A Suitable Boy

  Collecting herself after a while and dabbing her forehead with eau de cologne, she went out into the garden. It was a warm day, but a breeze was blowing from the river. Savita was sleeping, and all the others were out. She looked over at the unswept path past the bed of cannas. The young sweeper-woman was talking to the gardener in the shade of a mulberry tree. I must speak to her about this, thought Mrs Rupa Mehra absently.

  Mansoor’s father, the far shrewder Mateen, came out on to the verandah with the account book. Mrs Rupa Mehra was in no mood for the accounts, but felt it was her duty to do them. Wearily she returned to the verandah, got her spectacles out of her black bag and looked at the book.

  The sweeper-woman took up a broom and started sweeping up the dust, dried leaves, twigs, and fallen flowers from the path. Mrs Rupa Mehra glanced unseeingly at the open page of the account book.

  ‘Should I come back later?’ asked Mateen.

  ‘No, I’ll do them now. Wait a minute.’ She got out a blue pencil and looked at the lists of purchases. Doing the accounts had become much more of a strain since Mateen’s return from his village. Quite apart from his odd variant of the Hindi script, Mateen was more experienced than his son at cooking the books.

  ‘What is this?’ asked Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘Another four-seer tin of ghee? Do you think we are millionaires? When did we order our last tin?’

  ‘Must be two months ago, Burri Memsahib.’

  ‘When you were away loafing in the village, didn’t Mansoor buy a tin?’

  ‘He may have, Burri Memsahib. I don’t know; I didn’t see it.’

  Mrs Rupa Mehra started riffling back through the pages of the account book until she came upon the entry in Mansoor’s more legible hand. ‘He bought one a month ago. Almost twenty rupees. What happened to it? We’re not a family of twelve to go through a tin at such a rate.’

  ‘I’ve just returned, myself,’ Mateen ventured, with a glance at the sweeper-woman.

  ‘You’d buy us a sixteen-seer tin of ghee a week if given half the chance,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘Find out what happened to the rest of it.’

  ‘It goes in puris and parathas and on the daal—and Memsahib likes Sahib to put some ghee every day on his chapatis and rice—’ began Mateen. ‘Yes, yes,’ Mrs Rupa Mehra interrupted. ‘I can work out how much should go into all that. I want to find out what happened to the rest of it. We don’t keep open house—nor has this become the shop of a sweetseller.’

  ‘Yes, Burri Memsahib.’

  ‘Though young Mansoor seems to treat it like one.’

  Mateen said nothing, but frowned, as if in disapproval.

  ‘He eats the sweets and drinks the nimbu pani that is kept aside for guests,’ continued Mrs Rupa Mehra.

  ‘I’ll speak to him, Burri Memsahib.’

  ‘I’m not sure about the sweets,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra scrupulously. ‘He is a self-willed boy. And you—you never bring my tea regularly. Why does no one take care of me in this house? When I am at Arun Sahib’s house in Calcutta his servant brings me tea all the time. No one even asks here. If I had my own house, it would have been different.’

  Mateen, understanding that the accounts session was over, went to get Mrs Rupa Mehra her tea. About fifteen minutes later, Savita, who had emerged from her afternoon nap looking groggily beautiful, came on to the verandah to find her mother rereading Arun’s letter in tears, and saying, ‘Ear-drops! He even calls them ear-drops!’ When Savita found out what the matter was she felt a rush of sympathy towards her mother and indignation towards Meenakshi.

  ‘How could she have done that?’ she asked. Savita’s fierce defensiveness towards those whom she loved was masked by her gentle nature. She was independent-spirited but in such a low key that only those who knew her very well got any sense that her life and desires were not entirely determined by the easy drift of circumstance. She held her mother close and said, ‘I am amazed at Meenakshi. I will make sure that nothing happens to the other medal. Daddy’s memory is worth a great deal more than her small-minded whims. Don’t cry, Ma. I’ll send a letter off immediately. Or if you want we can write one together.’

  ‘No, no.’ Mrs Rupa Mehra looked down sadly at her empty cup.

  When Lata returned and heard the news, she too was shocked. She had been her father’s darling and had loved looking at his academic medals; indeed she had been very unhappy when they had been given to Meenakshi. What could they mean to her, Lata had wondered, compared to what they would mean to his daughters? She was now most unpleasantly being proved right. She was angry too with Arun who, she felt, had permitted this sorry business by his consent or indulgence and who now made light of the event in his fatuously casual letter. His brutal little attempts to shock or tease his mother made Lata fume. As to his suggestion that she go to Calcutta and cooperate in his introductions—Lata decided that that would be the last thing in the world she would do.

