A Suitable Boy

  ‘Oh,’ said Varun guiltily. ‘One or two gulps. Then someone asked me if I liked the odd social drink, and I said, yes. But I could feel my throat become dry, and the bulldog man just kept looking at me and he sniffed slightly and noted something down on a pad. And then he said, Mr Mehra, what if you were posted to a state like Bombay or a district like Kanpur where there was Prohibition, would you feel obliged to refrain from the odd social drink? So I said of course I would. Then someone else on my right said, what if you were visiting friends in Calcutta, and were offered a drink, would you refuse it—as a representative of a dry area? And I could see them staring at me, ten pairs of eyes, and then suddenly I thought, I am the Iron Frame, who are all these people anyway, and I said, No, I saw no reason to, in fact I would drink it with a pleasure enhanced by my previous abstinence—that’s what I said. “Enhanced by my previous abstinence.”’

  Kalpana laughed.

  ‘Yes,’ said Varun dubiously. ‘It seemed to go down well with them too. I don’t think it was I who was answering all those questions, you know. It seemed to be a sort of Arun person who had taken possession of me. Perhaps because I was wearing his tie.’

  ‘What else did they ask?’

  ‘Something about what three books I would take with me to a desert island, and did I know what the initials M.I.T. stood for, and did I think there would be war with Pakistan—and I really can’t remember anything, Kalpana, except that the bulldog man had two watches, one on the inside of his wrist and one on the outside. It was all I could do to avoid staring at him. Thank God it’s over,’ he added morosely. ‘It lasted forty-five minutes and it took a year off my life.’

  ‘Did you say forty-five minutes?’ said Kalpana Gaur excitedly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I must send a telegram to your mother at once. And I have decided that you must stay in Delhi for another two days. Your being here is very good for me.’

  ‘Really?’ said Varun, reddening.

  He wondered if it might have been the Brylcreem that had done it.

  VARUN BOOSTED INTERVIEW CONCLUDED FINGERS CROSSED FATHER MENDING LOVE KALPANA.

  Kalpana can always be trusted to do the needful, said Mrs Rupa Mehra happily to herself.

  19.2

  In Calcutta Mrs Rupa Mehra went around like a whirlwind, buying saris, herding her family into conferences, visiting her son-in-law-to-be twice a week, requisitioning cars (including the Chatterjis’ big white Humber) for her shopping and for visits to friends, writing long letters to all her relatives, designing the invitation card, monopolizing the phone in a Kakoli-like manner, and weeping alternately with joy at the prospect of her daughter’s marriage, concern for her daughter on her wedding night, and sorrow that the late Raghubir Mehra would not be present.

  She looked at a copy of Van de Velde’s Ideal Marriage in a bookshop on Park Street and, though the contents made her blush, determinedly bought it. ‘It’s for my daughter,’ she informed the sales clerk, who yawned and nodded.

  Arun stopped her from adding the design of a rose to the wedding invitation. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Ma,’ he said. ‘What do you think people will think of all that ghich-pich when they receive it? I’ll never live it down. Keep the design plain.’ He was very aggrieved that Lata, after receiving his egregious letter, had refused to be married from his house, and he was trying to compensate for his loss of authority by a commissarial attempt to take over all the practical arrangements for the wedding—at least those that could be managed at the Calcutta end. But he was up against the powerful personalities of his mother and his grandfather, both of whom had their own ideas about what was required.

  Meanwhile, though his view of Haresh had not changed, he bowed—or at least nodded—to the inevitable, and attempted to be gracious. He had lunch once more among the Czechs, and balanced this with a return invitation to Sunny Park.

  When Mrs Rupa Mehra asked Haresh about the date for the wedding, he said, beaming with cheerfulness: ‘The earlier the better.’ But in view of Lata’s exams and the fact that his own foster-parents were reluctant to agree to a wedding in the inauspicious last month of the Hindu calendar, the date was set for late, rather than early, April.

  Haresh’s parents also requested Lata’s horoscope in order to ensure that her stars and planets matched those of her husband. They were particularly concerned that Lata should not happen to be a Manglik—a ‘Martian’ under certain astronomical definitions—because then, for a non-Manglik like Haresh to marry her would certainly result in his early death.

