Part One

1.1
‘You too will marry a boy I choose,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra firmly to her younger
daughter.
Lata avoided the maternal imperative by looking around the great lamp-lit
garden of Prem Nivas. The wedding guests were gathered on the lawn. ‘Hmm,’
she said. This annoyed her mother further.
‘I know what your hmms mean, young lady, and I can tell you I will not stand
for hmms in this matter. I do know what is best. I am doing it all for you. Do you
think it is easy for me, trying to arrange things for all four of my children
without His help?’ Her nose began to redden at the thought of her husband, who
would, she felt certain, be partaking of their present joy from somewhere
benevolently above. Mrs Rupa Mehra believed, of course, in reincarnation, but
at moments of exceptional sentiment, she imagined that the late Raghubir Mehra
still inhabited the form in which she had known him when he was alive: the
robust, cheerful form of his early forties before overwork had brought about his
heart attack at the height of the Second World War. Eight years ago, eight years,
thought Mrs Rupa Mehra miserably.
‘Now, now, Ma, you can’t cry on Savita’s wedding day,’ said Lata, putting her
arm gently but not very concernedly around her mother’s shoulder.
‘If He had been here, I could have worn the tissue-patola sari I wore for my
own wedding,’ sighed Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘But it is too rich for a widow to wear.’
‘Ma!’ said Lata, a little exasperated at the emotional capital her mother
insisted on making out of every possible circumstance. ‘People are looking at
you. They want to congratulate you, and they’ll think it very odd if they see you
crying in this way.’
Several guests were indeed doing namaste to Mrs Rupa Mehra and smiling at
her; the cream of Brahmpur society, she was pleased to note.
‘Let them see me!’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra defiantly, dabbing at her eyes
hastily with a handkerchief perfumed with 4711 Eau de Cologne. ‘They will
only think it is because of my happiness at Savita’s wedding. Everything I do is
for you, and no one appreciates me. I have chosen such a good boy for Savita,
and all everyone does is complain.’
 Lata reflected that of the four brothers and sisters, the only one who hadn’t
complained of the match had been the sweet-tempered, fair-complexioned,
beautiful Savita herself.
‘He is a little thin, Ma,’ said Lata a bit thoughtlessly. This was putting it
mildly. Pran Kapoor, soon to be her brother-in-law, was lank, dark, gangly, and
asthmatic.
‘Thin? What is thin? Everyone is trying to become thin these days. Even I
have had to fast the whole day and it is not good for my diabetes. And if Savita
is not complaining, everyone should be happy with him. Arun and Varun are
always complaining: why didn’t they choose a boy for their sister then? Pran is a
good, decent, cultured khatri boy.’
There was no denying that Pran, at thirty, was a good boy, a decent boy, and
belonged to the right caste. And, indeed, Lata did like Pran. Oddly enough, she
knew him better than her sister did—or, at least, had seen him for longer than her
sister had. Lata was studying English at Brahmpur University, and Pran Kapoor
was a popular lecturer there. Lata had attended his class on the Elizabethans,
while Savita, the bride, had met him for only an hour, and that too in her
mother’s company.
‘And Savita will fatten him up,’ added Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘Why are you trying
to annoy me when I am so happy? And Pran and Savita will be happy, you will
see. They will be happy,’ she continued emphatically. ‘Thank you, thank you,’
she now beamed at those who were coming up to greet her. ‘It is so wonderful—
the boy of my dreams, and such a good family. The Minister Sahib has been very
kind to us. And Savita is so happy. Please eat something, please eat: they have
made such delicious gulab-jamuns, but owing to my diabetes I cannot eat them
even after the ceremonies. I am not even allowed gajak, which is so difficult to
resist in winter. But please eat, please eat. I must go in to check what is
happening: the time that the pandits have given is coming up, and there is no
sign of either bride or groom!’ She looked at Lata, frowning. Her younger
daughter was going to prove more difficult than her elder, she decided.
‘Don’t forget what I told you,’ she said in an admonitory voice.
‘Hmm,’ said Lata. ‘Ma, your handkerchief’s sticking out of your blouse.’
‘Oh!’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, worriedly tucking it in. ‘And tell Arun to please
take his duties seriously. He is just standing there in a corner talking to that
Meenakshi and his silly friend from Calcutta. He should see that everyone is
drinking and eating properly and having a gala time.’
 ‘That Meenakshi’ was Arun’s glamorous wife and her own disrespectful
daughter-in-law. In four years of marriage Meenakshi’s only worthwhile act, in
Mrs Rupa Mehra’s eyes, had been to give birth to her beloved granddaughter,
Aparna, who even now had found her way to her grandmother’s brown silk sari
and was tugging at it for attention. Mrs Rupa Mehra was delighted. She gave her
a kiss and told her:
‘Aparna, you must stay with your Mummy or with Lata Bua, otherwise you
will get lost. And then where would we be?’
‘Can’t I come with you?’ asked Aparna, who, at three, naturally had views
and preferences of her own.
‘Sweetheart, I wish you could,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, ‘but I have to make
sure that your Savita Bua is ready to be married. She is so late already.’ And Mrs
Rupa Mehra looked once again at the little gold watch that had been her
husband’s first gift to her and which had not missed a beat for two and a half
decades.
‘I want to see Savita Bua!’ said Aparna, holding her ground.
Mrs Rupa Mehra looked a little harassed and nodded vaguely at Aparna.
Lata picked Aparna up. ‘When Savita Bua comes out, we’ll go over there
together, shall we, and I’ll hold you up like this, and we’ll both get a good view.
Meanwhile, should we go and see if we can get some ice-cream? I feel like some
too.’
Aparna approved of this, as of most of Lata’s suggestions. It was never too
cold for ice-cream. They walked towards the buffet table together, three-year-old
and nineteen-year-old hand in hand. A few rose petals wafted down on them
from somewhere.
‘What is good enough for your sister is good enough for you,’ said Mrs Rupa
Mehra to Lata as a parting shot.
‘We can’t both marry Pran,’ said Lata, laughing.

1.2
The other chief host of the wedding was the groom’s father, Mr Mahesh Kapoor,
who was the Minister of Revenue of the state of Purva Pradesh. It was in fact in
his large, C-shaped, cream-coloured, two-storey family house, Prem Nivas,
situated in the quietest, greenest residential area of the ancient, and—for the
most part—over-populated city of Brahmpur, that the wedding was taking place.
This was so unusual that the whole of Brahmpur had been buzzing about it
for days. Mrs Rupa Mehra’s father, who was supposed to be the host, had taken
sudden umbrage a fortnight before the wedding, had locked up his house, and
had disappeared. Mrs Rupa Mehra had been distraught. The Minister Sahib had
stepped in (‘Your honour is our honour’), and had insisted on putting on the
wedding himself. As for the ensuing gossip, he ignored it.
There was no question of Mrs Rupa Mehra helping to pay for the wedding.
The Minister Sahib would not hear of it. Nor had he at any time asked for any
dowry. He was an old friend and bridge partner of Mrs Rupa Mehra’s father and
he had liked what he had seen of her daughter Savita (though he could never
remember the girl’s name). He was sympathetic to economic hardship, for he too
had tasted it. During the several years he had spent in British jails during the
struggle for Independence, there had been no one to run his farm or his cloth
business. As a result very little income had come in, and his wife and family had
struggled along with great difficulty.
Those unhappy times, however, were only a memory for the able, impatient,
and powerful Minister. It was the early winter of 1950, and India had been free
for over three years. But freedom for the country did not mean freedom for his
younger son, Maan, who even now was being told by his father:
‘What is good enough for your brother is good enough for you.’
‘Yes, Baoji,’ said Maan, smiling.
Mr Mahesh Kapoor frowned. His younger son, while succeeding to his own
habit of fine dress, had not succeeded to his obsession with hard work. Nor did
he appear to have any ambition to speak of.
‘It is no use being a good-looking young wastrel forever,’ said his father.
‘And marriage will force you to settle down and take things seriously. I have
written to the Banaras people, and I expect a favourable answer any day.’
Marriage was the last thing on Maan’s mind; he had caught a friend’s eye in
the crowd and was waving at him. Hundreds of small coloured lights strung
through the hedge came on all at once, and the silk saris and jewellery of the
women glimmered and glinted even more brightly. The high, reedy shehnai
music burst into a pattern of speed and brilliance. Maan was entranced. He
noticed Lata making her way through the guests. Quite an attractive girl, Savita’s
sister, he thought. Not very tall and not very fair, but attractive, with an oval
face, a shy light in her dark eyes and an affectionate manner towards the child
she was leading by the hand.
‘Yes, Baoji,’ said Maan obediently.
‘What did I say?’ demanded his father.
‘About marriage, Baoji,’ said Maan.
‘What about marriage?’
Maan was nonplussed.
‘Don’t you listen?’ demanded Mahesh Kapoor, wanting to twist Maan’s ear.
‘You are as bad as the clerks in the Revenue Department. You were not paying
attention, you were waving at Firoz.’
Maan looked a little shamefaced. He knew what his father thought of him.
But he had been enjoying himself until a couple of minutes ago, and it was just
like Baoji to come and puncture his light spirits.
‘So that’s all fixed up,’ continued his father. ‘Don’t tell me later that I didn’t
warn you. And don’t get that weak-willed woman, your mother, to change her
mind and come telling me that you aren’t yet ready to take on the responsibilities
of a man.’
‘No, Baoji,’ said Maan, getting the drift of things and looking a trifle glum.
‘We chose well for Veena, we have chosen well for Pran, and you are not to
complain about our choice of a bride for you.’
Maan said nothing. He was wondering how to repair the puncture. He had a
bottle of Scotch upstairs in his room, and perhaps he and Firoz could escape for
a few minutes before the ceremony—or even during it—for refreshment.
His father paused to smile brusquely at a few well-wishers, then turned to
Maan again.
‘I don’t want to have to waste any more time with you today. God knows I
have enough to do as it is. What has happened to Pran and that girl, what’s her
name? It’s getting late. They were supposed to come out from opposite ends of
the house and meet here for the jaymala five minutes ago.’
‘Savita,’ prompted Maan.
‘Yes, yes,’ said his father impatiently. ‘Savita. Your superstitious mother will
start panicking if they miss the correct configuration of the stars. Go and calm
her down. Go! Do some good.’
And Mahesh Kapoor went back to his own duties as a host. He frowned
impatiently at one of the officiating priests, who smiled weakly back. He
narrowly avoided being butted in the stomach and knocked over by three
children, offspring of his rural relatives, who were careering joyfully around the
garden as if it were a field of stubble. And he greeted, before he had walked ten
steps, a professor of literature (who could be useful for Pran’s career); two
influential members of the state legislature from the Congress Party (who might
well agree to back him in his perennial power struggle with the Home Minister);
a judge, the very last Englishman to remain on the bench of the Brahmpur High
Court after Independence; and his old friend the Nawab Sahib of Baitar, one of
the largest landowners in the state.

1.3
Lata, who had heard a part of Maan’s conversation with his father, could not help
smiling to herself as she walked past.
‘I see you’re enjoying yourself,’ said Maan to her in English.
His conversation with his father had been in Hindi, hers with her mother in
English. Maan spoke both well.
Lata was struck shy, as she sometimes was with strangers, especially those
who smiled as boldly as Maan. Let him do the smiling for both of us, she
thought.
‘Yes,’ she said simply, her eyes resting on his face for just a second. Aparna
tugged at her hand.
‘Well, now, we’re almost family,’ said Maan, perhaps sensing her
awkwardness. ‘A few minutes more, and the ceremonies will start.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Lata, looking up at him again more confidently. She paused and
frowned. ‘My mother’s concerned that they won’t start on time.’
‘So is my father,’ said Maan.
Lata began smiling again, but when Maan asked her why she shook her head.
‘Well,’ said Maan, flicking a rose petal off his beautiful tight white achkan,
‘you’re not laughing at me, are you?’
‘I’m not laughing at all,’ said Lata.
‘Smiling, I meant.’
‘No, not at you,’ said Lata. ‘At myself.’
‘That’s very mysterious,’ said Maan. His good-natured face melted into an
expression of exaggerated perplexity.
‘It’ll have to remain so, I’m afraid,’ said Lata, almost laughing now. ‘Aparna
here wants her ice-cream, and I must supply it.’
 ‘Try the pistachio ice-cream,’ suggested Maan. His eyes followed her pink
sari for a few seconds. Good-looking girl—in a way, he thought again. Pink’s the
wrong colour for her complexion, though. She should be dressed in deep green
or dark blue . . . like that woman there. His attention veered to a new object of
contemplation.
A few seconds later Lata bumped into her best friend, Malati, a medical
student who shared her room at the student hostel. Malati was very outgoing and
never lost her tongue with strangers. Strangers, however, blinking into her lovely
green eyes, sometimes lost their tongues with her.
‘Who was that Cad you were talking to?’ she asked Lata eagerly.
This wasn’t as bad as it sounded. A good-looking young man, in the slang of
Brahmpur University girls, was a Cad. The term derived from Cadbury’s
chocolate.
‘Oh, that’s just Maan, he’s Pran’s younger brother.’
‘Really! But he’s so good-looking and Pran’s so, well, not ugly, but, you
know, dark, and nothing special.’
‘Maybe he’s a dark Cad,’ suggested Lata. ‘Bitter but sustaining.’
Malati considered this.
‘And,’ continued Lata, ‘as my aunts have reminded me five times in the last
hour, I’m not all that fair either, and will therefore find it impossible to get a
suitable husband.’
‘How can you put up with them, Lata?’ asked Malati, who had been brought
up, fatherless and brotherless, in a circle of very supportive women.
‘Oh, I like most of them,’ said Lata. ‘And if it wasn’t for this sort of
speculation it wouldn’t be much of a wedding for them. Once they see the bride
and groom together, they’ll have an even better time. Beauty and the Beast.’
‘Well, he’s looked rather beast-like whenever I’ve seen him on the university
campus,’ said Malati. ‘Like a dark giraffe.’
‘Don’t be mean,’ said Lata, laughing. ‘Anyway, Pran’s very popular as a
lecturer,’ she continued. ‘And I like him. And you’re going to have to visit me at
his house once I leave the hostel and start living there. And since he’ll be my
brother-in-law you’ll have to like him too. Promise me you will.’
‘I won’t,’ said Malati firmly. ‘He’s taking you away from me.’
‘He’s doing nothing of the sort, Malati,’ said Lata. ‘My mother, with her fine
sense of household economy, is dumping me on him.’
‘Well, I don’t see why you should obey your mother. Tell her you can’t bear
to be parted from me.’
 ‘I always obey my mother,’ said Lata. ‘And besides, who will pay my hostel
fees if she doesn’t? And it will be very nice for me to live with Savita for a
while. I refuse to lose you. You really must visit us—you must keep visiting us.
If you don’t, I’ll know how much value to put on your friendship.’
Malati looked unhappy for a second or two, then recovered. ‘Who’s this?’ she
asked. Aparna was looking at her in a severe and uncompromising manner.
‘My niece, Aparna,’ said Lata. ‘Say hello to Malati Aunty, Aparna.’
‘Hello,’ said Aparna, who had reached the end of her patience. ‘Can I have a
pistachio ice-cream, please?’
‘Yes, kuchuk, of course, I’m sorry,’ said Lata. ‘Come, let’s all go together and
get some.’