  Pran returned late from his first meeting of the student welfare committee to a household that was clearly not itself, but he was too exhausted to inquire immediately what the matter was. He sat in his favourite chair—a rocking chair requisitioned from Prem Nivas—and read for a few minutes. After a while he asked Savita if she wanted to go for a walk, and during the course of it he was briefed on the crisis. He asked Savita whether he could look over the letter she had written to Meenakshi. It was not that he lacked faith in his wife’s judgement—quite the contrary. But he hoped that he, not being a Mehra and therefore less taut with a sense of injury, might be of help in preventing irretrievable words from exacerbating irretrievable acts. Family quarrels, whether over property or sentiment, were bitter things; their prevention was almost a public duty.

  Savita was happy to show him the letter. Pran looked it over, nodding from time to time. ‘This is fine,’ he said rather gravely, as if approving a student’s essay. ‘Diplomatic but deadly! Soft steel,’ he added in a different tone. He looked at his wife with an expression of amused curiosity. ‘Well, I’ll see it goes off tomorrow.’

  Malati came over later. Lata filled her in about the medal. Malati described some experiments that they had been required to perform at the medical college, and Mrs Rupa Mehra was sufficiently disgusted to be distracted—at least for a while.

  Savita noticed for the first time over dinner that Malati had a crush on her husband. It was evident in the way the girl looked at him over the soup and avoided looking at him over the main course. Savita was not at all annoyed. She assumed that but to know Pran was to love him; Malati’s affection was both natural and harmless. Pran, it was clear, was unaware of this; he was talking about the play that he had put on for Annual Day the previous year: Julius Caesar—a typical university choice (Pran was saying) since so few parents wanted their daughters to act on stage . . . but, on the other hand, the themes of violence, patriotism and a change of regime had given it a freshness in the present historical context that it would not otherwise have had.

  The obtuseness of intelligent men, thought Savita with a smile, is half of what makes them lovable. She closed her eyes for a second to say a prayer for his health and her own and that of her unborn child.

  Part Two

  2.1

  On the morning of Holi, Maan woke up smiling. He drank not just one but several glasses of thandai laced with bhang and was soon as high as a kite. He felt the ceiling floating down towards him—or was it he who was floating up towards it? As if in a mist he saw his friends Firoz and Imtiaz together with the Nawab Sahib arrive at Prem Nivas to greet the family. He went forward to wish them a happy Holi. But all he could manage was a continuous stream of laughter. They smeared his face with colour and he went on laughing. They sat him down in a corner and he continued laughing until the tears rolled down his cheeks. The ceiling had now floated away entirely, and it was the walls that were pulsing in and out in an immensely puzzling way. Suddenly he got up and put his arms around Firoz and Imtiaz and made for the door, pushing them along with him.

  ‘Where ar
e we going?’ asked Firoz.

  ‘To Pran’s,’ Maan replied. ‘I have to play Holi with my sister-in-law.’ He grabbed a couple of packets of coloured powder and put them in the pocket of his kurta.

  ‘You’d better not drive your father’s car in this state,’ Firoz said.

  ‘Oh, we’ll take a tonga, a tonga,’ Maan said, waving his arms around, and then embracing Firoz. ‘But first drink some thandai. It’s got an amazing kick.’

  They were lucky. There weren’t many tongas out this morning, but one trotted up just as they got on to Cornwallis Road. The horse was nervous as he passed the crowds of stained and shouting merrymakers on the way to the university. They paid the tonga-wallah double his regular fare and smeared his forehead pink and that of his horse green for good measure. When Pran saw them dismounting he went up and welcomed them into the garden. Just outside the door on the verandah of the house was a large bathtub filled with pink colour and several foot-long copper syringes. Pran’s kurta and pyjama were soaked and his face and hair smeared with yellow and pink powder.

  ‘Where’s my bhabhi?’ shouted Maan.

  ‘I’m not coming out—’ said Savita from inside.

  ‘That’s fine,’ shouted Maan, ‘we’ll come in.’

  ‘Oh no you won’t,’ said Savita. ‘Not unless you’ve brought me a sari.’

  ‘You’ll get your sari, what I want now is my pound of flesh,’ Maan said.

