A Suitable Boy

  He continued to stir his coffee with a troubled look.

  ‘I know of two mixed marriages—’ he began.

  ‘Ours wouldn’t work. No one else will let it work. And now I can’t even trust myself.’

  ‘Then why are you sitting here with me?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘And why are you crying?’

  Lata said nothing.

  ‘My handkerchief is dirty,’ said Kabir. ‘If you haven’t brought a handkerchief, use that napkin.’

  Lata dabbed at her eyes.

  ‘Come on, eat your cake, it’ll do you good. I’m the one who’s been rejected, and I’m not sobbing my poor little heart out.’

  She shook her head. ‘Now I must go,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

  Kabir did not try to dissuade her.

  ‘Don’t leave your book behind,’ he said. ‘Mansfield Park? I haven’t read that one. Tell me if it’s any good.’

  Neither of them turned around to look at the other as Lata walked towards the door.

  18.17

  So unsettled was Lata by her meeting with Kabir—but when was she not unsettled by a meeting with him? she wondered—that she took a long walk near the banyan tree. She sat down on the great, twisted root, remembered their first kiss, read some poetry, fed the monkeys, and fell into a reverie.

  Walks are my panacea, she thought, bitterly; and my substitute for any decisive action.

  The next day, however, she took action of the most decisive kind.

  Two letters arrived for Lata by the morning post. She sat on the verandah with its trellis of yellow jasmine and slit open both envelopes. Mrs Rupa Mehra was not at home when they arrived, or she would have recognized the handwriting on the envelopes and demanded to know what news they contained.

  The contents of the first envelope consisted of eight lines and a heading, typewritten and unsigned:

  A MODEST PROPOSAL

  As you’ve asked for black and white,

  May I send these lines to you

  In the tacit hope you might

  Take my type at least as true.

  Let this distance disappear

  And our hearts approach from far

  Till we come to be as near

  As acrostically we are.

  Lata began to laugh. The poem was a little trite, but it was skilful and entirely personalized, and it pleased her. She tried to recall exactly what she had said; had she really asked for black and white or merely told Amit that that was all she would believe? And how serious was this ‘modest’ proposal? After thinking the matter over, she was inclined to believe it was serious; and, as a result, it pleased her somewhat less.

  Would she have preferred it to be determinedly sombre and passionate—or not to have been written in the first place? Would a passionate proposal have been in Amit’s style at all—or at least in his style with her? Many of his poems were far from light in either sense of the word, but it seemed almost as if he hid that side of himself from her for fear that looking into that dark, pessimistic cynicism might trouble her too greatly and make her shy away.

  And yet, what was it he had said about her own poem, the despairing one that she had hesitantly shown him? That he had liked it—but only, he had implied, as a poem. If he disapproved of gloom, what was he doing as a poet? Would he not—at least for his own sake—have been far better off in the practical profession of law? But perhaps he did not disapprove of gloom as such in himself or others, only on the fruitless dwelling on it—which, she had to admit, that poem of hers had been guilty of. Clearly, the unhappiness or unease of Amit’s own strongest poems was typical not of his daily behaviour but of certain moments of intensity. Still, Lata felt that high hills rarely rise direct and isolated from the plains, and that there had to be some deeper organic connection between the poet of ‘The Fever Bird’ and Amit Chatterji as she knew him than he himself encouraged herself or others to believe.

  And what would it be like to be married to such a man? Lata got up and paced restlessly about the verandah. How could she consider him seriously—Meenakshi and Kuku’s brother, her own friend and guide to Calcutta, the purveyor of pineapples, the castigator of Cuddles? He was just Amit—to convert him into a husband was absurd—the thought of it made Lata smile and shake her head. But again she sat down, and again she read the poem, and she looked out beyond the hedge to the campus, from where the sloped and slated roof of the examination hall was distantly visible. She realized that she had the poem by heart already—as she had his earlier acrostic, and ‘The Fever Bird’, and other poems besides. Without any attempt on her part to learn them, they had become a part of herself.

  18.18

  The second letter was from Haresh.

  My dearest Lata,

  I hope everything is well with you and with the family. I have been so busy with work these last few weeks that I have come home exhausted, and not been in that state of mind in which you deserve to hear from me. But the Goodyear Welted line is going from strength to strength, and I have even persuaded the management to take on a new scheme of mine, by which entire uppers can be made outside and assembled for final manufacture here at Praha. Of course, that would be in other lines, such as brogues. All in all, I think I have already shown them that it was not a mistake to take me on, and that I am not merely someone imposed on them by Mr Khandelwal.

  I have some good news to convey. There is talk of promoting me to Group Foreman soon. If so, it will not come a moment too soon, as I find it difficult to keep down my expenses. I am a bit lavish by nature, and it will be good if someone helps me to curb it. If that is so, then it will certainly be true what they say, that two can live cheaper than one.

  I have talked to Arun and Meenakshi a few times on the phone, although the line from Prahapore to Calcutta is not as clear as it could be. They have unfortunately been busy with various engagements, but they have promised to make time to come for dinner sometime in the near future.