1.4
Lata soon lost Malati to a clutch of college friends, but before she and Aparna
could get much further, they were captured by Aparna’s parents.
‘So there you are, you precious little runaway,’ said the resplendent
Meenakshi, implanting a kiss on her daughter’s forehead. ‘Isn’t she precious,
Arun? Now where have you been, you precious truant?’
‘I went to find Daadi,’ began Aparna. ‘And then I found her, but she had to go
into the house because of Savita Bua, but I couldn’t go with her, and then Lata
Bua took me to have ice-cream, but we couldn’t because—’
But Meenakshi had lost interest and had turned to Lata.
‘That pink doesn’t really suit you, Luts,’ said Meenakshi. ‘It lacks a certain—
a certain—’
‘Je ne sais quoi?’ prompted a suave friend of her husband’s, who was
standing nearby.
‘Thank you,’ said Meenakshi, with such withering charm that the young
fellow glided away for a while and pretended to stare at the stars.
‘No, pink’s just not right for you, Luts,’ reaffirmed Meenakshi, stretching her
long, tawny neck like a relaxed cat and appraising her sister-in-law.
She herself was wearing a green-and-gold sari of Banaras silk, with a green
choli that exposed more of her midriff than Brahmpur society was normally
privileged or prepared to see.
 ‘Oh,’ said Lata, suddenly self-conscious. She knew she didn’t have much
dress sense, and imagined she looked rather drab standing next to this bird of
paradise.
‘Who was that fellow you were talking to?’ demanded her brother Arun, who,
unlike his wife, had noticed Lata talking to Maan. Arun was twenty-five, a tall,
fair, intelligent, pleasant-looking bully who kept his siblings in place by
pummelling their egos. He was fond of reminding them that after their father’s
death, he was ‘in a manner of speaking’, in loco parentis to them.
‘That was Maan, Pran’s brother.’
‘Ah.’ The word spoke volumes of disapproval.
Arun and Meenakshi had arrived just this morning by overnight train from
Calcutta, where Arun worked as one of the few Indian executives in the
prestigious and largely white firm of Bentsen & Pryce. He had had neither the
time nor the desire to acquaint himself with the Kapoor family—or clan, as he
called it—with whom his mother had contrived a match for his sister. He cast his
eyes balefully around. Typical of their type to overdo everything, he thought,
looking at the coloured lights in the hedge. The crassness of the state politicians,
white-capped and effusive, and of Mahesh Kapoor’s contingent of rustic
relatives excited his finely tuned disdain. And the fact that neither the brigadier
from the Brahmpur Cantonment nor the Brahmpur representatives of companies
like Burmah Shell, Imperial Tobacco, and Caltex were represented in the crowd
of invitees blinded his eyes to the presence of the larger part of the professional
elite of Brahmpur.
‘A bit of a bounder, I’d say,’ said Arun, who had noticed Maan’s eyes
casually following Lata before he had turned them elsewhere.
Lata smiled, and her meek brother Varun, who was a nervous shadow to Arun
and Meenakshi, smiled too in a kind of stifled complicity. Varun was studying—
or trying to study—mathematics at Calcutta University, and he lived with Arun
and Meenakshi in their small ground-floor flat. He was thin, unsure of himself,
sweet-natured and shifty-eyed; and he was Lata’s favourite. Though he was a
year older than her, she felt protective of him. Varun was terrified, in different
ways, of both Arun and Meenakshi, and in some ways even of the precocious
Aparna. His enjoyment of mathematics was mainly limited to the calculation of
odds and handicaps on the racing form. In winter, as Varun’s excitement rose
with the racing season, so did his elder brother’s ire. Arun was fond of calling
him a bounder as well.
 And what would you know about bounding, Arun Bhai? thought Lata to
herself. Aloud she said: ‘He seemed quite nice.’
‘An aunty we met called him a Cad,’ contributed Aparna.
‘Did she, precious?’ said Meenakshi, interested. ‘Do point him out to me,
Arun.’ But Maan was now nowhere to be seen.
‘I blame myself to some extent,’ said Arun in a voice which implied nothing
of the sort; Arun was not capable of blaming himself for anything. ‘I really
should have done something,’ he continued. ‘If I hadn’t been so tied up with
work, I might have prevented this whole fiasco. But once Ma got it into her head
that this Kapoor chap was suitable, it was impossible to dissuade her. It’s
impossible to talk reason with Ma; she just turns on the waterworks.’
What had also helped deflect Arun’s suspicions had been the fact that Dr Pran
Kapoor taught English. And yet, to Arun’s chagrin, there was hardly an English
face in this whole provincial crowd.
How fearfully dowdy! said Meenakshi wearily to herself, encapsulating her
husband’s thoughts. ‘And how utterly unlike Calcutta. Precious, you have smut
on your nose,’ she added to Aparna, half looking around to tell an imaginary
ayah to wipe it off with a handkerchief.
‘I’m enjoying it here,’ Varun ventured, seeing Lata look hurt. He knew that
she liked Brahmpur, though it was clearly no metropolis.
‘You be quiet,’ snapped Arun brutally. His judgement was being challenged
by his subordinate, and he would have none of it.
Varun struggled with himself; he glared, then looked down.
‘Don’t talk about what you don’t understand,’ added Arun, putting the boot
in.
Varun glowered silently.
‘Did you hear me?’
‘Yes,’ said Varun.
‘Yes, what?’
‘Yes, Arun Bhai,’ muttered Varun.
This pulverization was standard fare for Varun, and Lata was not surprised by
the exchange. But she felt very bad for him, and indignant at Arun. She could
not understand either the pleasure or the purpose of it. She decided she would
speak to Varun as soon after the wedding as possible to try to help him withstand
—at least internally—such assaults upon his spirit. Even if I’m not very good at
withstanding them myself, Lata thought.
 ‘Well, Arun Bhai,’ she said innocently, ‘I suppose it’s too late. We’re all one
big happy family now, and we’ll have to put up with each other as well as we
can.’
The phrase, however, was not innocent. ‘One big happy family’ was an
ironically used Chatterji phrase. Meenakshi Mehra had been a Chatterji before
she and Arun had met at a cocktail party, fallen in torrid, rapturous and elegant
love, and got married within a month, to the shock of both families. Whether or
not Mr Justice Chatterji of the Calcutta High Court and his wife were happy to
welcome the non-Bengali Arun as the first appendage to their ring of five
children (plus Cuddles the dog), and whether or not Mrs Rupa Mehra had been
delighted at the thought of her firstborn, the apple of her eye, marrying outside
the khatri caste (and to a spoilt supersophisticate like Meenakshi at that), Arun
certainly valued the Chatterji connection greatly. The Chatterjis had wealth and
position and a grand Calcutta house where they threw enormous (but tasteful)
parties. And even if the big happy family, especially Meenakshi’s brothers and
sisters, sometimes bothered him with their endless, unchokable wit and
improvised rhyming couplets, he accepted it precisely because it appeared to him
to be undeniably urbane. It was a far cry from this provincial capital, this Kapoor
crowd and these garish light-in-the-hedge celebrations—with pomegranate juice
in lieu of alcohol!
‘What precisely do you mean by that?’ demanded Arun of Lata. ‘Do you
think that if Daddy had been alive we would have married into this sort of a
family?’
Arun hardly seemed to care that they might be overheard. Lata flushed. But
the brutal point was well made. Had Raghubir Mehra not died in his forties but
continued his meteoric rise in the Railway Service, he would—when the British
left Indian government service in droves in 1947—certainly have become a
member of the Railway Board. His excellence and experience might even have
made him Chairman. The family would not have had to struggle, as it had had to
for years and was still forced to, on Mrs Rupa Mehra’s depleted savings, the
kindness of friends and, lately, her elder son’s salary. She would not have had to
sell most of her jewellery and even their small house in Darjeeling to give her
children the schooling which she felt that, above everything else, they must
have. Beneath her pervasive sentimentality—and her attachment to the
seemingly secure physical objects that reminded her of her beloved husband—
lay a sense of sacrifice and a sense of values that determinedly melted them
down into the insecure, intangible benefits of an excellent English-medium
boarding school education. And so Arun and Varun had continued to go to St
George’s School, and Savita and Lata had not been withdrawn from St Sophia’s
Convent.
The Kapoors might be all very well for Brahmpur society, thought Arun, but
if Daddy had been alive, a constellation of brilliant matches would have been
strewn at the feet of the Mehras. At least he, for one, had overcome their
circumstances and done well in the way of in-laws. What possible comparison
could there be between Pran’s brother, that ogling fellow whom Lata had just
been talking to—who ran, of all things, a cloth shop in Banaras, from what Arun
had heard—and, say, Meenakshi’s elder brother, who had been to Oxford, was
supposed to be studying law at Lincoln’s Inn, and was, in addition, a published
poet?
Arun’s speculations were brought down to earth by his daughter, who
threatened to scream if she didn’t get her ice-cream. She knew from experience
that screaming (or even the threat of it) worked wonders with her parents. And,
after all, they sometimes screamed at each other, and often at the servants.
Lata looked guilty. ‘It’s my fault, darling,’ she said to Aparna. ‘Let’s go at
once before we get caught up in something else. But you mustn’t cry or yell,
promise me that. It won’t work with me.’
Aparna, who knew it wouldn’t, was silent.
But just at that moment the bridegroom emerged from one side of the house,
dressed all in white, his dark, rather nervous face veiled with hanging strings of
white flowers; everyone crowded forward towards the door from which the bride
would emerge; and Aparna, lifted into her Lata Bua’s arms, was forced to defer
once again both treat and threat.

1.5
It was a little untraditional, Lata couldn’t help thinking, that Pran hadn’t ridden
up to the gate on a white horse with a little nephew sitting in front of him and
with the groom’s party in tow to claim his bride; but then Prem Nivas was the
groom’s house after all. And no doubt if he had followed the convention, Arun
would have found further cause for mockery. As it was, Lata found it difficult to
imagine the lecturer on Elizabethan Drama under that veil of tuberoses. He was
now placing a garland of dark red, heavily fragrant roses around her sister
Savita’s neck—and Savita was doing the same to him. She looked lovely in her
red-and-gold wedding sari, and quite subdued; Lata thought she might even have
been crying. Her head was covered, and she looked down at the ground as her
mother had doubtless instructed her to do. It was not proper, even when she was
putting the garland round his neck, that she should look full in the face of the
man with whom she was to live her life.
The welcoming ceremony completed, bride and groom moved together to the
middle of the garden, where a small platform, decorated with more white flowers
and open to the auspicious stars, had been erected. Here the priests, one from
each family, and Mrs Rupa Mehra and the parents of the groom sat around the
small fire that would be the witness of their vows.
Mrs Rupa Mehra’s brother, whom the family very rarely met, had earlier in
the day taken charge of the bangle ceremony. Arun was annoyed that he had not
been allowed to take charge of anything. He had suggested to his mother, after
the crisis brought on by his grandfather’s inexplicable actions, that they should
move the wedding to Calcutta. But it was too late for that, and she would not
hear of it.
Now that the exchange of garlands was over, the crowd paid no great
attention to the actual wedding rites. These would go on for the better part of an
hour while the guests milled and chattered round the lawns of Prem Nivas. They
laughed; they shook hands or folded them to their foreheads; they coalesced into
little knots, the men here, the women there; they warmed themselves at the
charcoal-filled clay stoves placed strategically around the garden while their
frosted, gossip-laden breath rose into the air; they admired the multicoloured
lights; they smiled for the photographer as he murmured ‘Steady, please!’ in
English; they breathed deeply the scent of flowers and perfume and cooked
spices; they exchanged births and deaths and politics and scandal under the
brightly coloured cloth canopy at the back of the garden beneath which long
tables of food had been laid out; they sat down exhaustedly on chairs with their
plates full and tucked in inexhaustibly. Servants, some in white livery, some in
khaki, brought around fruit juice and tea and coffee and snacks to those who
were standing in the garden: samosas, kachauris, laddus, gulab-jamuns, barfis
and gajak and ice-cream were consumed and replenished along with puris and
six kinds of vegetables. Friends who had not met each other for months fell upon
each other with loud cries, relatives who met only at weddings and funerals
embraced tearfully and exchanged the latest news of third cousins thrice
removed. Lata’s aunt from Kanpur, horrified by the complexion of the groom,
was talking to an aunt from Lucknow about ‘Rupa’s black grandchildren’, as if
they already existed. They made much of Aparna, who was obviously going to
be Rupa’s last fair grandchild, and praised her even when she spooned pistachio
ice-cream down the front of her pale yellow cashmere sweater. The barbaric
children from rustic Rudhia ran around yelling as if they were playing pitthu on
the farm. And though the plaintive, festive music of the shehnai had now ceased,
a happy babble of convivial voices rose to the skies and quite drowned out the
irrelevant chant of the ceremonies.
Lata, however, stood close by and watched with an attentive mixture of
fascination and dismay. The two bare-chested priests, one very fat and one fairly
thin, both apparently immune to the cold, were locked in mildly insistent
competition as to who knew a more elaborate form of the service. So, while the
stars stayed their courses in order to keep the auspicious time in abeyance, the
Sanskrit wound interminably on. Even the groom’s parents were asked by the fat
priest to repeat something after him. Mahesh Kapoor’s eyebrows were quivering;
he was about to blow his rather short fuse.
Lata tried to imagine what Savita was thinking. How could she have agreed
to get married without knowing this man? Kind-hearted and accommodating
though she was, she did have views of her own. Lata loved her deeply and
admired her generous, even temper; the evenness was certainly a contrast to her
own erratic swings of mood. Savita was free from any vanity about her fresh and
lovely looks; but didn’t she rebel against the fact that Pran would fail the most
lenient test of glamour? Did Savita really accept that Mother knew best? It was
difficult to speak to Savita, or sometimes even to guess what she was thinking.
Since Lata had gone to college, it was Malati rather than her sister who had
become her confidante. And Malati, she knew, would never have agreed to be
married off in this summary manner by all the mothers in the world conjoined.
In a few minutes Savita would relinquish even her name to Pran. She would
no longer be a Mehra, like the rest of them, but a Kapoor. Arun, thank God, had
never had to do that. Lata tried ‘Savita Kapoor’ on her tongue, and did not like it
at all.
The smoke from the fire—or possibly the pollen from the flowers—was
beginning to bother Pran, and he coughed a little, covering his mouth with his
hand. His mother said something to him in a low voice. Savita too looked up at
him very quickly, with a glance, Lata thought, of gentle concern. Savita, it was
true, would have been concerned about anyone who was suffering from
anything; but there was a special tenderness here that irritated and confused
Lata. Savita had only met this man for an hour! And now he was returning her
affectionate look. It was too much.
Lata forgot that she had been defending Pran to Malati just a short while ago,
and began to discover things to irritate herself with.
‘Prem Nivas’ for a start: the abode of love. An idiotic name, thought Lata
crossly, for this house of arranged marriages. And a needlessly grandiloquent
one: as if it were the centre of the universe and felt obliged to make a
philosophical statement about it. And the scene, looked at objectively, was
absurd: seven living people, none of them stupid, sitting around a fire intoning a
dead language that only three of them understood. And yet, Lata thought, her
mind wandering from one thing to another, perhaps this little fire was indeed the
centre of the universe. For here it burned, in the middle of this fragrant garden,
itself in the heart of Pasand Bagh, the pleasantest locality of Brahmpur, which
was the capital of the state of Purva Pradesh, which lay in the centre of the
Gangetic plains, which was itself the heartland of India . . . and so on through the
galaxies to the outer limits of perception and knowledge. The thought did not
seem in the least trite to Lata; it helped her control her irritation at, indeed
resentment of, Pran.
‘Speak up! Speak up! If your mother had mumbled like you, we would never
have got married.’
Mahesh Kapoor had turned impatiently towards his dumpy little wife, who
became even more tongue-tied as a result.
Pran turned and smiled encouragingly at his mother, and quickly rose again in
Lata’s estimation.
Mahesh Kapoor frowned, but held his peace for a few minutes, after which he
burst out, this time to the family priest:
‘Is this mumbo jumbo going to go on forever?’
The priest said something soothing in Sanskrit, as if blessing Mahesh Kapoor,
who felt obliged to lapse into an irked silence. He was irritated for several
reasons, one of which was the distinct and unwelcome sight of his arch political
rival, the Home Minister, deep in conversation with the large and venerable
Chief Minister S.S. Sharma. What could they be plotting? he thought. My stupid
wife insisted on inviting Agarwal because our daughters are friends, even though
she knew it would sour things for me. And now the Chief Minister is talking to
him as if no one else exists. And in my garden!
His other major irritation was directed at Mrs Rupa Mehra. Mahesh Kapoor,
once he had taken over the arrangements, had set his heart on inviting a beautiful
and renowned singer of ghazals to perform at Prem Nivas, as was the tradition
whenever anyone in his family got married. But Mrs Rupa Mehra, though she
was not even paying for the wedding, had put her foot down. She could not have
‘that sort of person’ singing love-lyrics at the wedding of her daughter. ‘That sort
of person’ meant both a Muslim and a courtesan.
Mahesh Kapoor muffed his responses, and the priest repeated them gently.
‘Yes, yes, go on, go on,’ said Mahesh Kapoor. He glowered at the fire.
But now Savita was being given away by her mother with a handful of rose
petals, and all three women were in tears.
Really! thought Mahesh Kapoor. They’ll douse the flames. He looked in
exasperation at the main culprit, whose sobs were the most obstreperous.
But Mrs Rupa Mehra was not even bothering to tuck her handkerchief back
into her blouse. Her eyes were red and her nose and cheeks were flushed with
weeping. She was thinking back to her own wedding. The scent of 4711 Eau de
Cologne brought back unbearably happy memories of her late husband. Then she
thought downwards one generation to her beloved Savita who would soon be
walking around this fire with Pran to begin her own married life. May it be a
longer one than mine, prayed Mrs Rupa Mehra. May she wear this very sari to
her own daughter’s wedding.
She also thought upwards a generation to her father, and this brought on a
fresh gush of tears. What the septuagenarian radiologist Dr Kishen Chand Seth
had taken offence at, no one knew: probably something said or done by his
friend Mahesh Kapoor, but quite possibly by his own daughter; no one could tell
for sure. Apart from repudiating his duties as a host, he had chosen not even to
attend his granddaughter’s wedding, and had gone furiously off to Delhi ‘for a
conference of cardiologists’, as he claimed. He had taken with him the
insufferable Parvati, his thirty-five-year-old second wife, who was ten years
younger than Mrs Rupa Mehra herself.
It was also possible, though this did not cross his daughter’s mind, that Dr
Kishen Chand Seth would have gone mad at the wedding had he attended it, and
had in fact fled from that specific eventuality. Short and trim though he had
always been, he was enormously fond of food; but owing to a digestive disorder
combined with diabetes his diet was now confined to boiled eggs, weak tea,
lemon squash, and arrowroot biscuits.
I don’t care who stares at me, I have plenty of reasons to cry, said Mrs Rupa
Mehra to herself defiantly. I am so happy and heartbroken today. But her
heartbreak lasted only a few minutes more. The groom and bride walked around
the fire seven times, Savita keeping her head meekly down, her eyelashes wet
with tears; and Pran and she were man and wife.
After a few concluding words by the priests, everyone rose. The newly-weds
were escorted to a flower-shrouded bench near a sweet-smelling, rough-leafed
harsingar tree in white-and-orange bloom; and congratulations fell on them and
their parents and all the Mehras and Kapoors present as copiously as those
delicate flowers fall to the ground at dawn.
Mrs Rupa Mehra’s joy was unconfined. She gobbled the congratulations
down like forbidden gulab-jamuns. She looked a little speculatively at her
younger daughter, who appeared to be laughing at her from a distance. Or was
she laughing at her sister? Well, she would find out soon enough what the happy
tears of matrimony were all about!
Pran’s much-shouted-at mother, subdued yet happy, after blessing her son and
daughter-in-law, and failing to see her younger son Maan anywhere, had gone
over to her daughter Veena. Veena embraced her; Mrs Mahesh Kapoor,
temporarily overcome, said nothing, but sobbed and smiled simultaneously. The
dreaded Home Minister and his daughter Priya joined them for a few minutes,
and in return for their congratulations, Mrs Mahesh Kapoor had a few kind
words to say to each of them. Priya, who was married and virtually immured by
her in-laws in a house in the old, cramped part of Brahmpur, said, rather
wistfully, that the garden looked beautiful. And it was true, thought Mrs Mahesh
Kapoor with quiet pride: the garden was indeed looking beautiful. The grass was
rich, the gardenias were creamy and fragrant, and a few chrysanthemums and
roses were already in bloom. And though she could take no credit for the sudden,
prolific blossoming of the harsingar tree, that was surely the grace of the gods
whose prized and contested possession, in mythical times, it used to be.

