A Suitable Boy, Page 21

  3.6

  A couple of days later there was a music recital in the Bharatendu Auditorium, one of the two largest auditoriums in town. One of the performers was Ustad Majeed Khan.

  Lata and Malati both managed to get tickets. So did Hema, a tall, thin, and high-spirited friend of theirs who lived with innumerable cousins—boys and girls—in a house not far from Nabiganj. They were all under the care of a strict elder member of the family who was referred to by everyone as ‘Tauji’. Hema’s Tauji had quite a job on his hands, as he was not only responsible for the well-being and reputation of the girls of the family but also had to make sure that the boys did not get into the countless kinds of mischief that boys are prone to. He had often cursed his luck that he was the sole representative in a university town of a large and far-flung family. He had on occasion threatened to send everyone straight back home when they had caused him more trouble than he could bear. But his wife, ‘Taiji’ to everyone, though she herself had been brought up with almost no liberty or latitude, felt it was a great pity that her nieces and grandnieces should be similarly constrained. She managed to obtain for the girls what they could not obtain by a more direct approach.

  This evening Hema and her cousins had thus succeeded in reserving the use of Tauji’s large maroon Packard, and went around town collecting their friends for the concert. No sooner was Tauji out of sight than they had entirely forgotten his outraged parting comment: ‘Flowers? Flowers in your hair? Rushing off in exam time—and listening to all this pleasure-music! Everyone will think you are completely dissolute—you will never get married.’

  Eleven girls, including Lata and Malati, emerged from the Packard at Bharatendu Auditorium. Strangely enough, their saris were not crushed, though perhaps they looked slightly dishevelled. They stood outside the auditorium rearranging their own and each other’s hair, chattering excitedly. Then in a busy shimmer of colour they streamed inside. There was no place for all of them to sit together, so they broke up into twos and threes, and sat down, rapt but no less voluble. A few fans whirled round overhead, but it had been a hot day, and the auditorium was stuffy. Lata and her friends started fanning themselves with their programmes, and waited for the recital to begin.

  The first half consisted of a disappointingly indifferent sitar recital by a well-known musician. At the interval, Lata and Malati were standing by the staircase in the lobby when the Potato Man walked towards them.

  Malati saw him first, nudged Lata’s attention in his direction, and said:

  ‘Meeting number three. I’m going to make myself scarce.’

  ‘Malati, please stay here,’ said Lata in sudden desperation, but Malati had disappeared with the admonition: ‘Don’t be a mouse. Be a tigress.’

  The young man approached her with fairly assured steps.

  ‘Is it all right to interrupt you?’ he said, not very loudly.

  Lata could not make out what he was saying in the noise of the crowded lobby, and indicated as much.

  This was taken by the young man as permission to approach. He came closer, smiled at her, and said:

  ‘I wondered if it was all right to interrupt you.’

  ‘To interrupt me?’ said Lata. ‘But I was doing nothing.’ Her heart was beating fast.

  ‘I meant, to interrupt your thoughts.’

  ‘I wasn’t having any,’ said Lata, trying to control a sudden overload of them. She thought of Malati’s comment about her being a poor liar and felt the blood rush to her cheeks.

  ‘Quite stuffy in there,’ said the young man. ‘Here too, of course.’

  Lata nodded. I’m not a mouse or a tigress, she thought, I’m a hedgehog.

  ‘Lovely music,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Lata, though she hadn’t thought so. His presence so close to her was making her tingle. Besides, she was embarrassed about being seen with a young man. She knew that if she looked around she would see someone she recognized looking at her. But having been unkind to him twice already she was determined not to rebuff him again. Holding up her side of the conversation, however, was difficult when she was feeling so distracted. Since it was hard for her to meet his eye, she looked down instead.

  The young man was saying: ‘. . . though, of course, I don’t often go there. How about you?’

  Lata, nonplussed, because she had either not heard or not registered what went before, did not reply.

  ‘You’re very quiet,’ he said.

  ‘I’m always very quiet,’ said Lata. ‘It balances out.’

