A Suitable Boy

  The pains were more frequent now, but irregular. Lata was holding Savita’s hand, and sometimes kissing her or stroking her forehead. When the pains were on, Savita closed her eyes. Imtiaz was over in an hour or so. He had had a difficult time tracking down the obstetrician, who had happened to be at a party.

  Once she was in the hospital—the medical college hospital—Savita looked around and asked where Pran was. ‘Shall I get him?’ asked Mrs Rupa Mehra.

  ‘No, no, let him sleep—he shouldn’t get out of bed,’ said Savita.

  ‘She’s quite right,’ said Imtiaz firmly. ‘It would do him no good at all. There are enough of us here for support and company.’

  A nurse informed them that the obstetrician would be coming very soon, and that there was nothing to be alarmed about. ‘First births take a long time in general. Twelve hours is quite normal.’ Savita’s eyes opened wide.

  Though she was in great pain, she did not cry out aloud. Dr Butalia, a short Sikh doctor with rather dreamy eyes, arrived, examined her briefly, and again assured her that things were fine.

  ‘Excellent, excellent,’ he said with a smile, his eyes fixed on his watch while Savita writhed on the bed. ‘Ten minutes—well, good, good.’ He then disappeared.

  Maan turned up next. The nurse, noting that he was a Mr Kapoor, and that he looked quite dishevelled and concerned, decided that he must be the father, and addressed him in those terms for a few minutes before he corrected her.

  ‘I’m afraid the father is another patient in this hospital,’ said Maan. ‘I am his brother.’

  ‘Oh, but how awful,’ said the nurse. ‘Does he know—’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Yes, he’s sleeping, and it’s his doctor’s orders—and his wife’s—that he not move or suffer unnecessary excitement. I’m standing in for him.’

  The nurse frowned. ‘Now lie quietly,’ she advised Savita. ‘Lie quietly and think calm thoughts.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Savita, tears squeezing themselves out of her eyes.

  The night was hot, and despite the fact that the room was on the second floor there were a number of mosquitoes. Mrs Rupa Mehra asked for another bed to be brought in so that she and Lata could take turns to rest. Imtiaz, having made sure that things were in good order, left. Maan sat on a chair in the corridor and went off to sleep.

  Savita could not think calm thoughts. She felt as if her body had been taken out of her own control by some terrible, brutal force. She gasped when the pains came, but because her mother had told her that they would be unbearable, and she kept expecting them to get worse, she tried not to cry out aloud, and succeeded. Hour followed hour, and the sweat stood out on her forehead. Lata tried to keep the mosquitoes away from her face.

  It was four o’clock, and still dark. In a couple of hours, Pran would be awake. But Imtiaz had made it quite clear that he would not be allowed out of his room. Now Savita began to cry softly to herself, not only because she would be deprived of the comfort of his support, but because she could imagine how anxious he would be for her.

  Her mother, thinking she was crying because of the pain, said: ‘Now, darling, be brave, it’ll all be over soon.’

  Savita groaned, and held her mother’s hand tightly.

  The pain was now very nearly unbearable. Suddenly, she felt the bed wet around her legs, and turned to Mrs Rupa Mehra, flushed with embarrassment and perplexity.

  ‘Ma—’

  ‘What is it, darling?’

  ‘I think—I think the bed is wet.’

  Mrs Rupa Mehra woke Maan and sent him to get the nurses on duty.

  The bag of waters had broken, and the contractions began coming very fast now, every couple of minutes or so. The nurses took one look at the situation, and wheeled Savita into the labour room. One of them telephoned Dr Butalia.

  ‘Where’s my mother?’ asked Savita.

  ‘She’s outside,’ said one rather abrupt nurse.

  ‘Please tell her to come in.’

  ‘Mrs Kapoor, I’m so sorry, we can’t do that,’ said the other nurse, a large, kind, Anglo-Indian woman. ‘The doctor will be here very soon. Hold on to the railing behind your bed if the pain is too bad.’

  ‘I think I can feel the baby—’ began Savita.

  ‘Mrs Kapoor, please try to hold on till the doctor arrives.’

  ‘I can’t—’

  Luckily the doctor appeared almost immediately, and the nurses now both exhorted her to push.

