Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

‘Biplob,’ said Amit.

‘Yes, of course, and it did come back to me eventually. I had named him that because I was a friend of Subhas Bose — well, let me say I knew the family. . Of course, in my position as a judge, a name like that would have to be, er—’

Amit waited while the old man searched for the right word, then helped him out.

‘Ironic?’

‘No, I wasn’t looking for that word, Amit, I was — well, “ironic” will do. Of course, those were different times, mm, mm. Do you know, I can’t even draw a map of India now. It seems so unimaginable. And the law too is changing every day. One keeps reading about writ petitions being brought up before the High Courts. Well, in my day we were content with regular suits. But I’m an old man, things must move ahead, and I must fall back. Now girls like Ila, and young people like you’—he gesticulated towards Amit and Lata—‘must carry things forward.’

‘I’m hardly a girl,’ said Dr Ila Chattopadhyay. ‘My own daughter is twenty-five now.’

‘For me, dear Ila, you will always be a girl,’ said old Mr Chatterji.

Dr Ila Chattopadhyay made an impatient sound. ‘Anyway, my students don’t treat me like a girl. The other day I was discussing a chapter in one of my old books with a junior colleague of mine, a very serious young man, and he said, “Madam, far be it for me, not only as your junior but also as one who is appreciative of the situation of the book in the context of its time and the fact that you have not many years remaining, to suggest that—” I was quite charmed. Remarks like that rejuvenate me.’

‘What book was that?’ asked Lata.

‘It was a book about Donne,’ said Dr Ila Chattopadhyay. ‘ Metaphysical Causality. It’s a very stupid book.’

‘Oh, so you teach English!’ said Lata, surprised. ‘I thought you were a doctor — I mean, a medical doctor.’

‘What on earth have you been telling her?’ said Dr Ila Chattopadhyay to Amit.

‘Nothing. I didn’t really get the chance to introduce you properly. You were telling Dipankar so forcefully that he should have dropped economics that I didn’t dare to interrupt.’

‘So I was. And so he should have. But where has he got to?’

Amit scanned the room cursorily, and noticed Dipankar standing with Kakoli and her babble-rabble. Dipankar, despite his mystical and religious tendencies, was fond of even foolish young women.

‘Shall I deliver him back to you?’ asked Amit.

‘Oh, no,’ said Dr Ila Chattopadhyay, ‘arguing with him only upsets me, it’s like battling a blancmange. . all his mushy ideas about the spiritual roots of India and the genius of Bengal. Well, if he were a true Bengali, he’d change his name back to Chattopadhyay — and so would you all, instead of continuing to cater to the feeble tongues and brains of the British. . Where are you studying?’

Lata, still a little shaken by Dr Ila Chattopadhyay’s emphatic energy, said: ‘Brahmpur.’

‘Oh, Brahmpur,’ said Dr Ila Chattopadhyay. ‘An impossible place. I once was — no, no, I won’t say it, it’s too cruel, and you’re a nice girl.’

‘Oh, do go on, Ila Kaki,’ said Amit. ‘I adore cruelty, and I’m sure Lata can take anything you have to say.’

‘Well, Brahmpur!’ said Dr Ila Chattopadhyay, needing no second bidding. ‘Brahmpur! I had to go there for a day about ten years ago to attend some conference or other in the English Department, and I’d heard so much about Brahmpur and the Barsaat Mahal and so on that I stayed on for a couple of extra days. It made me almost ill. All that courtly culture with its Yes Huzoor and No Huzoor and nothing robust about it at all. “How are you?” “Oh, well, I’m alive.” I just couldn’t stand it. “Yes, I’ll have two florets of rice, and one drop of daal. . ” All that subtlety and etiquette and bowing and scraping and ghazals and kathak. Kathak! When I saw those fat women twirling around like tops, I wanted to say to them, “Run! Run! don’t dance, run!”’

‘It’s a good thing you didn’t, Ila Kaki, you’d have been strangled.’

‘Well, at least it would have meant an end to my suffering. The next evening I had to undergo some more of your Brahmpuri culture. We had to go and listen to one of those ghazal singers. Dreadful, dreadful, I’ll never forget it! One of those soulful women, Saeeda something, whom you couldn’t see for her jewellery — it was like staring into the sun. Wild horses wouldn’t drag me there again. . and all those brainless men in that silly northern dress, the pyjama, looking as if they’d just got out of bed, rolling about in ecstasy — or agony — groaning “wah! wah!” to the most abjectly self-pitying insipid verse — or so it seemed to me when my friends translated it. . Do you like that sort of music?’

‘Well, I do like classical music,’ began Lata tentatively, waiting for Dr Ila Chattopadhyay to pronounce that she was completely misguided. ‘Ustad Majeed Khan’s performances of raags like Darbari, for instance. . ’

Amit, without waiting for Lata to finish her sentence, stepped swiftly in to draw Dr Ila Chattopadhyay’s fire.

‘So do I, so do I,’ he said. ‘I’ve always felt that the performance of a raag resembles a novel — or at least the kind of novel I’m attempting to write. You know,’ he continued, extemporizing as he went along, ‘first you take one note and explore it for a while, then another to discover its possibilities, then perhaps you get to the dominant, and pause for a bit, and it’s only gradually that the phrases begin to form and the tabla joins in with the beat. . and then the more brilliant improvisations and diversions begin, with the main theme returning from time to time, and finally it all speeds up, and the excitement increases to a climax.’

Dr Ila Chattopadhyay was looking at him in astonishment. ‘What utter nonsense,’ she said to Amit. ‘You’re getting to be as fluffy as Dipankar. Don’t pay any attention to him, Lata,’ continued the author of Metaphysical Causality. ‘He’s just a writer, he knows nothing at all about literature. Nonsense always makes me hungry, I must get some food at once. At least the family serves dinner at a sensible hour. “Two florets of rice” indeed!’ And, shaking her grey locks emphatically, she made for the buffet table.

Amit offered to bring some food on a plate to his grandfather, and the old man acquiesced. He sat down in a comfortable armchair, and Amit and Lata went towards the buffet. On the way, a pretty young woman detached herself from Kakoli’s giggling, gossiping group, and came up to Amit.

‘Don’t you remember me?’ she asked. ‘We met at the Sarkars’.’

Amit, trying to work out when and at which Sarkars’ they might have met, frowned and smiled simultaneously.

The girl looked at him reproachfully. ‘We had a long conversation,’ she said.

‘Ah.’

‘About Bankim Babu’s attitude towards the British, and how it affected the form as opposed to the content of his writing.’

Amit thought: Oh God! Aloud he said: ‘Yes. . yes. . ’

Lata, though she felt sorry for both Amit and the girl, could not help smiling. She was glad she had come to the party after all.

The girl persisted: ‘Don’t you remember?’

Amit suddenly became voluble. ‘I am so forgetful—’ he said; ‘—and forgettable,’ he added quickly, ‘that I sometimes wonder if I ever existed. Nothing I’ve ever done seems to have happened. . ’

The girl nodded. ‘I know just what you mean,’ she said. But she soon wandered away a little sadly.

Amit frowned.

Lata, who could tell that he was feeling bad for having made the girl feel bad, said:

‘Your responsibilities don’t end with having written your books, it seems.’