Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

‘I don’t believe I do, my dear,’ said her husband.

‘I believe it’s made from rice,’ said Arun. ‘It’s a Chinese concoction of some kind.’

‘Would Shaw Brothers carry it?’ asked Patricia Cox.

‘I rather doubt it. It ought to be available in Chinatown,’ said Arun.

In fact Varun and his friends did get it from Chinatown, from a hole-in-the-wall sort of place at eight annas a glass.

‘It must be powerful stuff, whatever it is. Smoked hilsa and Shamshu — how marvellous to learn two entirely different things at dinner. One never does, you know,’ Patricia confided. ‘Usually, I’m bored as a fish.’

Bored as a fish? thought Arun. But by now Varun had started singing to himself inside his room.

‘What a very interesting young man,’ continued Patricia Cox. ‘And he’s your brother, you say. What is he singing? Why didn’t he join us for dinner? We must have all of you around sometime soon. Mustn’t we, darling?’ Basil Cox looked very severely doubtful. Patricia Cox decided to take this for assent. ‘I haven’t had so much fun since I was at RADA. And do bring a bottle of Shamshu.’

Heaven forbid, thought Basil Cox.

Heaven forbid, thought Arun.

The guests were about to arrive at Mr Justice Chatterji’s house in Ballygunge. This was one of the three or four grand parties that he took it upon himself to give at short notice during the course of the year. There was a peculiar mixture of guests for two reasons. First, because of Mr Justice Chatterji himself, whose net of friendship and acquaintance was very varied. (He was an absent-minded man, who picked up friends here and there.) Secondly, because any party of this kind was invariably treated by the whole Chatterji family as an opportunity to invite all their own friends as well. Mrs Chatterji invited some of hers, and so did their children; only Tapan, who had returned for his school holidays, was considered too young to tag on his own list of invitees to a party where there would be drinking.

Mr Justice Chatterji was not an orderly man, but he had produced five children in strict alternation of sex: Amit, Meenakshi (who was married to Arun Mehra), Dipankar, Kakoli, and Tapan. None of them worked, but each had an occupation. Amit wrote poetry, Meenakshi played canasta, Dipankar sought the Meaning of Life, Kakoli kept the telephone busy, and Tapan, who was only twelve or thirteen, and by far the youngest, went to the prestigious boarding school, Jheel.

Amit, the poet, had studied Jurisprudence at Oxford, but having got his degree, had not completed, to his father’s exasperation, what should have been easy enough for him to complete: his studies for the Bar at Lincoln’s Inn, his father’s old Inn. He had eaten most of his dinners and had even passed a paper or two, but had then lost interest in the law. Instead, on the strength of a couple of university prizes for poetry, some short fiction published here and there in literary magazines, and a book of poetry which had won him a prize in England (and therefore adulation in Calcutta), he was sitting pretty in his father’s house and doing nothing that counted as real work.

At the moment he was talking to his two sisters and to Lata.

‘How many do we expect?’ asked Amit.

‘I don’t know,’ said Kakoli. ‘Fifty?’

Amit looked amused. ‘Fifty would just about cover half your friends, Kuku. I’d say one hundred and fifty.’

‘I can’t abide these large parties,’ said Meenakshi in high excitement.

‘No, nor can I,’ said Kakoli, glancing at herself in the tall mirror in the hall.

‘I suppose the guest list consists entirely of those invited by Ma and Tapan and myself,’ said Amit, naming the three least sociable members of the family.

‘Vereeeee funneeeee,’ said (or, rather, sang) Kakoli, whose name implied the songbird that she was.

‘You should go up to your room, Amit,’ said Meenakshi, ‘and settle down on a sofa with Jane Austen. We’ll tell you when dinner is served. Or better still, we’ll send it up to you. That way you can avoid all your admirers.’

‘He’s very peculiar,’ said Kakoli to Lata. ‘Jane Austen is the only woman in his life.’

‘But half the bhadralok in Calcutta want him as a match for their daughters,’ added Meenakshi. ‘They believe he has brains.’

Kakoli recited:

‘Amit Chatterji, what a catch!

Is a highly suitable match.’

Meenakshi added:

‘Why he has not married yet?

Always playing hard to get.’

Kakoli continued:

‘Famous poet, so they say.

“Besh” decent in every way.’

She giggled.

Lata said to Amit: ‘Why do you let them get away with this?’

‘You mean with their doggerel?’ said Amit.

‘I mean with teasing you,’ said Lata.

‘Oh, I don’t mind. It runs off my back like duck’s water,’ said Amit.

Lata looked surprised, but Kakoli said, ‘He’s doing a Biswas on you.’

‘A Biswas?’

‘Biswas Babu, my father’s old clerk. He still comes around a couple of times a week to help with this and that, and gives us advice on life. He advised Meenakshi against marrying your brother,’ said Kakoli.

In fact the opposition to Meenakshi’s sudden affair and marriage had been wider and deeper. Meenakshi’s parents had not particularly cared for the fact that she had married outside the community. Arun Mehra was neither a Brahmo, nor of Brahmin stock, nor even a Bengali. He came from a family that was struggling financially. To give the Chatterjis credit, this last fact did not matter very much to them, though they themselves had been more than affluent for generations. They were only (with respect to this objection) concerned that their daughter might not be able to afford the comforts of life that she had grown up with. But again, they had not swamped their married daughter with gifts. Even though Mr Justice Chatterji did not have an instinctive rapport with his son-in-law, he did not think that that would be fair.

‘What does Biswas Babu have to do with duck’s water?’ asked Lata, who found Meenakshi’s family amusing but confusing.

‘Oh — that’s just one of his expressions. I don’t think it’s very kind of Amit not to explain family references to outsiders.’

‘She’s not an outsider,’ said Amit. ‘Or she shouldn’t be. Actually, we are all very fond of Biswas Babu, and he is very fond of us. He was my grandfather’s clerk originally.’

‘But he won’t be Amit’s — to his heart-deep regret,’ said Meenakshi. ‘In fact, Biswas Babu is even more upset than our father that Amit has deserted the Bar.’

‘I can still practise if I choose to,’ said Amit. ‘A university degree is enough in Calcutta.’

‘Ah, but you won’t be admitted to the Bar Library.’

‘Who cares?’ said Amit. ‘Actually, I’d be happy editing a small journal and writing a few good poems and a novel or two and passing gently into senility and posterity. May I offer you a drink? A sherry?’

‘I’ll have a sherry,’ said Kakoli.

‘Not you, Kuku, you can help yourself. I was offering Lata a drink.’

‘Ouch,’ said Kakoli. She looked at Lata’s pale blue cotton sari with its fine chikan embroidery, and said: ‘Do you know, Lata — pink is what would really suit you.’

Lata said: ‘I’d better not have anything as dangerous as a sherry. Could I have some — oh, why not? A small sherry, please.’

Amit went to the bar with a smile and said: ‘Do you think I might have two glasses of sherry?’

‘Dry, medium or sweet, Sir?’ asked Tapan.

Tapan was the baby of the family, whom everyone loved and fussed over, and who was even allowed an occasional sip of sherry himself. This evening he was helping at the bar.