  ‘No, you aren’t,’ said the young man with a faint smile. ‘You and your friends were chattering like a flock of jungle babblers when you came in—and some of you continued to chatter while the sitar player was tuning up.’

  ‘Do you think,’ Lata said, looking up a little sharply, ‘that men don’t chatter and babble as much as women?’

  ‘I do,’ said the young man airily, happy that she was talking at last. ‘It’s a fact of nature. Shall I tell you a folk tale about Akbar and Birbal? It’s very relevant to this subject.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Lata. ‘Once I’ve heard it I’ll tell you if you should have told it.’

  ‘Well, maybe at our next meeting?’

  Lata took this remark quite coolly.

  ‘I suppose there will be one,’ she said. ‘We seem to keep meeting by chance.’

  ‘Does it have to be by chance?’ asked the young man. ‘When I talked about you and your friends, the fact is that I had eyes mostly for you. The moment I saw you enter, I thought how lovely you looked—in a simple green sari with just a white rose in your hair.’

  The word ‘mostly’ bothered Lata, but the rest was music. She smiled.

  He smiled back, and suddenly became very specific.

  ‘There’s a meeting of the Brahmpur Literary Society at five o’clock on Friday evening at old Mr Nowrojee’s house—20 Hastings Road. It should be interesting—and it’s open to anyone who feels like coming. With the university vacations coming up, they seem to want to welcome outsiders to make up the numbers.’

  The university vacations, thought Lata. Perhaps we won’t see each other again after all. The thought saddened her.

  ‘Oh, I know what I wanted to ask you,’ she said.

  ‘Yes?’ asked the young man, looking puzzled. ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘What’s your name?’ asked Lata.

  The young man’s face broke into a happy grin. ‘Ah!’ he said, ‘I thought you would never ask. I’m Kabir, but very recently my friends have started calling me Galahad.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Lata, surprised.

  ‘Because they think that I spend my time rescuing damsels in distress.’

  ‘I was not in such distress that I needed rescuing,’ said Lata.

  Kabir laughed. ‘I know you weren’t, you know you weren’t, but my friends are such idiots,’ he said.

  ‘So are mine,’ said Lata disloyally. Malati had, after all, left her in the lurch.

  ‘Why don’t we exchange last names as well?’ said the young man, pursuing his advantage.

  Some instinct of self-preservation made Lata pause. She liked him, and she very much hoped she would meet him again—but he might ask her for her address next. Images of Mrs Rupa Mehra’s interrogations came to mind.

  ‘No, let’s not,’ said Lata. Then, feeling her abruptness and the hurt she might have caused him, she quickly blurted out the first thing she could think of. ‘Do you have any brothers and sisters?’

  ‘Yes, a younger brother.’

  ‘No sisters?’ Lata smiled, though she did not quite know why.

  ‘I had a younger sister till last year.’

  ‘Oh—I am so sorry,’ said Lata in dismay. ‘How terrible that must have been for you—and for your parents.’

  ‘Well, for my father,’ said Kabir quietly. ‘But it looks as if Ustad Majeed Khan has begun. Maybe we should go in?’

  Lata, moved by a rush of sympathy and even tenderness, hardly heard him; but as he wa
lked towards the door, so did she. Inside the hall the maestro had begun his slow and magnificent rendition of Raag Shri. They separated, resumed their previous places, and sat down to listen.

  3.7

  Normally Lata would have been transfixed by Ustad Majeed Khan’s music. Malati, sitting next to her, was. But her encounter with Kabir had set her mind wandering in so many different directions, often simultaneously, that she might as well have been listening to silence. She felt suddenly light-hearted and started smiling to herself at the thought of the rose in her hair. A minute later, remembering the last part of their conversation, she rebuked herself for being so unfeeling. She tried to make sense of what he had meant by saying—and so quietly at that—‘Well, for my father.’ Was it that his mother had already died? That would place him and Lata in a curiously symmetrical position. Or was his mother so estranged from the family that she was unconscious of or not much distressed by the loss of her daughter? Why am I thinking such impossible thoughts? Lata wondered. Indeed, when Kabir had said, ‘I had a younger sister till last year,’ did that have to imply the conclusion to which Lata had automatically jumped? But, poor fellow, he had grown so tense and subdued by the last few words that had passed between them that he had himself suggested that they return to the hall.

