A Suitable Boy, Page 5

  Lata spoke from experience, as Varun well knew. Arun, when angry, hardly cared what he said. When Lata had taken it into her head to become a nun—a foolish, adolescent notion, but her own—Arun, exasperated with the lack of success of his bludgeoning attempts at dissuasion, had said: ‘All right, go ahead, become a nun, ruin your life, no one would have married you anyway, you look just like the Bible—flat in front and flat at the back.’ Lata thanked God that she wasn’t studying at Calcutta University; for most of the year at least, she was outside the range of Arun’s blunderbuss. Even though those words were no longer true, the memory of them still stung.

  ‘I wish you were in Calcutta,’ said Varun.

  ‘Surely you must have some friends—’ said Lata.

  ‘Well, in the evening Arun Bhai and Meenakshi Bhabhi are often out and I have to mind Aparna,’ said Varun, smiling weakly. ‘Not that I mind,’ he added.

  ‘Varun, this won’t do,’ said Lata. She placed her hand firmly on his slouching shoulder and said: ‘I want you to go out with your friends—with people you really like and who like you—for at least two evenings a week. Pretend you have to attend a coaching session or something.’ Lata didn’t care for deception, and she didn’t know whether Varun would be any good at it, but she didn’t want things to continue as they were. She was worried about Varun. He had looked even more jittery at the wedding than when she had seen him a few months previously.

  A train hooted suddenly from alarmingly close, and the tonga horse shied.

  ‘How amazing,’ said Varun to himself, all thoughts of everything else obliterated.

  He patted the horse when they got back into the tonga.

  ‘How far is the station from here?’ he asked the tonga-wallah.

  ‘Oh, it’s just over there,’ said the tonga-wallah, indicating vaguely the built-up area beyond the well-laid-out gardens of the racecourse. ‘Not far from the zoo.’

  I wonder if it gives the local horses an advantage, Varun said to himself. Would the others tend to bolt? What difference would it make to the odds?

  1.11

  When they got to the zoo, Bhaskar and Aparna joined forces and asked to ride on the children’s railway, which, Bhaskar noted, also went around anticlockwise. Lata and Malati wanted a walk after the tonga ride, but they were overruled. All five of them sat in a small, post-box-red compartment, squashed together and facing each other this time, while the little green steam engine puffed along on its one-foot-wide track. Varun sat opposite Malati, their knees almost touching. Malati enjoyed the fun of this, but Varun was so disconcerted that he looked desperately around at the giraffes, and even stared attentively at the crowds of schoolchildren, some of whom were licking huge bobbins of pink spun candy. Aparna’s eyes began to shine with anticipation.

  Since Bhaskar was nine, and Aparna a third of his age, they did not have much to say to each other. They attached themselves to their most-favoured adults. Aparna, brought up by her socialite parents with alternating indulgence and irritation, found Lata reassuringly certain in her affection. In Lata’s company she behaved in a less brat-like manner. Bhaskar and Varun got on famously once Bhaskar succeeded in getting him to concentrate. They discussed mathematics, with special reference to racing odds.

  They saw the elephant, the camel, the emu, the common bat, the brown pelican, the red fox, and all the big cats. They even saw a smaller one, the black-spotted leopard-cat, as he paced frenziedly across the floor of his cage.

  But the best stop of all was the reptile house. Both children were eager to see the snake pit, which was full of fairly sluggish pythons, and the glass cases with their deadly vipers and kraits and cobras. And also, of course, the cold, corrugated crocodiles on to whose backs some schoolchildren and visiting villagers were throwing coins—while others, as the white, serrated mouths opened lazily far below, leaned over the railings and pointed and squealed and shuddered. Luckily Varun had a taste for the sinister, and took the kids inside. Lata and Malati refused to go in.

  ‘I see enough horrifying things as a medical student,’ said Malati.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t tease Varun,’ said Lata after a while.

  ‘Oh, I wasn’t teasing him,’ said Malati. ‘Just listening to him attentively. It’s good for him.’ She laughed.