  When Haresh passed on this request, Mrs Rupa Mehra got cross. ‘If there was any truth in all these horoscopes, there would be no young widows,’ she said.

  ‘I agree with you,’ said Haresh. ‘Well, I’ll tell them that no one has ever made a horoscope for Lata.’

  But this resulted in a request for Lata’s date and time and place of birth. Haresh’s parents were going to get her horoscope made themselves.

  Haresh went to an astrologer in Calcutta with Lata’s place and date of birth, and asked him for a safe time of birth that would ensure that her stars matched his. The astrologer gave him two or three times, one of which Haresh sent on to his parents. Luckily, their astrologer worked on the same principles and calculations as his. Their anxieties were allayed.

  Amit, needless to say, was disappointed, but not as much as he might have been. His novel, now that he was free from the worry of handling the Chatterji fortunes, was going well, and many more momentous events were taking place on his pages than in his life. He sank deeper into the novel, and—a little disgusted with himself for doing so—used his disappointment and sadness to portray that of a character who happened to be conveniently on hand.

  He wrote a brief note, not in verse, to congratulate Lata, and tried to behave in a sportsmanlike manner. Mrs Rupa Mehra, in any case, did not allow him to behave in any other way. The Chatterji children, like the Chatterji car, were pulled into her orbit. Amit, Kuku, Dipankar and even Tapan (when he had a moment to spare from his homework at St Xavier’s) were each assigned various tasks: the making of guest lists, the selection of gifts, the collecting of items that had been ordered from the shops. Perhaps Lata had known that of the three men courting her, the only one who could be rejected without the loss of his friendship was Amit.

  19.3

  When Mrs Rupa Mehra told Meenakshi one afternoon to come with her to the jewellers to help her buy, or at least select, a wedding band for Haresh, Meenakshi stretched her neck lazily and said:

  ‘Oh, but Ma, I’m going somewhere this afternoon.’

  ‘But your canasta is tomorrow.’

  ‘Well,’ said Meenakshi with a slow and rather feline smile, ‘life is not all canasta and rummy.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ demanded her mother-in-law.

  ‘Oh, I’m going here and there,’ said Meenakshi, adding to Aparna: ‘Darling, please release my hair.’

  Mrs Rupa Mehra, unaware that she had just been treated to a Kakoli-couplet, became annoyed.

  ‘But these are the jewellers you recommended. I will get much better service if you come with me. If you don’t come with me, I’ll have to go to Lokkhi Babu’s.’

  ‘Oh, no, Ma, you really shouldn’t. Go to Jauhri’s; they’re the ones who made my little gold pears.’ Meenakshi stroked her neck just below her ear with the scarlet nail of her middle finger.

  This last remark infuriated Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘if that’s how much you care about your sister-in-law’s wedding, go gallivanting around town. My Varun will come with me.’

  When they got to the shop, Mrs Rupa Mehra did not in the event find it difficult to charm Mr Jauhri. Within two minutes he knew all about Bentsen Pryce and the IAS and Haresh’s testimonials. When he had reassured her that he could make anything she wished and have it ready for collection in three weeks, she ordered a gold champakali necklace (‘It is so pretty with its hollow buds and not too heavy for Lata’) and a Jaipur kundan set—a
necklace and earrings in glass and gold and enamel.

  As Mrs Rupa Mehra chattered on happily about her daughter, Mr Jauhri, who was a sociable man, added his comments and congratulations. When she mentioned her own late husband, who had been in the railways, Mr Jauhri lamented the decline in service. After a while, when everything had been settled satisfactorily, she said that she had to be going. She got out her Mont Blanc pen and wrote down her name and address and telephone number.

  Mr Jauhri looked startled.

  ‘Ah,’ he said, recognizing the surname and address.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, ‘my daughter-in-law has been here before.’

  ‘Mrs Mehra—was it your husband’s medal she gave me to have made into her chain and earrings? Beautiful—just like little pears?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, fighting to keep back her tears. ‘I will come back in three weeks. Please treat the order as urgent.’

  Mr Jauhri said: ‘Madam, let me check with my calendar and orders. Maybe I can give them to you in two and a half weeks.’ He disappeared into the back of the shop. When he returned he placed a small red box on the counter and opened it.