  Malati was kind enough and smart enough neither to glance at her nor to nudge her. And soon Lata too sank into the music and lost herself in it.

  3.8

  The next time Lata saw Kabir, he was looking the very opposite of tense and subdued. She was walking across the campus with a book and a file under her arm when she saw him and another student, both wearing cricket clothes, sauntering along the path that led to the sports fields. Kabir was casually swinging a bat as he walked and the two of them appeared to be engaged in relaxed and occasional conversation. Lata was too far behind them to make out anything of what they were saying. Suddenly Kabir leaned his head back and burst out laughing. He looked so handsome in the morning sunlight and his laughter was so open-hearted and free from tension that Lata, who had been about to turn towards the library, found herself continuing to follow him. She was astonished by this, but didn’t rebuke herself. Well, why shouldn’t I? she thought. Since he’s approached me three times already, I don’t see why I shouldn’t follow him for once. But I thought the cricket season was over. I didn’t know there was a match on in the middle of exams.

  As it happened, Kabir and his friend were off for a bit of practice at the nets. It was his way of taking a break from studies. The far end of the sports fields, where the practice nets had been set up, was close to a small stand of bamboos. Lata sat down in the shade and—herself unobserved—watched the two take turns with bat and ball. She did not know the first thing about cricket—even Pran’s enthusiasm had not affected her at all—but she was drowsily entranced by the sight of Kabir, dressed completely in white, shirt unbuttoned at the collar, capless and with ruffled hair, running in to bowl—or standing at the crease wielding his bat with what seemed like easy skill. Kabir was an inch or two under six feet, slim and athletic, with a ‘fair to wheatish’ complexion, an aquiline nose, and black, wavy hair. Lata did not know how long she sat there, but it must have been for more than half an hour. The sound of bat on ball, the rustle of a slight breeze in the bamboo, the twittering of a few sparrows, the calls of a couple of mynas, and, above all, the sound of the young men’s easy laughter and indistinct conversation all combined to make her almost oblivious of herself. It was quite a while before she came to.

  I’m behaving like a fascinated gopi, she thought. Soon, instead of feeling jealous of Krishna’s flute I’ll start envying Kabir’s bat! She smiled at the thought, then got up, brushed a few dried leaves from her salwaar-kameez, and—still unnoticed—walked back the way she had come.

  ‘You have to find out who he is,’ she told Malati that afternoon, plucking a leaf and absent-mindedly running it up and down her arm.

  ‘Who?’ said Malati. She was delighted.

  Lata made a sound of exasperation.

  ‘Well, I could have told you something about him,’ said Malati, ‘if you’d allowed me to after the concert.’

  ‘Like what?’ said Lata expectantly.

  ‘Well, here are two facts to begin with,’ said Malati tantalizingly. ‘His name is Kabir, and he plays cricket.’

  ‘But I know that already,’ protested Lata. ‘And that’s about all I do know. Don’t you know anything else?’

  ‘No,’ said Malati. She toyed with the idea of inventing a streak of criminality in his family, but decided that that was too cruel.

  ‘But you said “to begin with”. That means you must have something else.’

  ‘No,’ said Malati. ‘The second half of the concert began just as I was about to ask my informant a few more questions.’

  ‘I’m sure you can find out everything about him if you put your mind to it.’ Lata’s faith in her friend was touching.

  Malati doubted it. She had a wide circle of acquaintance. But it was nearly the end of term and she didn’t know where to begin inquiries. Some students—those whose exams were over—had already left Brahmpur; these included her informant at the concert. She herself would be leaving in a couple of days to go back to Agra for a while.

  ‘The Trivedi Detective Agency needs a clue or two to start with,’ she said. ‘And time is short. You’ve got to think back over your conversations. Isn’t there anything else you know about him that could help me?’

