A Suitable Boy, Page 67

  ‘Let Calcutta wait,’ said Biswas Babu and returned to his newspaper.

  ‘It is your responsibility to do something—“by hooks and by crooks” as they say in English.’

  ‘I have done enough,’ said Biswas Babu with stylized weariness. ‘He’s a good boy, but a dreamer.’

  ‘A good boy—but a dreamer! Oh, let’s have that son-in-law joke again,’ said someone to Biswas Babu and the burra babu.

  ‘No, no—’ they both demurred. But they were easily enough prevailed upon by the others to act it out. Both of them enjoyed acting, and this skit was only a few lines long. They had acted it half a dozen times before, and to the same audience; the adda, normally so torpid, was given to occasional theatricality.

  The burra babu walked around the room, examining the produce in a fish market. Suddenly he saw his old friend. ‘Ah, ah, Biswas Babu,’ he exclaimed joyfully.

  ‘Yes, yes, borro babu—it has been a long time,’ said Biswas Babu, shaking out his umbrella.

  ‘Congratulations on your daughter’s engagement, Biswas Babu. A good boy?’

  Biswas Babu nodded his head vigorously. ‘He’s a good boy. Very decent. Well, he eats an onion or two sometimes, but that’s all.’

  The burra babu, clearly shocked, exclaimed: ‘What? Does he eat onions every day?’

  ‘Oh no! Not every day. Far from it. Only when he has had a few drinks.’

  ‘But drinking! Surely he doesn’t drink often.’

  ‘Oh no!’ said Biswas Babu. ‘By no means. Only when he’s with women of an evening. . . .’

  ‘But women—what!—and does this happen regularly?’

  ‘Oh no!’ exclaimed Biswas Babu. ‘He can’t afford to visit prostitutes so often. His father is a retired pimp, and destitute, and the boy can only sponge off him once in a while.’

  The adda greeted this performance with cheers and laughter. It whetted their appetite for the play they would be going to see later in the evening at a local North Calcutta venue—the Star Theatre. The tea soon came in, together with a few delicious lobongo-lotikas and other sweets prepared by Biswas Babu’s daughter-in-law; and for a few minutes everyone fell appreciatively silent except for a few tongue-clicks and comments of enjoyment.

  7.39

  Dipankar sat on the little rug in his room with Cuddles on his lap, and dispensed advice to his troubled siblings.

  Whereas no one dared to interrupt Amit while he was working, or for fear that he might be working, on his immortal prose or verse, it was open season on Dipankar’s time and energy.

  They came in for specific advice, or sometimes just to talk. There was something pleasantly and zanily earnest about Dipankar which was very reassuring.

  Although Dipankar was utterly indecisive in his own life—or perhaps for that very reason—he was quite good at throwing out useful suggestions into the lives of others.

  Meenakshi dropped in first with a question about whether it was possible to love more than one person—‘utterly, desperately, and truly’. Dipankar talked the matter over with her in strictly unspecific terms, and came to the conclusion that it certainly was possible. The ideal, of course, was to love everyone in the universe equally, he said. Meenakshi was far from convinced of this but felt much better for having talked it over.

  Kuku came in next with a specific problem. What was she to do with Hans? He couldn’t bear Bengali food, he was a worse philistine even than Arun, who refused to eat fish-heads, even the most delicious bits, the eyes. Hans had not taken to fried neem leaves (he found them too bitter, just imagine, said Kuku), and she did not know if she could really love a man who didn’t like neem leaves. More importantly, did he really love her? Hans might have to be discarded yet, for all his Schubert and Schmerz.

  Dipankar reassured her that she could, and that he did. He mentioned that tastes were tastes, and that, if she recalled, Mrs Rupa Mehra had once thought Kuku herself a barbarian because she had spoken slightingly of the dussehri mango. As for Hans, Dipankar suspected that he was in for an education. Sauerkraut would soon be replaced by the banana flower, and stollen and Sachertorte by lobongo-lotikas and ledikenis; and he would have to adapt, and accept, and appreciate, if he was to remain Kakoli’s most-favoured mushroom; for if everyone else was putty in his firmly grasping hands, he was certainly putty in hers.

  ‘And where will I go and live?’ asked Kuku, beginning to sniff. ‘In that freezing, bombed-out country?’ She looked around Dipankar’s room, and said, ‘You know what’s lacking on that wall is a picture of the Sundarbans. I’ll paint you one. . . . I hear it rains all the time in Germany, and people spend their whole lives shivering, and if Hans and I quarrel, I can’t just walk home like Meenakshi.’