  ‘Very funny,’ said Savita. ‘You can play Holi as much as you like with my husband, but promise me you’ll only put a bit of colour on me.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I promise! Just a smidgeon, no more, of powder—and then a bit on your pretty little sister’s face—and I’ll be satisfied—until next year.’

  Savita opened the door cautiously. She was wearing an old and faded salwaar-kameez and looked lovely: laughing and cautious, half-poised for flight.

  Maan held the packet of pink powder in his left hand. He now smeared a bit on his sister-in-law’s forehead. She reached into the packet to do the same to him.

  ‘—and a little bit on each cheek—’ Maan continued as he smeared more powder on her face.

  ‘Good, that’s fine,’ said Savita. ‘Very good. Happy Holi!’

  ‘—and a little bit here—’ said Maan, rubbing more on her neck and shoulders and back, holding her firmly and fondling her a bit as she struggled to get away.

  ‘You’re a real ruffian, I’ll never trust you again,’ said Savita. ‘Please let me go, please stop it, no, Maan, please—not in my condition. . . .’

  ‘So I’m a ruffian, am I?’ said Maan, reaching for a mug and dipping it in the tub.

  ‘No, no, no—’ said Savita. ‘I didn’t mean it. Pran, please help me,’ said Savita, half laughing and half crying. Mrs Rupa Mehra was peeping in alarm through the window. ‘No wet colour, Maan, please—’ cried Savita, her voice rising to a scream.

  But despite all her pleading Maan poured three or four mugs of cold pink water over her head, and rubbed the moist powder on to her kameez over her breasts, laughing all the while.

  Lata was looking out of the window too, amazed by Maan’s bold, licentious attack—the licence presumably being provided by the day. She could almost feel Maan’s hands on her and then the cold shock of the water. To her surprise, and to that of her mother, who was standing next to her, she gave a gasp and a shiver. But nothing would induce her to go outside, where Maan was continuing his polychrome pleasures.

  ‘Stop—’ cried Savita, outraged. ‘What kind of cowards are you? Why don’t you help me? He’s had bhang, I can see it—just look at his eyes—’

  Firoz and Pran managed to distract Maan by squirting several syringes full of coloured water at him, and he fled into the garden. He was not very steady on his feet as it was, and he stumbled and fell into the bed of yellow cannas. He raised his head among the flowers long enough to sing the single line: ‘Oh revellers, it’s Holi in the land of Braj!’ and sat down again, disappearing from view. A minute later, like a cuckoo clock, he got up to repeat the same line and sat down once more. Savita, bent on revenge, filled a small brass pot with coloured water and came down the steps into the garden. She made her way stealthily to the bed of cannas. Just at that moment Maan got up once again to sing. As his head appeared above the cannas he saw Savita and the lota of water. But it was too late. Savita, fierce and determined, threw the entire contents on his face and chest. Looking at Maan’s astonished expression she began to giggle. But Maan had sat down once again and was now crying, ‘Bhabhi doesn’t love me, my bhabhi doesn’t love me.’

  ‘Of course, I don’t,’ said Savita. ‘Why should I?’

  Tears rolled down Maan’s cheeks and he was inconsolable. When Firoz tried to get him on to his feet he clung to him. ‘You’re my only real friend,’ he wept. ‘Where are the sweets?’

  Now that Maan had neutralized himself, Lata ventured out and played a little mild Holi with Pran, Firoz and Savita. Mrs Rupa Mehra got smeared with a bit of colour too.

  But all the while Lata kept wondering what it would have felt like to be rubbed and smeared by the cheerful Maan in such a public and intimate way. And this was a man who was engaged! She had never seen anyone behave even remotely like Maan—and Pran was very far from furious. A strange family, the Kapoors, she thought.

  Meanwhile Imtiaz, like Maan, had got fairly stoned on the bhang in his thandai and was sitting on the steps, smiling at the world and murmuring repeatedly to himself a word that sounded like ‘myocardial’. Sometimes he murmured it, sometimes he sang it, at other times it seemed to be a question both profound and unanswerable. Occasionally he would touch the small mole on his cheek in a thoughtful manner.

  A group of about twenty students—multicoloured and almost unrecognizable—appeared along the road. There were even a few girls in the group—and one of them was the now purple-skinned (but still green-eyed) Malati. They had induced Professor Mishra to join them; he lived just a few houses away. His whale-like bulk was unmistakable, and besides, he had very little colour on him.

  ‘What an honour, what an honour,’ said Pran, ‘but I should have come to your house, Sir, not you to mine.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t stand on ceremony in such matters,’ said Professor Mishra, pursing his lips and twinkling his eyes. ‘Now, do tell me, where is the charming Mrs Kapoor?’

