A Suitable Boy, Page 55

  ‘Yes, it seems to come—’

  ‘I once wrote poetry,’ said the woman. ‘In English, like you. Though I have an aunt who writes Bengali poetry. She was a true disciple of Robi Babu. Does your poetry rhyme?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Mine didn’t. It was modern. I was young, in Darjeeling. I wrote about nature, not about love. I hadn’t met Mihir then. My husband, you know. Later I typed them. I showed them to Mihir. Once I spent a night in a hospital bitten by mosquitoes. And a poem came out suddenly. But he said, “It doesn’t rhyme.”’

  She looked disapprovingly at her husband, who was hovering around like a cup-bearer with her refilled glass.

  ‘Your husband said that?’ said Amit.

  ‘Yes. Then I never had the urge again. I don’t know why.’

  ‘You’ve killed a poet,’ said Amit to her husband, who seemed a good enough fellow.

  ‘Come,’ he continued to Lata, who had been listening to the last part of the conversation, ‘I’ll introduce you to a few people, as I promised. Excuse me for a minute.’

  Amit had made no such promise, but it enabled him to get away.

  7.9

  ‘Well, whom do you want to meet?’ said Amit to Lata.

  ‘No one,’ said Lata.

  ‘No one?’ asked Amit. He looked amused.

  ‘Anyone. How about that woman there with the red-and-white cotton sari?’

  ‘The one with the short grey hair—who looks as if she’s laying down the law to Dipankar and my grandfather?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s Ila Chattopadhyay. Dr Ila Chattopadhyay. She’s related to us. She has strong and immediate opinions. You’ll like her.’

  Though Lata was unsure about the value of strong and immediate opinions, she liked the look of the woman. Dr Ila Chattopadhyay was shaking her finger at Dipankar and saying something to him with great and apparently affectionate vigour. Her sari was rather crushed.

  ‘May we interrupt?’ asked Amit.

  ‘Of course you may, Amit, don’t be stupid,’ said Dr Ila Chattopadhyay.

  ‘This is Lata, Arun’s sister.’

  ‘Good,’ said Dr Ila Chattopadhyay, appraising her in a second. ‘I’m sure she’s nicer than her bumptious brother. I was telling Dipankar that economics is a pointless subject. He would have done far better to study mathematics. Don’t you agree?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Amit.

  ‘Now that you’re back in India you must stay here permanently, Amit. Your country needs you—and I don’t say that lightly.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Amit.

  Dr Ila Chattopadhyay said to Lata: ‘I never pay any attention to Amit, he always agrees with me.’

  ‘Ila Kaki never pays any attention to anyone,’ said Amit.

  ‘No. And do you know why? It’s because of your grandfather.’

  ‘Because of me?’ asked the old man.

  ‘Yes,’ said Dr Ila Chattopadhyay. ‘Many years ago you told me that until you were forty you were very concerned about what people thought of you. Then you decided to be concerned about what you thought of other people instead.’

  ‘Did I say that?’ said old Mr Chatterji, surprised.

  ‘Yes, indeed, whether you remember it or not. I too used to make myself miserable bothering about other people’s opinions, so I decided to adopt your philosophy immediately, even though I wasn’t forty then—or even thirty. Do you really not remember that remark of yours? I was trying to decide whether to give up my career, and was under a lot of pressure from my husband’s family to do so. My talk with you made all the difference.’

  ‘Well,’ said old Mr Chatterji, ‘I remember some things but not other things these days. But I’m very glad my remark made such a, such a, well, profound impression on you. Do you know, the other day I forgot the name of my last cat but one. I tried to recall it, but it didn’t come to me.’

  ‘Biplob,’ said Amit.

  ‘Yes, of course, and it did come back to me eventually. I had named him that because I was a friend of Subhas Bose—well, let me say I knew the family. . . . Of course, in my position as a judge, a name like that would have to be, er—’

  Amit waited while the old man searched for the right word, then helped him out.

  ‘Ironic?’

  ‘No, I wasn’t looking for that word, Amit, I was—well, “ironic” will do. Of course, those were different times, mm, mm. Do you know, I can’t even draw a map of India now. It seems so unimaginable. And the law too is changing every day. One keeps reading about writ petitions being brought up before the High Courts. Well, in my day we were content with regular suits. But I’m an old man, things must move ahead, and I must fall back. Now girls like Ila, and young people like you’—he gesticulated towards Amit and Lata—‘must carry things forward.’

