Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

‘Who brought them?’ Mrs Rupa Mehra asked Hanif. ‘The postman?’

‘No, Memsahib. A man.’

‘What did he look like? Where was he from?’

‘He was just a man, Memsahib. But he gave me this letter for you.’

Mrs Rupa Mehra looked at Hanif severely. ‘You should have given it to me at once. All right. Bring me a plate and a sharp knife, and wash two mangoes.’ Mrs Rupa Mehra pressed and sniffed a few and selected two. ‘These two.’

‘Yes, Memsahib.’

‘And tell Lata to come in from the garden and eat a mango with me at once.’

Lata had been sitting in the garden. It had not been raining, though there was a slight breeze. When she came in, Mrs Rupa Mehra read out the whole of Savita’s accompanying letter.

. . but I said I could imagine how disappointed you must be feeling, Ma darling, and we ourselves were so sad because we had chosen them so carefully and with so much affection, judging each one to ensure that it would be ripe in six days’ time. But then a Bengali gentleman who works in the Registrar’s Office told us how to get around the problem. He knows an attendant who works in the air-conditioned bogey of the Brahmpur-Calcutta Mail. We gave him ten rupees to take the mangoes to you, and we hope that they have arrived — safe and cool and complete. Please do tell me if they have arrived in time. If so we might be able to manage another batch before the season is over because we will not have to choose half-ripe mangoes as we had to for the parcel post. But Ma, you must also be very careful not to eat too many because of your blood sugar. Arun should also read this letter, and monitor your intake. .

Mrs Rupa Mehra’s eyes filled with tears as she read the letter out to her younger daughter. Then she ate a mango with great gusto, and insisted that Lata eat one as well.

‘Now we will share another one,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra.

‘Ma, your blood sugar—’

‘One mango will make no difference.’

‘Of course it will, Ma, and so will the next, and so will the next. And don’t you want to make them last till the next parcel comes?’

The discussion was cut short by the arrival of Amit and Kuku.

‘Where’s Meenakshi?’ asked Amit.

‘She’s gone out,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra.

‘Not again!’ said Amit. ‘I had hoped to see her. By the time I heard she had come to see Dipankar, she’d gone. Please tell her I called. Where’s she gone?’

‘To the Shady Ladies,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, frowning.

‘What a pity,’ said Amit. ‘But it’s nice to see you both.’ He turned to Lata and said: ‘Kuku was just going off to Presidency College to see an old friend, and I thought that perhaps we might go along together. I remember you wanted to visit that area.’

‘Yes!’ said Lata, happy that Amit had remembered. ‘May I go, Ma? Or do you need me for something this afternoon?’

‘That is all right,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, feeling liberal. ‘But you must have some mangoes before you go,’ she continued hospitably to Amit and Kuku. ‘These have just come from Brahmpur. Savita has sent them. And Pran — it is so good when one’s child gets married to such a thoughtful person. And you must also take some home with you,’ she added.

When Amit, Kuku and Lata had gone, Mrs Rupa Mehra decided to cut another mango. When Aparna woke up after her nap, she was fed a slice. When Meenakshi came back from the Shady Ladies, having played a few successful games of mah-jongg, the letter from Savita was read out to her, and she was told to eat a mango.

‘No, Ma, I really can’t — it’s not good for my figure — and it will ruin my lipstick. Hello, Aparna darling — no, don’t kiss Mummy just yet. Your lips are all sticky.’

Mrs Rupa Mehra was confirmed in her opinion that Meenakshi was extremely odd. To steel yourself against mangoes showed a degree of iciness that was almost inhuman.

‘Amit and Kuku enjoyed them.’

‘Oh, what a pity I missed meeting them.’ Meenakshi’s tone implied relief.

‘Amit came specially to see you. He’s come several times, and you’ve always been out.’

‘I doubt it.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, who did not enjoy being contradicted, least of all by her daughter-in-law.

‘I doubt he came to see me. He very rarely visited us before you came from Brahmpur. He’s quite content living in his own dreamworld of characters.’

Mrs Rupa Mehra frowned at Meenakshi but was silent.

‘Oh, Ma, you’re so slow on the uptake,’ continued Meenakshi. ‘It’s clearly Luts whom he’s interested in. I’ve never seen him behave with any kind of consideration towards a girl before. And it’s no bad thing either.’

‘No bad thing either,’ repeated Aparna, testing out the phrase.

‘Be quiet, Aparna,’ said her grandmother sharply. Aparna, too astonished to be hurt by a rebuke from this everloving quarter, kept quiet but continued to listen intently.

‘That’s not true, that is simply not true. And don’t give either of them any ideas,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, shaking her finger at Meenakshi.

‘I’ll give them no ideas that they don’t have already,’ was the cool response.

‘You are a mischief-maker, Meenakshi, I won’t have it,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra.

‘My dear Ma,’ said Meenakshi, amused. ‘Don’t fly off the handle. Neither is it mischief, nor have I made it. I’d just accept things as they come.’

‘I have no intention of accepting things as they come,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, the unsavoury vision of sacrificing yet another of her children on the altar of the Chatterjis making her flush with indignation. ‘I will take her back to Brahmpur at once.’ She stopped. ‘No, not to Brahmpur. Somewhere else.’

‘And Luts will traipse after you obediently?’ said Meenakshi, stretching her long neck.

‘Lata is a sensible and a good girl, and she will do as I tell her. She is not wilful and disobedient like girls who think they are very modern. She has been well brought up.’

Meenakshi stretched back her head lazily, and looked first at her nails and then at her watch. ‘Oh, I have to be somewhere in ten minutes,’ she said. ‘Ma, will you look after Aparna?’

Mrs Rupa Mehra silently conveyed her irked consent. Meenakshi knew too well that her mother-in-law would be pleased to look after her only grandchild.

‘I’ll be back by six thirty,’ said Meenakshi. ‘Arun said he’d be a little late at the office today.’

But Mrs Rupa Mehra was annoyed, and did not respond. And behind her annoyance a slow panic was beginning to build and take hold of her.

Amit and Lata were browsing among the innumerable bookstalls of College Street. (Kuku had gone to meet Krishnan at the Coffee House. According to her he needed to be ‘appeased’, though to her irritation Amit did not ask what she meant by that.)

‘One feels so bewildered among all these millions of books,’ said Lata, astonished that several hundred yards of a city could actually be given over to nothing but books — books on the pavement, books on makeshift bookshelves out in the street, books in the library and in Presidency College, first-, second-, third- and tenth-hand books, everything from technical monographs on electroplating to the latest Agatha Christie.

‘I feel so bewildered among these millions of books, you mean.’

‘No, I do,’ said Lata.

‘What I meant,’ said Amit, ‘was “I”, as opposed to “one”. If you meant the general “one”, that would be fine. But you meant “I”. Far too many people say “one” when they mean “I”. I found them doing it all the time in England, and it’ll survive here long after they’ve given up that idiocy.’