1.6
Her lord and master the Minister of Revenue was meanwhile accepting
congratulations from the Chief Minister of Purva Pradesh, Shri S.S. Sharma.
Sharmaji was rather a hulking man with a perceptible limp and an unconscious
and slight vibration of the head, which was exacerbated when, as now, he had
had a long day. He ran the state with a mixture of guile, charisma and
benevolence. Delhi was far away and rarely interested in his legislative and
administrative fief. Though he was uncommunicative about his discussion with
his Home Minister, he was nevertheless in good spirits.
Noticing the rowdy kids from Rudhia, he said in his slightly nasal voice to
Mahesh Kapoor:
‘So you’re cultivating a rural constituency for the coming elections?’
Mahesh Kapoor smiled. Ever since 1937 he had stood from the same urban
constituency in the heart of Old Brahmpur—a constituency that included much
of Misri Mandi, the home of the shoe trade of the city. Despite his farm and his
knowledge of rural affairs—he was the prime mover of a bill to abolish large and
unproductive landholdings in the state—it was unimaginable that he would
desert his electoral home and choose to contest from a rural constituency. By
way of answer, he indicated his garments; the handsome black achkan he was
wearing, the tight off-white pyjamas, and the brilliantly embroidered white jutis
with their up-turned toes would present an incongruous picture in a rice field.
‘Why, nothing is impossible in politics,’ said Sharmaji slowly. ‘After your
Zamindari Abolition Bill goes through, you will become a hero throughout the
countryside. If you chose, you could become Chief Minister. Why not?’ said
Sharmaji generously and warily. He looked around, and his eye fell on the
Nawab Sahib of Baitar, who was stroking his beard and looking around
perplexedly. ‘Of course, you might lose a friend or two in the process,’ he added.
Mahesh Kapoor, who had followed his glance without turning his head, said
quietly: ‘There are zamindars and zamindars. Not all of them tie their friendship
to their land. The Nawab Sahib knows that I am acting out of principle.’ He
paused, and continued: ‘Some of my own relatives in Rudhia stand to lose their
land.’
The Chief Minister nodded at the sermon, then rubbed his hands, which were
cold. ‘Well, he is a good man,’ he said indulgently. ‘And so was his father,’ he
added.
Mahesh Kapoor was silent. The one thing Sharmaji could not be called was
rash; and yet here was a rash statement if ever there was one. It was well known
that the Nawab Sahib’s father, the late Nawab Sahib of Baitar, had been an active
member of the Muslim League; and though he had not lived to see the birth of
Pakistan, that above all was what he had dedicated his life to.
The tall, grey-bearded Nawab Sahib, noticing four eyes on him, gravely
raised his cupped hand to his forehead in polite salutation, then tilted his head
sideways with a quiet smile, as if to congratulate his old friend.
 ‘You haven’t seen Firoz and Imtiaz anywhere, have you?’ he asked Mahesh
Kapoor, after walking slowly over.
‘No, no—but I haven’t seen my son either, so I assume. . . .’
The Nawab Sahib raised his hands slightly, palms forward, in a gesture of
helplessness.
After a while he said: ‘So Pran is married, and Maan is next. I would imagine
you will find him a little less tractable.’
‘Well, tractable or not, there are some people in Banaras I have been talking
to,’ said Mahesh Kapoor in a determined tone. ‘Maan has met the father. He’s
also in the cloth business. We’re making inquiries. Let’s see. And what about
your twins? A joint wedding to two sisters?’
‘Let’s see, let’s see,’ said the Nawab Sahib, thinking rather sadly about his
wife, buried these many years; ‘Inshallah, all of them will settle down soon
enough.’

1.7
‘To the law,’ said Maan, raising his third glass of Scotch to Firoz, who was
sitting on his bed with a glass of his own. Imtiaz was lounging in a stuffed chair
and examining the bottle.
‘Thank you,’ said Firoz. ‘But not to new laws, I hope.’
‘Oh, don’t worry, don’t worry, my father’s bill will never pass,’ said Maan.
‘And even if it does, you’ll be much richer than me. Look at me,’ he added,
gloomily. ‘I have to work for a living.’
Since Firoz was a lawyer and his brother a doctor, it was not as if they fitted
the popular mould of the idle sons of aristocracy.
‘And soon,’ went on Maan, ‘if my father has his way, I’ll have to work on
behalf of two people. And later for more. Oh God!’
‘What—your father isn’t getting you married off, is he?’ asked Firoz, halfway
between a smile and a frown.
‘Well, the buffer zone disappeared tonight,’ said Maan disconsolately. ‘Have
another.’
‘No, no thanks, I still have plenty,’ said Firoz. Firoz enjoyed his drink, but
with a slightly guilty feeling; his father would approve even less than Maan’s.
‘So when’s the happy hour?’ he added uncertainly.
 ‘God knows. It’s at the inquiry stage,’ said Maan.
‘At the first reading,’ Imtiaz added.
For some reason, this delighted Maan. ‘At the first reading!’ he repeated.
‘Well, let’s hope it never gets to the third reading! And, even if it does, that the
President withholds his assent!’
He laughed and took a couple of long swigs. ‘And what about your
marriage?’ he demanded of Firoz.
Firoz looked a little evasively around the room. It was as bare and functional
as most of the rooms in Prem Nivas—which looked as if they expected the
imminent arrival of a herd of constituents. ‘My marriage!’ he said with a laugh.
Maan nodded vigorously.
‘Change the subject,’ said Firoz.
‘Why, if you were to go into the garden instead of drinking here in seclusion
—’
‘It’s hardly seclusion.’
‘Don’t interrupt,’ said Maan, throwing an arm around him. ‘If you were to go
down into the garden, a good-looking, elegant fellow like you, you would be
surrounded within seconds by eligible young beauties. And ineligible ones too.
They’d cling to you like bees to a lotus. Curly locks, curly locks, will you be
mine?’
Firoz flushed. ‘You’ve got the metaphor slightly wrong,’ he said. ‘Men are
bees, women lotuses.’
Maan quoted a couplet from an Urdu ghazal to the effect that the hunter could
turn into the hunted, and Imtiaz laughed.
‘Shut up, both of you,’ said Firoz, attempting to appear more annoyed than he
was; he had had enough of this sort of nonsense. ‘I’m going down. Abba will be
wondering where on earth we’ve got to. And so will your father. And besides,
we ought to find out if your brother is formally married yet—and whether you
really do now have a beautiful sister-in-law to scold you and curb your
excesses.’
‘All right, all right, we’ll all go down,’ said Maan genially. ‘Maybe some of
the bees will cling to us too. And if we get stung to the heart, Doctor Sahib here
can cure us. Can’t you, Imtiaz? All you would have to do would be to apply a
rose petal to the wound, isn’t that so?’
‘As long as there are no contraindications,’ said Imtiaz seriously.
‘No contraindications,’ said Maan, laughing as he led the way down the
stairs.
 ‘You may laugh,’ said Imtiaz. ‘But some people are allergic even to rose
petals. Talking of which, you have one sticking to your cap.’
‘Do I?’ asked Maan. ‘These things float down from nowhere.’
‘So they do,’ said Firoz, who was walking down just behind him. He gently
brushed it away.

1.8
Because the Nawab Sahib had been looking somewhat lost without his sons,
Mahesh Kapoor’s daughter Veena had drawn him into her family circle. She
asked him about his eldest child, his daughter Zainab, who was a childhood
friend of hers but who, after her marriage, had disappeared into the world of
purdah. The old man talked about her rather guardedly, but about her two
children with transparent delight. His grandchildren were the only two beings in
the world who had the right to interrupt him when he was studying in his library.
But now the great yellow ancestral mansion of Baitar House, just a few minutes’
walk from Prem Nivas, was somewhat run down, and the library too had
suffered. ‘Silverfish, you know,’ said the Nawab Sahib. ‘And I need help with
cataloguing. It’s a gigantic task, and in some ways not very heartening. Some of
the early editions of Ghalib can’t be traced now; and some valuable manuscripts
by our own poet Mast. My brother never made a list of what he took with him to
Pakistan. . . .’
At the word Pakistan, Veena’s mother-in-law, withered old Mrs Tandon,
flinched. Three years ago, her whole family had had to flee the blood and flames
and unforgettable terror of Lahore. They had been wealthy, ‘propertied’ people,
but almost everything they had owned was lost, and they had been lucky to
escape with their lives. Her son Kedarnath, Veena’s husband, still had scars on
his hands from an attack by rioters on his refugee convoy. Several of their
friends had been butchered.
The young, old Mrs Tandon thought bitterly, are very resilient: her grandchild
Bhaskar had of course only been six at the time; but even Veena and Kedarnath
had not let those events embitter their lives. They had returned here to Veena’s
hometown, and Kedarnath had set himself up in a small way in—of all polluting,
carcass-tainted things—the shoe trade. For old Mrs Tandon, the descent from a
decent prosperity could not have been more painful. She had been willing to
tolerate talking to the Nawab Sahib though he was a Muslim, but when he
mentioned comings and goings from Pakistan, it was too much for her
imagination. She felt ill. The pleasant chatter of the garden in Brahmpur was
amplified into the cries of the blood-mad mobs on the streets of Lahore, the
lights into fire. Daily, sometimes hourly, in her imagination she returned to what
she still thought of as her city and her home. It had been beautiful before it had
become so suddenly hideous; it had appeared completely secure so shortly
before it was lost forever.
The Nawab Sahib did not notice that anything was the matter, but Veena did,
and quickly changed the subject even at the cost of appearing rude. ‘Where’s
Bhaskar?’ she asked her husband.
‘I don’t know. I think I saw him near the food, the little frog,’ said Kedarnath.
‘I wish you wouldn’t call him that,’ said Veena. ‘He is your son. It’s not
auspicious. . . .’
‘It’s not my name for him, it’s Maan’s,’ said Kedarnath with a smile. He
enjoyed being mildly henpecked. ‘But I’ll call him whatever you want me to.’
Veena led her mother-in-law away. And to distract the old lady she did in fact
get involved in looking for her son. Finally they found Bhaskar. He was not
eating anything but simply standing under the great multicoloured cloth canopy
that covered the food tables, gazing upwards with pleased and abstract
wonderment at the elaborate geometrical patterns—red rhombuses, green
trapeziums, yellow squares and blue triangles—from which it had been stitched
together.

1.9
The crowds had thinned; the guests, some chewing paan, were departing at the
gate; a heap of gifts had grown by the side of the bench where Pran and Savita
had been sitting. Finally only they and a few members of the family were left—
and the yawning servants who would put away the more valuable furniture for
the night, or pack the gifts in a trunk under the watchful eye of Mrs Rupa Mehra.
The bride and groom were lost in their thoughts. They avoided looking at
each other now. They would spend the night in a carefully prepared room in
Prem Nivas, and leave for a week’s honeymoon in Simla tomorrow.
 Lata tried to imagine the nuptial room. Presumably it would be fragrant with
tuberoses; that, at least, was Malati’s confident opinion. I’ll always associate
tuberoses with Pran, Lata thought. It was not at all pleasant to follow her
imagination further. That Savita would be sleeping with Pran tonight did not
bear thinking of. It did not strike her as being at all romantic. Perhaps they
would be too exhausted, she thought optimistically.
‘What are you thinking of, Lata?’ asked her mother.
‘Oh, nothing, Ma,’ said Lata automatically.
‘You turned up your nose. I saw it.’
Lata blushed.
‘I don’t think I ever want to get married,’ she said emphatically.
Mrs Rupa Mehra was too wearied by the wedding, too exhausted by emotion,
too softened by Sanskrit, too cumbered with congratulations, too overwrought,
in short, to do anything but stare at Lata for ten seconds. What on earth had got
into the girl? What was good enough for her mother and her mother’s mother
and her mother’s mother’s mother should be good enough for her. Lata, though,
had always been a difficult one, with a strange will of her own, quiet but
unpredictable—like that time in St Sophia’s when she had wanted to become a
nun! But Mrs Rupa Mehra too had a will, and she was determined to have her
own way, even if she was under no illusions as to Lata’s pliability.
And yet, Lata was named after that most pliable thing, a vine, which was
trained to cling: first to her family, then to her husband. Indeed, when she was a
baby, Lata’s fingers had had a strong and coiling grasp which even now came
back with a sweet vividness to her mother. Suddenly Mrs Rupa Mehra burst out
with the inspired remark:
‘Lata, you are a vine, you must cling to your husband!’
It was not a success.
‘Cling?’ said Lata. ‘Cling?’ The word was pronounced with such quiet scorn
that her mother could not help bursting into tears. How terrible it was to have an
ungrateful daughter. And how unpredictable a baby could be.
Now that the tears were running down her cheeks, Mrs Rupa Mehra
transferred them fluidly from one daughter to the other. She clasped Savita to her
bosom and wept loudly. ‘You must write to me, Savita darling,’ she said. ‘You
must write to me every day from Simla. Pran, you are like my own son now, you
must be responsible and see to it. Soon I will be all alone in Calcutta—all alone.’
This was of course quite untrue. Arun and Varun and Meenakshi and Aparna
would all be crowded together with her in Arun’s little flat in Sunny Park. But
Mrs Rupa Mehra was one who believed with unformulated but absolute
conviction in the paramountcy of subjective over objective truth.

1.10
The tonga clip-clopped along the road, and the tonga-wallah sang out:
‘A heart was shattered into bits—and one fell here, and one fell there. . . .’
Varun started to hum along, then sang louder, then suddenly stopped.
‘Oh, don’t stop,’ said Malati, nudging Lata gently. ‘You have a nice voice.
Like a bulbul.’
‘In a china-china-shop,’ she whispered to Lata.
‘Heh, heh, heh.’ Varun’s laugh was nervous. Realizing that it sounded weak,
he tried to make it slightly sinister. But it didn’t work. He felt miserable. And
Malati, with her green eyes and sarcasm—for it had to be sarcasm—wasn’t
helping.
The tonga was quite crowded: Varun was sitting with young Bhaskar in the
front, next to the tonga-wallah; and back to back with them sat Lata and Malati
—both dressed in salwaar-kameez—and Aparna in her ice-cream-stained
sweater and a frock. It was a sunny winter morning.
The white-turbaned old tonga-wallah enjoyed driving furiously through this
part of town with its broad, relatively uncrowded streets—unlike the cramped
madness of Old Brahmpur. He started talking to his horse, urging him on.
Malati now began to sing the words of the popular film song herself. She
hadn’t meant to discourage Varun. It was pleasant to think of shattered hearts on
a cloudless morning.
Varun didn’t join in. But after a while he took his life in his hands and said,
turning around:
‘You have a—a wonderful voice.’
It was true. Malati loved music, and studied classical singing under Ustad
Majeed Khan, one of the finest singers in north India. She had even got Lata
interested in Indian classical music during the time they had lived together in the
student hostel. As a result, Lata often found herself humming some tune or other
in one of her favourite raags.
Malati did not disclaim Varun’s compliment.
 ‘Do you think so?’ she said, turning around to look deeply into his eyes. ‘You
are very sweet to say so.’
Varun blushed to the depths of his soul and was speechless for a few minutes.
But as they passed the Brahmpur Racecourse, he gripped the tonga-wallah’s arm
and cried:
‘Stop!’
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Lata.
‘Oh—nothing—nothing—if we’re in a hurry, let’s go on. Yes, let’s go on.’
‘Of course we’re not, Varun Bhai,’ she said. ‘We’re only going to the zoo.
Let’s stop if you want.’
After they had got down, Varun, almost uncontrollably excited, wandered to
the white palings and stared through.
‘It’s the only anticlockwise racecourse in India other than Lucknow,’ he
breathed, almost to himself, awestruck. ‘They say it’s based on the Derby,’ he
added to young Bhaskar, who happened to be standing next to him.
‘But what’s the difference?’ asked Bhaskar. ‘The distance is the same, isn’t it,
whether you run clockwise or anticlockwise?’
Varun paid no attention to Bhaskar’s question. He had started walking slowly,
dreamily, by himself, anticlockwise along the fence. He was almost pawing the
earth.
Lata caught up with him: ‘Varun Bhai?’ she said.
‘Er—yes? Yes?’
‘About yesterday evening.’
‘Yesterday evening?’ Varun dragged himself back to the two-legged world.
‘What happened?’
‘Our sister got married.’
‘Ah. Oh. Yes, yes, I know. Savita,’ he added, hoping to imply alertness by
specificity.
‘Well,’ said Lata, ‘don’t let yourself be bullied by Arun Bhai. Just don’t.’ She
stopped smiling, and looked at him as a shadow crossed his face. ‘I really hate it,
Varun Bhai, I really hate seeing him bully you. I don’t mean that you should
cheek him or answer back or anything, just that you shouldn’t let it hurt you the
way that—well, that I can see it does.’
‘No, no—’ he said, uncertainly.
‘Just because he’s a few years older doesn’t make him your father and teacher
and sergeant major all rolled into one.’
 Varun nodded unhappily. He was too well aware that while he lived in his
elder brother’s house he was subject to his elder brother’s will.
‘Anyway, I think you should be more confident,’ continued Lata. ‘Arun Bhai
tries to crush everyone around him like a steamroller, and it’s up to us to remove
our egos from his path. I have a hard enough time, and I’m not even in Calcutta.
I just thought I’d say so now, because at the house I’ll hardly get the chance to
talk to you alone. And tomorrow you’ll be gone.’
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,
sixteen 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 longingly 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.
Just after Raghubir Mehra had died, Mrs Rupa Mehra and her family had
gone to live with her father, who at that stage had not yet remarried. Given her
straitened finances, this seemed to be the only thing to do; she also thought that
he might be lonely, and hoped to help him with his household affairs. The
experiment had lasted a few months, and had been a disaster. Dr Kishen Chand
Seth was an impossible man to live with. Tiny though he was, he was a force to
reckon with not only at the medical college, from which he had retired as
Principal, but in Brahmpur at large: everyone was scared of him and obeyed him
tremblingly. He expected his home life to run on similar lines. He overrode Rupa
Mehra’s writ with respect to her own children. He left home suddenly for weeks
on end without leaving money or instructions for the staff. Finally, he accused
his daughter, whose good looks had survived her widowhood, of making eyes at
his colleagues when he invited them home—a shocking accusation for the
heartbroken though sociable Rupa. The teenaged Arun had threatened to beat up
his grandfather. There had been tears and yells and Dr Kishen Chand Seth had
pounded the floor with his stick. Then Mrs Rupa Mehra had left, weeping and
determined, with her brood of four, and had sought refuge with sympathetic
friends in Darjeeling.
Reconciliation had been effected a year later in a renewed bout of weeping.
Since then things had jolted along. The marriage with Parvati (which had
shocked not just his family but Brahmpur at large because of the disparity of
age), Lata’s enrolment at Brahmpur University, Savita’s engagement (which Dr
Kishen Chand Seth had helped arrange), Savita’s wedding (which he had almost
wrecked and from which he had wilfully absented himself): all these were
landmarks along an extremely bumpy road. But family was family, and, as Mrs
Rupa Mehra continually told herself, one had to take the rough with the smooth.
Several months had now passed since Savita’s wedding. Winter had gone and
the pythons in the zoo had emerged from hibernation. Roses had replaced
narcissi, and had been replaced in their turn by the purple-wreath creeper, whose
five-bladed flowers helicoptered gently to the ground in the hot breeze. The
broad, silty-brown Ganga, flowing due east past the ugly chimneys of the
tannery and the marble edifice of the Barsaat Mahal, past Old Brahmpur with its
crowded bazaars and alleys, temples and mosques, past the bathing ghats and the
cremation ghat and the Brahmpur Fort, past the whitewashed pillars of the
Subzipore Club and the spacious estate of the university, had shrunken with the
summer, but boats and steamers still plied busily up and down its length, as did
trains along the parallel railway line that bounded Brahmpur to the south.
Lata had left the hostel and had gone to live with Savita and Pran, who had
descended from Simla to the plains very much in love. Malati visited Lata often,
and had grown to like the lanky Pran, of whom she had formed such an
unfavourable first impression. Lata too liked his decent, affectionate ways, and
was not too upset to learn that Savita was pregnant. Mrs Rupa Mehra wrote long
letters to her daughters from Arun’s flat in Calcutta, and complained repeatedly
that no one replied to her letters either soon enough or often enough.
Though she did not mention this in any of her letters for fear of enraging her
daughter, Mrs Rupa Mehra had tried—without success—to find a match for Lata
in Calcutta. Perhaps she had not made enough effort, she told herself: she was,
after all, still recovering from the excitement and exertion of Savita’s wedding.
But now at last she was going back to Brahmpur for a three-month stint at what
she had begun to call her second home: her daughter’s home, not her father’s. As
the train puffed along towards Brahmpur, the propitious city which had yielded
her one son-in-law already, Mrs Rupa Mehra promised herself that she would
make another attempt. Within a day or two of her arrival she would go to her
father for advice.

