Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

Even in the case at present before him, though it gave Mr Justice Chatterji no pleasure to confirm sentences of death, he felt that he was doing what was just. His judgement was clearly thought out and robustly expressed. But he was considerably worried by the fact that in the first draft of his judgement he had named five of the dacoits and missed out the sixth. This was just the kind of potential disaster that the careful housekeeping of Biswas Babu was always saving him from in his lawyering days.

For a moment his mind turned to Biswas Babu. He wondered how he was and what he was doing. The sound of Kuku at the piano wafted through the open door of his study. He remembered what she had said at lunch about shallybhery juishes. Then he had been annoyed, now he was amused. Biswas Babu’s written legal English may have been sharp and economical (except for the occasional misplaced article), but his spoken English was a thing of tortuous beauty. And one could hardly expect the high-spirited Kuku not to be alive to its expressive possibilities.

Biswas Babu, as it happened, was at that very moment with his friend and fellow-clerk, the burra babu of the insurance department of Bentsen Pryce. They had been friends for over twenty years now, and Biswas Babu’s adda or den had slowly cemented this relationship. (When Arun had married Meenakshi it was almost as if their families had suddenly found themselves allied.) The burra babu would visit Biswas Babu’s house most evenings; here a number of old companions would gather to talk about the world or simply to sit around, drinking tea and reading the newspapers with an occasional comment. Today some of them were thinking of going to a play.

‘So it seems that your High Court building has been struck by lightning,’ ventured one man.

‘No damage, no damage,’ said Biswas Babu. ‘The main problem is the refugees from East Bengal who have begun to camp in the corridors.’ No one here referred to it as East Pakistan.

‘The Hindus there are being terrified and driven out. Every day one reads in the Hindustan Standard of Hindu girls being kidnapped—’

‘Ay, Ma’—this was addressed to Biswas Babu’s youngest granddaughter, a girl of six—‘tell your mother to send some more tea.’

‘One quick war, and Bengal will be united once again.’

This was considered so stupid that no one responded.

For a few minutes there was contented silence.

‘Did you read that article where Netaji’s air-crash death was contradicted? It appeared two days ago—’

‘Well, if he’s alive, he’s not doing much to prove it.’

‘Naturally he has to lie low.’

‘Why? The British have gone.’

‘Ah — but he has worse enemies among those left behind.’

‘Who?’

‘Nehru — and all the others,’ ended the proponent darkly if lamely.

‘I suppose you think Hitler is alive as well?’ This elicited a chuckle all around.

‘When is your Amit Babu getting married?’ asked someone of Biswas Babu after a pause. ‘All Calcutta is waiting.’

‘Let Calcutta wait,’ said Biswas Babu and returned to his newspaper.

‘It is your responsibility to do something—“by hooks and by crooks” as they say in English.’

‘I have done enough,’ said Biswas Babu with stylized weariness. ‘He’s a good boy, but a dreamer.’

‘A good boy — but a dreamer! Oh, let’s have that son-in-law joke again,’ said someone to Biswas Babu and the burra babu.

‘No, no—’ they both demurred. But they were easily enough prevailed upon by the others to act it out. Both of them enjoyed acting, and this skit was only a few lines long. They had acted it half a dozen times before, and to the same audience; the adda, normally so torpid, was given to occasional theatricality.

The burra babu walked around the room, examining the produce in a fish market. Suddenly he saw his old friend. ‘Ah, ah, Biswas Babu,’ he exclaimed joyfully.

‘Yes, yes, borro babu — it has been a long time,’ said Biswas Babu, shaking out his umbrella.

‘Congratulations on your daughter’s engagement, Biswas Babu. A good boy?’

Biswas Babu nodded his head vigorously. ‘He’s a good boy. Very decent. Well, he eats an onion or two sometimes, but that’s all.’

The burra babu, clearly shocked, exclaimed: ‘What? Does he eat onions every day?’

‘Oh no! Not every day. Far from it. Only when he has had a few drinks.’

‘But drinking! Surely he doesn’t drink often.’

‘Oh no!’ said Biswas Babu. ‘By no means. Only when he’s with women of an evening. . ’

‘But women — what! — and does this happen regularly?’

‘Oh no!’ exclaimed Biswas Babu. ‘He can’t afford to visit prostitutes so often. His father is a retired pimp, and destitute, and the boy can only sponge off him once in a while.’

The adda greeted this performance with cheers and laughter. It whetted their appetite for the play they would be going to see later in the evening at a local North Calcutta venue — the Star Theatre. The tea soon came in, together with a few delicious lobongo-lotikas and other sweets prepared by Biswas Babu’s daughter-in-law; and for a few minutes everyone fell appreciatively silent except for a few tongue-clicks and comments of enjoyment.

Dipankar sat on the little rug in his room with Cuddles on his lap, and dispensed advice to his troubled siblings.

Whereas no one dared to interrupt Amit while he was working, or for fear that he might be working, on his immortal prose or verse, it was open season on Dipankar’s time and energy.

They came in for specific advice, or sometimes just to talk. There was something pleasantly and zanily earnest about Dipankar which was very reassuring.

Although Dipankar was utterly indecisive in his own life — or perhaps for that very reason — he was quite good at throwing out useful suggestions into the lives of others.

Meenakshi dropped in first with a question about whether it was possible to love more than one person—‘utterly, desperately, and truly’. Dipankar talked the matter over with her in strictly unspecific terms, and came to the conclusion that it certainly was possible. The ideal, of course, was to love everyone in the universe equally, he said. Meenakshi was far from convinced of this but felt much better for having talked it over.

Kuku came in next with a specific problem. What was she to do with Hans? He couldn’t bear Bengali food, he was a worse philistine even than Arun, who refused to eat fish-heads, even the most delicious bits, the eyes. Hans had not taken to fried neem leaves (he found them too bitter, just imagine, said Kuku), and she did not know if she could really love a man who didn’t like neem leaves. More importantly, did he really love her? Hans might have to be discarded yet, for all his Schubert and Schmerz.

Dipankar reassured her that she could, and that he did. He mentioned that tastes were tastes, and that, if she recalled, Mrs Rupa Mehra had once thought Kuku herself a barbarian because she had spoken slightingly of the dussehri mango. As for Hans, Dipankar suspected that he was in for an education. Sauerkraut would soon be replaced by the banana flower, and stollen and Sachertorte by lobongo-lotikas and ledikenis; and he would have to adapt, and accept, and appreciate, if he was to remain Kakoli’s most-favoured mushroom; for if everyone else was putty in his firmly grasping hands, he was certainly putty in hers.

‘And where will I go and live?’ asked Kuku, beginning to sniff. ‘In that freezing, bombed-out country?’ She looked around Dipankar’s room, and said, ‘You know what’s lacking on that wall is a picture of the Sundarbans. I’ll paint you one. . I hear it rains all the time in Germany, and people spend their whole lives shivering, and if Hans and I quarrel, I can’t just walk home like Meenakshi.’