  Inside, sitting on a cushion of white silk, was Raghubir Mehra’s gold medal for Engineering.

  19.4

  Twice that month did Mrs Rupa Mehra shuttle between Calcutta and Brahmpur.

  She was so delighted to have the medal restored to her (‘The fact is, Madam, I could not bear to melt it down.’) that she bought it back instantly, drawing out whatever was necessary from her savings, and trying to economize slightly more on the necessary wedding expenses. She was—for a few days at least—entirely reconciled to Meenakshi and her ways. For if Meenakshi had not given Mr Jauhri this medal, it would have been stolen from the house in Sunny Park with the rest of the jewellery, and, like the Physics medal, would have vanished for good. Meenakshi too, when she got back from wherever it was she had been, looked happy and satisfied and was quite pleasant to her mother-in-law and Varun. When she heard about the medal she was not slow in claiming a perverse credit for events—and her mother-in-law did not object.

  When Mrs Rupa Mehra got to Brahmpur she brought the medal with her and showed it triumphantly to everyone in the family, and everyone was delighted with her good fortune.

  ‘You must study hard, Lata, there are so few days left’—Mrs Rupa Mehra cautioned her daughter—‘or you will never have your Daddy’s academic success. You should not let your wedding and other things distract you.’ And with that she put Ideal Marriage, carefully wrapped in the bridal colours of red and gold, into her hands.

  ‘This book will teach you everything—about Men,’ she said, lowering her voice for some reason. ‘Even our Sita and Savitri had to have these experiences.’

  ‘Thank you, Ma,’ said Lata, a little apprehensively.

  Mrs Rupa Mehra was suddenly embarrassed, and disappeared into the next room with the excuse that she had to phone her father.

  Lata promptly unwrapped the package and, forgetting her studies, began to look through the Dutch sexologist’s advice. She was as much repelled as fascinated by what he had to offer.

  There were numerous graphs describing the man’s and the woman’s degrees of excitement under different circumstances, for example, coitus interruptus and what the author called ‘Ideal Communion’. There were multicoloured, copiously labelled, not very appealing cross-sections of various organs. ‘Marriage is a science. (H. de Balzac)’ read the epigraph of the book, and Dr Van de Velde evidently took this aphorism seriously not only in his illustrations but also in his taxonomy. He divided what he shyly called his ‘Synousiology’ into converse and averse types, and further divided these into the habitual or medial attitude, the first attitude of extension, the second attitude of extension (suspensory), the attitudes of flexion (favoured, according to him, by the Chinese), the attitude of equitation (in which Martial described Hector and Andromache), the sedentary attitude, the anterior-lateral attitude, the ventral attitude, the posterior-lateral attitude, the attitude of averse flexion, and the posterior-sedentary attitude. Lata was amazed by the possibilities: she had only thought of one. (Indeed, even Malati had only ever mentioned one.) She wondered what the nuns at St Sophia’s would think of a book like this.

  A footnote read as follows:

  Arrangements have now been made for the manufacture of Dr Van de Velde’s Jellies (‘Eugam’): Lubricant, Contraceptive and Proconceptive. They are made by Messrs. Harman Freese, 32 Great Dover Street, London, S.E.1, who are also the makers of the author’s other preparations and pessaries (‘Gamophile’) referred to in ‘Fertility and Sterility in Marriage’.

  From time to time Dr Van de Velde quoted approvingly the Dutch poet Cats, whose folk wisdom did not emerge well in translation:

  Listen my friend, and know the reason why:

  All beauty lies in the beholder’s eye.

  But for all that, Lata was glad that her mother had cared enough for her to overcome her own embarrassment and put this book in her hands. She still had a few weeks to prepare herself for Life.

  Lata looked thoughtful through most of dinner, glancing at Pran and Savita and wondering whether Savita too had received an Ideal Marriage before her wedding There was jelly for pudding, and to Mrs Rupa Mehra’s puzzlement—and everyone else’s—Lata began to laugh and would not explain why.

