Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

‘I’ll make it for you, Ma,’ said Lata. ‘Would you like some now?’

‘No, darling, you’re yawning, you go and rest,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, suddenly accommodating. By offering to make tea, Lata had as good as made it for her.

‘I don’t want to rest, Ma,’ said Lata.

‘Then why are you yawning, darling?’

‘Probably because I’ve slept too much. Would you like some tea?’

‘Not if it’s too much trouble.’

Lata went to the kitchen. She had been brought up by her mother ‘not to give trouble but to take trouble’. After her father’s death, they had lived for a number of years in the house — and therefore in a sense on the charity, however graciously bestowed — of friends, so it was natural that Mrs Rupa Mehra should have been concerned about giving trouble either directly or because of her children. A great deal in the personality of all four children could be traced to these years. The sense of uncertainty and the consciousness of obligation to others outside the family had had its effect on them. Savita had been affected least of all, it seemed; but then with Savita one sometimes got the impression that her kindness and gentleness had come to her as a baby, and that no circumstances of mere environment could have greatly altered them.

‘Was Savita sunny even as a baby?’ asked Lata a few minutes later when she returned with the tea. Lata knew the answer to her question not only because it was part of Mehra folklore but because there were plenty of photographs to attest to Savita’s sunniness: baby pictures of her wolfing down quarter-boiled eggs with a beatific grin, or smiling in her infant sleep. But she asked it anyway, perhaps in order to put her mother in a better mood.

‘Yes, very sunny,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘But, darling, you have forgotten my saccharine.’

A little later Amit and Dipankar dropped by in the Chatterji car, a large white Humber. They could tell that Lata and her mother were slightly surprised to see them.

‘Where’s Meenakshi?’ asked Dipankar, looking around slowly. ‘Nice spider lilies outside.’

‘She’s gone with Arun to the races,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘They are determined to catch pneumonia. We were just having a cup of tea. Lata will make another pot.’

‘No, really, it isn’t necessary,’ said Amit.

‘That’s all right,’ said Lata with a smile. ‘The water’s hot.’

‘How like Meenakshi,’ said Amit, a bit irked and a bit amused. ‘And she said it would be fine to drop by this afternoon. I suppose we’d better be going. Dipankar has some work in the library of the Asiatic Society.’

‘You can’t do that,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra hospitably. ‘Not without having tea.’

‘But didn’t she even tell you we’d be coming?’

‘No one ever tells me anything,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra automatically.

‘Setting off without a brolly,

Meenee-haha goes to Tolly,’

remarked Amit.

Mrs Rupa Mehra frowned. She always found it difficult to hold a coherent conversation with any of the younger Chatterjis.

Dipankar, having looked around once more, asked: ‘Where’s Varun?’

He liked talking to Varun. Even when Varun was bored, he was too nervous to object, and Dipankar construed his silence as interest. Certainly he was a better listener than anyone in Dipankar’s own family, who became impatient when he talked about the Skein of Nothingness or the Cessation of Desire. When he had talked about the latter subject at the breakfast table, Kakoli had listed his girlfriends seriatim and stated that she saw no marked Deceleration, let alone Cessation, in his own life so far. Kuku did not see things in the abstract, thought Dipankar. She was still trapped on the plane of contingent actuality.

‘Varun’s gone out too,’ said Lata, returning with the tea. ‘Should I tell him to phone you when he returns?’

‘If we are to meet, we will meet,’ said Dipankar thoughtfully. He then walked into the garden, though it was still drizzling and his shoes would get muddy.

Meenakshi’s brothers! thought Mrs Rupa Mehra.

Since Amit was sitting in silence, and Mrs Rupa Mehra abhorred silence, she asked after Tapan.

‘Oh, he’s very well,’ said Amit. ‘We’ve just dropped him and Cuddles at a friend’s place. They have a lot of dogs, and Cuddles, oddly enough, gets along with them.’

‘Oddly enough’ was right, thought Mrs Rupa Mehra. Cuddles had flown through the air on their first meeting and tried to bite her. Luckily, he had been tied to the leg of the piano, and had remained just out of range. Meanwhile Kakoli had continued to play her Chopin without missing a beat. ‘Don’t mind him,’ she had said, ‘he means well.’ Truly a mad family, reflected Mrs Rupa Mehra.

‘And dear Kakoli?’ she asked.

‘She’s singing Schubert with Hans. Or rather, she’s playing, he’s singing.’

Mrs Rupa Mehra looked stern. This must be the boy whom Purobi Ray had mentioned in connection with Kakoli. Most unsuitable.

‘At home, of course,’ she said.

‘No, at Hans’s place. He came to fetch her. A good thing too, otherwise Kuku would have beaten us to the car.’

‘Who is with them?’ asked Mrs Rupa Mehra.

‘The spirit of Schubert,’ replied Amit casually.

‘For Kuku’s sake you must be careful,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, startled as much by his tone as by what he had said. She simply could not understand the Chatterjis’ attitude to the risks their sister was running. ‘Why can’t they sing in Ballygunge?’

‘Well, for a start, there’s often a conflict between the harmonium and the piano. And I can’t write in that din.’

‘My husband wrote his railway inspection reports with four children shouting all around him,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra.

‘Ma, that’s not the same thing at all,’ said Lata. ‘Amit’s a poet. Poetry’s different.’

Amit shot her a grateful glance, even though he wondered whether the novel he was engaged on — or even poetry — was different from inspection reports to quite the extent that she imagined.

Dipankar came in from the garden, fairly wet. He did, however, wipe his feet on the mat before he entered. He was reciting, indeed, chanting, a passage from Sri Aurobindo’s mystic poem ‘Savitri’:

‘Calm heavens of imperishable Light,

Illumined continents of violet peace,

Oceans and rivers of the mirth of God

And griefless countries under purple suns. . ’

He turned towards them. ‘Oh, the tea,’ he said, and fell to wondering how much sugar he ought to have.

Amit turned to Lata. ‘Did you understand that?’ he asked.

Dipankar fixed a look of gentle condescension upon his elder brother. ‘Amit Da is a cynic,’ he said, ‘and believes in Life and Matter. But what about the psychical entity behind the vital and physical mentality?’

‘What about it?’ said Amit.

‘You mean you don’t believe in the Supramental?’ asked Dipankar, beginning to blink. It was as if Amit had questioned the existence of Saturday — which, as a matter of fact, he was capable of doing.

‘I don’t know if I believe in it or not,’ said Amit. ‘I don’t know what it is. But it’s all right — no, don’t — don’t tell me.’

‘It’s the plane on which the Divine meets the individual soul and transforms the individual to a “gnostic being”,’ explained Dipankar with mild disdain.

‘How interesting,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, who from time to time wondered about the Divine. She began to feel quite positive about Dipankar. Of all the Chatterji children he appeared to be the most serious-minded. He blinked a lot, which was disconcerting, but Mrs Rupa Mehra was willing to make allowances.