Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

‘One sweet and one dry, please,’ said Amit. ‘Where’s Dipankar?’ he asked Tapan.

‘I think he’s in his room, Dada,’ said Tapan. ‘Shall I call him down?’

‘No, no, you help with the bar,’ said Amit, patting his brother on the shoulder. ‘You’re doing a fine job. I’ll just see what he’s up to.’

Dipankar, their middle brother, was a dreamer. He had studied economics, but spent most of his time reading about the poet and patriot Sri Aurobindo, whose flaccid mystical verse he was (to Amit’s disgust) at present deeply engrossed in. Dipankar was indecisive by nature. Amit knew that it would be best simply to bring him downstairs himself. Left to his own devices, Dipankar treated every decision like a spiritual crisis. Whether to have one spoon of sugar in his tea or two, whether to come down now or fifteen minutes later, whether to enjoy the good life of Ballygunge or to take up Sri Aurobindo’s path of renunciation, all these decisions caused him endless agony. A succession of strong women passed through his life and made most of his decisions for him, before they became impatient with his vacillation (‘Is she really the one for me?’) and moved on. His views moulded themselves to theirs while they lasted, then began to float freely again.

Dipankar was fond of making remarks such as, ‘It is all the Void,’ at breakfast, thus casting a mystical aura over the scrambled eggs.

Amit went up to Dipankar’s room, and found him sitting on a prayer mat at the harmonium, untunefully singing a song by Rabindranath Tagore.

‘You had better come down soon,’ Amit said in Bengali. ‘The guests have begun to arrive.’

‘Just coming, just coming,’ said Dipankar. ‘I’ll just finish this song, and then I’ll. . I’ll come down. I will.’

‘I’ll wait,’ said Amit.

‘You can go down, Dada. Don’t trouble yourself. Please.’

‘It’s no trouble,’ said Amit. After Dipankar had finished his song, unembarrassed by its tunelessness — for all pitches, no doubt, stood equal before the Void — Amit escorted him down the teak-balustraded marble stairs.

‘Where’s Cuddles?’ asked Amit when they were halfway down.

‘Oh,’ said Dipankar vaguely, ‘I don’t know.’

‘He might bite someone.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Dipankar, not greatly troubled by the thought.

Cuddles was not a hospitable dog. He had been with the Chatterji family for more than ten years, during which time he had bitten Biswas Babu, several schoolchildren (friends who had come to play), a number of lawyers (who had visited Mr Justice Chatterji’s chambers for conferences during his years as a barrister), a middle-level executive, a doctor on a house call, and the standard mixture of postmen and electricians.

Cuddles’ most recent victim had been the man who had come to the door to take the decennial census.

The only creature Cuddles treated with respect was Mr Justice Chatterji’s father’s cat Pillow, who lived in the next house, and who was so fierce that he was taken for walks on a leash.

‘You should have tied him up,’ said Amit.

Dipankar frowned. His thoughts were with Sri Aurobindo. ‘I think I have,’ he said.

‘We’d better make sure,’ said Amit. ‘Just in case.’

It was good that they did. Cuddles rarely growled to identify his position, and Dipankar could not remember where — if at all — he had put him. He might still be ranging the garden in order to savage any guests who wandered on to the verandah.

They found Cuddles in the bedroom which had been set aside for people to leave their bags and other apparatus in. He was crouched quietly near a bedside table, watching them with shiny little black eyes. He was a small black dog, with some white on his chest and on his paws. When they had bought him the Chatterjis had been told he was an apso, but he had turned out to be a mutt with a large proportion of Tibetan terrier.

In order to avoid trouble at the party, he had been fastened by a leash to a bedpost. Dipankar could not recall having done this, so it might have been someone else. He and Amit approached Cuddles. Cuddles normally loved the family, but today he was jittery.

Cuddles surveyed them closely without growling, and when he judged that the moment was ripe, he flew intently and viciously through the air towards them until the sudden restraint of the leash jerked him back. He strained against it, but could not get into biting range. All the Chatterjis knew how to step back rapidly when instinct told them Cuddles was on the attack. But perhaps the guests would not react so swiftly.

‘I think we should move him out of this room,’ said Amit. Strictly speaking, Cuddles was Dipankar’s dog, and thus his responsibility, but he now in effect belonged to all of them — or, rather, was, accepted as one of them, like the sixth point of a regular hexagon.

‘He seems quite happy here,’ said Dipankar. ‘He’s a living being too. Naturally he gets nervous with all this coming and going in the house.’

‘Take it from me,’ said Amit, ‘he’s going to bite someone.’

‘Hmm. . Should I put a notice on the door: Beware of Dog?’ asked Dipankar.

‘No. I think you should get him out of here. Lock him up in your room.’

‘I can’t do that,’ said Dipankar. ‘He hates being upstairs when everyone else is downstairs. He is a sort of lapdog, after all.’

Amit reflected that Cuddles was the most psychotic lapdog he had known. He too blamed his temperament on the constant stream of visitors to the house. Kakoli’s friends of late had flooded the Chatterji mansion. Now, as it happened, Kakoli herself entered the room with a friend.

‘Ah, there you are, Dada, we were wondering what had happened to you. Have you met Neera? Neera, these are my berruthers Amit and Dipankar. Oh yes, put it down on the bed,’ said Kakoli. ‘It’ll be quite safe here. And the bathroom’s through there.’ Cuddles prepared for a lunge. ‘Watch out for the dog — he’s harmless but sometimes he has moods. We have moods, don’t we, Cuddlu? Poor Cuddlu, left all alone in the bedroom.

Darling Cuddles, what to do

When the house is such a zoo!’

sang Kakoli, then disappeared.

‘We’d better take him upstairs,’ said Amit. ‘Come on.’

Dipankar consented. Cuddles growled. They calmed him down and took him up. Then Dipankar played a few soothing chords on the harmonium to reassure him, and they returned downstairs.

Many of the guests had arrived by now, and the party was in full swing. In the grand drawing room with its grand piano and grander chandelier milled scores of guests in full summer evening finery, the women fluttering and flattering and sizing each other up, the men engaging themselves in more self-important chatter. British and Indian, Bengali and non-Bengali, old and middle-aged and young, saris shimmering and necklaces glimmering, crisp Shantipuri dhotis edged with a fine line of gold and hand-creased to perfection, kurtas of raw off-white silk with gold buttons, chiffon saris of various pastel hues, white cotton saris with red borders, Dhakai saris with a white background and a pattern in the weave — or (still more elegant) a grey background with a white design, white dinner jackets with black trousers and black bow ties and black patent leather Derbys or Oxfords (each bearing a little reflected chandelier), long dresses of flowery-printed fine poplin chintz and finely polka-dotted white cotton organdy, even an off-the-shoulder silk dress or two in the lightest and most summery of silks: brilliant were the clothes, and glittering the people who filled them.

Arun, who considered it too hot for a jacket, was wearing a stylish cummerbund instead — a maroon monochrome sash with a shimmering pattern through the weave — and a matching bow tie. He was talking rather gravely to Jock Mackay, a cheerful bachelor in his mid-forties who was one of the directors of the managing agency of McKibbin & Ross.