  Kakoli sneezed. Cuddles barked. Dipankar blinked and continued.

  ‘Well, Kuku, if I were you—’

  ‘You didn’t bless me,’ protested Kakoli.

  ‘Oh, sorry, Kuku, bless you.’

  ‘Oh, Cuddles, Cuddles, Cuddles,’ said Kuku, ‘no one loves us, no one at all, not even Dipankar. No one cares if we get pneumonia and die.’

  Bahadur entered. ‘A phone call for Baby Memsahib,’ he said.

  ‘Oh,’ said Kuku, ‘I must flee.’

  ‘But you were discussing the direction of your life,’ protested Dipankar mildly. ‘You don’t even know who’s called—it couldn’t possibly be that important.’

  ‘But it’s the phone,’ said Kuku and, having delivered herself of this complete and ineluctable explanation, did indeed flee.

  Next came Dipankar’s mother, not to take, but to give advice.

  ‘Ki korchho tumi, Dipankar? . . .’ she began, and continued to upbraid him quietly, while Dipankar continued to smile pacifically. ‘Your father is so worried . . . and I also would like you to settle down . . . family business . . . after all, we are not going to live forever . . . responsibility . . . father’s getting old . . . look at your brother, only wants to write poetry, and now these novels, thinks he is another Saratchandra . . . you are our only hope . . . then your father and I can rest in peace.’

  ‘But, Mago, we still have some time left to settle the matter,’ said Dipankar, who always deferred whatever he could and left the rest undecided.

  Mrs Chatterji looked uncertain. When Dipankar was small, whenever Bahadur asked him what he wanted to eat for breakfast, he would just look up and shake his head in one way or another, and Bahadur, understanding intuitively what was required, would turn up with a fried egg or an omelette or whatever, which Dipankar would eat quite happily. The family had been filled with wonderment. Perhaps, Mrs Chatterji now thought, no mental message had ever passed between them at all, and Bahadur merely represented Fate making its offerings to a Dipankar who decided nothing but accepted everything.

  ‘And even among girls, you don’t decide,’ continued Mrs Chatterji. ‘There’s Hemangini, and Chitra, and . . . it’s as bad as Kuku,’ she ended sadly.

  Dipankar had rather chiselled features, not like the milder, more rounded, features of the large-eyed Amit, who fitted Mrs Chatterji’s Bengali idea of good looks. She always thought of Dipankar as a sort of ugly duckling, was fiercely ready to protect him against accusations of angularity and boniness, and was amazed when women of the younger generation, all these Chitras and Hemanginis, babbled on about how attractive he was.

  ‘None of them is the Ideal, Mago,’ said Dipankar. ‘I must continue to search for the Ideal. And for Unity.’

  ‘And now you are going to this Pul Mela in Brahmpur. It is so inappropriate for a Brahmo, praying to the Ganga and taking dips.’

  ‘No, Ma, not at all—’ said Dipankar seriously. ‘Even Keshub Chunder Sen anointed himself with oil and dipped himself three times in the tank in Dalhousie Square.’

  ‘He did not!’ said Mrs Chatterji, shocked by Dipankar’s apostasy.

  The Brahmos, who believed in an abstract and elevated monotheism, or were supposed to, simply did not go about doing that sort of thing.

  ‘He
did, Mago. Well, I’m not sure it was Dalhousie Square,’ Dipankar conceded. ‘But, on the other hand, I think it was four dips, not three. And the Ganga is so much holier than a stagnant tank. Why, even Rabindranath Tagore said about the Ganga. . . .’

  ‘Oh, Robi Babu!’ exclaimed Mrs Chatterji, her face transfigured with muted ecstasy.

  The fourth to visit Dipankar’s clinic was Tapan.

  Cuddles at once jumped out of Dipankar’s lap and on to Tapan’s. Whenever Tapan’s trunk was packed for him to go to school, Cuddles would become almost desperate, would sit on the trunk to prevent its removal, and would be inconsolably ferocious for a week afterwards.

  Tapan stroked Cuddles’ head and looked at the shiny black triangle formed by his eyes and nose.

  ‘We’ll never shoot you, Cuddles,’ he promised. ‘Your eyes have no whites at all.’

  Cuddles wagged his bristly tail in wholehearted approval.

