Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

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.’