  ‘Mm—you make him nervous.’

  ‘You’re very protective of your elder brother.’

  ‘He’s not—oh, I see—yes, my younger elder brother. Well, since I don’t have a younger brother, I suppose I’ve given him the part. But seriously, Malati, I am worried about him. And so is my mother. We don’t know what he’s going to do when he graduates in a few months. He hasn’t shown much aptitude for anything. And Arun bullies him fearfully. I wish some nice girl would take him in charge.’

  ‘And I’m not the one? I must say, he has a certain feeble charm. Heh, heh!’ Malati imitated Varun’s laugh.

  ‘Don’t be facetious, Malati. I don’t know about Varun, but my mother would have a fit,’ said Lata.

  This was certainly true. Even though it was an impossible proposition geographically, the very thought of it would have given Mrs Rupa Mehra nightmares. Malati Trivedi, apart from being one of a small handful of girls among the almost five hundred boys at the Prince of Wales Medical College, was notorious for her outspoken views, her participation in the activities of the Socialist Party, and her love affairs—though not with any of those five hundred boys, whom, by and large, she treated with contempt.

  ‘Your mother likes me, I can tell,’ said Malati.

  ‘That’s beside the point,’ said Lata. ‘And actually, I’m quite amazed that she does. She usually judges things by influences. I would have thought you’re a bad influence on me.’

  But this was not entirely true, even from Mrs Rupa Mehra’s viewpoint. Malati had certainly given Lata more confidence than she had had when she had emerged wet-feathered from St Sophia’s. And Malati had succeeded in getting Lata to enjoy Indian classical music, which (unlike ghazals) Mrs Rupa Mehra approved of. That they should have become room-mates at all was because the government medical college (usually referred to by its royal title) had no provision for housing its small contingent of women and had persuaded the university to accommodate them in its hostels.

  Malati was charming, dressed conservatively but attractively, and could talk to Mrs Rupa Mehra about everything from religious fasts to cooking to genealogy, matters that her own westernized children showed very little interest in. She was also fair, an enormous plus in Mrs Rupa Mehra’s subconscious calculus. Mrs Rupa Mehra was convinced that Malati Trivedi, with her dangerously attractive greenish eyes, must have Kashmiri or Sindhi blood in her. So far, however, she had not discovered any.

  Though they did not often talk about it, the bond of paternal loss also tied Lata and Malati together.

  Malati had lost her adored father, a surgeon from Agra, when she was eight. He had been a successful and handsome man with a wide acquaintance and a varied history of work: he had been attached to the army for a while and had gone to Afghanistan; he had taught in Lucknow at the medical college; he had also been in private practice. At the time of his death, although he had not been very good at saving money, he had owned a fair amount of property—largely in the form of houses. Every five years or so he would uproot himself and move to another town in U.P.—Meerut, Bareilly, Lucknow, Agra. Wherever he lived he built a new house, but without disposing of the old ones. When he died, Malati’s mother went into what seemed like an irreversible depression, and remained in that state for two years.

  Then she pulled herself together. She had a large family to take care of, and it was essential that she think of things in a practical way. She was a very simple, idealistic, upright woman, and she was concerned more with what was right than with what was convenient or approved of or monetarily beneficial. It was in that light that she was determined to bring up her family.

  And what a family!—almost all girls. The eldest was a proper tomboy, sixte
en years old when her father died, and already married to a rural landlord’s son; she lived about twenty miles away from Agra in a huge house with twenty servants, lichi orchards, and endless fields, but even after her marriage she joined her sisters in Agra for months at a time. This daughter had been followed by two sons, but they had both died in childhood, one aged five, the other three. The boys had been followed by Malati herself, who was eight years younger than her sister. She also grew up as a sort of boy—though not by any means like the tomboy her sister was—for a variety of reasons connected with her infancy: the direct gaze in her unusual eyes, her boyish look, the fact that the boys’ clothes were at hand, the sadness that her parents had experienced at the death of their two sons. After Malati came three girls, one after another; then another boy; and then her father died.