1.13
In the event, it was not necessary to go to Dr Kishen Chand Seth for advice. He
drove to the university the next day in a fury and arrived at Pran Kapoor’s house.
It was three in the afternoon, and hot. Pran was at the department. Lata was
attending a lecture on the Metaphysical Poets. Savita had gone shopping.
Mansoor, the young servant, tried to soothe Dr Kishen Chand Seth by offering
him tea, coffee or fresh lime juice. All this was brushed brusquely aside.
‘Is anyone at home? Where is everyone?’ asked Dr Kishen Chand Seth in a
rage. His short, compressed and very jowly appearance made him look a little
like a fierce and wrinkled Tibetan watchdog. (Mrs Rupa Mehra’s good looks had
been the gift of her mother.) He carried a carved Kashmiri cane which he used
more for emphasis than for support. Mansoor hurried inside.
‘Burri Memsahib?’ he called, knocking at the door of Mrs Rupa Mehra’s
room.
‘What? . . . Who?’
‘Burri Memsahib, your father is here.’
‘Oh. Oh.’ Mrs Rupa Mehra, who had been enjoying an afternoon nap, woke
into a nightmare. ‘Tell him I will be with him immediately, and offer him some
tea.’
‘Yes, Memsahib.’
Mansoor entered the drawing room. Dr Seth was staring at an ashtray.
‘Well? Are you dumb as well as half-witted?’ asked Dr Kishen Chand Seth.
‘She’s just coming, Sahib.’
‘Who’s just coming? Fool!’
‘Burri Memsahib, Sahib. She was resting.’
 That Rupa, his mere chit of a daughter, could ever somehow have been
elevated into not just a Memsahib but a Burri Memsahib puzzled and annoyed
Dr Seth.
Mansoor said, ‘Will you have some tea, Sahib? Or coffee?’
‘Just now you offered me nimbu pani.’
‘Yes, Sahib.’
‘A glass of nimbu pani.’
‘Yes, Sahib. At once.’ Mansoor made to go.
‘And oh—’
‘Yes, Sahib?’
‘Are there any arrowroot biscuits in this house?’
‘I think so, Sahib.’
Mansoor went into the back garden to pluck a couple of limes, then returned
to the kitchen to squeeze them into juice.
Dr Kishen Chand Seth picked up a day-old Statesman in preference to that
day’s Brahmpur Chronicle, and sat down to read in an armchair. Everyone was
half-witted in this house.
Mrs Rupa Mehra dressed hurriedly in a black-and-white cotton sari and
emerged from her room. She entered the drawing room, and began to apologize.
‘Oh, stop it, stop it, stop all this nonsense,’ said Dr Kishen Chand Seth
impatiently in Hindi.
‘Yes, Baoji.’
‘After waiting for a week I decided to visit you. What kind of daughter are
you?’
‘A week?’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra palely.
‘Yes, yes, a week. You heard me, Burri Memsahib.’
Mrs Rupa Mehra didn’t know which was worse, her father’s anger or his
sarcasm.
‘But I only arrived from Calcutta yesterday.’
Her father seemed ready to explode at this patent fiction when Mansoor came
in with the nimbu pani and a plate of arrowroot biscuits. He noticed the
expression on Dr Seth’s face and stood hesitantly by the door.
‘Yes, yes, put it down here, what are you waiting for?’
Mansoor set the tray down on a small glass-topped table and turned to leave.
Dr Seth took a sip and bellowed in fury—
‘Scoundrel!’
 Mansoor turned, trembling. He was only sixteen, and was standing in for his
father, who had taken a short leave. None of his teachers during his five years at
a village school had inspired in him such erratic terror as Burri Memsahib’s
crazy father.
‘You rogue—do you want to poison me?’
‘No, Sahib.’
‘What have you given me?’
‘Nimbu pani, Sahib.’
Dr Seth, jowls shaking, looked closely at Mansoor. Was he trying to cheek
him?
‘Of course it’s nimbu pani. Did you think I thought it was whisky?’
‘Sahib.’ Mansoor was nonplussed.
‘What have you put in it?’
‘Sugar, Sahib.’
‘You buffoon! I have my nimbu pani made with salt, not sugar,’ roared Dr
Kishen Chand Seth. ‘Sugar is poison for me. I have diabetes, like your Burri
Memsahib. How many times have I told you that?’
Mansoor was tempted to reply, ‘Never,’ but thought better of it. Usually Dr
Seth had tea, and he brought the milk and sugar separately.
Dr Kishen Chand Seth rapped his stick on the floor. ‘Go. Why are you staring
at me like an owl?’
‘Yes, Sahib. I’ll make another glass.’
‘Leave it. No. Yes—make another glass.’
‘With salt, Sahib.’ Mansoor ventured to smile. He had quite a nice smile.
‘What are you laughing at like a donkey?’ asked Dr Seth. ‘With salt, of
course.’
‘Yes, Sahib.’
‘And, idiot—’
‘Yes, Sahib?’
‘With pepper too.’
‘Yes, Sahib.’
Dr Kishen Chand Seth veered around towards his daughter. She wilted before
him.
‘What kind of daughter do I have?’ he asked rhetorically. Rupa Mehra waited
for the answer, and it was not long in coming. ‘Ungrateful!’ Her father bit into an
arrowroot biscuit for emphasis. ‘Soggy!’ he added in disgust.
Mrs Rupa Mehra knew better than to protest.
 Dr Kishen Chand Seth went on:
‘You have been back from Calcutta for a week and you haven’t visited me
once. Is it me you hate so much or your stepmother?’
Since her stepmother, Parvati, was considerably younger than herself, Mrs
Rupa Mehra found it very difficult to think of her other than as her father’s nurse
and, later, mistress. Though fastidious, Mrs Rupa Mehra did not entirely resent
Parvati. Her father had been lonely for three decades after her mother had died.
Parvati was good to him and (she supposed) good for him. Anyway, thought Mrs
Rupa Mehra, this is the way things happen in the world. It is best to be on good
terms with everyone.
‘But I only arrived here yesterday,’ she said. She had told him so a minute
ago, but he evidently did not believe her.
‘Hunh!’ said Dr Seth dismissively.
‘By the Brahmpur Mail.’
‘You wrote in your letter that you would be coming last week.’
‘But I couldn’t get reservations, Baoji, so I decided to stay in Calcutta another
week.’ This was true, but the pleasure of spending time with her three-year-old
granddaughter Aparna had also been a factor in her delay.
‘Have you heard of telegrams?’
‘I thought of sending you one, Baoji, but I didn’t think it was so important.
Then, the expense. . . .’
‘Ever since you became a Mehra you have become completely evasive.’
This was an unkind cut, and could not fail to wound. Mrs Rupa Mehra bowed
her head.
‘Here. Have a biscuit,’ said her father in a conciliatory manner.
Mrs Rupa Mehra shook her head.
‘Eat, fool!’ said her father with rough affection. ‘Or are you still keeping
those brainless fasts that are so bad for your health?’
‘It is Ekadashi today.’ Mrs Rupa Mehra fasted on the eleventh day of each
lunar fortnight in memory of her husband.
‘I don’t care if it’s ten Ekadashis,’ said her father with some heat. ‘Ever since
you came under the influence of the Mehras you have become as religious as
your ill-fated mother. There have been too many mismatched marriages in this
family.’
The combination of these two sentences, loosely coupled in several possible
wounding interpretations, was too much for Mrs Rupa Mehra. Her nose began to
redden. Her husband’s family was no more religious than it was evasive.
Raghubir’s brothers and sisters had taken her to their heart in a manner both
affecting and comforting to a sixteen-year-old bride, and still, eight years after
her husband’s death, she visited as many of them as possible in the course of
what her children called her Annual Trans-India Rail-Pilgrimage. If she was
growing to be ‘as religious as her mother’ (which she was not—at least not yet),
the operative influence was probably the obvious one: that of her mother, who
had died in the post-First-World-War influenza epidemic, when Rupa was very
young. A faded image now came before her eyes: the soft spirit of Dr Kishen
Chand Seth’s first wife could not have been more distant from his own
freethinking, allopathic soul. His comment about mismatched marriages injured
the memory of two loved ghosts, and was possibly even intended as an insult to
the asthmatic Pran.
‘Oh don’t be so sensitive!’ said Dr Kishen Chand Seth brutally. Most women,
he had decided, spent two-thirds of their time weeping and whimpering. What
good did they think it did? As an afterthought he added, ‘You should get Lata
married off soon.’
Mrs Rupa Mehra’s head jerked up. ‘Oh? Do you think so?’ she said. Her
father seemed even more full of surprises than usual.
‘Yes. She must be nearly twenty. Far too late. Parvati got married when she
was in her thirties, and see what she got. A suitable boy must be found for Lata.’
‘Yes, yes, I was just thinking the same,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘But I don’t
know what Lata will say.’
Dr Kishen Chand Seth frowned at this irrelevance.
‘And where will I find a suitable boy?’ she continued. ‘We were lucky with
Savita.’
‘Lucky—nothing! I made the introduction. Is she pregnant? No one tells me
anything,’ said Dr Kishen Chand Seth.
‘Yes, Baoji.’
Dr Seth paused to interpret the yes. Then he said: ‘It’s about time. I hope I get
a great-grandson this time.’ He paused again. ‘How is she?’
‘Well, a bit of morning sickness,’ began Mrs Rupa Mehra.
‘No, idiot, I mean my great-granddaughter, Arun’s child,’ said Dr Kishen
Chand Seth impatiently.
‘Oh, Aparna? She’s very sweet. She’s grown very attached to me,’ said Mrs
Rupa Mehra happily. ‘Arun and Meenakshi send their love.’
This seemed to satisfy Dr Seth for the moment, and he bit his arrowroot
biscuit carefully. ‘Soft,’ he complained. ‘Soft.’
 Things had to be just so for her father, Mrs Rupa Mehra knew. When she was
a child she had not been allowed to drink water with her meals. Each morsel had
to be chewed twenty-four times to aid digestion. For a man so particular about,
indeed so fond of, his food, it was sad to see him reduced to biscuits and boiled
eggs.
‘I’ll see what I can do for Lata,’ her father went on. ‘There’s a young
radiologist at the Prince of Wales. I can’t remember his name. If we had thought
about it earlier and used our imaginations we could have captured Pran’s
younger brother and had a double wedding. But now they say he’s got engaged
to that Banaras girl. Perhaps that is just as well,’ he added, remembering that he
was supposed to be feuding with the Minister.
‘But you can’t go now, Baoji. Everyone will be back soon,’ protested Mrs
Rupa Mehra.
‘Can’t? Can’t? Where is everyone when I want them?’ retorted Dr Kishen
Chand Seth. He clicked his tongue impatiently. ‘Don’t forget your stepmother’s
birthday next week,’ he added as he walked to the door.
Mrs Rupa Mehra looked wistfully and worriedly from the doorway at her
father’s back. On the way to his car he paused by a bed of red and yellow cannas
in Pran’s front garden, and she noticed him get more and more agitated.
Bureaucratic flowers (among which he also classified marigolds, bougainvillaea
and petunias) infuriated him. He had banned them at the Prince of Wales
Medical College as long as he had wielded supreme power there; now they were
making a comeback. With one swipe of his Kashmiri walking stick he lopped off
the head of a yellow canna. As his daughter tremblingly watched, he got into his
ancient grey Buick. This noble machine, a Raja among the rabble of Austins and
Morrises that plied the Indian roads, was still slightly dented from the time
when, ten years ago, Arun (on a visit during his vacation from St George’s) had
taken it for a catastrophic joyride. Arun was the only one in the family who
could defy his grandfather and get away with it, indeed was loved the more for
it. As Dr Kishen Chand Seth drove off, he told himself that this had been a
satisfying visit. It had given him something to think about, something to plan.
Mrs Rupa Mehra took a few moments to recover from her father’s bracing
company. Suddenly realizing how hungry she was, she began to think of her
sunset meal. She could not break her fast with grain, so young Mansoor was
dispatched to the market to buy some raw bananas to make into cutlets. As he
went through the kitchen to get the bicycle key and the shopping bag, he passed
by the counter, and noticed the rejected glass of nimbu pani: cool, sour, inviting.
 He swiftly gulped it down.

1.14
Everyone who knew Mrs Rupa Mehra knew how much she loved roses and,
particularly, pictures of roses, and therefore most of the birthday cards she
received featured roses of various colours and sizes, and various degrees of
copiousness and blatancy. This afternoon, sitting with her reading glasses on at
the desk in the room she shared with Lata, she was going through old cards for a
practical purpose, although the project threatened to overwhelm her with its
resonances of ancient sentiment. Red roses, yellow roses, even a blue rose here
and there combined themselves with ribbons, pictures of kittens and one of a
guilty-looking puppy. Apples and grapes and roses in a basket; sheep in a field
with a foreground of roses; roses in a misty pewter mug with a bowl of
strawberries resting nearby; violet-flushed roses graced with unrose-like,
unserrated leaves and mild, even inviting, green thorns: birthday cards from
family, friends and assorted well-wishers all over India, and even some from
abroad—everything reminded her of everything, as her elder son was apt to
remark.
Mrs Rupa Mehra glanced in a cursory manner over her piles of old New Year
cards before returning to the birthday roses. She took out a small pair of scissors
from the recesses of her great black handbag, and tried to decide which card she
would have to sacrifice. It was very rarely that Mrs Rupa Mehra bought a card
for anyone, no matter how close or dear the person was. The habit of necessary
thrift had sunk deep into her mind, but eight years of the deprivation of small
luxuries could not reduce for her the sanctity of the birthday greeting. She could
not afford cards, so she made them. In fact she enjoyed the creative challenge of
making them. Scraps of cardboard, shreds of ribbon, lengths of coloured paper,
little silver stars and adhesive golden numerals lay in a variegated trove at the
bottom of the largest of her three suitcases, and these were now pressed into
service. The scissors poised, descended. Three silver stars were parted from their
fellows, and pasted (with the help of borrowed glue—this was the only
constituent Mrs Rupa Mehra did not, for fear of leakage, carry with her) on to
three corners of the front of the folded blank white piece of cardboard. The
fourth corner, the northwest corner, could contain two golden numerals
indicating the age of the recipient.
But now Mrs Rupa Mehra paused—for surely the age of the recipient would
be an ambivalent detail in the present case. Her stepmother, as she could never
cease to remember, was fully ten years younger than she was, and the accusing
‘35’, even—or perhaps especially—in gold, could be seen—would be seen—as
implying an unacceptable disparity, possibly even an unacceptable motivation.
The golden numerals were put aside, and a fourth silver star joined its fellows in
a pattern of innocuous symmetry.
Postponing the decision of illustration, Mrs Rupa Mehra now looked for
assistance in building up a rhyming text for her card. The rose-and-pewter card
contained the following lines:
May the gladness you have scattered
Along life’s shining way
And the little deeds of kindness
That are yours from day to day
And the happiness you’ve showered
On others all life through
Return to swell your blessings
In this birthday hour for you.

