Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

Philosophy. The subject covers the history and the theory of Ethics, Eastern and Western, and includes moral standards and their application, the problems of moral order and progress of Society and the State, and theories of punishment. It includes also the history of Western Philosophy and should be studied with special reference to the problems of space, time and causality, evolution and value and the nature of God.

‘Child’s play,’ said Lata to herself, and decided to go and talk to her mother, who was sitting alone in the next room. All of a sudden she began to feel quite light-headed.

My sweet Rat, my sweetest sweetest Rat,

I dreamed of you all last night. I woke up twice and each time it was from a dream of you. I don’t know why you insist on coming into my mind so often, and inflicting memories and sighs on me. I was determined after our last meeting not to think of you, and your letter annoys me still. How can you write so coolly when you know what you mean to me and what I thought I meant to you?

I was in a room — at first it was a dark room with no way out. After a while a window appeared, and I saw a sundial through it. Then, somehow, the room was lit, and there was furniture in it — and before I knew it, it was the room at 20 Hastings Road, complete with Mr Nowrojee and Shrimati Supriya Joshi and Dr Makhijani, but, strangely enough, there was no door anywhere, so I assumed that they must have climbed in through the window. And how had I come in myself? Anyway, before I could puzzle all this out, a door did appear just where it should have been, and someone knocked at it — casually, but impatiently. I knew it was you — though I’ve never heard you knock on a door, in fact we’ve only met out of doors except that once — and, yes, also at Ustad Majeed Khan’s concert. I was convinced it was you, and my heart started beating so fast I could hardly bear it, I was looking forward to seeing you so much. Then it turned out to be someone else, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

Dearest Kabir, I am not going to mail this letter, so you needn’t worry about my becoming passionately fond of you and disturbing all your plans for the Indian Foreign Service and Cambridge and the rest of it. If you think I was unreasonable, well, perhaps I was, but I’ve never been in love before and it is certainly an unreasonable feeling too — and one that I never want to feel again for you or for anyone.

I read your letter sitting among spider-lilies, but all I could think about was gulmohur flowers at my feet, and your telling me that I’d forget about all my troubles in five years. Oh, yes, and shaking kamini flowers out of my hair and crying.

The second dream — well, why don’t I tell you, since it won’t reach your eyes anyway. We were lying together by ourselves on a boat far away from both shores, and you were kissing me, and — oh, it was absolute bliss. Then later you got up and said, ‘I’ve got to go now and swim four lengths; if I do, our team will win the match, and if I don’t it won’t,’ and you left me alone in the boat. My heart sank, but you were quite determined to leave. Luckily the boat didn’t sink, and I rowed it alone to the shore. I think I have finally got rid of you. At least I hope I have. I have decided to remain a spinster without encumbrances, and to devote my time to thinking about space, time and causality, evolution and value and the nature of God.

So Godspeed, sweet prince, sweet Rat-prince, and may you emerge near the dhobi-ghat, safe but bedraggled, and do brilliantly in life.

With all my love too, my darling Kabir,

Lata.

Lata folded the letter into an envelope, and wrote Kabir’s name on it. Then, instead of writing his address, she wrote his name here and there on the envelope a few more times for good measure. Then she drew a stamp on the corner of the envelope (‘Waste not, want not’) and marked it ‘Postage Due’. Finally, she tore the whole thing into tiny pieces and began crying.

If I achieve nothing else in life, thought Lata, I shall at least have turned into one of the World’s Great Neurotics.

Amit asked Lata to lunch and tea the next day at the Chatterjis.

‘I thought I’d ask you over so that you could see us Brahmos at our clannish best,’ he said. ‘Ila Chattopadhyay, whom you met the other day, will be there, as will an aunt and uncle on my mother’s side and all their brood. And of course now you’re part of the clan by marriage.’

So the next day at Amit’s house they sat down to a traditional Bengali meal, unlike the party fare of the previous week. Amit assumed that Lata had eaten this sort of food before. But when she saw a small helping of karela and rice — and nothing else — in front of her, she appeared so surprised that he had to tell her that there were other courses coming.

It was odd, thought Amit, that she shouldn’t have known. Before Arun and Meenakshi had got married, though he himself had been in England, he knew that the Mehras had been invited once or twice to the Chatterjis’. But perhaps it hadn’t been to this sort of meal.

Lunch had begun a little late. They had waited for Dr Ila Chattopadhyay, but had eventually decided to eat because the children were hungry. Amit’s uncle Mr Ganguly was an extremely taciturn man whose energies went entirely into eating. His jowls worked vigorously, swiftly, almost twice a second, and only occasionally pausing, while his mild, bland, bovine eyes looked at his hosts and fellow-guests who were doing the talking. His wife was a fat, highly emotional woman who wore a great deal of sindoor in her hair and had a very large bindi of equally brilliant red in the middle of her forehead. She was a shocking gossip and in between extracting fine fishbones from her large paan-stained mouth she impaled the reputations of all her neighbours and any of her relatives who were not present. Embezzlement, drunkenness, gangsterism, incest: whatever could be stated was stated and whatever could not be was implied. Mrs Chatterji was shocked, pretended to be even more shocked than she was, and enjoyed her company greatly. The only thing that worried her was what Mrs Ganguly would say about their family — especially about Kuku — once she had left the house.

For Kuku was behaving as freely as she always did, encouraged by Tapan and Amit. Soon Dr Ila Chattopadhyay turned up (‘I am such a stupid woman, I always forget lunch timings. Am I late? Stupid question. Hello. Hello. Hello. Oh, you again? Lalita? Lata? I never remember names’) and things became even more boisterous.

Bahadur announced that there was a phone call for Kakoli.

‘Tell whoever it is that Kuku will take it after lunch,’ said her father.

‘Oh, Baba!’ Kuku turned a liquid gaze on her father.

‘Who is it?’ Mr Justice Chatterji asked Bahadur.

‘That German Sahib.’

Mrs Ganguly’s intelligent, pig-like eyes darted from face to face.

‘Oh, Baba, it’s Hans. I must go.’ The ‘Hans’ was pleadingly elongated.

Mr Justice Chatterji nodded slightly, and Kuku leapt up and ran to the phone.

When Kakoli returned to the table, everyone except the children turned towards her. The children were consuming large quantities of tomato chutney, and their mother was not even reproving them, so keen was she to hear what Kuku was going to say.

But Kuku had turned from love to food. ‘Oh, gulab-jamun,’ she said, imitating Biswas Babu, ‘and the chumchum! And mishti doi. Oh — the bhery mhemory makesh my shallybhery juishes to phlow.’

‘Kuku.’ Mr Justice Chatterji was seriously displeased.

‘Sorry, Baba. Sorry. Sorry. Let me join in the gossip. What were you talking about in my absence?’

‘Have a sandesh, Kuku,’ said her mother.