kedarnath invited Haresh Khanna to lunch. He’s a young man from Kanpur—’

  Lata burst out laughing. Mrs Rupa Mehra’s face went first white, then pink. This was completely intolerable. Everyone in Brahmpur knew of this Haresh, and she had been the last to hear of it. Why had Haresh not mentioned Kedarnath or Bhaskar or Dr Durrani in his conversation? Why was she, Mrs Rupa Mehra, the last to be informed on a subject closer to her than to anyone else in this room: the acquisition of a son-in-law?

  Veena and Mrs Mahesh Kapoor looked astonished by the reactions of both Lata and her mother.

  ‘How long has all this been going on?’ demanded Mrs Rupa Mehra with accusation and even resentment in her voice. ‘Why does everyone know about everything? Everyone knows this Haresh; everywhere I go it is Haresh, Haresh. And only I am left staring.’

  ‘But you left for Calcutta so soon after he was here that there wasn’t any chance to talk to you, Ma,’ said Veena. ‘Why is it so important?’

  When it dawned on Veena and Mrs Mahesh Kapoor from the closeness of the interrogation to which they were being subjected that Haresh was considered to be a ‘prospect’, they pounced on Mrs Rupa Mehra with a volley of questions of their own, and upbraided her for keeping them in the dark.

  Mrs Rupa Mehra, mollified, was soon as eager to divulge as to receive information. She had described Haresh’s certificates and qualifications and clothes and looks and had moved on to Lata’s reactions to Haresh and his to Lata, when, luckily for Lata’s peace of mind, she was interrupted by the arrival of Malati Trivedi.

  ‘Hello, hello,’ beamed Malati Trivedi, almost bouncing in. ‘I haven’t seen you for months, Lata. Namaste, Mrs Mehra—Ma, I mean. And to both of you.’ She nodded at Savita and the very visible bulge. ‘Hello, Veenaji, how is the music going? How is Ustad Sahib? I turned on the radio the other night and I heard him singing Raag Bageshri. It was so lovely: the lake, the hills, and the raag—all of them merged into one. I felt like dying with pleasure.’ With a final namaste to Mrs Mahesh Kapoor, whom she did not recognize, but whom she guessed to be Veena’s mother, Malati completed the circle, and sat down. ‘I’ve just come back from Nainital,’ she announced happily. ‘Where’s Pran?’

  12.3

  Lata looked at Malati as if she were a knight-errant. ‘Let’s go!’ she said to her. ‘Let’s go for a walk. At once! There are lots of things I want to talk about with you. I’ve been wanting to get out of the house all morning, but I’ve been too lazy to do so. And I thought of going to the women’s hostel but I didn’t know if you were back yet. We ourselves just got back last night.’

  Malati obligingly got up again.

  ‘Malati has just come in,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘This is not very hospitable, Lata, or polite either. You must let her have some tea. Then you can go for your walk.’

  ‘That’s all right, Ma,’ said Malati, smiling. ‘I’m not really feeling like tea, and I’ll be thirsty when I return. I’ll have some then, and we’ll catch up on things. Meanwhile Lata and I’ll take a walk by the river.’

  ‘Do be careful, Malati, that path down by the banyan trees is very slippery in this weather,’ warned Mrs Rupa Mehra.

  After going to her room to fetch a couple of things, Lata made good her escape.

  ‘Now what’s all this about?’ asked Malati as soon as they got out of the door. ‘Why did you want to leave?’

  Lata lowered her voice for no very good reason.

  ‘They were discussing me and a man whom my mother made me meet in Kanpur just as if I wasn’t there, and even Savita didn’t object.’

  ‘I’m not sure I would have objected either,’ said Malati. ‘What were they saying?’

  ‘I’ll tell you later,’ said Lata. ‘I’ve had enough of myself for a while, and I want to hear something different. What’s your news?’

  ‘What sort of news do you want?’ asked Malati. ‘Intellectual, physical, political, spiritual, or romantic?’

  Lata considered the last two, then thought of Malati’s comment about the lake, the hills, and a night raag. ‘Romantic,’ she said.

  ‘That’s a bad choice,’ said Malati. ‘You should get every idea of romance out of your head. But, well—I had a romantic encounter in Nainital. Except, well—’ She paused.

  ‘Except what?’ asked Lata.

  ‘Except, well, it wasn’t really. Anyway, I’ll tell you what happened and you decide for yourself.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘You know my sister, my elder sister, the one who keeps kidnapping us?’