This would not do for Parvati, Mrs Rupa Mehra decided. She turned to the card
illustrated with grapes and apples.
’Tis a day for hugs and kisses,
For cakes and candles too,
A day for all who love you
To renew their love anew,
A day for sweet reflection
Along life’s shining way,
And a day for all to tell you:
Have the wonderfullest day.

This showed promise but there was something wrong with the fourth line, Mrs
Rupa Mehra instinctively felt. Also, she would have to alter ‘hugs and kisses’ to
‘special greetings’; Parvati might very well deserve hugs and kisses but Mrs
Rupa Mehra was incapable of giving them to her.
Who had sent her this card? Queenie and Pussy Kapadia, two unmarried
sisters in their forties whom she had not met for years. Unmarried! The very
word was like a knell. Mrs Rupa Mehra paused in her thoughts for a moment,
and moved resolutely on.
 The puppy yapped an unrhymed and therefore unusable text—a mere ‘Happy
Birthday and Many Happy Returns’—but the sheep bleated in rhymes identical
to but sentiment marginally distinct from the others:
It’s not a standard greeting
For just one joyful day
But a wish that’s meant to cover
Life’s bright and shining way—
To wish you all the special things
That mean the most to you
So that this year and every year
Your fondest dreams come true.

Yes! Life’s shining way, a concept dear to Mrs Rupa Mehra, was here polished to
an even finer lustre. Nor did the lines commit her to any deep protestation of
affection for her father’s second wife. At the same time the greeting was not
accusably distant. She got out her black-and-gold Mont Blanc fountain pen,
Raghubir’s present to her when Arun was born—twenty-five years old and still
going strong, she reflected with a sad smile—and began to write.
Mrs Rupa Mehra’s handwriting was very small and well formed, and this
presented her in the present instance with a problem. She had chosen too large a
size of card in proportion to her affection, but the silver stars had been stuck and
it was too late to change that parameter. She now wished to fill as much space as
possible with the rhymed message so that she would not have to inscribe more
than a few words in her own right to supplement the verse. The first three
couplets were therefore laid out—with as much white space in between as would
not appear too obvious—on the left-hand side; an ellipsis of seven dots spoored
across the page in a semblance of suspense; and the concluding couplet was
allowed to crash down with thunderous blandness on the right.
‘To Dear Parvati—a very happy birthday, much love, Rupa,’ wrote Mrs Rupa
Mehra with a dutiful expression. Then, repenting, she added ‘est’ to the ‘Dear’.
It looked a little cramped now, but only a careful eye would perceive it as an
afterthought.
Now came the heartbreaking part: not the mere transcription of a stanza but
the actual sacrifice of an old card. Which of the roses would have to be
transplanted? After some thought, Mrs Rupa Mehra decided that she could not
bear to part with any of them. The dog, then? He looked mournful, even guilty—
besides, the picture of a dog, however appealing his appearance, was open to
misinterpretation. The sheep perhaps—yes, they would do. They were fluffy and
unemotional. She did not mind parting with them. Mrs Rupa Mehra was a
vegetarian, whereas both her father and Parvati were avid meat-eaters. The roses
in the foreground of the old card were preserved for future use, and the three
sheared sheep were driven carefully towards new pastures.
Before she sealed the envelope Mrs Rupa Mehra got out a small writing pad,
and wrote a few lines to her father:
Dearest Baoji,
Words cannot express how much happiness it gave me to see you yesterday. Pran and Savita
and Lata were very disappointed. They did not get the chance to be there, but such is life. About
the radiologist, or any other prospect for Lata, please pursue enquiries. A good khatri boy would
be best of course, but after Arun’s marriage I am capable of considering others. Fair or dark, as
you know, one cannot be choosy. I have recovered from my journey and remain, with much
affection,
Your everloving daughter,
Rupa

The house was quiet. She asked Mansoor for a cup of tea, and decided to write a
letter to Arun. She unfolded a green inland letter form, dated it carefully in her
minute and lucid script, and began.
My darling Arun,
I hope you are feeling much better and the pain in your back as well as the toothache is much
less. I was very sad and upset in Calcutta as we did not have much time to spend at the station
together due to the traffic on Strand and Howrah Bridge and you having to leave before the train
left because Meenakshi wanted you home early. You don’t know how very much you are in my
thoughts—much more than words can say. I thought maybe the preparations for the party could
have been postponed by ten minutes but it was not to be. Meenakshi knows best. Anyway
whatever it all was the net result was that we didn’t have long at the station and tears rolled down
my cheeks due to disappointment. My dear Varun also had to go back because he came in your
car to see me off. Such is life one doesn’t often get the things one wants. Now I only pray for you
to get well soon and keep good health wherever you are and have no more trouble with your back
so that you can play golf again which you are so fond of. If it be God’s will we will meet again
very soon. I love you lots and wish you all the happiness and success you well deserve. Your
Daddy would have been so proud to see you in Bentsen and Pryce, and now with wife and child.
Love and kisses to darling Aparna.
The journey passed peacefully and as planned, but I must admit I could not resist having some
mihidana at Burdwan. If you had been there you would have scolded me, but I could not resist my
sweet tooth. The ladies in my Ladies’ Reserve compartment were very friendly and we played
rummy and three-two-five and had a good chat. One of the ladies knew the Miss Pal we used to
visit in Darjeeling, the one who was engaged to the army captain but he died in the War. I had the
set of cards that Varun gave me for my last birthday in my bag, and they helped to while away the
journey. Whenever I travel I remember our saloon days with your Daddy. Please give him my
love and tell him to study hard in the good traditions of his father.
Savita is looking very well, and Pran is a first-class husband except for his asthma and most
caring. I think that he is having some difficulty with his department but he does not like to talk
about it. Your grandfather visited yesterday and could have given him some medical advice but
unfortunately only I was at home. By the way it is the birthday of your step-grandmother next
week, and maybe you should send her a card. Better late than sorry.
 I am suffering some pain in my foot but that is expected. Monsoons will be here in two three
months and then my joints will play up. Unfortunately Pran cannot afford a car on his lecturer’s
salary and the transport situation is not good. I take a bus or tonga to go here and there and
sometimes I walk. As you know, the Ganges is not far from the house and Lata also goes walking
quite a lot, she seems to enjoy it. It is quite safe as far as the dhobi-ghat near the university,
though there is a bit of a monkey menace.
Has Meenakshi had Daddy’s gold medals set yet? I like the idea of a neck-pendant for one and
the lid of a little cardamom-container for the other. That way you can read what is written on both
sides of the medal.
Now Arun mine, do not be cross with me for what I am saying, but I have been thinking a lot
about Lata lately, and I think you should build up her confidence which she is lacking despite her
brilliant record of studies. She is quite afraid of your comments, sometimes even I am afraid of
them. I know you do not mean to be harsh, but she is a sensitive girl and now that she is of
marriageable age she is super-sensitive. I am going to write to Mr. Gaur’s daughter Kalpana in
Delhi—she knows everyone, and may help us find a suitable match for Lata. Also I think it is
time for you to help in the matter. I could see how busy you were with work, so I mentioned it
very rarely when I was in Calcutta but it was always on my mind. Another covenanted boy from a
good family, does not have to be khatri, would be a dream come true. Now that the college year is
almost over Lata will have time. I may have many faults but I think I am a loving mother, and I
long to see all my children well settled.
Soon it will be April and I am afraid I will again be very depressed and lonely at heart because
that month will bring back memories of your father’s illness and death as if they happened only
the other day and it is eight long years that have gone by and so much has happened under the
bridge in this period. I know there are thousands who have had and are having much more to
suffer but to every human being one’s own sufferings seem the most and I am still very much
human and have not risen very much above the usual feelings of sorrow and disappointments. I
am trying very hard though believe me to rise above all this, and (D.V.) I will.

Here the inland letter form ended, and Mrs Rupa Mehra began to fill in—
transversely—the space left blank near the head of the letter:
Anyway space is short so my darling Arun I will end now. Do not worry at all about me, my
blood sugar level is OK I am sure, Pran is making me go for a test at the university clinic
tomorrow morning, and I have been careful about my diet except for one glass of very sweet
nimbu pani when I arrived tired after my journey.

Here she went on to write on the non-adhesive flap:

After I have written to Kalpana I will play a game of patience with Varun’s cards. Lots and lots of
love to you and to Varun and a big hug and lots of kisses to my little sweetheart Aparna, and of
course to Meenakshi also.
Yours everloving,
Ma

Fearing that her pen might run out during the course of her next letter, Mrs Rupa
Mehra opened her handbag and took out an already opened bottle of ink—
Parker’s Quink Royal Washable Blue—effectively separated from the other
contents of the handbag by several layers of rags and cellophane. A bottle of
glue she habitually carried had once leaked from its slit rubber cap with
disastrous consequences, and glue had thenceforth been banished from her
handbag, but ink had so far caused her only minor problems.
Mrs Rupa Mehra took out another inland letter form, then decided that this
would be a false economy in the present case, and began writing on a well-
husbanded pad of cream-coloured cambric bond:
Dearest Kalpana,
You have always been like a daughter to me so I will speak from the heart. You know how
worried I have been about Lata this last year or so. As you know, since your Uncle Raghubir died
I have had a hard time in many ways, and your father—who was so close to Uncle during his
lifetime—has been as good to me after his sad demise. Whenever I come to Delhi which is sadly
not often of late I feel happy when I am with you, despite the jackals that bark all night behind
your house, and since your dear mother passed away I have felt like a mother to you.
Now the time has come to get Lata well settled, and I must look all out for a suitable boy.
Arun should shoulder some responsibility in the matter but you know how it is, he is so occupied
with work and family. Varun is too young to help and is quite unsteady also. You my dear
Kalpana are a few years older to Lata and I hope you can suggest some suitable names among
your old college friends or others in Delhi. Maybe in October in the Divali holidays—or in
December in the Christmas-New Year holidays—Lata and I can come to Delhi to look into
things? I only mention this to mention it. Do please say what you think?
How is your dear father? I am writing from Brahmpur where I am staying with Savita and
Pran. All is well but the heat is already very delapidating and I am dreading April-May-June. I
wish you could have come to their wedding but what with Pimmy’s appendix operation I can
understand. I was worried to know she had not been well. I hope it is all resolved now. I am in
good health and my blood sugar is fine. I have taken your advice and had new glasses made and
can read and write without strain.
Please write soonest to this address. I will be here throughout March and April, maybe even in
May till Lata’s results for this year are out.
With fondest love,
Yours ever,
Ma (Mrs. Rupa Mehra)

P.S. Lata sometimes comes up with the idea that she will not get married. I hope you will cure her
of such theories. I know how you feel about early marriage after what happened with your
engagement, but in a different way I also feel that ’tis better to have loved and lost etc. Not that
love is always an unmixed blessing. P.S. Divali would be better than New Year for us to come to
Delhi, because it fits in better with my annual travel plans, but whichever time you say is fine.
Lovingly, Ma

Mrs Rupa Mehra looked over her letter (and her signature—she insisted on all
young people calling her Ma), folded it neatly in four, and sealed it in a matching
envelope. She fished out a stamp from her bag, licked it thoughtfully, stuck it on
the envelope, and wrote Kalpana’s address (from memory) as well as Pran’s
address on the back. Then she closed her eyes and sat perfectly still for a few
minutes. It was a warm afternoon. After a while she took out the pack of playing
cards from her bag. When Mansoor came in to take away the tea and to do the
accounts, he found she had dozed off over a game of patience.

1.15
The Imperial Book Depot was one of the two best bookshops in town, and was
located on Nabiganj, the fashionable street that was the last bulwark of
modernity before the labyrinthine alleys and ancient, cluttered neighbourhoods
of Old Brahmpur. Though it was a couple of miles away from the university
proper it had a greater following among students and teachers than the
University and Allied Bookshop, which was just a few minutes away from
campus. The Imperial Book Depot was run by two brothers, Yashwant and
Balwant, both almost illiterate in English, but both (despite their prosperous
roundness) so energetic and entrepreneurial that it apparently made no
difference. They had the best stock in town, and were extremely helpful to their
customers. If a book was not available in the shop, they asked the customer
himself to write down its name on the appropriate order form.
Twice a week an impoverished university student was paid to sort new
arrivals on to the designated shelves. And since the bookshop prided itself on its
academic as well as general stock, the proprietors unashamedly collared
university teachers who wandered in to browse, sat them down with a cup of tea
and a couple of publishers’ lists, and made them tick off titles that they thought
the bookshop should consider ordering. These teachers were happy to ensure that
books they needed for their courses would be readily available to their students.
Many of them resented the University and Allied Bookshop for its entrenched,
lethargic, unresponsive and high-handed ways.
After classes, Lata and Malati, both dressed casually in their usual salwaar-
kameez, went to Nabiganj to wander around and have a cup of coffee at the Blue
Danube coffee house. This activity, known to university students as ‘ganjing’,
they could afford to indulge in about once a week. As they passed the Imperial
Book Depot, they were drawn magnetically in. Each wandered off to her
favourite shelves and subjects. Malati headed straight for the novels, Lata went
for poetry. On the way, however, she paused by the science shelves, not because
she understood much science, but, rather, because she did not. Whenever she
opened a scientific book and saw whole paragraphs of incomprehensible words
and symbols, she felt a sense of wonder at the great territories of learning that
lay beyond her—the sum of so many noble and purposive attempts to make
objective sense of the world. She enjoyed the feeling; it suited her serious
moods; and this afternoon she was feeling serious. She picked up a random book
and read a random paragraph:

It follows from De Moivre’s formula that zn = rn (cos n + i sin n). Thus, if we allow complex
number z to describe a circle of radius r about the origin, zn will describe n complete times a
circle of radius rn as z describes its circle once. We also recall that r, the modulus of z, written |z|,
gives the distance of z from O, and that if z′=x′+iy′, then |z–z′| is the distance between z and z′.
With these preliminaries we may proceed to the proof of the theorem.