  ‘Hold on to the spring and handle above you.’

  ‘Push, push, push—’

  ‘I can’t bear it—I can’t bear it—’ said Savita, her lips drawn apart in agony.

  ‘Just push—’

  ‘No,’ she wept. ‘It’s horrible. I can’t bear it. Give me an anaesthetic. Doctor, please—’

  ‘Push, Mrs Kapoor, you’re doing very well,’ said the doctor.

  Out of a haze of pain, Savita heard one nurse say to the other: ‘Is the baby’s head coming out first?’

  Savita felt a tearing sensation below, then a sudden warm gush. Then more stretching and such pain that she thought she would pass out.

  ‘I can’t bear it, oh Ma, I can’t bear it any more,’ she screamed. ‘I never want to have another baby.’

  ‘They all say that,’ said the abrupt nurse, ‘and they all come back next year. Keep pushing—’

  ‘I won’t. I’ll never—never—never have another child,’ said Savita, who felt herself being stretched beyond endurance, almost torn apart. ‘Oh God.’

  Suddenly the head slipped out, and she felt a sense of immediate relief.

  When, after what seemed a long time, she heard the baby’s cry, she opened her eyes, which were still hazy with tears, and looked at the red, wrinkled, black-haired, bawling baby, covered with blood and a sort of greasy film, that the doctor was holding up in his arms.

  ‘It’s a girl, Mrs Kapoor,’ said the dreamy-eyed doctor. ‘With a very powerful voice.’

  ‘A girl?’

  ‘Yes. Quite a large baby. Well done. It was a difficult birth, as such things go.’

  Savita lay exhausted for a couple of minutes. The light in the labour room was too bright for her. A baby! she thought.

  ‘Can I hold her?’ she asked after a while.

  ‘Just one minute more, and we’ll have her cleaned up.’

  But the baby was still quite slippery when it—she—came to rest on the cradle of Savita’s slack stomach. Savita looked at the top of its head, adoringly and accusingly, then held it gently and closed her eyes with exhaustion once more.

  13.12

  Pran woke to find himself a father.

  ‘What?’ he said in disbelief to Imtiaz.

  But seeing his parents sitting there by his bedside, something that would not normally have occurred outside visiting hours, he shook his head and believed it.

  ‘A girl,’ added Imtiaz. ‘They’re upstairs. Maan’s there too, quite happy to be mistaken for the father.’

  ‘A girl?’ Pran was surprised, perhaps even a little disappointed. ‘How is Savita?’

  ‘Fine. I’ve had a word with the obstetrician. He says the birth was a little difficult, but nothing unusual.’

  ‘Well, let me go to see her and the baby. I suppose she can’t move.’

  ‘No, she can’t. Not for a couple of days. She has a few stitches. And I’m sorry, Pran, you can’t move either. Neither movement nor excitement will conduce to your recovery.’ Imtiaz spoke with the slightly severe formality that he found worked best with patients when he wanted to ensure their compliance.

  ‘This is ridiculous, Imtiaz. Be sensible. Please. I suppose you’re going to tell me that I can only see photographs of my baby.’

  ‘That’s an idea now,’ said Imtiaz unable to resist a smile, and rubbing the mole on his cheek. ‘But the baby, unlike the mother, is a transportable item, and she can certainly be brought to you here. It’s a good thing you aren’t infectious, or even that woul
dn’t have been possible. Butalia guards his babies as if they were something of value.’

  ‘But I must speak to Savita,’ said Pran.

  ‘She’s doing well, Pran,’ said his father reassuringly. ‘When I was upstairs she was resting. She’s a good girl,’ he added irrelevantly.

  ‘Why don’t you write her a note?’ suggested Imtiaz.

  ‘A note?’ said Pran with a short laugh. ‘She’s not in a different city.’ But he asked his mother to give him the pad on the nightstand, and scribbled a few lines:

  Darling,

  Imtiaz has forbidden me a sight of you; he claims that walking up a couple of flights of stairs and the excitement of seeing you will undo me. I know that you must be looking as beautiful as ever. I hope you are all right, and I wish I were there to hold your hand and tell you how wonderful our baby is. Because I’m sure she must be wonderful.