  Tapan looked a bit troubled and seemed to want to talk about something, but wasn’t very articulate about what he wanted to say. Dipankar let him ramble on for a bit. After a while Tapan noticed a book about famous battles on Dipankar’s topmost shelf and asked to borrow it. Dipankar looked at the dusty book in astonishment—it was a remnant of his unenlightened days—and got it down.

  ‘Keep it,’ he told Tapan.

  ‘Are you sure, Dada?’ asked Tapan gratefully.

  ‘Sure?’ asked Dipankar, beginning to wonder whether such a book would really be good for Tapan to keep. ‘Well, I’m not really sure. When you’ve read it, bring it back, and we’ll decide what to do with it then . . . or later.’

  Finally, just as he was about to begin meditating, Amit wandered by. He had been writing all day and looked tired.

  ‘Are you certain I’m not disturbing you?’ he asked.

  ‘No, Dada, not at all.’

  ‘You’re quite certain?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Because I wanted to discuss something with you—something that’s quite impossible to discuss with Meenakshi or Kuku.’

  ‘I know, Dada. Yes, she’s quite nice.’

  ‘Dipankar!’

  ‘Yes; unaffected,’ said Dipankar, looking like an umpire indicating a batsman out; ‘intelligent,’ he continued, like Churchill signalling victory; ‘attractive—’, he went on, now representing the trident of Shiva; ‘Chatterji-compatible,’ he murmured, like the Grande Dame emphasizing the four aims of life; ‘and Beastly to Bish,’ he added finally, in the stance of a benevolent Buddha.

  ‘Beastly to Bish?’ asked Amit.

  ‘So Meenakshi told me a little while ago, Dada. Apparently, Arun was quite put out and refuses to introduce her to anyone else. Arun’s mother is distraught, Lata is secretly elated, and—oh yes—Meenakshi—who thinks there’s nothing wrong with Bish except that he’s insufferable—is taking Lata’s side. And incidentally, Dada, Biswas Babu, who has heard of her, thinks she is just my type! Did you tell him about her?’ asked Dipankar unblinkingly.

  ‘No,’ said Amit, frowning. ‘I didn’t. Perhaps Kuku did—the chatterbox. What a gossip you are, Dipankar, don’t you do any work at all? I wish you’d do what Baba says, and get a proper job and handle all these wretched family finances. It would kill both me and my novel if I had to. Anyway, she’s not your type in the least, and you know it. Go and find your own Ideal.’

  ‘Anything for you, Dada,’ said Dipankar sweetly, and lowered his right hand in gentle blessing.

  7.40

  Mangoes arrived for Mrs Rupa Mehra from Brahmpur one afternoon, and her eyes gleamed. She had had enough of the langra mango in Calcutta, which (though it was acceptable) did not remind her of her childhood. What she longed for was the delicate, delectable dussehri, and the season for dussehris was, she had thought, over. Savita had sent her a dozen by parcel post a few days earlier, but when the parcel had arrived, apart from three squashed mangoes at the top, there were only stones underneath. Clearly someone in the Post Office had intercepted them. Mrs Rupa Mehra had been as distressed by the wickedness of man as by her own sense of deprivation. She had given up hope of dussehris for this season. And who knows if I’ll be alive next year? she thought to herself dramatically—and somewhat unreasonably, since she was still several years short of fifty. But now here was another parcel with two dozen dussehris, ripe but not overripe, and even cool to the touch.

  ‘Who brought them?’ Mrs Rupa Mehra asked Hanif. ‘The postman?’

  ‘No, Memsahib. A man.’

  ‘What did he look like? Where was he from?’

  ‘He was just a man, Memsahib. But he gave me this letter for you.’

  Mrs Rupa Mehra looked at Hanif severely. ‘You should have given it to me at once. All right. Bring me a plate and a sharp knife, and wash two mangoes.’ Mrs Rupa Mehra pressed and sniffed a few and selected two. ‘These two.’

  ‘Yes, Memsahib.’

  ‘And tell Lata to come in from the garden and eat a mango with me at once.’

  Lata had been sitting in the garden. It had not been raining, though there was a slight breeze. When she came in, Mrs Rupa Mehra read out the whole of Savita’s accompanying letter.