What exactly it was that pleased her in these sentences she did not know, but
they conveyed weight, comfort, inevitability. Her mind strayed to Varun and his
mathematical studies. She hoped that her brief words to him the day after the
wedding had done him some good. She should have written to him more often to
bolster his courage, but with exams coming up she had very little time for
anything. It was at the insistence of Malati—who was even busier than she was
—that she had gone ganjing at all.
She read the paragraph again, looking serious. ‘We also recall’ and ‘with
these preliminaries’ drew her into a compact with the author of these verities and
mysteries. The words were assured, and therefore reassuring: things were what
they were even in this uncertain world, and she could proceed from there.
She smiled to herself now not aware of her surroundings. Still holding the
book, she looked up. And this was how a young man, who had been standing not
far from her, was included, unintentionally, in her smile. He was pleasantly
startled, and smiled back at her. Lata frowned at him and looked down at the
page again. But she could not concentrate on it, and after a few moments,
replaced it on the shelf before making her way to Poetry.
Lata, whatever she thought of love itself, liked love poetry. ‘Maud’ was one
of her favourite poems. She began to flip through a volume of Tennyson.
The tall young man, who had (Lata noticed) slightly wavy black hair and very
good, rather aquiline, looks, seemed to be as interested in poetry as in
mathematics, because a few minutes later Lata was aware that he had shifted his
attention to the poetry shelves, and was glancing through the anthologies. Lata
felt that his eyes were on her from time to time. This annoyed her and she did
not look up. When, despite herself, she did, she noticed him innocently
immersed in his reading. She could not resist glancing at the cover of his book. It
was a Penguin: Contemporary Verse. He now looked up, and the tables were
turned. Before she could glance down again, he said: ‘It’s unusual for someone
to be interested in both poetry and mathematics.’
‘Is that so?’ said Lata severely.
‘Courant and Robbins—it’s an excellent work.’
‘Oh?’ said Lata. Then, realizing that the young man was referring to the
mathematics book she had picked randomly off the shelf, she said, ‘Is it?’ by
way of closure.
But the young man was eager to continue the conversation.
‘My father says so,’ he went on. ‘Not as a text but as a broad introduction to
various, well, facets of the subject. He teaches maths at the university.’
Lata looked around to see if Malati was listening. But Malati was intent on
her browsing in the front of the shop. Nor was anyone else eavesdropping; the
shop was not busy at this time of year—or this time of day.
‘Actually, I’m not interested in mathematics,’ said Lata with an air of finality.
The young man looked a little downcast before he rallied and confided, genially:
‘You know, nor am I. I’m a history student myself.’
Lata was amazed at his determination and, looking straight at him, said, ‘I
must go now. My friend is waiting for me.’ Even as she was saying this,
however, she could not help noticing how sensitive, even vulnerable, this wavy-
haired young man looked. This appeared to contradict his determined, bold
behaviour in speaking to an unknown, unintroduced, girl in a bookshop.
‘I’m sorry, I suppose I’ve been disturbing you?’ he apologized, as if reading
her thoughts.
‘No,’ said Lata. She was about to go to the front of the shop when he added
quickly, with a nervous smile, ‘In that case, may I ask you your name?’
‘Lata,’ said Lata shortly, though she didn’t see the logic of ‘in that case’.
‘Aren’t you going to ask me mine?’ asked the young man, his smile
broadening amiably.
‘No,’ said Lata, quite kindly, and rejoined Malati, who had a couple of
paperback novels in her hand.
‘Who’s he?’ whispered Malati conspiratorially.
‘Just someone,’ said Lata, glancing back a bit anxiously. ‘I don’t know. He
just came up to me and began a conversation. Hurry up. Let’s go. I’m feeling
hungry. And thirsty. It’s hot in here.’
The man at the counter was looking at Lata and Malati with the energetic
friendliness he showered on regular customers. The little finger of his left hand
was searching for wax in the crevices of his ear. He shook his head with
reproving benevolence and said in Hindi to Malati:
‘Exams are coming up, Malatiji, and you are still buying novels? Twelve
annas plus one rupee four annas makes two rupees altogether. I should not allow
this. You are like daughters to me.’
‘Balwantji, you would go out of business if we did not read your novels. We
are sacrificing our examination results at the altar of your prosperity,’ said
Malati.
‘I’m not,’ said Lata. The young man must have disappeared behind a
bookshelf, because she couldn’t see him anywhere.
‘Good girl, good girl,’ said Balwant, possibly referring to both of them.
‘Actually, we were going to get some coffee and came into your shop
unplanned,’ said Malati, ‘so I didn’t bring—’ She left the sentence unfinished
and flung a winning smile at Balwant.
‘No, no, that is not necessary—you can give it later,’ said Balwant. He and
his brother extended terms of easy credit to many students. When asked whether
this wasn’t bad for business, they would reply that they had never lost money
trusting anyone who bought books. And, certainly, they were doing very well for
themselves. They reminded Lata of the priests of a well-endowed temple. The
reverence with which the brothers treated their books supported the analogy.
‘Since you suddenly feel famished, we are going straight to the Blue Danube,’
said Malati decisively once they were outside the shop. ‘And there you will tell
me exactly what happened between that Cad and you.’
‘Nothing,’ said Lata.
‘Hah!’ said Malati in affectionate scorn. ‘So what did you two talk about?’
‘Nothing,’ said Lata. ‘Seriously, Malati, he just came up and started talking
nonsense, and I said nothing in reply. Or monosyllables. Don’t add chillies to
boiled potatoes.’
They continued to stroll down Nabiganj.
‘Quite tall,’ said Malati, a couple of minutes later.
Lata said nothing.
‘Not exactly dark,’ said Malati.
Lata did not think this was worth responding to either. ‘Dark’, as she
understood it, referred in novels to hair, not skin.
‘But very handsome,’ persisted Malati.
Lata made a wry face at her friend, but she was, to her own surprise, quite
enjoying her description.
 ‘What’s his name?’ continued Malati.
‘I don’t know,’ said Lata, looking at herself in the glass front of a shoe shop.
Malati was astonished at Lata’s ineptness. ‘You talked to him for fifteen
minutes and you don’t know his name?’
‘We did not talk for fifteen minutes,’ said Lata. ‘And I hardly talked at all. If
you’re so keen on him, why don’t you go back to the Imperial Book Depot and
ask him his name? Like you, he has no compunctions about talking to anyone.’
‘So you don’t like him?’
Lata was silent. Then she said, ‘No, I don’t. I’ve no reason to like him.’
‘It’s not all that easy for men to talk to us, you know,’ said Malati. ‘We
shouldn’t be so hard on them.’
‘Malati defending the weaker sex!’ said Lata. ‘I never thought I’d see the
day.’
‘Don’t change the subject,’ said Malati. ‘He didn’t seem the brazen type. I
know. Trust my five-hundredfold experience.’
Lata flushed. ‘It seemed pretty easy for him to talk to me,’ she said. ‘As if I
was the sort of girl who . . .’
‘Who what?’
‘Who can be talked to,’ ended Lata uncertainly. Visions of her mother’s
disapproval floated across her mind. She made an effort to push these away.
‘Well,’ said Malati, a little more quietly than usual as they entered the Blue
Danube, ‘he really does have nice looks.’
They sat down.
‘Nice hair,’ continued Malati, surveying the menu.
‘Let’s order,’ said Lata. Malati appeared to be in love with the word ‘nice’.
They ordered coffee and pastries.
‘Nice eyes,’ said Malati, five minutes later, laughing now at Lata’s studied
unresponsiveness.
Lata remembered the young man’s temporary nervousness when she had
looked straight at him.
‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘But so what? I have nice eyes too, and one pair is enough.’

1.16
While his mother-in-law was playing patience and his sister-in-law was fending
off Malati’s leading questions, Dr Pran Kapoor, that first-class husband and son-
in-law, was battling with the departmental problems he was reticent about
burdening his family with.
Pran, though a calm man by and large, and a kind man, regarded the head of
the English Department, Professor Mishra, with a loathing that made him almost
ill. Professor O.P. Mishra was a huge, pale, oily hulk, political and manipulative
to the very depths of his being. The four members of the syllabus committee of
the English Department were seated this afternoon around an oval table in the
staff room. It was an unusually warm day. The single window was open (to the
view of a dusty laburnum tree), but there was no breeze; everyone looked
uncomfortable, but Professor Mishra was sweating in profuse drops that
gathered on his forehead, wet his thin eyebrows, and trickled down the sides of
his large nose. His lips were sweetly pursed and he was saying in his genial,
high-pitched voice, ‘Dr Kapoor, your point is well taken, but I think that we will
need a little convincing.’
The point was the inclusion of James Joyce on the syllabus for the paper on
Modern British Literature. Pran Kapoor had been pressing this on the syllabus
committee for two terms—ever since he had been appointed a member—and at
last the committee had decided to agree whether to consider it.
Why, Pran wondered, did he dislike Professor Mishra so intensely? Although
Pran had been appointed to his lecturership five years ago under the headship of
his predecessor, Professor Mishra, as a senior member of the department, must
have had a say in hiring him. When he first came to the department, Professor
Mishra had gone out of his way to be gracious to him, even inviting him to tea at
his house. Mrs Mishra was a small, busy, worried woman, and Pran had liked
her. But despite Professor Mishra’s open-armed avuncularity, his Falstaffian bulk
and charm, Pran detected something dangerous: his wife and two young sons
were, so it seemed to him, afraid of their father.
Pran had never been able to understand why people loved power, but he
accepted it as a fact of life. His own father, for instance, was greatly attracted by
it: his enjoyment in its exercise went beyond the pleasure of being able to realize
his ideological principles. Mahesh Kapoor enjoyed being Revenue Minister, and
he would probably be happy to become either Chief Minister of Purva Pradesh
or a Minister in Prime Minister Nehru’s Cabinet in Delhi. The headaches, the
overwork, the responsibility, the lack of control over one’s own time, the
complete absence of opportunity to contemplate the world from a calm vantage
point: these mattered little to him. Perhaps it was true to say that Mahesh Kapoor
had contemplated the world sufficiently long from the calm vantage point of his
cell in a prison in British India, and now required what he had in fact acquired:
an intensely active role in running things. It was almost as if father and son had
exchanged between themselves the second and third stages of the accepted
Hindu scheme of life: the father was entangled in the world, the son longed to
separate himself into a life of philosophical detachment.
Pran, however, whether he liked it or not, was what the scriptures would call
a householder. He enjoyed Savita’s company, he basked in her warmth and care
and beauty, he looked forward to the birth of their child. He was determined not
to depend on his father for financial support, although the small salary of a
department lecturer—200 rupees per month—was barely enough to subsist on
—‘to subside on’, as he told himself in moments of cynicism. But he had applied
for a readership that had recently fallen open in the department; the salary
attached to that post was less pitiful, and it would be a step up in terms of the
academic hierarchy. Pran did not care about titular prestige, but he realized that
designations helped one’s designs. He wanted to see certain things done, and
being a reader would help him do them. He believed that he deserved the job,
but he had also learned that merit was only one criterion among several.
His experience of the recurrent asthmatic illness that had afflicted him since
childhood had made him calm. Excitement disturbed his breathing, and caused
him pain and incapacitation, and he had therefore almost dispensed with
excitability. This was the simple logic of it, but the path itself had been difficult.
He had studied patience, and by slow practice he had become patient. But
Professor O.P. Mishra had got under his skin in a way Pran had not been able to
envisage.
‘Professor Mishra,’ said Pran, ‘I am pleased that the committee has decided to
consider this proposal, and I am delighted that it has been placed second on the
agenda today and has at last come up for discussion. My main argument is quite
simple. You have read my note on the subject’—he nodded around the table to
Dr Gupta and Dr Narayanan—‘and you will, I am sure, appreciate that there is
nothing radical in my suggestion.’ He looked down at the pale blue type of the
cyclostyled sheets before him. ‘As you can see, we have twenty-one writers
whose works we consider it essential for our B.A. students to read in order for
them to obtain a proper understanding of Modern British Literature. But there is
no Joyce. And, I might add, no Lawrence. These two writers—’
 ‘Wouldn’t it be better,’ interrupted Professor Mishra, wiping an eyelash away
from the corner of his eye, ‘wouldn’t it be better if we were to concentrate on
Joyce for the moment? We will take up Lawrence at our session next month—
before we adjourn for the summer vacation.’
‘The two matters are interlinked, surely,’ said Pran, looking around the table
for support. Dr Narayanan was about to say something when Professor Mishra
pointed out:
‘But not on this agenda, Dr Kapoor, not on this agenda.’ He smiled at Pran
sweetly, and his eyes twinkled. He then placed his huge white hands, palms
down, on the table and said, ‘But what were you saying when I so rudely
interrupted?’
Pran looked at the large white hands emanating from the grand pulp of
Professor Mishra’s round body, and thought, I may look thin and fit, but I am
not, and this man, for all his slug-like pallor and bulk, has a great deal of
stamina. If I am to get agreement on this measure I must remain calm and
collected.
He smiled around the table, and said: ‘Joyce is a great writer. This is now
universally acknowledged. He is, for instance, the subject of increasing
academic study in America. I do think he should be on our syllabus too.’
‘Dr Kapoor,’ the high voice responded, ‘each point in the universe must make
up its own mind on the question of acknowledgement before acknowledgement
can be considered to be universal. We in India pride ourselves on our
Independence—an Independence won at great expense by the best men of
several generations, a fact I need not emphasize to the illustrious son of an even
more illustrious father. We should hesitate before we blindly allow the American
dissertation mill to order our priorities. What do you say, Dr Narayanan?’
Dr Narayanan, who was a Romantic Revivalist, seemed to look deep into his
soul for a few seconds. ‘That is a good point,’ he said judiciously, shaking his
head sideways for emphasis.
‘If we do not keep pace with our companions,’ continued Professor Mishra,
‘perhaps it is because we hear a different drummer. Let us step to the music that
we hear, we in India. To quote an American,’ he added.
Pran looked down at the table and said quietly: ‘I say Joyce is a great writer
because I believe he is a great writer, not because of what the Americans say.’ He
remembered his first introduction to Joyce: a friend had lent him Ulysses a
month before his Ph.D. oral examination at Allahabad University and he had, as
a result, ignored his own subject to the point where he had jeopardized his
academic career.
Dr Narayanan looked at him and came out suddenly in unexpected support.
‘“The Dead”,’ said Dr Narayanan. ‘A fine story. I read it twice.’
Pran looked at him gratefully.
Professor Mishra looked at Dr Narayanan’s small, bald head almost
approvingly. ‘Very good, very good,’ he said, as if applauding a small child.
‘But’—and his voice assumed a cutting edge—‘there is more to Joyce than “The
Dead”. There is the unreadable Ulysses. There is the worse than unreadable
Finnegans Wake. This kind of writing is unhealthy for our students. It
encourages them, as it were, in sloppy and ungrammatical writing. And what
about the ending of Ulysses? There are young and impressionable women whom
in our courses it is our responsibility to introduce to the higher things of life, Dr
Kapoor—your charming sister-in-law for example. Would you put a book like
Ulysses into her hands?’ Professor Mishra smiled benignly.
‘Yes,’ said Pran simply.
Dr Narayanan looked interested. Dr Gupta, who was mainly interested in
Anglo-Saxon and Middle English, looked at his nails.
‘It is heartening to come across a young man—a young lecturer’—Professor
Mishra looked over at the rank-conscious reader, Dr Gupta—‘who is so, shall I
say, so, well, direct in his opinions and so willing to share them with his
colleagues, however senior they may be. It is heartening. We may disagree of
course; but India is a democracy and we can speak our minds. . . .’ He stopped
for a few seconds, and stared out of the window at the dusty laburnum. ‘A
democracy. Yes. But even democracies are faced with hard choices. There can be
only one head of department, for example. And when a post falls open, of all the
deserving candidates only one can be selected. We are already hard-pressed to
teach twenty-one writers in the time we allot to this paper. If Joyce goes in, what
comes out?’
‘Flecker,’ said Pran without a moment’s hesitation.
Professor Mishra laughed indulgently. ‘Ah, Dr Kapoor, Dr Kapoor . . .’ he
intoned,
‘Pass not beneath, O Caravan, or pass not singing. Have you heard That silence where the birds
are dead yet something pipeth like a bird?

James Elroy Flecker, James Elroy Flecker.’ That seemed to settle it in his mind.
 Pran’s face became completely impassive. Does he believe this? he thought.
Does he really believe what he is implying? Aloud he said, ‘If Fletcher—Flecker
—is indispensable, I suggest we include Joyce as our twenty-second writer. I
would be pleased to put it to the committee for a vote.’ Surely, thought Pran, the
ignominy of being known to have turned Joyce down (as opposed to merely
having deferred the decision indefinitely) would be something that the
committee would not be willing to face.
‘Ah, Dr Kapoor, you are angry. Do not get angry. You want to pin us down,’
said Professor Mishra playfully. He turned his palms up on the table to display
his own helplessness. ‘But we did not agree to decide the matter at this meeting,
only to decide whether to decide it.’
This was too much for Pran in his present mood, though he knew it was true.
‘Please do not misunderstand me, Professor Mishra,’ he said, ‘but that line of
argument may be taken by those of us not well versed in the finer forms of
parliamentary byplay to be a species of quibbling.’
‘A species of quibbling . . . a species of quibbling.’ Professor Mishra
appeared delighted by the phrase, while both his colleagues looked appalled at
Pran’s insubordination. (This is like playing bridge with two dummies, thought
Pran.) Professor Mishra continued: ‘I will now order coffee, and we will collect
ourselves and approach the issues calmly, as it were.’
Dr Narayanan perked up at the prospect of coffee. Professor Mishra clapped
his hands, and a lean peon in a threadbare green uniform came in.
‘Is coffee ready?’ asked Professor Mishra in Hindi.
‘Yes, Sahib.’
‘Good.’ Professor Mishra indicated that it should be served.
The peon brought in a tray with a coffee pot, a small jug of hot milk, a bowl
of sugar, and four cups. Professor Mishra indicated that he should serve the
others first. The peon did so in the usual manner. Then Professor Mishra was
offered coffee. As Professor Mishra poured coffee into his cup, the peon moved
the tray deferentially backwards. Professor Mishra made to set down the coffee
pot, and the peon moved the tray forward. Professor Mishra picked up the milk
jug and began to add milk to his coffee, and the peon moved the tray backwards.
And so on for each of three spoons of sugar. It was like a comic ballet. It would
have been merely ridiculous, thought Pran, this display of the naked gradient of
power and obsequiousness between the department head and the department
peon, if it had only been some other department at some other university. But it
was the English Department of Brahmpur University—and it was through this
man that Pran had to apply to the selection committee for the readership he both
wanted and needed.
This same man whom in my first term I considered jovial, bluff, expansive,
charming, why have I transformed him in my mind into such a caricature of a
villain? thought Pran looking into his cup. Does he loathe me? No, that is his
strength: he doesn’t. He just wants his own way. In effective politics hatred is
just not useful. For him all this is like a game of chess—on a slightly vibrating
board. He is fifty-eight—he has two more years until he retires. How will I be
able to put up with him for so long? A sudden murderous impulse seized Pran,
whom murderous impulses never seized, and he realized his hands were
trembling slightly. And all this over Joyce, he said to himself. At least I haven’t
had a bronchial attack. He looked down at the pad on which he, as the junior
member of the committee, was taking the minutes of the meeting. It read simply:
Present: Professor O.P. Mishra (head); Dr R.B. Gupta;
Dr T.R. Narayanan; Dr P. Kapoor.
1. The Minutes of the last meeting were read and approved.

We have got nowhere, and we will get nowhere, he thought.