  ‘I’m hardly a girl,’ said Dr Ila Chattopadhyay. ‘My own daughter is twenty-five now.’

  ‘For me, dear Ila, you will always be a girl,’ said old Mr Chatterji.

  Dr Ila Chattopadhyay made an impatient sound. ‘Anyway, my students don’t treat me like a girl. The other day I was discussing a chapter in one of my old books with a junior colleague of mine, a very serious young man, and he said, “Madam, far be it for me, not only as your junior but also as one who is appreciative of the situation of the book in the context of its time and the fact that you have not many years remaining, to suggest that—” I was quite charmed. Remarks like that rejuvenate me.’

  ‘What book was that?’ asked Lata.

  ‘It was a book about Donne,’ said Dr Ila Chattopadhyay. ‘Metaphysical Causality. It’s a very stupid book.’

  ‘Oh, so you teach English!’ said Lata, surprised. ‘I thought you were a doctor—I mean, a medical doctor.’

  ‘What on earth have you been telling her?’ said Dr Ila Chattopadhyay to Amit.

  ‘Nothing. I didn’t really get the chance to introduce you properly. You were telling Dipankar so forcefully that he should have dropped economics that I didn’t dare to interrupt.’

  ‘So I was. And so he should have. But where has he got to?’

  Amit scanned the room cursorily, and noticed Dipankar standing with Kakoli and her babble-rabble. Dipankar, despite his mystical and religious tendencies, was fond of even foolish young women.

  ‘Shall I deliver him back to you?’ asked Amit.

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Dr Ila Chattopadhyay, ‘arguing with him only upsets me, it’s like battling a blancmange . . . all his mushy ideas about the spiritual roots of India and the genius of Bengal. Well, if he were a true Bengali, he’d change his name back to Chattopadhyay—and so would you all, instead of continuing to cater to the feeble tongues and brains of the British. . . . Where are you studying?’

  Lata, still a little shaken by Dr Ila Chattopadhyay’s emphatic energy, said: ‘Brahmpur.’

  ‘Oh, Brahmpur,’ said Dr Ila Chattopadhyay. ‘An impossible place. I once was—no, no, I won’t say it, it’s too cruel, and you’re a nice girl.’

  ‘Oh, do go on, Ila Kaki,’ said Amit. ‘I adore cruelty, and I’m sure Lata can take anything you have to say.’

  ‘Well, Brahmpur!’ said Dr Ila Chattopadhyay, needing no second bidding. ‘Brahmpur! I had to go there for a day about ten years ago to attend some conference or other in the English Department, and I’d heard so much about Brahmpur and the Barsaat Mahal and so on that I stayed on for a couple of extra days. It made me almost ill. All that courtly culture with its Yes Huzoor and No Huzoor and nothing robust about it at all. “How are you?” “Oh, well, I’m alive.” I just couldn’t stand it. “Yes, I’ll have two florets of rice, and one drop of daal. . . .” All that subtlety and etiquette and bowing and scraping and ghazals and kathak. Kathak! When I saw those fat women twirling around like tops, I wanted to say to them, “Run! Run! don’t dance, run!”’

  ‘It’s a good thing you didn’t, Ila Kaki, you’d have been strangled.’

  ‘Well, at least it would have meant an end to my suffering. The n
ext evening I had to undergo some more of your Brahmpuri culture. We had to go and listen to one of those ghazal singers. Dreadful, dreadful, I’ll never forget it! One of those soulful women, Saeeda something, whom you couldn’t see for her jewellery—it was like staring into the sun. Wild horses wouldn’t drag me there again . . . and all those brainless men in that silly northern dress, the pyjama, looking as if they’d just got out of bed, rolling about in ecstasy—or agony—groaning “wah! wah!” to the most abjectly self-pitying insipid verse—or so it seemed to me when my friends translated it. . . . Do you like that sort of music?’

  ‘Well, I do like classical music,’ began Lata tentatively, waiting for Dr Ila Chattopadhyay to pronounce that she was completely misguided. ‘Ustad Majeed Khan’s performances of raags like Darbari, for instance. . . .’

  Amit, without waiting for Lata to finish her sentence, stepped swiftly in to draw Dr Ila Chattopadhyay’s fire.