  Malati had therefore been brought up almost entirely among women; even her little brother had been like a little sister; he had been too young to be treated as anything different. (After a while, perhaps out of perplexity, he had gone the way of his brothers.) The girls grew up in an atmosphere where men came to be seen as exploitative and threatening; many of the men Malati came into contact with were precisely that. No one could touch the memory of her father. Malati was determined to become a doctor like him, and never allowed his instruments to rust. She intended one day to use them.

  Who were these men? One was the cousin who did them out of many of the things that her father had collected and used, but which were lying in storage after his death. Malati’s mother had cleared out what she had seen as inessentials from their life. It was not necessary now to have two kitchens, one European and one Indian. The china and fine cutlery for western food was put away, together with a great deal of furniture, in a garage. The cousin came, got the keys from the grieving widow, told her he would manage matters, and cleaned out whatever had been stored. Malati’s mother never saw a rupee of the proceeds. ‘Well,’ she had said philosophically, ‘at least my sins have lessened.’

  Another was the servant who acted as an intermediary for the sale of the houses. He would contact property agents or other prospective buyers in the towns where the houses were located, and make deals with them. He had something of a reputation as a cheat.

  Yet another was her father’s younger brother, who still lived in the Lucknow house, with his wife downstairs and a dancing girl upstairs. He would happily have cheated them, if he had been able to, over the sale of that house. He needed money to spend on the dancing girl.

  Then there was the young—well, twenty-six-year-old—but rather sleazy college teacher who had lived downstairs in a rented room when Malati was fifteen or so. Malati’s mother wanted her to learn English, and had no compunction, no matter what the neighbours said (and they said a great deal, not much of it charitable) about sending Malati to learn from him—though he was a bachelor. Perhaps in this case the neighbours were right. He very soon fell madly in love with Malati, and requested her mother for permission to marry her. When Malati was asked by her mother for her views on the matter, she was amazed and shocked, and refused point-blank.

  At the medical college in Brahmpur, and before that, when she had studied Intermediate Science in Agra, Malati had had a lot to put up with: teasing, gossip, the pulling of the light chunni around her neck, and remarks such as ‘She wants to be a boy.’ This was very far from the truth. The remarks were unbearable and only diminished when, provoked by one boy beyond endurance, she had slapped his face hard in front of his friends.

  Men fell for her at a rapid rate, but she saw them as beneath her attention. It was not as if she truly hated men; most of the time she didn’t. It was just that her standards were too high. No one came near the image she and her sisters had of their father, and most men struck her as being immature. Besides, marriage was a distraction for someone who had set her sights upon the career of medicine, and she was not enormously concerned if she never got married.

  She overfilled the unforgiving minute. As a girl of twelve or thirteen, she had been a loner, even in her crowded family. She loved reading, and people knew better than to talk to her when she had a book in her hands. When this happened, her mother did not insist that she help with cooking and housework. ‘Malati’s reading,’ was enough for people to avoid the room where she lay or sat crouched, for she would pounce angrily on anyone who dared disturb her. Sometimes she would actually hide from people, seeking out a corner where no one would be likely to find her. They got the message soon enough. As the years passed, she guided the education of her younger sisters. Her elder sister, the tomboy, guided them all—or, rather, bossed them around—in other matters.

  Malati’s mother was remarkable in that she wished her daughters to be independent. She wanted them, apart from their schooling at a Hindi-medium school, to learn music and dancing and languages (and especially to be good at English); and if this meant that they had to go to someone’s house to learn what was needed, they would go—regardless of what people said. If a tutor had to be called to the house of the six women, he would be called. Young men would look up in fascination at the first floor of the house, as they heard five girls singing along undemurely together. If the girls wanted ice-cream as a special treat, they would be allowed to go to the shop by themselves and eat it. When neighbours objected to the shamelessness of letting young girls go around by themselves in Agra, they were allowed occasionally to go to the shop after dark instead—which, presumably, was worse, though less detectable. Malati’s mother made it clear to the girls that she would give them the best education possible, but that they would have to find their own husbands.