  19.5

  Lata took her final exams as if in a trance: sometimes she got the impression that she was someone other than herself. She felt she had done well, but this was combined with a curious, dislocated feeling—not like the panic of the previous year, but a sense that she was floating above her physical self and looking down on it from a height. Once, after a paper was over, she wandered down from the examination hall and sat on the bench beneath the gulmohur tree. Again the dark-orange flowers lay thick below her feet. Had it only been a year since she had met him?

  If you love him so much, can you be happy to leave him miserable?

  Where was he? Even if his exams were being held in the same building, he did not stand on the steps afterwards. He did not pass by the bench.

  Just after the last paper, there was a concert by Ustad Majeed Khan, to which she went with Malati. Kabir was nowhere to be seen.

  Amit had written her a brief note of congratulation, but—after their few moments in the bookshop and the coffee house—Kabir had as good as disappeared.

  Whose life am I living? Lata wondered. Was my acceptance just a reaction?

  Despite Haresh’s encouraging letters and her own cheerful replies, Lata began to feel both uncertain and very lonely.

  Sometimes she sat on the banyan root and looked out over the Ganga, recollecting what it was pointless to recollect. Would she have been happy with him? Or he with her? He was so jealous now, so intense, so violent, so unlike the casual cricketer whom she had seen laughing and practising at the nets a year ago. How different he was now from the knight who had rescued her from the gulmohur bench and from Mr Nowrojee’s.

  And I? she asked herself. How would I have acted in his place? With a jovial attempt at good fellowship? Even now I almost feel it’s he who’s left me—and I can’t bear it.

  Two weeks more, she thought, and I will be the Bride of Goodyear Welted.

  Oh, Kabir, Kabir—she wept.

  I should run away, she thought.

  I should run away, she thought, far from Haresh, far from Kabir, far from Arun and Varun and Ma and the whole Chatterji clan, far from Pran and Maan and Hindus and Muslims and passionate love and passionate hatred and all loud noises—just me and Malati and Savita and the baby.

  We’ll sit on the sand on the other side of the Ganga and go to sleep for a year or two.

  19.6

  The wedding arrangements proceeded with great verve and much conflict. Mrs Rupa Mehra, Malati, Dr Kishen Chand Seth and Arun each tried to act as major-domo.

  Dr Kishen Chand Seth insisted on asking Saeeda Bai to sing at the wedding. ‘Who
else can one ask,’ he said, ‘when Saeeda Bai is in Brahmpur? Her throttling has opened her throat, they say.’

  It was only when he realized that the entire Prem Nivas contingent would boycott the wedding that he relented. But by then he was off on to something else: the length of the list of invitees. It was too long, he claimed: his garden would be destroyed, his pockets emptied.

  Everyone reassured him that they would be careful not to expand their own invitation list, and everyone went ahead and invited everyone they met. As for Dr Kishen Chand Seth, he was the worst offender of all: half the Subzipore Club and half the doctors of Brahmpur were invited, and almost anyone who had ever played bridge with him. ‘A wedding is always a time for settling scores,’ he explained cryptically.

  Arun arrived a few days early and tried to take over the management of events from his grandfather. But Parvati, who apparently realized how good it was for her husband to exhaust himself with excitement, put paid to his attempts at usurpation. She even shouted at Arun in front of the servants, and he retreated before ‘that harridan’.

  The arrival from Delhi of the baraat—the groom’s party—brought its own excitement and complications. Haresh’s foster-parents had been satisfied on the score of astrology; his mother, however, insisted on various precautions being taken about the preparation of her food. She would have been horrified to know that at Pran’s house, where she ate one day, the cook was a Muslim. His name was therefore converted from Mateen to Matadeen for the duration.

  Two of Haresh’s foster-brothers and their wives came with the baraat, as did the doubting Umesh Uncle. Their English was terrible and their sense of punctuality so lax as to be almost non-existent, and in general they confirmed Arun’s worst fears. Mrs Rupa Mehra, however, gave the women saris and talked to them endlessly.

  They approved of Lata.

  Haresh was not allowed to meet Lata. He stayed with Sunil Patwardhan, and the St Stephen’s contingent gathered around him in the evenings to tease him and enact Scenes from Married Life. The vast Sunil was usually the shrinking bride.