  ‘Hello, Professor Mishra, how nice of you to have come to play Holi with us,’ Savita said, advancing with a little powder in her hand. ‘Welcome, all of you. Hello, Malati, we were wondering what had happened to you. It’s almost noon. Welcome, welcome—’

  A little colour was applied to the Professor’s broad forehead as he bent downwards.

  But Maan, who had been leaning, downcast, on Firoz’s shoulder, now dropped a canna he had been toying with and advanced with an open-hearted smile towards Professor Mishra. ‘So you are the notorious Professor Mishra,’ he said in delighted welcome. ‘How wonderful to meet so infamous a man.’ He embraced him warmly. ‘Tell me, are you really an Enemy of the People?’ he asked encouragingly. ‘What a remarkable face, what a mobile expression!’ he murmured in awed appreciation as Professor Mishra’s jaw dropped.

  ‘Maan,’ said Pran, startled.

  ‘So nefarious!’ said Maan, in wholehearted approval.

  Professor Mishra stared at him.

  ‘My brother calls you Moby-Dick, the great white whale,’ continued Maan in a friendly way. ‘Now I see why. Come for a swim,’ he invited Professor Mishra generously, indicating the tub full of pink water.

  ‘No, no, I don’t think—’ began Professor Mishra weakly.

  ‘Imtiaz, give me a hand,’ said Maan.

  ‘Myocardial,’ said Imtiaz to indicate his willingness. They lifted Professor Mishra by the shoulders and led him physically to the tub.

  ‘No, no, I’ll get pneumonia!’ cried Professor Mishra in anger and bewilderment.

  ‘Stop it, Maan!’ said Pran sharply.

  ‘What do you say, Doctor Sahib?�
�� Maan asked Imtiaz.

  ‘No contraindications,’ said Imtiaz, and the two pushed the unprepared professor into the tub. He splashed around, wet to the bone, submerged in pinkness, wild with rage and confusion. Maan looked on, helpless with happy laughter, while Imtiaz grinned beneficently. Pran sat down on a step with his head in his hands. Everyone else looked on horrified.

  When Professor Mishra got out of the tub he stood on the verandah for a second, trembling with wetness and emotion. Then he looked around the company like a bull at bay, and walked dripping down the steps and out of the garden. Pran was too taken aback even to apologize. With indignant dignity the great pink figure made its way out of the gate and disappeared along the road.

  Maan looked around at the assembled company for approval. Savita avoided looking at him, and everyone else was quiet and subdued, and Maan felt that for some reason he was in the doghouse again.

  2.2

  Dressed in a fresh, clean kurta-pyjama after a long bath, happy under the influence of bhang and a warm afternoon, Maan had gone to sleep back in Prem Nivas. He dreamed an unusual dream: he was about to catch a train to Banaras to meet his fiancée. He realized that if he did not catch this train he would be imprisoned, but under what charge he did not know. A large body of policemen, from the Inspector-General of Purva Pradesh down to a dozen constables, had formed a cordon around him, and he, together with a number of mud-spattered villagers and about twenty festively dressed women students, was being herded into a compartment. But he had left something behind and was pleading for permission to go and get it. No one was listening to him and he was becoming more and more vehement and upset. And he was falling at the feet of the policemen and the ticket examiner and pleading that he be allowed to go out: he had left something somewhere else, perhaps at home, perhaps on another platform, and it was imperative that he be allowed to go and get it. But now the whistle was blowing and he had been forced on to the train. Some of the women were laughing at him as he got more and more desperate. ‘Please let me out,’ he kept insisting, but the train had left the station and was picking up speed. He looked up and saw a small red-and-white sign: To Stop Train Pull Chain. Penalty for Improper Use Rupees 50. He leapt on to a berth. The villagers tried to stop him as they saw what he was about to do, but he struggled against them and grabbed hold of the chain and pulled it down with all his might. But it had no effect. The train kept gathering speed, and now the women were laughing even more openly at him. ‘I’ve left something there,’ he kept repeating, pointing in the general direction from which they had come, as if somehow the train would listen to his explanation and consent to stop. He took out his wallet and begged the ticket examiner: ‘Here is fifty rupees. Just stop the train. I beg you—turn it back. I don’t mind going to jail.’ But the man kept examining everyone else’s ticket and shrugging off Maan as if he was a harmless madman.