  Soon after she came to Brahmpur, Malati fell in love with a married musician, who was a socialist. She remained involved with the Socialist Party even when their affair ended. Then she had another rather unhappy love affair. At the moment she was unattached.

  Though full of energy most of the time, Malati would fall ill every few months or so, and her mother would come down from Agra to Brahmpur to cure her of the evil eye, an influence that lay outside the province of western medicine. Because Malati had such remarkable eyes herself, she was a special target of the evil eye.

  A dirty, grey, pink-legged crane surveyed Malati and Lata with its small, intense red eyes; then a grey film blinked sideways across each eyeball, and it walked carefully away.

  ‘Let’s surprise the kids by buying some of that spun candy for them,’ said Lata as a vendor went past. ‘I wonder what’s keeping them. What’s the matter, Malati? What are you thinking of?’

  ‘Love,’ said Malati.

  ‘Oh, love, what a boring subject,’ said Lata. ‘I’ll never fall in love. I know you do from time to time. But—’ She lapsed into silence, thinking once again, with some distaste, of Savita and Pran, who had left for Simla. Presumably they would return from the hills deeply in love. It was intolerable.

  ‘Well, sex then.’

  ‘Oh please, Malati,’ said Lata looking around quickly. ‘I’m not interested in that either,’ she added, blushing.

  ‘Well, marriage then. I’m wondering whom you’ll get married to. Your mother will get you married off within a year, I’m sure of it. And like an obedient little mouse, you’ll obey her.’

  ‘Quite right,’ said Lata.

  This rather annoyed Malati, who bent down and plucked three narcissi growing immediately in front of a sign that read, Do not pluck the flowers. One she kept, and two she handed to Lata, who felt very awkward holding such illegally gotten gains. Then Malati bought five sticks of flossy pink candy, handed four to Lata to hold with her two narcissi, and began to eat the fifth.

  Lata started to laugh.

  ‘And what will happen then to your plan to teach in a small school for poor children?’ demanded Malati.

  ‘Look, here they come,’ said Lata.

  Aparna was looking petrified and holding Varun’s hand tightly. For a few minutes they all ate their candy, walking towards the exit. At the turnstile a ragged urchin looked l
ongingly at them, and Lata quickly gave him a small coin. He had been on the point of begging, but hadn’t yet done so, and looked astonished.

  One of her narcissi went into the horse’s mane. The tonga-wallah again began to sing of his shattered heart. This time they all joined in. Passers-by turned their heads as the tonga trotted past.

  The crocodiles had had a liberating effect on Varun. But when they got back to Pran’s house on the university campus, where Arun and Meenakshi and Mrs Rupa Mehra were staying, he had to face the consequences of returning an hour late. Aparna’s mother and grandmother were looking anxious.

  ‘You damn irresponsible fool,’ said Arun, dressing him down in front of everyone. ‘You, as the man, are in charge, and if you say twelve thirty, it had better be twelve thirty, especially since you have my daughter with you. And my sister. I don’t want to hear any excuses. You damned idiot.’ He was furious. ‘And you—’ he added to Lata, ‘you should have known better than to let him lose track of the time. You know what he’s like.’

  Varun bowed his head and looked shiftily at his feet. He was thinking how satisfying it would be to feed his elder brother, head first, to the largest of the crocodiles.

  1.12

  One of the reasons why Lata was studying in Brahmpur was because this was where her grandfather, Dr Kishen Chand Seth, lived. He had promised his daughter Rupa when Lata first came to study here that he would take very good care of her. But this had never happened. Dr Kishen Chand Seth was far too preoccupied either with bridge at the Subzipore Club or feuds with the likes of the Minister of Revenue or passion for his young wife Parvati to be capable of fulfilling any guardian-like role towards Lata. Since it was from his grandfather that Arun had inherited his atrocious temper, perhaps this was, all in all, not a bad thing. At any rate, Lata did not mind living in the university dormitory. Far better for her studies, she thought, than under the wing of her irascible Nana.