Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

Even more than their kisses, she remembered the morning when she had followed him to the cricket field and watched him practising in the nets. She had been in a trance, she had been entranced. He had leaned his head back and burst out laughing at something. His shirt had been open at the collar; there had been a faint breeze in the bamboos; a couple of mynas were quarrelling; it had been warm.

She read through the letter once again. Despite his injunction to her that she should not sit crying on benches, tears gathered in her eyes. Having finished the letter, she began, hardly conscious of what she was doing, to read a paragraph of the book on Egyptian mythology. But the words formed no pattern in her mind.

She was startled by Varun’s voice, a couple of yards away.

‘You’d better go in, Lata, Ma is getting anxious.’

Lata controlled herself and nodded.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, noticing that she was — or had been — in tears. ‘Have you been quarrelling with her?’

Lata shook her head.

Varun, glancing down at the book, saw the letter, and immediately understood who it was from.

‘I’ll kill him,’ said Varun with timorous ferocity.

‘There’s nothing to kill,’ said Lata, more angrily than sadly. ‘Just don’t tell Ma, please, Varun Bhai. It would drive both of us crazy.’

When Arun came back from work that day, he was in excellent spirits. He had had a productive day, and he sensed that the evening was going to go off well. Meenakshi, her domestic crisis resolved, was no longer running around nervously; indeed, so elegantly collected was she that Arun could never have guessed she had been in the least distraught. After kissing him on the cheek and giving him the benefit of her tinkly laugh, she went in to change. Aparna was delighted to see her father and bestowed a few kisses on him too but was unable to convince him to do a jigsaw puzzle with her.

Arun thought that Lata looked a bit sulky, but then that was par for the course with Lata these days. Ma, well, Ma, there was no accounting for her moods. She looked impatient, probably because her tea had not come on time. Varun was his usual scruffy, shifty self. Why, Arun asked himself, did his brother have so little spine and initiative and why did he always dress in tattered kurta-pyjamas that looked as if they had been slept in? ‘Turn off that bloody noise,’ he shouted as he entered the drawing room and received the full power of ‘Two intoxicating eyes’.

Varun, cowed down though he was by Arun and his bullying sophistication, occasionally raised his head, usually to have it brutally slashed off. It took time for another head to grow, but today it happened to have done so. Varun did turn off the gramophone, but his resentment smouldered. Having been subject to his brother’s authority since boyhood, he hated it — and, in fact, all authority. He had once, in a fit of anti-imperialism and xenophobia, scrawled ‘Pig’ on two Bibles at St George’s School, and had been soundly thrashed for it by the white headmaster. Arun too had bawled him out after that incident, using every possible hurtful reference to his pathetic childhood and past felonies, and Varun had duly flinched. But even while flinching before his well-built elder brother’s attack, and expecting to be slapped by him at any moment, Varun thought to himself: All he knows how to do is to suck up to the British and crawl in their tracks. Pig! Pig! He must have looked his thoughts, for he did get the slap he expected.

Arun used to listen to Churchill’s speeches on the radio during the War and murmur, as he had heard the English murmur, ‘Good old Winnie!’ Churchill loathed Indians and made no secret of it, and spoke with contempt of Gandhi, a far greater man than he could ever aspire to be; and Varun regarded Churchill with a visceral hatred.

‘And change out of those crumpled pyjamas. Basil Cox will be coming within an hour and I don’t want him to think I run a third-class dharamshala.’

‘I’ll change into cleaner ones,’ said Varun sullenly.

‘You will not,’ said Arun. ‘You will change into proper clothes.’

‘Proper clothes!’ mumbled Varun softly in a mocking tone.

‘What did you say?’ asked Arun slowly and threateningly.

‘Nothing,’ said Varun with a scowl.

‘Please don’t fight like this. It isn’t good for my nerves,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra.

‘Ma, you keep out of this,’ said Arun, bluntly. He pointed in the direction of Varun’s small bedroom — more a storeroom than a bedroom. ‘Now get out and change.’

‘I planned to anyway,’ said Varun, edging out of the door.

‘Bloody fool,’ said Arun to himself. Then, affectionately, he turned to Lata: ‘So, what’s the matter, why are you looking so down in the mouth?’

Lata smiled. ‘I’m fine, Arun Bhai,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll go and get ready as well.’

Arun went in to change too. About fifteen minutes before Basil Cox and his wife were due to arrive, he came out to find everyone except Varun dressed and ready. Meenakshi emerged from the kitchen where she had been doing some last-minute supervising. The table had been laid for seven with the best glassware and crockery and cutlery, the flower arrangement was perfect, the hors d’oeuvre had been tasted and found to be fine, the whisky and sherry and campari and so forth had been taken out of the cabinet, and Aparna had been put to bed.

‘Where is he now?’ demanded Arun of the three women.

‘He hasn’t come out. He must be in his room,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘I do wish you wouldn’t shout at him.’

‘He should learn how to behave in a civilized household. This isn’t some dhoti-wallah’s establishment. Proper clothes indeed!’

Varun emerged a few minutes later. He was wearing a clean kurta-pyjama, not torn exactly, but with a button missing. He had shaved in a rudimentary sort of way after his bath. He reckoned he looked presentable.

Arun did not reckon so. His face reddened. Varun noticed it reddening, and — though he was scared — he was quite pleased as well.

For a second Arun was so furious he could hardly speak. Then he exploded.

‘You bloody idiot!’ he roared. ‘Do you want to embarrass us all?’

Varun looked at him shiftily. ‘What’s embarrassing about Indian clothes?’ he asked. ‘Can’t I wear what I want to? Ma and Lata and Bhabhiji wear saris, not dresses. Or do I have to keep imitating the whiteys even in my own house? I don’t think it’s a good idea.’

‘I don’t care what you bloody well think. In my house you will do as I tell you. Now you change into shirt and tie — or — or—’

‘Or else what, Arun Bhai?’ said Varun, cheeking his brother and enjoying his rage. ‘You won’t give me dinner with your Colin Box? Actually, I’d much rather have dinner with my own friends anyway than bow and scrape before this box-wallah and his box-walli.’

‘Meenakshi, tell Hanif to remove one place,’ said Arun.

Meenakshi looked undecided.

‘Did you hear me?’ asked Arun in a dangerous voice.

Meenakshi got up to do his bidding.

‘Now get out,’ shouted Arun. ‘Go and have dinner with your Shamshu-drinking friends. And don’t let me see you anywhere near this house for the rest of the evening. And let me tell you here and now that I won’t put up with this sort of thing from you at all. If you live in this house, you bloody well abide by its rules.’

Varun looked uncertainly towards his mother for support.

‘Darling, please do what he says. You look so much nicer in a shirt and trousers. Besides, that button is missing. These foreigners don’t understand. He’s Arun’s boss, we must make a good impression.’