  Lata thought for a while but came up with a blank. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘Oh, wait—his father teaches maths.’

  ‘At Brahmpur University?’ asked Malati.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Lata. ‘And another thing: I think he’s fond of literature. He wanted me to come to the Lit Soc meeting tomorrow.’

  ‘Then why don’t you go there and ask him about himself,’ said Malati, who believed in the Approach Audacious. ‘Whether he brushes his teeth with Kolynos, for instance. “There’s magic in a Kolynos smile.”’

  ‘I can’t,’ said Lata, so forcefully that Malati was a little taken aback.

  ‘Surely you’re not falling for him!’ she said. ‘You don’t know the first thing about him—his family, or even his full name.’

  ‘I feel I know more important things about him than the first thing,’ said Lata.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Malati, ‘like the whiteness of his teeth and the blackness of his hair. “She floated on a magical cloud high in the sky, sensing his strong presence around her with every fibre of her being. He was her whole universe. He was the be-all and end-all and catch-all and hold-all of her existence.” I know the feeling.’

  ‘If you’re going to talk nonsense—’ said Lata, feeling the warmth rise to her face.

  ‘No, no, no, no, no,’ said Malati, still laughing. ‘I’ll find out whatever I can.’

  Several thoughts went through her mind: cricket reports in the university magazine? The Mathematics Department? The Registrar’s Office?

  Aloud she said, ‘Leave Boiled Potatoes to me. I’ll smother him with chillies and present him to you on a platter. Anyway, Lata, from your face, no one would know you still had a paper left. Being in love is good for you. You must do it more often.’

  ‘Yes, I will,’ said Lata. ‘When you become a doctor, prescribe it to all your patients.’

  3.9

  Lata arrived at 20 Hastings Road at five o’clock the next day. She had finished her last paper that morning. She was convinced she had not done well in it, but when she started to feel upset, she thought of Kabir and instantly cheered up. Now she looked around for him among the group of about fifteen men and women who were sitting in old Mr Nowrojee’s drawing room—the room in which the weekly meetings of the Brahmpur Literary Society had been held from as far back as anyone could remember. But either Kabir had not yet arrived or else he had changed his mind about coming.

  The room was full of stuffed chairs with flowery prints and overstuffed cushions with flow
ery prints.

  Mr Nowrojee, a thin, short and gentle man, with an immaculate white goatee beard and an immaculate light-grey suit, presided over the occasion. Noticing that Lata was a new face, he introduced himself and made her feel welcome. The others, who were sitting or standing in small groups, paid no attention to her. Feeling awkward at first, she walked over to a window and gazed out towards a small, well-tended garden with a sundial in the middle. She was looking forward so much to seeing him that she vehemently pushed aside the thought that he might not turn up.

  ‘Good afternoon, Kabir.’

  ‘Good afternoon, Mr Nowrojee.’

  Lata turned around at the mention of Kabir’s name and the sound of his low, pleasant voice, and gave him such a happy smile that he put his hand to his forehead and staggered back a few steps.

  Lata did not know what to make of his buffoonery, which luckily no one else had noticed. Mr Nowrojee was now seated at the oblong table at the end of the room and was coughing mildly for attention. Lata and Kabir sat down on an empty sofa near the wall farthest from the table. Before they could say anything to each other, a middle-aged man with a plump, bright-eyed, cheerful face handed them each a sheaf of carbon copies which appeared to be covered with poetry.

  ‘Makhijani,’ he said mysteriously as he passed.

  Mr Nowrojee took a sip of water from one of the three glasses in front of him. ‘Fellow-members of the Brahmpur Literary Society—and friends,’ he said in a voice that barely carried to where Lata and Kabir were sitting, ‘we have gathered here for the 1,698th meeting of our society. I now declare the meeting open.’

  He looked wistfully out of the window, and rubbed his glasses with a handkerchief. Then he continued: ‘I remember when Edmund Blunden addressed us. He said—and I remember his words to this very day—he said—’