  I haven’t seen her either yet, and this is to request you to relinquish her for a few minutes.

  Incidentally, I am fine and, in case you were wondering, had a restful night!

  All my love,

  Pran

  Imtiaz went off.

  ‘Don’t worry that it’s a girl, Pran,’ said his mother.

  ‘I’m not worried at all,’ said Pran. ‘I’m just surprised. Everyone kept talking about a boy, so after a while I believed it.’

  Mrs Mahesh Kapoor herself was not displeased that she had had a granddaughter, since Bhaskar (though not in the male line) had fulfilled her wish for a grandson.

  ‘Rupa couldn’t be pleased, though,’ she told her husband.

  ‘Why?’ said her husband.

  ‘Two granddaughters and no grandsons.’

  ‘Women should have their brains examined,’ was his response, before he returned to the day’s newspaper.

  ‘But you always say—’

  Mahesh Kapoor held up his hand, and continued reading.

  In a short while Mrs Rupa Mehra appeared with the baby.

  Pran’s eyes filled suddenly with tears. ‘Hello, Ma,’ he said, reaching out for the baby.

  The baby’s eyes were open but because of the folds around them, she looked almost as if she was squinting. To Pran she looked extremely raw and wrinkled, but not unattractive. In an unfocused way she too appeared to register Pran.

  He held her, not knowing what to do. How did one communicate with a baby? He hummed for a bit. Then he said to his mother-in-law: ‘How is Savita? When will she be able to move around?’

  ‘Oh, she’s sent a customs note with the parcel,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, handing Pran a piece of paper.

  Pran looked at his mother-in-law, surprised by this sudden flippant touch of wit. He felt that if he had made a joke in the same vein she would have rebuked him.

  ‘Really, Ma!’ he said. But Mrs Rupa Mehra was laughing, and tickling the back of the baby’s head in a doting manner. Pran rested the note against the baby, and read as follows:

  Dearest P,

  Herewith find enclosed one baby, size M, sex F, colour R, to be returned after inspection and approval.

  I am very well, and longing to see you, and I have been told that in two or three days I can move around carefully. It’s these stitches, which make certain things difficult for me.

  The baby has a definite personality and I feel she has taken a liking to me. I hope you are equally lucky. Her nose reminds me of Ma’s, but nothing else reminds me of anything in either of our families. She was very slippery when she came out, but now she has been cleaned and talcumed for presentability.

  Please don’t worry about me, Pran. I am very well, and Ma will be sleeping in my room next to the baby’s cot so that I’ll be able to rest except for feeding times.

  I hope you are all right, my darling, and congratulations. It’s difficult to think of myself in my changed status. I know I’ve had a baby all right, but I can’t believe I’m a mother.

  Lots of love,

  Savita

  Pran rocked his daughter for a while. He smiled at the last sentence. Imtiaz had congratulated him on being a father rather than on having a baby, and he had no difficulty in accepting the fact of his fatherhood.

  The baby was asleep in his arms. Pran was amazed at how perfect she was, all of her. Even though she was so small, each vein, each limb and lid and lip, each tiny finger was there—and functioning.

  The baby’s mouth was open in an unmeaning smile.

  Pran saw what Savita meant about the nose. Even though it was very small, he could see that it had the potential of Mrs Rupa Mehra’s rather hawk-like nose. He wondered if it would redden in the same way when she cried. At any rate, it couldn’t be redder than it was now.

  ‘Isn’t she lovely?’ asked Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘How proud He would have been to see his second granddaughter.’

  Pran rocked the baby a bit more, and touched his nose to hers.

  ‘What do you think of your daughter?’ asked Mrs Rupa Mehra.

  ‘She has a nice smile, considering that she’s a baby,’ said Pran.

  As he had thought, Mrs Rupa Mehra did not approve of his flippancy. She told him that if he had given birth to the baby he would have appreciated her more.

  ‘Quite right, Ma, quite right,’ said Pran.

  He wrote a short note back to Savita, informing her that the baby met with his approval, and reassuring her that slippery people were necessary in the scheme of things. When Mrs Rupa Mehra returned upstairs with the baby, Mr and Mrs Mahesh Kapoor followed, and Pran stared at the ceiling, lost in his thoughts, more happy about the present than worried about the future.

