Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

‘Yes,’ said Dipankar, stirring a third spoon of sugar into his tea. ‘It is below Brahma and sat-chit-ananda, but acts like a conduit or conductor.’

‘Is it sweet enough?’ asked Mrs Rupa Mehra with concern.

‘I think so,’ said Dipankar with an air of appraisal.

Having found a listener, Dipankar now expanded into several channels that interested him. His interests in mysticism were wide-ranging, and included Tantra and the worship of the Mother-Goddess besides the more conceptual ‘synthetic’ philosophy he had just been expounding. Soon he and Mrs Rupa Mehra were chatting happily about the great seers Ramakrishna and Vivekananda. Half an hour later it was Unity, Duality, and the Trinity, on which Dipankar had recently had a crash course. Mrs Rupa Mehra was trying her best to keep up with Dipankar’s free flow of ideas.

‘It all comes to a climax in the Pul Mela at Brahmpur,’ said Dipankar. ‘That is when the astral conjunctions are most powerful. On the night of the full moon of the month of Jeth the gravitational pull of the moon will act with full force upon all our chakras. I don’t believe in all the legends, but one can’t deny science. I will be going this year, and we can immerse ourselves in the Ganga together. I have already booked my ticket.’

Mrs Rupa Mehra looked doubtful. Then she said:

‘That is a good idea. Let us see how things turn out.’

She had just recalled with relief that she would not be in Brahmpur at the time.

Amit, meanwhile, was talking to Lata about Kakoli. He was telling Lata about her latest beau, the German nutcracker. Kuku had even got him to paint a diplomatically unsuitable Reichsadler above her bathtub. The tub itself had been painted inside and out with turtles, fish, crabs and other watery creatures by Kuku’s more artistic friends. Kuku loved the sea, especially at the delta of the Ganga, the Sundarbans. And fish and crabs reminded her of delicious Bengali dishes, and enhanced the wallowing luxuriousness of her bath.

‘And your parents didn’t object?’ asked Lata, recalling the stateliness of the Chatterji mansion.

‘My parents may mind,’ said Amit, ‘but Kuku can twist my father around her little finger. She’s his favourite. I think even my mother is jealous of the way he indulges her. A few days ago there was talk of letting her have a telephone of her own rather than just an extension.’

Two telephones in one home seemed utterly extravagant to Lata. She asked why they were necessary, and Amit told her about Kakoli’s umbilical linkage to the telephone. He even imitated her characteristic greetings for her A-level, B-level and C-level friends. ‘But the phone holds such magic for her that she will readily desert an A-level friend who’s taken the trouble to visit her in order to talk to a C-level friend for twenty minutes if he happens to be on the line.’

‘I suppose she’s very sociable. I’ve never seen her alone,’ said Lata.

‘She is,’ said Amit.

‘Does she mean to be?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Is it of her own volition?’

‘That’s a difficult question,’ said Amit.

‘Well,’ said Lata, picturing the good-humouredly giggling Kakoli surrounded by a large crowd at the party, ‘she’s very nice, and attractive, and lively. I’m not surprised people like her.’

‘Mmm,’ said Amit. ‘She doesn’t call people on the phone herself and ignores messages that come when she’s out of the house, so she doesn’t show a lot of volition as such. And yet she’s always on the phone. They always call back.’

‘So she’s, well, passively volitional.’ Lata looked rather surprised at her own phrase.

‘Well, passively volitional — in a lively way,’ said Amit, thinking this was an odd way to describe Kuku.

‘My mother’s getting along well with your brother,’ said Lata, with a glance towards them.

‘Looks like it,’ said Amit with a smile.

‘And what sort of music does she like?’ asked Lata. ‘I mean Kuku.’

Amit thought for a second. ‘Despairing music,’ he said.

Lata waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t. Instead he said, ‘And what kind of music do you like?’

‘I?’ said Lata.

‘You,’ said Amit.

‘Oh, all sorts. I told you I liked Indian classical music. And don’t tell your Ila Kaki, but the one time I went to a ghazal concert, I enjoyed it. And you?’

‘All sorts as well.’

‘Does Kuku have any reason for liking despairing music?’ asked Lata.

‘Well, I’m sure she’s suffered her share of heartbreak,’ said Amit rather callously. ‘But she wouldn’t have found Hans if someone else hadn’t broken her heart.’

Lata looked curiously at Amit, perhaps almost sternly. ‘I can hardly believe you’re a poet,’ she said.

‘No. Nor can I,’ said Amit. ‘Have you read anything by me?’

‘No,’ said Lata. ‘I was sure there’d be a copy of your book in this house, but—’

‘And are you fond of poetry?’

‘Very fond.’

There was a pause. Then Amit said:

‘What have you seen of Calcutta so far?’

‘Victoria Memorial and Howrah Bridge.’

‘That’s all?’

‘That’s all.’

It was Amit’s turn to look stern.

‘And what are you doing this afternoon?’ he asked.

‘Nothing,’ said Lata, surprised.

‘Good. I’ll show you a few places of poetic interest. We’ve got the car, which is good. And there are a couple of umbrellas in the car — so we won’t get wet when we walk around the cemetery.’

But even though it was ‘just Amit’, as Lata pointed out, whom she would be going out with, Mrs Rupa Mehra unreasonably insisted on someone accompanying them. Amit for Mrs Rupa Mehra was merely Meenakshi’s brother — and not a risk in any sense of the word. But, well, he was a young man, and for form’s sake it was important that someone be with them, so that they would not be seen alone together. On the other hand, Mrs Rupa Mehra was prepared to be fairly flexible as to who the chaperon could be. She herself was certainly not going to walk around with them in the rain. But Dipankar would do.

‘I can’t go with you, Dada,’ said Dipankar. ‘I have to go to the library.’

‘Well, I’ll phone Tapan at his friend’s place and see what he has to say,’ said Amit.

Tapan agreed on the condition that Cuddles could accompany them — on a leash of course.

Since Cuddles was nominally Dipankar’s dog, his sanction was required as well. This he readily gave.

And so, on a warm, rainy Saturday afternoon, Amit, Lata, Dipankar (who would go with them as far as the Asiatic Society), Tapan and Cuddles went for a drive and a walk with the acquiescence of Mrs Rupa Mehra, who was relieved that Lata was at last behaving more like her normal self again.

When the mass of the British left India at Independence, they left behind them a great number of pianos, and one of them, a large, black, tropicalized Steinway, stood in the drawing room of Hans Sieber’s apartment in Queens Mansions. Kakoli was seated at it and Hans was standing behind her, singing from the same score that she was playing from, and feeling extremely happy although the songs that he was singing were extremely gloomy.

Hans adored Schubert. They were singing through Winterreise , a snowbound song cycle of rejection and dejection that ends in madness. Outside, the warm Calcutta rain came down in sheets. It flooded the streets, gurgled down the inadequate drainage system, poured into the Hooghly, and finally flowed down into the Indian Ocean. In an earlier incarnation it could well have been the soft German snow that had whirled around the memory-haunted traveller, and in a later one it might well become part of the icy brook into whose surface he had carved his initials and those of his faithless beloved. Or possibly even his hot tears that threatened to melt all the snow of winter.