Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

‘Ma, do be reasonable. Varun and I will be going with you to the homoeopath’s and then to the station. And Amit will be here in fifteen minutes with the car. Do you want him to see you in tears?’

‘I don’t care what he sees or does not see,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra with a snappish edge to her voice.

Amit arrived on time. Mrs Rupa Mehra had washed her face, but her nose was still red with emotion. When she said goodbye to Aparna, both of them began to cry. Luckily Arun had already left for work, so he could not make unhelpful comments from the sidelines.

Dr Nuruddin, the homoeopath, was a middle-aged man with a long face, a jovial manner, and rather a drawling voice. He greeted Mrs Rupa Mehra warmly, obtained her general particulars and her medical history, looked at her blood sugar charts, talked for a minute or two about Kakoli Chatterji, stood up, sat down again, and then embarked upon a disconcerting line of questioning.

‘You have reached menopause?’

‘Yes. But why—’

‘Yes?’ asked Dr Nuruddin, as of a fractious child.

‘Nothing,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra meekly.

‘Do you find yourself easily irritable, upset?’

‘Doesn’t everyone?’

Dr Nuruddin smiled. ‘Many people do. Do you, Mrs Mehra?’

‘Yes. This morning at breakfast—’

‘Tears?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you sometimes feel extreme sadness? Abject despair, uncompromising melancholy?’

He pronounced these as one would medical symptoms like itching or intestinal pain. Mrs Rupa Mehra looked at him in perplexity.

‘Extreme? How extreme?’ she faltered.

‘Any answer you can give me will be helpful.’

Mrs Rupa Mehra thought before replying: ‘Sometimes I feel very despairing. Whenever I think of my late husband.’

‘Are you thinking of him now?’

‘Yes.’

‘And are you in despair?’

‘Not just now,’ confessed Mrs Rupa Mehra.

‘What are you feeling just now?’ asked Dr Nuruddin.

‘How peculiar all this is.’

Translated, this meant: ‘That you are mad. And so am I, for putting up with these questions.’

Dr Nuruddin touched the eraser on his pencil to the tip of his nose before asking: ‘Mrs Mehra, do you think my questions are not pertinent? That they are impertinent?’

‘Well—’

‘I assure you that they are very pertinent for understanding your condition. In homoeopathy we try to deal with the whole system, we do not merely confine ourselves to the physical side. Now tell me, do you suffer from loss of memory?’

‘No. I always remember the names and birthdays of friends, and other important things.’

Dr Nuruddin wrote something down on a small pad. ‘Good, good,’ he said. ‘And dreams?’

‘Dreams?’

‘Dreams.’

‘Yes?’ asked Mrs Rupa Mehra in bewilderment.

‘What dreams do you have, Mrs Mehra?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘You don’t remember?’ he responded with genial scepticism.

‘No,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, gritting her teeth.

‘Do you grind your teeth in your sleep?’

‘How do I know? I’m sleeping. What does all this have to do with my diabetes?’

Dr Nuruddin continued jovially: ‘Do you ever wake up thirsty at night?’

Mrs Rupa Mehra, frowning, replied: ‘Yes, quite often. I keep a jug of water by my bedside.’

‘Do you feel more tired in the morning or in the evening?’

‘In the morning, I think. Until I do my recitations from the Gita. Then I feel stronger.’

‘Are you fond of mangoes?’

Mrs Rupa Mehra stared at Dr Nuruddin across the table: ‘How do you know?’ she demanded.

‘It was only a question, Mrs Mehra. Does your urine smell of violets?’

‘How dare you?’ cried Mrs Rupa Mehra, outraged.

‘Mrs Mehra, I am trying to help you,’ said Dr Nuruddin, laying his pencil down. ‘Will you answer my questions?’

‘I will not answer such questions. My train is leaving from Howrah in under an hour. I have to go.’

Dr Nuruddin took down his copy of the Materia Medica and opened it to the relevant page. ‘You see, Mrs Mehra,’ he said, ‘I am not conjuring up these symptoms out of my head. But even the strength of your resistance to my questions has been helpful to me in my diagnosis. Now I have only one further question.’

Mrs Rupa Mehra tensed up. ‘Yes?’ she asked.

‘Do the tips of your fingers ever itch?’ asked Dr Nuruddin.

‘No,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, and breathed a deep sigh.

Dr Nuruddin stroked the bridge of his nose with his two index fingers for a minute, then wrote out a prescription, and handed it to his dispensing assistant, who began to grind various materials up into a white powder, which he distributed into twenty-one tiny paper packets.

‘You will not eat onions or ginger or garlic, and you will take one small packet of powder before each meal. At least half an hour before each meal,’ said Dr Nuruddin.

‘And this will improve my diabetes?’

‘Inshallah.’

‘But I thought you would give me those small pills,’ protested Mrs Rupa Mehra.

‘I prefer powders,’ said Dr Nuruddin. ‘Come back in seven days, and we will see—’

‘I am leaving Calcutta. I won’t be back for months.’

Dr Nuruddin, not quite so jovially, said: ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘You didn’t ask me. I’m sorry, Doctor.’

‘Yes. And where are you going to?’

‘To Delhi, and then to Brahmpur. My daughter Savita is expecting,’ confided Mrs Rupa Mehra.

‘When will you be in Brahmpur?’

‘In a week or two.’

‘I don’t like to prescribe for long periods,’ said Dr Nuruddin, ‘but there doesn’t seem to be much choice.’ He spoke to his assistant before continuing:

‘I am giving you medicines for two weeks. You must write to me at this address after five days, telling me how you are feeling. And in Brahmpur you must visit Dr Baldev Singh. Here is his address. I will write him a note about you later today. Please pay and collect your medicines at the front. Goodbye, Mrs Mehra.’

‘Thank you, Doctor,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra.

‘Next,’ called Dr Nuruddin cheerfully.

Mrs Rupa Mehra was unusually quiet on the way to the station. When asked by her children how the appointment with the doctor had gone, she said: ‘It was peculiar. You can tell Kuku that.’

‘Are you going to follow his prescription?’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘I was not brought up to waste money.’ She sounded as if she was irritated by their presence.

Throughout a long traffic jam on Howrah Bridge, while precious minutes ticked by, and the Humber inched its way forward through a raucous, horn-blowing, yelling, deafening throng of buses, trams, taxis, cars, motorcycles, carts, rickshaws, bicycles and — above all — pedestrians, Mrs Rupa Mehra, who would normally have been in a desperate, bangle-clutching panic, hardly seemed to be aware that her train would be leaving in less than fifteen minutes.

Only after the traffic had miraculously got moving and she was ensconced with all her suitcases in her compartment and had had a good chance to look at the other passengers did Mrs Rupa Mehra’s natural emotions reassert themselves. Kissing Lata with tears in her eyes she told her that she had to take care of Varun. Kissing Varun with tears in her eyes, she told him that he had to take care of Lata. Amit stood a little apart. Howrah Station with its crowds and smoke and bustle and blare and all-pervasive smell of decaying fish was not his favourite place in the world.

‘Really, Amit, it was very nice of you to let us have the car,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, attempting to be gracious.

‘Not at all, Ma, it happened to be free. Kuku, by some miracle, hadn’t reserved it.’