A few well-known lines from Tagore came into his head in Tagore’s own
English translation:
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the
dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening
thought and action—
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

At least his own mortal father had given him principles, thought Pran, even if he
had given him almost no time or company when he was younger. His mind
wandered back home, to the small whitewashed house, to Savita, her sister, her
mother—the family that he had taken into his heart and that had taken him into
theirs; and then to the Ganges flowing close by the house. (When he thought in
English, it was the Ganges, rather than the Ganga, to him.) He followed it first
downstream to Patna and Calcutta, then upstream past Banaras till it divided at
Allahabad; there he chose the Yamuna and followed it to Delhi. Are things as
closed-minded in the capital? he asked himself. As mad, as mean, as silly, as
rigid? How will I be able to live in Brahmpur all my life? And Mishra will
doubtless give me an excellent report just to see the back of me.
 1.17
But now Dr Gupta was laughing at a remark of Dr Narayanan’s, and Professor
Mishra was saying, ‘Consensus—consensus is the goal, the civilized goal—how
can we vote when we might be divided two votes against two? There were five
Pandavas, they could have voted if they chose, but even they did everything by
consensus. They even took a wife by consensus, ha, ha, ha! And Dr Varma is
indisposed as usual, so we are only four.’
Pran looked at the twinkling eyes, the great nose, the sweetly pursed lips with
reluctant admiration. University statutes required that the syllabus committee,
like departmental committees of any kind, should consist of an odd number of
members. But Professor Mishra, as head of the department, appointed the
members of each committee within his purview in such a way as always to
include someone who for reasons of health or research was likely to be
indisposed or absent. With an even number of members present, committees
were more reluctant than ever to bring things to the climax of a vote. And the
head, with his control over the agenda and the pacing of a meeting, could in the
circumstances gather even more effective power into his hands.
‘I think we have, as it were, expended enough time on item two,’ said
Professor Mishra. ‘Shall we go on to chiasmus and anacoluthia?’ He was
referring to a proposal, put forward by himself, that they eliminate too detailed a
study of traditional figures of speech for the paper in Literary Theory and
Criticism. ‘And then we have the question of symmetrical auxiliaries proposed
by the junior member of the committee. Though this will, of course, depend
upon other departments agreeing to our proposals. And finally, since the shades
of night are falling,’ continued Professor Mishra, ‘I think we should, without
prejudice to items five, six, and seven, wind up the meeting. We can take up
those items next month.’
But Pran was unwilling to be dissuaded from pressing on with the unresolved
question of Joyce. ‘I think we have now collected ourselves,’ he said, ‘and can
approach the issue under discussion quite calmly. If I were willing to accept that
Ulysses might be a bit, well, difficult for B.A. students, would the committee
agree to include Dubliners on the syllabus as a first step? Dr Gupta, what do you
think?’
Dr Gupta looked up at the slowly circulating fan. His ability to get speakers
on Old and Middle English invited to the departmental seminar depended upon
Professor Mishra’s goodwill: outside speakers entailed incidental expenses, and
funds had to be approved by the head of the department. Dr Gupta knew as well
as anyone what ‘as a first step’ implied. He looked up at Pran and said, ‘I would
be willing—’
But he was swiftly interrupted in his sentence, whatever that might have
been. ‘We are forgetting,’ Professor Mishra cut in, ‘something that even I, I must
admit, did not bear in mind earlier in this discussion. I mean that, by tradition,
the Modern British Literature paper does not include writers who were living at
the time of the Second World War.’ This was news to Pran, who must have
looked astonished, because Professor Mishra felt compelled to explain: ‘This is
not altogether a matter for surprise. We need the distance of time objectively to
appraise the stature of modern writers, to include them in our canon, as it were.
Do remind me, Dr Kapoor . . . when did Joyce die?’
‘1941,’ said Pran sharply. It was clear that the great white whale had known
this all along.
‘Well, there you are . . .’ said Professor Mishra helplessly. His finger moved
down the agenda.
‘Eliot, of course, is still alive,’ said Pran quietly, looking at the list of
prescribed authors.
The head of the department looked as if he had been slapped across the face.
He opened his mouth slightly, then pursed his lips together. The jolly twinkle
appeared again in his eyes. ‘But Eliot, Eliot, surely—we have objective criteria
enough in his case—why, even Dr Leavis—’
Professor Mishra clearly responded to a different drummer from the
Americans, reflected Pran. Aloud he said, ‘Dr Leavis, as we know, greatly
approves of Lawrence too. . . .’
‘We have agreed to discuss Lawrence next time,’ Professor Mishra
expostulated.
Pran gazed out of the window. It was getting dark and the leaves of the
laburnum now looked cool, not dusty. He went on, not looking at Professor
Mishra: ‘. . . and, besides, Joyce has a better claim as a British writer in Modern
British Literature than Eliot. So if we—’
‘That, my young friend, if I may say so,’ cut in Professor Mishra, ‘could be
considered a species of quibbling.’ He was recovering quickly from his shock. In
a minute he would be quoting Prufrock.
What is it about Eliot, thought Pran irrelevantly, his mind wandering from the
subject at hand, that makes him such a sacred cow for us Indian intellectuals?
Aloud he said: ‘Let us hope that T.S. Eliot has many more years of life, of
productive life. I am glad that, unlike Joyce, he did not die in 1941. But we are
now living in 1951, which implies that the pre-war rule you mentioned, even if it
is a tradition, could not be a very ancient one. If we can’t do away with it, why
not update it? Surely its purpose is that we should revere the dead above the
living—or, to be less sceptical, appraise the dead before the living. Eliot, who is
alive, has been granted a waiver. I propose we grant Joyce one. A friendly
compromise.’ Pran paused, then added: ‘As it were.’ He smiled. ‘Dr Narayanan,
are you for “The Dead”?’
‘Yes, well, I think so,’ said Dr Narayanan with the faintest of responding
smiles, before Professor Mishra could interrupt.
‘Dr Gupta?’ asked Pran.
Dr Gupta could not look Professor Mishra in the eye.
‘I agree with Dr Narayanan,’ said Professor Gupta.
There was silence for a few seconds. Pran thought, I can’t believe it. I’ve
won. I’ve won. I can’t believe it.
And indeed, it seemed that he had. Everyone knew that the approval of the
Academic Council of the university was usually a formality once the syllabus
committee of a department had decided matters.
As if nothing in the least untoward had occurred, the head of the department
gathered together the reins of the meeting. The great soft hands scuttled across
the cyclostyled sheets. ‘The next item . . .’ said Professor Mishra with a smile,
then paused and began again: ‘but before we go on to the next item, I should say
that I personally have always greatly admired James Joyce as a writer. I am
delighted, needless to say—’
A couple of lines of poetry came terrifyingly unbidden to Pran’s mind:
Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar,
Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell?

and he burst into a fit of sudden laughter, incomprehensible even to himself,

which went on for twenty seconds and ended in a spasm of coughing. He bent
his head and tears streamed down his cheeks. Professor Mishra rewarded him
with a look of unfeigned fury and hatred.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ muttered Pran as he recovered. Dr Gupta was thumping him
vigorously on the back, which was not helpful. ‘Please continue—I was
overcome—it sometimes happens. . . .’ But to offer any further explanation was
impossible.
 The meeting was resumed and the next two points discussed quickly. There
was no real disagreement. It was dark now; the meeting was adjourned. As Pran
left the room Professor Mishra put a friendly arm around his shoulder. ‘My dear
boy, that was a fine performance.’ Pran shuddered at the memory. ‘You are
clearly a man of great integrity, intellectual and otherwise.’ Oh, oh, what is he up
to now? thought Pran. Professor Mishra continued: ‘The Proctor has been
badgering me since last Tuesday to submit a member of my department—it’s our
turn, you know—to join the student welfare committee of the university. . . .’ Oh
no, thought Pran, there goes one day every week. ‘. . . and I have decided to
volunteer you.’ I didn’t know the verb was transitive, thought Pran. In the
darkness—they were now walking across the campus—it was difficult for
Professor Mishra entirely to disguise the active dislike in his high voice. Pran
could almost see the pursed lips, the specious twinkle. He was silent, and that, to
the head of the English Department, implied acceptance.
‘I realize you are busy, my dear Dr Kapoor, what with your extra tutorials,
the Debating Society, the Colloquium, putting on plays and so on. . . .’ said
Professor Mishra. ‘The sort of thing that makes one deservedly popular with
students. But you are comparatively new here, my dear fellow—five years is not
a long time from the perspective of an old fogey like me—and you must allow
me to give you a word of advice. Cut down on your unacademic activities. Don’t
tire yourself out unnecessarily. Don’t take things so seriously. What were those
wonderful lines of Yeats?
She bid me take life easy as the leaves grown on the tree,
But I being young and foolish with her did not agree.

I’m sure your charming wife would endorse that. Don’t drive yourself so hard—
your health depends on it. And your future, I dare say. . . . In some ways you are
your own worst enemy.’
But I am only my metaphorical enemy, thought Pran. And obstinacy on my
part has earned me the actual enmity of the formidable Professor Mishra. But
was Professor Mishra more dangerous or less dangerous to him—in this matter
of the readership, for instance, now that Pran had won his hatred?
What was Professor Mishra thinking, wondered Pran. He imagined his
thoughts went something like this: I should never have got this uppity young
lecturer on to the syllabus committee. It’s too late, however, to regret all that. But
at least his presence here has kept him from working mischief in, say, the
admissions committee; there he could have brought up all kinds of objections to
students I wanted to bring in if they weren’t selected entirely on the basis of
merit. As for the university’s selection committee for the readership in English, I
must rig this somehow before I allow it to meet—
But Pran got no further clues to the inner working of that mysterious
intelligence. For at this point the paths of the two colleagues diverged and, with
expressions of great mutual respect, they parted from each other.

1.18
Meenakshi, Arun’s wife, was feeling utterly bored, so she decided to have her
daughter Aparna brought to her. Aparna was looking even more pretty than
usual: round and fair and black-haired with gorgeous eyes, as sharp as those of
her mother. Meenakshi pressed the electric buzzer twice (the signal for the
child’s ayah) and looked at the book in her lap. It was Thomas Mann’s
Buddenbrooks, and it was unutterably dull. She didn’t know how she was going
to get through another five pages of it. Arun, delighted though he normally was
with her, had the irksome habit of throwing an improving book her way now and
then, and Meenakshi felt his suggestions were more in the way of subtle
commands. ‘A wonderful book. . . .’ Arun would say some evening, laughing, in
the company of the oddly flippant crowd they mixed with, a crowd that
Meenakshi felt convinced could not possibly be more interested than she was in
Buddenbrooks or any other such clotted Germanic construct. ‘. . . I have been
reading this marvellous book by Mann, and I’m now getting Meenakshi involved
in it.’ Some of the others, especially the languid Billy Irani, would look from
Arun to Meenakshi in momentary wonderment, and the topic would pass to
office matters or the social world or racing or dancing or golf or the Calcutta
Club or complaints about ‘these bloody politicians’ or ‘these brainless
bureaucrats’, and Thomas Mann would be quite forgotten. But Meenakshi would
now feel obliged to read enough of the book to convey an acquaintance with its
contents, and it seemed to make Arun happy to see her do so.
How wonderful Arun was, thought Meenakshi, and how pleasant it was to
live in this nice flat in Sunny Park, not far from her father’s house on Ballygunge
Circular Road, and why did they have to have all these furious tiffs? Arun was
incredibly hotheaded and jealous, and she had only to look languidly at the
languid Billy for Arun to start smouldering somewhere deep inside. It might be
wonderful to have a smouldering husband in bed later, Meenakshi reflected, but
such advantages did not come unadulterated. Sometimes Arun would go off into
a smouldering sulk, and was quite spoilt for love-making. Billy Irani had a
girlfriend, Shireen, but that made no difference to Arun, who suspected
Meenakshi (quite correctly) of harbouring a casual lust for his friend. Shireen for
her part occasionally sighed amidst her cocktails and announced that Billy was
incorrigible.
When the ayah arrived in answer to the bell, Meenakshi said, ‘Baby lao!’ in a
kind of pidgin Hindi. The aged ayah, most of whose reactions were slow, turned
creakingly to fulfil her mistress’s behest. Aparna was fetched. She had been
having her afternoon nap, and yawned as she was brought in to her mother. Her
small fists were rubbing her eyes.
‘Mummy!’ said Aparna in English. ‘I’m sleepy, and Miriam woke me up.’
Miriam, the ayah, upon hearing her name spoken, although she could understand
no English, grinned at the child with toothless goodwill.
‘I know, precious baby doll,’ said Meenakshi, ‘but Mummy had to see you,
she was so bored. Come and give—yes—and now on the other side.’
Aparna was wearing a mauve dress of flouncy fluffy stuff and was looking,
thought her mother, inexcusably enchanting. Meenakshi’s eyes went to her
dressing-table mirror and she noticed with a surge of joy what a wonderful
mother-and-child pair they made. ‘You are looking so lovely,’ she informed
Aparna, ‘that I think I will have a whole line of little girls . . . Aparna, and
Bibeka, and Charulata, and—’
Here she was cut off by Aparna’s glare. ‘If another baby comes into this
house,’ announced Aparna, ‘I will throw it straight into the waste-paper basket.’
‘Oh,’ said Meenakshi, more than a little startled. Aparna, living among so
many opinionated personalities, had quite early developed a powerful
vocabulary. But three-year-olds were not supposed to express themselves so
lucidly, and in conditional sentences at that. Meenakshi looked at Aparna and
sighed.
‘You are so scrumptious,’ she told Aparna. ‘Now have your milk.’ To the
ayah she said, ‘Dudh lao. Ek dum!’ And Miriam creaked off to get a glass of
milk for the little girl.
For some reason the ayah’s slow-moving back irritated Meenakshi and she
thought: We really ought to replace the T.C. She’s quite needlessly senile. This
was her and Arun’s private abbreviation for the ayah and Meenakshi laughed
with pleasure as she remembered the occasion over the breakfast table when
Arun had turned from the Statesman crossword to say, ‘Oh, do get the toothless
crone out of the room. She quite puts me off my omelette.’ Miriam had been the
T.C. ever since. Living with Arun was full of sudden delightful moments like
that, thought Meenakshi. If only it could all be that way.
But the trouble was that she also had to run the house, and she hated it. The
elder daughter of Mr Justice Chatterji had always had everything done for her—
and she was now discovering how trying it could be to handle things on her own.
Managing the staff (ayah, servant-cum-cook, part-time sweeper, part-time
gardener; Arun supervised the driver, who was on the company payroll); doing
the accounts; buying those items that one simply couldn’t trust the servant or the
ayah to buy; and making sure that everything fitted within the budget. This last
she found especially difficult. She had been brought up in some luxury, and
though she had insisted (against her parents’ advice) on the romantic adventure
of standing after marriage entirely on their own four feet, she had found it
impossible to curb her taste for certain items (foreign soap, foreign butter and so
on) that were intrinsic to the fabric of a civilized life. She was very conscious of
the fact that Arun helped support everyone in his own family and often
commented to him about the fact.
‘Well,’ Arun had said just recently, ‘now that Savita’s married, that’s one
less, you’ll agree, darling.’ Meenakshi had sighed, replying in a couplet:
‘Marry one—and what’s my fate?
Every Mehra on my plate.’