  The baby was a little difficult to feed on the first day. At first she didn’t want to acknowledge the breast, but once Savita brushed her finger against her cheek she turned around quite swiftly and opened her mouth. This was the opportunity for the nipple to be put to the baby’s mouth. The baby’s face registered an expression something like surprise. She also had a little difficulty in pulling properly. After that there was no trouble, except that she tended to go to sleep while feeding, and had to be woken up to complete her feed. Sometimes Savita tickled her behind the ears, sometimes on the soles of her feet. The baby was comfortable and contented to the extent that she required a great deal of persuasion to wake up at times.

  Grandmother, mother and baby each had a bed in the private room. Lata had to go for classes in the morning, but usually managed to relieve her mother’s watch for an hour or two around lunchtime. Sometimes Mrs Rupa Mehra, Savita, and the baby would all be sleeping, with only Lata watching, and an occasional nurse stopping by to ensure that everything was all right. It was a quiet time, and Lata used it to learn her lines. At other times she simply mused. If the baby woke, or needed its nappy changed, she took care of what needed to be done. The baby was content to be rocked by her.

  Sometimes, sitting here, with the marked script of Twelfth Night open on her lap, Lata substituted the word ‘happiness’ for ‘greatness’ in the famous quotation. She wondered what one could do to be born happy, to achieve happiness, or to have it thrust on one. The baby, she thought, had arranged to be born happy; she was placid, and had as good a chance as anyone of happiness in this world, her father’s poor health notwithstanding. Pran and Savita, different though their backgrounds were, were a happy couple. They recognized limits and possibilities; their yearnings did not stretch beyond their reach. They loved each other—or, rather, had come to do so. They both assumed, without ever needing to state it—or perhaps without even thinking explicitly about it—that marriage and children were a great good. If Savita was restless—and at the moment in the shaded noon light her sleeping face showed no restlessness but, rather, a peace and pleasure that Lata wondered at—if she was restless, it was because she feared the undoing by forces outside themselves of this great good. She wanted above all to ensure that no matter what happened to her husband, insecurity and unhappiness would not unavoidably thrust themselves on their child. The law-book resting on the table on one side of her be
d balanced the baby resting in the cot on the other.

  Nowadays, when Mrs Rupa Mehra fussed about Savita or her as-yet-nameless granddaughter, or voiced to Lata her fears about Pran’s health or Varun’s shiftlessness, Lata was not so impatient as she had earlier been. Her mother appeared to her now as the guardian of the family; and with life and death so near each other here in the hospital, it seemed to Lata that all that provided continuity in the world or protection from it was the family. Calcutta, Delhi, Kanpur, Lucknow—the visits to endless relatives—the Annual Trans-India Rail-Pilgrimages that Arun mocked so relentlessly and the waterworks that vexed him, the sending of cards to third cousins thrice removed on their birthdays, the family gossip at every ritual ceremony from birth to death, and the continual recollection of her husband—that absent but no doubt still benevolently supervising god—all these could be seen as part of the works of a corresponding domestic goddess, whose symbols (false teeth, black bag, scissors and thimble, gold and silver stars) would be remembered with tenderness long after she was gone—as she herself was over-fond of pointing out. She wanted Lata’s happiness just as Savita wanted her baby’s; and had tried to arrange for it in as determined a manner as she could. Lata no longer resented it.

  Thrust so suddenly into the marriage market this year, forced to travel from city to city, Lata had begun to look at marriages (the Sahgals, the Chatterjis, Arun and Meenakshi, Mr and Mrs Mahesh Kapoor, Pran and Savita) with more than a disinterested eye. But whether it was owing to the hectoring of her mother or her overly copious love or the vision of these different families or Pran’s illness or the birth of Savita’s baby or all of them combined, Lata felt she had changed. The sleeping Savita was perhaps a more powerful adviser than the voluble Malati.

  Lata looked back on her wish to elope with Kabir with a kind of amazement, even as she could not shake off her feelings for him. But where would these feelings lead? A gradual, stable attraction such as Savita’s for Pran—was this not the best thing for her, and for the family, and for any children that she might have?