  ‘So do I, so do I,’ he said. ‘I’ve always felt that the performance of a raag resembles a novel—or at least the kind of novel I’m attempting to write. You know,’ he continued, extemporizing as he went along, ‘first you take one note and explore it for a while, then another to discover its possibilities, then perhaps you get to the dominant, and pause for a bit, and it’s only gradually that the phrases begin to form and the tabla joins in with the beat . . . and then the more brilliant improvisations and diversions begin, with the main theme returning from time to time, and finally it all speeds up, and the excitement increases to a climax.’

  Dr Ila Chattopadhyay was looking at him in astonishment. ‘What utter nonsense,’ she said to Amit. ‘You’re getting to be as fluffy as Dipankar. Don’t pay any attention to him, Lata,’ continued the author of Metaphysical Causality. ‘He’s just a writer, he knows nothing at all about literature. Nonsense always makes me hungry, I must get some food at once. At least the family serves dinner at a sensible hour. “Two florets of rice” indeed!’ And, shaking her grey locks emphatically, she made for the buffet table.

  Amit offered to bring some food on a plate to his grandfather, and the old man acquiesced. He sat down in a comfortable armchair, and Amit and Lata went towards the buffet. On the way, a pretty young woman detached herself from Kakoli’s giggling, gossiping group, and came up to Amit.

  ‘Don’t you remember me?’ she asked. ‘We met at the Sarkars’.’

  Amit, trying to work out when and at which Sarkars’ they might have met, frowned and smiled simultaneously.

  The girl looked at him reproachfully. ‘We had a long conversation,’ she said.

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘About Bankim Babu’s attitude towards the British, and how it affected the form as opposed to the content of his writing.’

  Amit thought: Oh God! Aloud he said: ‘Yes . . . yes. . . .’

  Lata, though she felt sorry for both Amit and the girl, could not help smiling. She was glad she had come to the party after all.

  The girl persisted: ‘Don’t you remember?’

  Amit suddenly became voluble. ‘I am so forgetful—’ he said; ‘—and forgettable,’ he added quickly, ‘that I sometimes wonder if I ever existed. Nothing I’ve ever done seems to have happened. . . .’

  The girl nodded. ‘I know just what you mean,’ she said. But she soon wandered away a little sadly.

  Amit frowned.

  Lata, who could tell that he was feeling bad for having made the girl feel bad, said:

  ‘Your responsibilities don’t end with having written your books, it seems.’

  ‘What?’ said Amit, as if noticing her for the first time. ‘Oh yes, oh yes, that’s certainly true. Here, Lata. Have a plate.’

  7.10

  Although Amit was not too conscientious about his general duties as a host, he tried to make sure that Lata at least was not left stranded during the evening. Varun (who might otherwise have kept her company) had not come to the party; he preferred his Shamshu friends. Meenakshi (who was fond of Lata and normally would have escorted her around) was talking to her parents during a brief respite in their hostly duties, describing the events in the kitchen yesterday afternoon with the Mugh cook and in the drawing room yesterday evening with the Coxes. She had had the Coxes invited this evening as well because she thought it might be good for Arun.

  ‘But she’s a drab little thing,’ said Meenakshi. ‘Her clothes look as if they’ve been bought off the hook.’

  ‘She didn’t look all that drab when she introduced herself,’ said her father.

  Meenakshi looked around the room casually and started slightly. Patricia Cox was wearing a beautiful green silk dress with a pearl necklace. Her gold-brown hair was short and, under the light of the chandelier, curiously radiant. This was not the mousy Patricia Cox of yesterday. Meenakshi’s expression was not ecstatic.

  ‘I hope things are well with you, Meenakshi,’ said Mrs Chatterji, reverting for a moment to Bengali.

  ‘Wonderfully well, Mago,’ replied Meenakshi in English. ‘I’m so much in love.’

  This brought an anxious frown to Mrs Chatterji’s face.

  ‘We’re so worried about Kakoli,’ she said.

  ‘We?’ said Mr Justice Chatterji. ‘Well, I suppose that’s right.’

  ‘Your father doesn’t take things seriously enough. First it was that boy at Calcutta University, the, you know, the—’

  ‘The commie,’ said Mr Justice Chatterji benevolently.

  ‘Then it was the boy with the deformed hand and the strange sense of humour, what was his name?’

  ‘Tapan.’

  ‘Yes, what an unfortunate coincidence.’ Mrs Chatterji glanced at the bar where her own Tapan was still on duty. Poor baby. She must tell him to go to bed soon. Had he had time to snatch a bite to eat?