Arun had frowned. He had been reminded once again of the fact that
Meenakshi’s elder brother was a poet. It was from long familiarity—almost
obsession—with rhyme that most of the younger Chatterjis had learned to
improvise couplets, sometimes of surpassing puerility.
The ayah brought the milk and left. Meenakshi turned her lovely eyes back to
Buddenbrooks while Aparna sat on the bed drinking her milk. With a sound of
impatience Meenakshi threw Thomas Mann on to the bed and followed him
there, closed her eyes and went off to sleep. She was awakened with a shock
twenty minutes later by Aparna, who was pinching her breast.
‘Don’t be horrid, Aparna precious. Mummy’s trying to sleep,’ said
Meenakshi.
‘Don’t sleep,’ said Aparna. ‘I want to play.’ Unlike other children of her age,
Aparna never used her name in the Caesarean third person, though her mother
did.
 ‘Darling sweetheart, Mummy is tired, she’s been reading a book and she
doesn’t want to play. Not now, anyway. Later, when Daddy comes home, you
can play with him. Or you can play with Uncle Varun when he returns from
college. What have you done with your glass?’
‘When will Daddy come home?’
‘I’d say in about an hour,’ replied Meenakshi.
‘I’d say in about an hour,’ said Aparna speculatively, as if she liked the
phrase. ‘I want a necklace too,’ she added, and tugged at her mother’s gold
chain.
Meenakshi gave her daughter a hug. ‘And you shall have one,’ she said, and
dismissed the subject. ‘Now go to Miriam.’
‘No.’
‘Then stay here if you want. But do be quiet, darling.’
Aparna was quiet for a while. She looked at Buddenbrooks, at her empty
glass, at her sleeping mother, at the quilt, at the mirror, at the ceiling. Then she
said, ‘Mummy?’ tentatively. There was no response.
‘Mummy?’ Aparna attempted a few notches louder.
‘Mmm?’
‘MUMMY!’ yelled Aparna at the top of her lungs.
Meenakshi sat bolt upright and shook Aparna. ‘Do you want me to spank
you?’ she asked.
‘No,’ replied Aparna definitively.
‘Then what is it? Why are you shouting? What were you going to say?’
‘Have you had a hard day, darling?’ asked Aparna, hoping to arouse a
response to her imitative charm.
‘Yes,’ said Meenakshi shortly. ‘Now darling, pick up that glass and go to
Miriam at once.’
‘Shall I comb your hair?’
‘No.’
Aparna got down reluctantly from the bed and made her way to the door. She
toyed with the idea of saying, ‘I’ll tell Daddy!’ though what she could have
complained about was left unformulated. Her mother meanwhile was once again
sleeping sweetly, her lips slightly parted, her long black hair spread across the
pillow. It was so hot in the afternoon, and everything tilted her towards a long
and languorous sleep. Her breasts rose and fell gently, and she dreamed about
Arun, who was handsome and dashing and covenanted, and who would be
coming home in an hour. And after a while she began to dream about Billy Irani,
whom they would be meeting later that evening.
When Arun arrived, he left his briefcase in the drawing room, walked into the
bedroom, and closed the door. Seeing Meenakshi asleep, he paced up and down
for a while, then took off his coat and tie, and lay down beside her without
disturbing her sleep. But after a while his hand moved to her forehead and then
down her face to her breasts. Meenakshi opened her eyes and said, ‘Oh.’ She was
momentarily bewildered. After a while she asked, ‘What’s the time?’
‘Five thirty. I came home early just as I promised—and I found you asleep.’
‘I couldn’t sleep earlier, darling. Aparna woke me up every few minutes.’
‘What’s the programme for the evening?’
‘Dinner and dancing with Billy and Shireen.’
‘Oh yes, of course.’ After a pause Arun continued: ‘To tell you the truth,
darling, I’m rather tired. I wonder whether we shouldn’t simply call it off
tonight?’
‘Oh, you’ll revive quickly enough after you’ve had a drink,’ said Meenakshi
brightly. ‘And a glance or two from Shireen,’ she added.
‘I suppose you’re right, dear.’ Arun reached out for her. He had had a little
trouble with his back a month ago, but had quite recovered.
‘Naughty boy,’ said Meenakshi, and pushed his hand away. After a while she
added, ‘The T.C. has been cheating us on the Ostermilk.’
‘Ah? Has she?’ said Arun indifferently, then swerved off to a subject that
interested him—‘I discovered today that we were being overcharged sixty
thousand on the new paper project by one of our local businessmen. We’ve
asked him to revise his estimates, of course, but it does rather shock one. . . . No
sense of business ethics—or personal ethics either. He was in the office the other
day, and he assured me that he was making us a special offer because of what he
called our long-standing relationship. Now I find, after talking to Jock Mackay,
that that’s the line he took with them as well—but charged them sixty thousand
less than us.’
‘What will you do?’ Meenakshi asked dutifully. She had switched off a few
sentences ago.
Arun talked on for five minutes or so, while Meenakshi’s mind wandered.
When he stopped and looked at her questioningly, she said, yawning a little from
residual sleepiness:
‘How has your boss reacted to all this?’
 ‘Difficult to say. With Basil Cox it’s difficult to say anything, even when he’s
delighted. In this case I think he’s as annoyed by the possible delay as pleased by
the definite saving.’ Arun unburdened himself for another five minutes while
Meenakshi began to buff her nails.
The bedroom door had been bolted against interruption, but when Aparna
saw her father’s briefcase she knew that he had returned and insisted upon being
admitted. Arun opened the door and gave her a hug, and for the next hour or so
they did a jigsaw featuring a giraffe, which Aparna had seen in a toyshop a week
after being taken to the Brahmpur Zoo. They had done the jigsaw several times
before, but Aparna had not yet tired of it. Nor had Arun. He adored his daughter
and occasionally felt it was a pity that he and Meenakshi went out almost every
evening. But one simply couldn’t let one’s life come to a standstill because one
had a child. What, after all, were ayahs for? What, for that matter, were younger
brothers for?
‘Mummy has promised me a necklace,’ said Aparna.
‘Has she, darling?’ said Arun. ‘How does she imagine she’s going to buy it?
We can’t afford it at the moment.’
Aparna looked so disappointed at this latest intelligence that Arun and
Meenakshi turned to each other with transferred adoration.
‘But she will,’ said Aparna, quietly and determinedly. ‘Now I want to do a
jigsaw.’
‘But we’ve just done one,’ protested Arun.
‘I want to do another.’
‘You handle her, Meenakshi,’ said Arun.
‘You handle her, darling,’ said Meenakshi. ‘I must get ready. And please clear
the bedroom floor.’
So for a while Arun and Aparna, banished to the drawing room this time, lay
on the carpet putting together a jigsaw of the Victoria Memorial while
Meenakshi bathed and dressed and perfumed and ornamented herself.
Varun returned from college, slid past Arun into his tiny box of a room, and
sat down with his books. But he seemed nervous, and could not settle down to
studying. When Arun went to get ready, Aparna was transferred to him; and the
rest of Varun’s evening was spent at home trying to keep her amused.
The long-necked Meenakshi turned numerous heads when their party of four
entered Firpo’s for dinner. Arun told Shireen she was looking gorgeous and Billy
looked with soulful languor at Meenakshi and said that she looked divine, and
things went wonderfully well and were followed by some pleasantly titillating
dancing at the 300 Club. Meenakshi and Arun were not really able to afford all
this—Billy Irani had independent means—but it seemed intolerable that they, for
whom this kind of life was so obviously intended, should be deprived of it by a
mere lack of funds. Meenakshi could not help noticing, through dinner and
beyond, the lovely little gold danglers that Shireen was wearing, and that hung
so becomingly from her little velvety ears.
It was a warm evening. In the car on the way back home Arun said to
Meenakshi, ‘Give me your hand, darling,’ and Meenakshi, placing one red nail-
polished fingertip on the back of his hand, said, ‘Here!’ Arun thought that this
was delightfully elegant and flirtatious. But Meenakshi had her mind on
something else.
Later, when Arun had gone to bed, Meenakshi unlocked her jewellery case
(the Chatterjis did not believe in giving their daughter great quantities of
jewellery but she had been given quite enough for her likely requirements) and
took out the two gold medals so precious to Mrs Rupa Mehra’s heart. She had
given these to Meenakshi at the time of her wedding as a gift to the bride of her
elder son. This she felt was the appropriate thing to do; she had nothing else to
give, and she felt that her husband would have approved. On the back of the
medals was engraved: ‘Thomasson Engineering College Roorkee. Raghubir
Mehra. Civil Engg. First. 1916’ and ‘Physics. First. 1916’ respectively. Two lions
crouched sternly on pedestals on each medal. Meenakshi looked at the medals,
then balanced them in her hands, then held the cool and precious discs to her
cheeks. She wondered how much they weighed. She thought of the gold chain
she had promised Aparna and the gold drops she had virtually promised herself.
She had examined them quite carefully as they hung from Shireen’s little ears.
The danglers were shaped like tiny pears.
When Arun rather impatiently called her to bed, she murmured, ‘Just
coming.’ But it was a minute or two before she joined him. ‘What are you
thinking of, darling?’ he asked her. ‘You look dangerously preoccupied.’ But
Meenakshi instinctively realized that to mention what had passed through her
head—what she planned to do with those dowdy medals—would not be a good
idea, and she avoided the subject by nibbling at the lobe of his left ear.

1.19
The next morning at ten o’clock Meenakshi phoned her younger sister Kakoli.
‘Kuku, a friend of mine from the Shady Ladies—my club, you know—wants
to find out where she can get some gold melted down discreetly. Do you know of
a good jeweller?’
‘Well, Satram Das or Lilaram, I suppose,’ yawned Kuku, barely awake.
‘No, I am not talking of Park Street jewellers—or any jewellers of that kind,’
said Meenakshi with a sigh. ‘I want to go somewhere where they don’t know
me.’
‘You want to go somewhere?’
There was a short silence at the other end. ‘Well, you may as well know,’ said
Meenakshi: ‘I’ve set my heart on a pair of earrings—they look adorable—just
like tiny little pears—and I want to melt down those fat ugly medals that Arun’s
mother gave me for my wedding.’
‘Oh, don’t do that,’ said Kakoli in a kind of alarmed warble.
‘Kuku, I want your advice about the place, not about the decision.’
‘Well, you could go to Sarkar’s. No—try Jauhri’s on Rashbehari Avenue.
Does Arun know?’
‘The medals were given to me,’ said Meenakshi. ‘If Arun wants to melt his
golf clubs down to make a back brace I won’t object.’
When she got to the jeweller’s, she was astonished to meet opposition there
as well.
‘Madam,’ said Mr Jauhri in Bengali, looking at the medals won by her father-
in-law, ‘these are beautiful medals.’ His fingers, blunt and dark, slightly
incongruous for someone who held and supervised work of such fineness and
beauty, touched the embossed lions lovingly, and circled around the smooth,
unmilled edges.
Meenakshi stroked the side of her neck with the long, red-polished nail of the
middle finger of her right hand.
‘Yes,’ she said indifferently.
‘Madam, if I might advise you, why not order these earrings and this chain
and pay for them separately? There is really no need to melt down these medals.’
A well-dressed and evidently wealthy lady would presumably not find any
difficulty in this suggestion.
Meenakshi looked at the jeweller with cool surprise. ‘Now that I know the
approximate weight of the medals, I propose to melt down one, not both,’ she
said. Somewhat annoyed by his impertinence—these shopkeepers sometimes got
above themselves—she went on: ‘I came here to get a job done; I would
normally have gone to my regular jewellers. How long do you think it will
take?’
Mr Jauhri did not dispute the issue further. ‘It will take two weeks,’ he said.
‘That’s rather a long time.’
‘Well, you know how it is, Madam. Artisans of the requisite skill are scarce,
and we have many orders.’
‘But it is March. The wedding season is virtually over.’
‘Nevertheless, Madam.’
‘Well, I suppose that will have to do,’ Meenakshi said. She picked up one
medal—it happened to be the Physics one—and popped it back in her purse. The
jeweller looked somewhat regretfully at the Engineering Medal lying on a small
velvet square on his table. He had not dared to ask whose it was, but when
Meenakshi took a receipt for the medal after it had been weighed exactly on his
scales, he had deduced from her name that it must have been awarded to her
father-in-law. He was not to know that Meenakshi had never known her father-
in-law and felt no particular closeness to him.
As Meenakshi turned to leave, he said, ‘Madam, if you happen to change
your mind . . .’
Meenakshi turned to him, and snapped: ‘Mr Jauhri, if I wish for your advice I
will ask for it. I came to you specifically because you were recommended to
me.’
‘Quite right, Madam, quite right. Of course it is entirely up to you. In two
weeks then.’ Mr Jauhri frowned sadly at the medal before summoning his master
artisan.
Two weeks later, Arun discovered through a casual conversational slip what
Meenakshi had done. He was livid.
Meenakshi sighed. ‘It’s pointless talking to you when you are as cross as
this,’ she said. ‘You behave quite heartlessly. Come, Aparna darling, Daddy’s
angry with us, let’s go into the other room.’
A few days later Arun wrote—or, rather, scrawled—a letter to his mother:
Dear Ma,
Sorry not written to you earlier in response to your letter re Lata. Yes, by all means, will look
for someone. But don’t be sanguine, the covenanted are almost twice-born and get dowry offers in
the tens of thousands, even lakhs. Still, situation not entirely hopeless. Will try, but I suggest Lata
come to Calcutta in the summer. Will effect introductions &c. But she must cooperate. Varun
lackadaisical, studies hard only when I take a hand. Shows no interest in girls, only the fourfooted
as usual, and dreadful songs. Aparna in fine fettle, asks after her Daadi continually so rest assured
she misses you. Daddy’s Engg. Medal melted down for ear-drops and chain by M, but I’ve placed
 injunction on Physics, not to worry. All else well, back OK, Chatterjis much the same, will write
at length when time.
Love and xxx from all,
Arun

This brief note, written in Arun’s illegible telegraphese (the upright lines of the
letters tilting at angles of thirty degrees randomly to left or right), landed like a
grenade in Brahmpur by the second post one afternoon. When Mrs Rupa Mehra
read it, she burst into tears without even (as Arun might have been tempted to
remark had he been there) the customary preliminary of a reddening nose. In
fact, not to make cynical light of the matter, she was deeply upset, and for every
obvious reason.
The horror of the melted medal, the callousness of her daughter-in-law, her
disregard of every tender feeling as evidenced by this shallow act of vanity upset
Mrs Rupa Mehra more than anything had in years, more even than Arun’s
marriage to Meenakshi in the first place. She saw before her very eyes her
husband’s golden name being physically melted away in a crucible. Mrs Rupa
Mehra had loved and admired her husband almost to excess, and the thought that
one of the few things that tied his presence to the earth was now maliciously—
for what was such wounding indifference but a kind of malice—and irretrievably
lost made her weep tears of bitterness, anger and frustration. He had been a
brilliant student at the Roorkee College and his memories of his student days had
been happy ones. He had hardly studied, yet had done extremely well. He had
been liked by both his fellow-students and his teachers. The only subject he had
been weak in had been Drawing. In that he had barely scraped through. Mrs
Rupa Mehra remembered his little sketches in the children’s autograph books
and felt that the examiners had been ignorant and unjust.
Collecting herself after a while and dabbing her forehead with eau de
cologne, she went out into the garden. It was a warm day, but a breeze was
blowing from the river. Savita was sleeping, and all the others were out. She
looked over at the unswept path past the bed of cannas. The young sweeper-
woman was talking to the gardener in the shade of a mulberry tree. I must speak
to her about this, thought Mrs Rupa Mehra absently.
Mansoor’s father, the far shrewder Mateen, came out on to the verandah with
the account book. Mrs Rupa Mehra was in no mood for the accounts, but felt it
was her duty to do them. Wearily she returned to the verandah, got her spectacles
out of her black bag and looked at the book.
 The sweeper-woman took up a broom and started sweeping up the dust, dried
leaves, twigs, and fallen flowers from the path. Mrs Rupa Mehra glanced
unseeingly at the open page of the account book.
‘Should I come back later?’ asked Mateen.
‘No, I’ll do them now. Wait a minute.’ She got out a blue pencil and looked at
the lists of purchases. Doing the accounts had become much more of a strain
since Mateen’s return from his village. Quite apart from his odd variant of the
Hindi script, Mateen was more experienced than his son at cooking the books.
‘What is this?’ asked Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘Another four-seer tin of ghee? Do
you think we are millionaires? When did we order our last tin?’
‘Must be two months ago, Burri Memsahib.’
‘When you were away loafing in the village, didn’t Mansoor buy a tin?’
‘He may have, Burri Memsahib. I don’t know; I didn’t see it.’
Mrs Rupa Mehra started riffling back through the pages of the account book
until she came upon the entry in Mansoor’s more legible hand. ‘He bought one a
month ago. Almost twenty rupees. What happened to it? We’re not a family of
twelve to go through a tin at such a rate.’
‘I’ve just returned, myself,’ Mateen ventured, with a glance at the sweeper-
woman.
‘You’d buy us a sixteen-seer tin of ghee a week if given half the chance,’ said
Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘Find out what happened to the rest of it.’
‘It goes in puris and parathas and on the daal—and Memsahib likes Sahib to
put some ghee every day on his chapatis and rice—’ began Mateen. ‘Yes, yes,’
Mrs Rupa Mehra interrupted. ‘I can work out how much should go into all that. I
want to find out what happened to the rest of it. We don’t keep open house—nor
has this become the shop of a sweetseller.’
‘Yes, Burri Memsahib.’
‘Though young Mansoor seems to treat it like one.’
Mateen said nothing, but frowned, as if in disapproval.
‘He eats the sweets and drinks the nimbu pani that is kept aside for guests,’
continued Mrs Rupa Mehra.
‘I’ll speak to him, Burri Memsahib.’
‘I’m not sure about the sweets,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra scrupulously. ‘He is a
self-willed boy. And you—you never bring my tea regularly. Why does no one
take care of me in this house? When I am at Arun Sahib’s house in Calcutta his
servant brings me tea all the time. No one even asks here. If I had my own
house, it would have been different.’
 Mateen, understanding that the accounts session was over, went to get Mrs
Rupa Mehra her tea. About fifteen minutes later, Savita, who had emerged from
her afternoon nap looking groggily beautiful, came on to the verandah to find her
mother rereading Arun’s letter in tears, and saying, ‘Ear-drops! He even calls
them ear-drops!’ When Savita found out what the matter was she felt a rush of
sympathy towards her mother and indignation towards Meenakshi.
‘How could she have done that?’ she asked. Savita’s fierce defensiveness
towards those whom she loved was masked by her gentle nature. She was
independent-spirited but in such a low key that only those who knew her very
well got any sense that her life and desires were not entirely determined by the
easy drift of circumstance. She held her mother close and said, ‘I am amazed at
Meenakshi. I will make sure that nothing happens to the other medal. Daddy’s
memory is worth a great deal more than her small-minded whims. Don’t cry,
Ma. I’ll send a letter off immediately. Or if you want we can write one together.’
‘No, no.’ Mrs Rupa Mehra looked down sadly at her empty cup.
When Lata returned and heard the news, she too was shocked. She had been
her father’s darling and had loved looking at his academic medals; indeed she
had been very unhappy when they had been given to Meenakshi. What could
they mean to her, Lata had wondered, compared to what they would mean to his
daughters? She was now most unpleasantly being proved right. She was angry
too with Arun who, she felt, had permitted this sorry business by his consent or
indulgence and who now made light of the event in his fatuously casual letter.
His brutal little attempts to shock or tease his mother made Lata fume. As to his
suggestion that she go to Calcutta and cooperate in his introductions—Lata
decided that that would be the last thing in the world she would do.
Pran returned late from his first meeting of the student welfare committee to a
household that was clearly not itself, but he was too exhausted to inquire
immediately what the matter was. He sat in his favourite chair—a rocking chair
requisitioned from Prem Nivas—and read for a few minutes. After a while he
asked Savita if she wanted to go for a walk, and during the course of it he was
briefed on the crisis. He asked Savita whether he could look over the letter she
had written to Meenakshi. It was not that he lacked faith in his wife’s judgement
—quite the contrary. But he hoped that he, not being a Mehra and therefore less
taut with a sense of injury, might be of help in preventing irretrievable words
from exacerbating irretrievable acts. Family quarrels, whether over property or
sentiment, were bitter things; their prevention was almost a public duty.
 Savita was happy to show him the letter. Pran looked it over, nodding from
time to time. ‘This is fine,’ he said rather gravely, as if approving a student’s
essay. ‘Diplomatic but deadly! Soft steel,’ he added in a different tone. He
looked at his wife with an expression of amused curiosity. ‘Well, I’ll see it goes
off tomorrow.’
Malati came over later. Lata filled her in about the medal. Malati described
some experiments that they had been required to perform at the medical college,
and Mrs Rupa Mehra was sufficiently disgusted to be distracted—at least for a
while.
Savita noticed for the first time over dinner that Malati had a crush on her
husband. It was evident in the way the girl looked at him over the soup and
avoided looking at him over the main course. Savita was not at all annoyed. She
assumed that but to know Pran was to love him; Malati’s affection was both
natural and harmless. Pran, it was clear, was unaware of this; he was talking
about the play that he had put on for Annual Day the previous year: Julius
Caesar—a typical university choice (Pran was saying) since so few parents
wanted their daughters to act on stage . . . but, on the other hand, the themes of
violence, patriotism and a change of regime had given it a freshness in the
present historical context that it would not otherwise have had.
The obtuseness of intelligent men, thought Savita with a smile, is half of what
makes them lovable. She closed her eyes for a second to say a prayer for his
health and her own and that of her unborn child.