  My own family is well. My doubting Umesh Uncle has been impressed by my obtaining a job like this one so quickly. My foster-mother, who is really like a real mother to me, is also pleased. I remember when I went to England first, she said: ‘Son, people go to England to become doctors, engineers, barristers. Why do you need to go all the way to become a cobbler?’ I could not help smiling at the time, and even now I smile when I think of it. I am happy, however, that I am not a burden on them, that I am standing on my own two feet, and that my work is useful in its own circle.

  You will be glad to know that I have given up eating paan. I was warned by Kalpana that your family does not think it attractive, and, whatever I think about it, I have decided to be accommodating in this respect. I hope you are impressed by all these efforts of mine to Mehra-ise myself.

  There is something I have not touched upon in either of my last two letters, and it is good of you not to have mentioned its absence. As you know, I was very upset about a word you used, which I realize in retrospect you did not intend as I took it. I wrote to Kalpana about it that same evening, because I felt the need to unburden myself. For some reason I was also uneasy in general. She ticked me off for my ‘thick-skinned sensitivity’ (she had a way with words even in college) and told me I should apologize at once and not be truculent. Well, I did not feel sorry, so I did not write it. But now with the passing of the weeks I realise that I was in the wrong.

  I am a practical man and I am proud of it—but sometimes I come across situations that I do not know how to handle despite my well-formed opinions, and I find that after all perhaps there is less reason to be proud than I thought. So please accept my apologies, Lata, and forgive me for ending New Year’s Day in such an unpleasing manner.

  I hope that when we get married—I am hoping that it is when, and not if—you will tell me, with that lovely quiet smile of yours, whenever I take things amiss that are not badly intended.

  Baoji has been asking me about my marriage plans, but on that score I have not been
able to reassure him as yet. As soon as you are sure in your mind that I would make you the right husband, please do tell me. I give thanks every day that I should have met you and that you and I should have got to know each other through words and meetings. The feelings I have for you increase every day, and, unlike my shoes, do not take Saturday and Sunday off. Needless to say, I have your framed photograph on my desk before me, and it brings to me tender thoughts of the original.

  Apart from what one sometimes reads in the Calcutta papers, I have had a little news of the Kapoor family in the course of some business dealings with Kedarnath, and my deep sympathy goes to all of them. It must be a terrible time for everyone. He says that Veena and Bhaskar are most agitated, but he makes light of his own anxieties. I can also imagine how hard it is for Pran, with his brother’s difficulties and the death of his mother coming side by side. It is good that Savita has her baby and her law studies to provide other thoughts, but it could not be easy to concentrate, especially on some subject as hard as law. I do not know what I can do to help in any way, but if there is anything I can do, please tell me. Some things—the latest law-books and so on—are available in Calcutta more easily than in Brahmpur, I think.

  I hope you are studying somehow through all this. I am keeping my fingers crossed for you and am very confident, my Lata, that you will come out in flying colours.

  My love to Ma, whom I often thank in my mind for bringing you to Kanpur, and to Pran and Savita and the baby. Please tell Kedarnath if you happen to meet him that I will be writing to him very shortly, probably within the week, depending on certain consultations at this end.

  With all my love,

  Your own,

  Haresh

  18.19

  As Lata read, she smiled to herself from time to time. He had crossed out ‘Cawnpore’ to write ‘Kanpur’. When she came to the end she read it through once more. She was glad to hear about Umesh Uncle and his resolved doubts. She could imagine Haresh’s father demanding a similar resolution to his own.

  Over the months her world had begun to be populated by the various people Haresh continually mentioned. She even missed Simran; Haresh had probably left her out of this letter for fear of treading on her sensitivities. But Lata realized with a start that, however much she liked Haresh, she was not jealous of Simran.

  And who were these people in reality? She thought of Haresh: generous, robust, optimistic, impatient, responsible. There he stood in Prahapore, as solid as a pair of Goodyear Welted shoes, twinkling his eyes affectionately at her from the pages of his letter and telling her as well as he could that he was lonely without her.

  But Haresh stood alone: Umesh Uncle, Simran, his foster-father, all these figures whom she felt she knew, could turn out to be entirely different from what she had imagined. And his family of conservative Old Delhi khatris: how could she possibly behave with them as she behaved with Kuku or Dipankar or Mr Justice Chatterji? What would she talk about to the Czechs? But there was something adventurous in losing herself entirely in a world that she did not know with a man whom she trusted and had begun to admire—and who cared for her so deeply and steadily. She thought of a paan-less Haresh, smiling his open smile; she sat him down at a table so that she could not see his co-respondent shoes; she ruffled his hair a bit, and—well, he was quite attractive! She liked him. Perhaps, given time and luck, she could even learn to love him.

  18.20

  A letter from Arun arrived in the afternoon post and helped clarify her thoughts:

  My dear Lata,

  You will not mind if I take an elder brother’s prerogative to write to you on a matter of great importance to your future and to the future of the family. We are, as such things go, an exceptionally close family, and perhaps as a result of Daddy’s death we have been forced even closer together. I, for example, would not have taken on the responsibilities that I have, had Daddy been alive. Varun would probably not have been staying with me, nor would I feel it incumbent on myself to advise him about finding a direction in life, something that left to himself he would, I am afraid, be disinclined to do. Nor would I have the sense that I am, in a manner of speaking, in loco parentis to you.