  ‘And now?’ asked Meenakshi, looking over at the corner where Kakoli and her friends were nattering and chattering away.

  ‘Now,’ said her mother, ‘it’s a foreigner. Well, I may as well tell you, it’s that German fellow there.’

  ‘He’s very good-looking,’ said Meenakshi, who noticed important things first. ‘Why hasn’t Kakoli told me?’

  ‘She’s quite secretive these days,’ said her mother.

  ‘On the contrary, she’s very open,’ said Mr Justice Chatterji.

  ‘It’s the same thing,’ said Mrs Chatterji. ‘We hear about so many friends and special friends that we never really know who the real one is. If indeed there is one at all.’

  ‘Well, dear,’ said Mr Justice Chatterji to his wife, ‘you worried about the commie and that came to nothing, and about the boy with the hand, and that came to nothing. So why worry? Look at Arun’s mother there, she’s always smiling, she never worries about anything.’

  ‘Baba,’ said Meenakshi, ‘that’s simply not true, she’s the biggest worrier of all. She worries about everything—no matter how trivial.’

  ‘Is that so?’ said her father with interest.

  ‘Anyway,’ continued Meenakshi, ‘how do you know that there is any romantic interest between them?’

  ‘He keeps inviting her to all these diplomatic functions,’ said her mother. ‘He’s a Second Secretary at the German Consulate General. He even pretends to like Rabindrasangeet. It’s too much.’

  ‘Darling, you’re not being quite fair,’ said Mr Justice Chatterji. ‘Kakoli too has suddenly evinced an interest in playing the piano parts of Schubert songs. If we’re lucky, we may even hear an impromptu recital tonight.’

  ‘She says he has a lovely baritone voice, and it makes her swoon. She will completely ruin her reputation,’ said Mrs Chatterji.

  ‘What’s his name?’ asked Meenakshi.

  ‘Hans,’ said Mrs Chatterji.

  ‘Just Hans?’

  ‘Hans something. Really, Meenakshi, it’s too upsetting. If he’s not serious, it’ll break her heart. And if she marries him she’ll leave India and we’ll never see her again.’

  ‘Hans Sieber,’ said her father. ‘Incidentally, if you introduce
yourself as Mrs Mehra rather than as Miss Chatterji, he is liable to seize your hand and kiss it. I think his family was originally Austrian. Courtesy is something of a disease there.’

  ‘Really?’ breathed Meenakshi, intrigued.

  ‘Really. Even Ila was charmed. But it didn’t work with your mother; she considers him a sort of pallid Ravana come to spirit her daughter away to distant wilds.’

  The analogy was not apt, but Mr Justice Chatterji, off the bench, relaxed considerably the logical rigour he was renowned for.

  ‘So you think he might kiss my hand?’

  ‘Not might, will. But that’s nothing to what he did with mine.’

  ‘What did he do, Baba?’ Meenakshi fixed her huge eyes on her father.

  ‘He nearly crushed it to pulp.’ Her father opened his right hand and looked at it for a few seconds.

  ‘Why did he do that?’ asked Meenakshi, laughing in her tinkling way.

  ‘I think he wanted to be reassuring,’ said her father. ‘And your husband was similarly reassured a few minutes later. At any rate, I noticed him open his mouth slightly when he was receiving his handshake.’

  ‘Oh, poor Arun,’ said Meenakshi with unconcern.

  She looked across at Hans, who was gazing adoringly at Kakoli surrounded by her circle of jabberers. Then, to her mother’s considerable distress, she repeated:

  ‘He’s very good-looking. Tall too. What’s wrong with him? Aren’t we Brahmos supposed to be very open-minded? Why shouldn’t we marry Kuku off to a foreigner? It would be rather chic.’

  ‘Yes, why not?’ said her father. ‘His limbs appear to be intact.’

  Mrs Chatterji said: ‘I wish you could dissuade your sister from acting rashly. I should never have let her learn that brutal language from that awful Miss Hebel.’

  Meenakshi said: ‘I don’t think anything we say to one another has much effect. Didn’t you want Kuku to dissuade me from marrying Arun a few years ago?’

  ‘Oh, that was quite different,’ said Mrs Chatterji. ‘And besides, we’re used to Arun now,’ she continued unconvincingly. ‘We’re all one big happy family now.’