  . . . but I said I could imagine how disappointed you must be feeling, Ma darling, and we ourselves were so sad because we had chosen them so carefully and with so much affection, judging each one to ensure that it would be ripe in six days’ time. But then a Bengali gentleman who works in the Registrar’s Office told us how to get around the problem. He knows an attendant who works in the air-conditioned bogey of the Brahmpur-Calcutta Mail. We gave him ten rupees to take the mangoes to you, and we hope that they have arrived—safe and cool and complete. Please do tell me if they have arrived in time. If so we might be able to manage another batch before the season is over because we will not have to choose half-ripe mangoes as we had to for the parcel post. But Ma, you must also be very careful not to eat too many because of your blood sugar. Arun should also read this letter, and monitor your intake. . . .

  Mrs Rupa Mehra’s eyes filled with tears as she read the letter out to her younger daughter. Then she ate a mango with great gusto, and insisted that Lata eat one as well.

  ‘Now we will share another one,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra.

  ‘Ma, your blood sugar—’

  ‘One mango will make no difference.’

  ‘Of course it will, Ma, and so will the next, and so will the next. And don’t you want to make them last till the next parcel comes?’

  The discussion was cut short by the arrival of Amit and Kuku.

  ‘Where’s Meenakshi?’ asked Amit.

  ‘She’s gone out,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra.

  ‘Not again!’ said Amit. ‘I had hoped to see her. By the time I heard she had come to see Dipankar, she’d gone. Please tell her I called. Where’s she gone?’

  ‘To the Shady Ladies,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, frowning.

  ‘What a pity,’ said Amit. ‘But it’s nice to see you both.’ He turned to Lata and said: ‘Kuku was just going off to Presidency College to see an old friend, and I thought that perhaps we might go along together. I remember you wanted to visit that area.’

  ‘Yes!’ said Lata, happy that Amit had remembered. ‘May I go, Ma? Or do you need me for something this afternoon?’

  ‘That is all right,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, feeling liberal. ‘But you must have some mangoes before you go,’ she continued hospitably to Amit and Kuku. ‘These have just come from Brahmpur. Savita has sent them. And Pran—it is so good when one’s child gets married to such a thoughtful person. And you must also take some home with you,’ she added.

  When Amit, Kuku and Lata had gone, Mrs Rupa Mehra decided to cut another mango. When Aparna woke up after her nap, she was fed a slice. When Meenakshi came back from the Shady Ladies, having played a few successful games of mah-jongg, the letter from Savita was read out to her, and she was told to eat a mango.

  ‘No, Ma, I really can’t—it’s not good for my figure—and it will ruin my lipstick. Hello
, Aparna darling—no, don’t kiss Mummy just yet. Your lips are all sticky.’

  Mrs Rupa Mehra was confirmed in her opinion that Meenakshi was extremely odd. To steel yourself against mangoes showed a degree of iciness that was almost inhuman.

  ‘Amit and Kuku enjoyed them.’

  ‘Oh, what a pity I missed meeting them.’ Meenakshi’s tone implied relief.

  ‘Amit came specially to see you. He’s come several times, and you’ve always been out.’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, who did not enjoy being contradicted, least of all by her daughter-in-law.

  ‘I doubt he came to see me. He very rarely visited us before you came from Brahmpur. He’s quite content living in his own dreamworld of characters.’

  Mrs Rupa Mehra frowned at Meenakshi but was silent.

  ‘Oh, Ma, you’re so slow on the uptake,’ continued Meenakshi. ‘It’s clearly Luts whom he’s interested in. I’ve never seen him behave with any kind of consideration towards a girl before. And it’s no bad thing either.’

  ‘No bad thing either,’ repeated Aparna, testing out the phrase.

  ‘Be quiet, Aparna,’ said her grandmother sharply. Aparna, too astonished to be hurt by a rebuke from this everloving quarter, kept quiet but continued to listen intently.

  ‘That’s not true, that is simply not true. And don’t give either of them any ideas,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, shaking her finger at Meenakshi.

  ‘I’ll give them no ideas that they don’t have already,’ was the cool response.

  ‘You are a mischief-maker, Meenakshi, I won’t have it,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra.

  ‘My dear Ma,’ said Meenakshi, amused. ‘Don’t fly off the handle. Neither is it mischief, nor have I made it. I’d just accept things as they come.’

  ‘I have no intention of accepting things as they come,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, the unsavoury vision of sacrificing yet another of her children on the altar of the Chatterjis making her flush with indignation. ‘I will take her back to Brahmpur at once.’ She stopped. ‘No, not to Brahmpur. Somewhere else.’