  I imagine you have already guessed the matter I am referring to. Suffice it to say that I have thought about it from every possible angle, and I find myself in disagreement with Ma’s judgement on the subject. Hence this letter. Ma has too great a tendency to be swayed by sentiment, and she appears to have taken an irrationally strong liking to Haresh—as well as a strong antipathy—irrational or otherwise—to other people. I experienced something similar in her attitude to my own marriage, which, contrary to her expectations, has turned out to be a happy one based on mutual affection and trust. I believe that as a result I have gained a more objective sense of the choices facing you.

  Apart from your temporary infatuation with a certain person in Brahmpur, about which the less said the better, you do not have much experience of the tangled thickets of life, nor have you had the chance to develop criteria for judging the alternatives unguided. It is in this context that I am proffering my advice.

  I believe that Haresh has some excellent qualities. He is hardworking, he is in some sense self-made, and he has been educated at—or has at least obtained a degree from—one of the better colleges in India. He is, from all accounts, competent at the trade he has chosen. He has confidence, and he is unafraid to speak his mind. One must give the man his due. That said, however, let me make it clear that I believe that he would not make a suitable addition to our family, and for the following reasons:

  1. Despite his having studied English at St Stephen’s and having lived in England for two years, his use of the English language leaves a great deal to be desired. This is no trivial point. Conversation between man and wife is the staple of a marriage based on true understanding. They must be able to communicate, to be, as they say, on the same wave-length. Haresh is simply not on the same wave-length as you—or any of us for that matter. This is not merely a question of his accent, which immediately betrays the fact that English is very far from being his first language; it is a question of his idiom and diction, of his very sense, sometimes, of what is being said. I am glad I was not present at home when that ludicrous fracas about the word ‘mean’ took place but, as you know, Ma informed me (with many tears and in great detail) about what had occurred the moment Meenakshi and I returned home. If you take the view that Mother knows best, and become engaged to this man, you will continually face painful and absurd situations of this kind.

  2. A second, not unrelated, point, is that Haresh does not, and can never aspire to, move in the same social circles as we do. A foreman is not a covenanted assistant, and Praha is simply not Bentsen Pryce. The smell of leather clings rather too closely to the name; the Czechs, who are his bosses, are technicians, sometimes barely literate in English, not graduates from the best universities in England. In a certain sense, by choosing a trade rather than a profession after his graduation from St Stephen’s, Haresh has downgraded himself. I hope you do not mind my speaking frankly on a matter of such importance to your future happiness. Society matters, and society is exacting and cruel; you will find yourself excluded from certain circles simply by virtue of being Mrs Khanna.

  Nor can Haresh’s own background or demeanour counteract the Praha trademark. Unlike say, Meenakshi or Amit, whose father and grandfather have been High Court judges, his family are small people from Old Delhi, and are, to put it bluntly, entirely undistinguished. Certainly, it does him credit that he has brought himself to where he is; but, being a self-made man, he has a tendency to be rather pleased with himself—indeed, a little bumptious. I have noticed that this is often true of short people; he may well have an additional chip on his shoulder as a result of this. I know that Ma thinks of him as a rough diamond. All I can say is that the cut and polish of a stone matter. One does not wear a rough diamond—or one that is chipped—in a wedding ring.

  Family, if I may put it pla
inly, will out. It shows in Haresh’s manner of dress, in his liking for snuff and paan, in the fact that, despite his stint in England, he lacks the small social graces. I warned Ma about family background at the time of Savita’s engagement to Pran, but she would not listen; and the result, socially speaking, has been the disgraceful connection, through us, of the family of a jailbird to the family of a judge. This is another reason why I feel it is my duty to speak to you before it is too late.

  3. Your future family income will in all likelihood not permit you to send your children to the kind of school—for example, St George’s or St Sophia’s or Jheel or Mayo or Loreto or Doon—that our children—Meenakshi’s and mine—will go to. Besides, even if you could afford it, Haresh may have very different views from you about the upbringing of his children or the proportion of the family budget to be devoted to education. With respect to Savita’s husband, since he is an academic, I have no concerns on this particular count. But with Haresh I do, and I have to put them to you. I wish the family to remain close, indeed, I feel responsible for the maintenance of this closeness; and differences in the upbringing of our children are bound to draw us apart in time, and to cause you a great deal of heartache besides.

  I must ask you to treat this letter as a personal one; to think deeply about it, as befits its contents, but not to show it around the family. Ma would no doubt take it amiss, and, I suppose, so would Savita. As for the subject of this letter, I will only add that he has been pestering us with offers of hospitality; we have been cool to him, and have so far avoided going to Prahapore for another gargantuan lunch. He should, we believe, not presume to be considered part of the family unless he in fact becomes part of it. Needless to say, the choice is yours, and we would welcome your husband, whoever he happened to be, in our private capacity. But it is no use meaning well if you cannot also speak freely, and that is what I have done in this letter.