Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

Varun had put on the gramophone about half an hour earlier and was playing the same scratchy 78-rpm record again and again: the Hindi film song ‘Two intoxicating eyes’, a song that no one, not even the sentimental Mrs Rupa Mehra, could tolerate after its fifth repetition. Varun had been singing the words to himself moodily and dreamily before Meenakshi returned. In her presence Varun stopped singing, but he continued to rewind the gramophone every few minutes and hum the song softly to himself by way of accompaniment. As he put away the spent needles one by one in the little compartment that fitted into the side of the machine, he reflected gloomily on his own fleeting life and personal uselessness.

Lata took the book on Egyptian mythology down from the shelf, and was about to go into the garden with it when her mother said:

‘Where are you going?’

‘To sit in the garden, Ma.’

‘But it’s so hot, Lata.’

‘I know, Ma, but I can’t read with this music going on.’

‘I’ll tell him to turn it off. All this sun is bad for your complexion. Varun, turn it off.’ She had to repeat her request a few times before Varun heard what she was saying.

Lata took the book into the bedroom.

‘Lata, sit with me, darling,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra.

‘Ma, please let me be,’ said Lata.

‘You have been ignoring me for days,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘Even when I told you your results, your kiss was half-hearted.’

‘Ma, I have not been ignoring you,’ said Lata.

‘You have, you can’t deny it. I feel it — here.’ Mrs Rupa Mehra pointed to the region of her heart.

‘All right, Ma, I have been ignoring you. Now please let me read.’

‘What’s that you’re reading? Let me see the book.’

Lata replaced it on the shelf, and said: ‘All right, Ma, I won’t read it, I’ll talk to you. Happy?’

‘What do you want to talk about, darling?’ asked Mrs Rupa Mehra sympathetically.

‘I don’t want to talk. You want to talk,’ Lata pointed out.

‘Read your silly book!’ cried Mrs Rupa Mehra in a sudden temper. ‘I have to do everything in this house, and no one cares for me. Everything goes wrong and I have to make peace. I have slaved for you all my life, and you don’t care if I live or die. Only when I’m burned on the pyre will you realize my worth.’ The tears started rolling down her cheeks and she placed a black nine on a red ten.

Normally Lata would have made some dutiful attempt to console her mother, but she was so frustrated and annoyed by her sudden emotional sleight of hand that she did nothing. After a while, she took the book down from the shelf again, and walked into the garden.

‘It will rain,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, ‘and the book will get spoiled. You have no sense of the value of money.’

Good, thought Lata violently. I hope the book and everything in it — and I too — get washed away.

The small green garden was empty. The part-time mali had gone. An intelligent-looking crow cawed from a banana tree. The delicate spider lilies were in bloom. Lata sat down on the slatted green wooden bench in the shade of a tall flame-of-the-forest tree. Everything was rain-washed and clean, unlike in Brahmpur where each leaf had looked dusty and each blade of grass parched.

Lata looked at the envelope with its firm handwriting and Brahmpur postmark. Her name was followed immediately by the address; it was not ‘care of’ anybody.

She pulled out a hairpin and opened the envelope. The letter was only a page long. She had expected Kabir’s letter to be effusive and apologetic. It was not exactly that.

After the address and date it went:

Dearest Lata,

Why should I repeat that I love you? I don’t see why you should disbelieve me. I don’t disbelieve you. Please tell me what the matter is. I don’t want things to end in this way between us.

I can’t think about anything except you, but I am annoyed that I should have to say so. I couldn’t and I can’t run off with you to some earthly paradise, but how could you have expected me to? Suppose I had agreed to your crazy plan. I know that you would then have discovered twenty reasons why it was impossible to carry it out. But perhaps I should have agreed anyway. Perhaps you would have felt reassured because I would have proved how much I cared for you. Well, I don’t care for you so much that I’m willing to abdicate my intelligence. I don’t even care for myself that much. I’m not made that way, and I do think ahead a bit.

Darling Lata, you are so brilliant, why don’t you see things in perspective? I love you. You really owe me an apology.

Anyway, congratulations on your exam results. You must be very pleased — but I am not very surprised. You must not spend your time sitting on benches and crying in future. Who knows who might want to rescue you. Perhaps whenever you’re tempted to do so, you can think of me returning to the pavilion and crying every time I fail to make a century.

Two days ago I hired a boat and went up the Ganges to the Barsaat Mahal. But, like Nawab Khushwaqt, I was so much grieved that my mind was upset, and the place was sordid and sad. For a long time I could not forget you though all possible efforts were made. I felt a strong kinship with him even though my tears did not fall fast and furious into the frangrant waters.

My father, though he is fairly absent-minded, can see that there is something the matter with me. Yesterday he said, ‘It’s not your results, so what is it, Kabir? I believe it must be a girl or something.’ I too believe it must be a girl or something.

Well, now that you have my address why don’t you write to me? I have been unhappy since you left and unable to concentrate on anything. I knew you couldn’t write to me even if you wanted to because you didn’t have my address. Well, now you do. So please do write. Otherwise I’ll know what to think. And the next time I go to Mr Nowrojee’s place I will have to read out some stricken verses of my own.

With all my love, my darling Lata,

Yours,

Kabir

For a long while Lata sat in a kind of reverie. She did not at first reread the letter. She felt a great many emotions, but they pulled her in conflicting directions. Under ordinary circumstances the pressure of her feelings might have caused her to shed a few unselfconscious tears, but there were a couple of remarks in the letter which made that impossible. Her first sense was that she had been cheated, cheated out of something that she had expected. There was no apology in the letter for the pain that he must have known he had caused her. There were declarations of love, but they were not as fervent or untinged with irony as she had thought they would be. Perhaps she had given Kabir no opportunity to explain himself at their last meeting, but now that he was writing to her, he could have explained himself better. He had not addressed anything seriously, and Lata had above all wanted him to be serious. For her it had been a matter of life and death.

Nor had he given her much — or any — news of himself, and Lata longed for it. She wanted to know everything about him — including how well he had done in his exams. From his father’s remark it was probable that he had not done badly, but that was not the only interpretation of his remark. It might simply have meant that with the results out, even if he had merely passed, one area of uncertainty had been closed as a possible explanation for his downcast — or perhaps merely unsettled — mood. And how had he obtained her address? Surely not from Pran and Savita? From Malati perhaps? But as far as she knew Kabir did not even know Malati.

He did not want to take any responsibility for her feelings, that was clear. If anything it was she who — according to him — should be the one to apologize. In one sentence he praised her intelligence, in another he treated her like a dunce. Lata got the sense that he was trying to jolly her along without making any commitment to her beyond ‘love’. And what was love?