  ‘Yes—I haven’t met her, but the one who was married at fifteen to the young zamindar and lives near Bareilly.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Malati. ‘Near Agra, actually. Anyway, they were having a holiday in Nainital, so I went along as well. And so did my three younger sisters and our cousins and so on. Everyone was given a rupee a day as pocket money, and this was quite enough to fill almost the whole day with one activity or another. I’d had a hard term, and I was eager to get Brahmpur out of my head. Like you, I suppose.’ She put her arm around Lata’s shoulder.

  ‘At any rate, I would ride in the morning—it’s only four annas an hour to hire a horse—and I’d also row, and skate at the rink—I’d sometimes skate twice a day and forget to go home for lunch. The rest of the family were involved in their own activities. Now I bet you can’t imagine what happened.’

  ‘You had a fall, and some young gallant at the rink rescued you,’ said Lata.

  ‘No,’ said Malati. ‘I look too self-assured for any Galahads to come chasing after me.’

  Lata reflected that this was quite likely. Men did fall for her friend at a rapid rate, it was true, but they would probably fear to pick her up if she fell. Malati’s attitude towards most men was that they were beneath her attention.

  Malati continued: ‘As it happens, I did have a fall or two while skating, but I got up on my own. No, what happened was quite different. I began to notice that a middle-aged man was following me around. Every morning when I was out rowing, I’d see him looking at me from the shore. Sometimes he’d get a boat out himself. He’d even appear at the rink.’

  ‘Horrible!’ said Lata, her thoughts immediately turning to her uncle in Lucknow, Mr Sahgal.

  ‘Well, no, not really, Lata, I wasn’t disconcerted at first, just puzzled. He didn’t come up to me or, well, approach me or anything. But after a while it began to trouble me. So I went up to him.’

  ‘You went up to him?’ asked Lata. This was asking for trouble, clearly. ‘That was very adventurous.’

  ‘Yes, and I said, “You’ve been following me around. Is something the matter? Would you like to say something to me?” He said, “Well, I’m on holiday, and I’m staying at such-and-such a hotel in room number so-and-so; would you come and have tea with me this afternoon?” I was surprised, but he looked pleasant and sounded decent, and so I agreed.’

  Lata was looking astonished, even shocked. Malati noticed this with pleasure.

  ‘Well,’ continued Malati, ‘at tea he told me that he had indeed been following me around, and for longer than I had realized. Don’t look so thunderstruck, Lata, it’s unsettling. Anyway, he told me he had seen me one day when he was out rowing, and, being on holiday with nothing better to do, he had followed me. Having rowed, I hired a horse and went for a ride. Later I skated. I did not seem to care, or so it seemed to him, about eating, about r
esting, about anything except the activity I was engaged in. He decided that he liked me very much. Don’t look so disgusted, it’s all true. He had five sons, he said, and he thought that I would make one of them a wonderful match. They lived in Allahabad. If I was ever passing that way, would I agree to meet them? Oh, incidentally, when we were making small talk, it turned out that he had known my family in Meerut many years ago, even before my father’s death.’

  ‘And you agreed?’ said Lata.

  ‘Yes, I agreed. At least to meet them. No harm in meeting them, Lata; five brothers—perhaps I’ll marry them all. Or none. So that was it—that’s why he was following me around.’ She paused. ‘That’s my romantic story. At least, I think it’s romantic. It’s certainly not physical, intellectual, spiritual or political. Now what’s been happening to you?’

  ‘But would you marry someone under those circumstances?’

  ‘Why not? I’m sure his sons are quite nice. But I have to have one more affair before I settle down. Five sons! How strange.’

  ‘But you are five sisters, aren’t you?’

  ‘I suppose we are,’ said Malati. ‘Anyway, it seems less strange. I’ve spent most of my growing-up years among women, and it doesn’t seem odd at all. Of course, it’s not the same for you. Even though you lost your father, you had brothers. But I had a peculiar sort of feeling when I entered your sister’s drawing room just now. As if I was back to an earlier life: six women and no men. But not like the feeling you get in a women’s hostel. It was very comforting.’

  ‘But now you’re surrounded by men, aren’t you Malati?’ said Lata. ‘Your subject—’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Malati, ‘in class—but what does that matter? It was far worse in Intermediate Science. Sometimes I think that men should simply be lined up against a wall and shot. It’s not that I hate them, of course. Now what about you? What has happened about Kabir? How have you dealt with him? And now that you’re back, what do you plan to do—short of shooting him and halting an innings?’