Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

‘But I did. I sent a telegram.’

‘Oh — it’ll probably come today. Things have got so bad with the postal service even though they’ve just put up the rates.’

‘It’ll take time. They have a reasonable Minister in charge,’ said her father. ‘The young are always so impatient.’

‘Anyway, why didn’t you send us a letter?’ asked Kalpana.

‘I decided to come suddenly. It’s Lata,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra in a rush. ‘I want you to find her a boy at once. A suitable boy. She is getting involved with unsuitable boys, and I cannot have that.’

Kalpana reflected on her own attachments to unsuitable boys: on an engagement that had broken up because her friend had suddenly changed his mind; on her father’s opposition to another. She was still unmarried, which made her rather sad whenever she thought about it. She said: ‘Khatri, of course? One or two?’

Mrs Rupa Mehra gave Kalpana a worried smile. ‘Two, please. I will stir it myself. Actually, I should have this saccharine but after a journey one can always make an exception. Of course khatri would be best. I think that one’s own community creates a sense of comfort. But proper khatris: Seth, Khanna, Kapoor, Mehra — no, not Mehra preferably—’

Kalpana was virtually but not quite out of marriageable range herself; it was perhaps a measure of Mrs Rupa Mehra’s desperation that she had decided to entrust such an enterprise to her. Her decision, however, was not unbased on reason. Kalpana knew young people, and Mrs Rupa Mehra knew no one else in Delhi who did. Kalpana was very fond of Lata, who was several years younger than her. And since it was only the khatri community that was to be dredged for prospective candidates, it was not likely that Kalpana herself heaven forbid, should perceive a conflict of interest — especially since she was not a khatri but a brahmin.

‘Don’t worry, Ma, I don’t know any Mehras except you,’ said Kalpana Gaur. She beamed broadly and continued:

‘I do know some Khannas and Kapoors in Delhi, though. I’ll introduce them to you. Once they see you, they’ll know that your daughter’s bound to be good-looking.’

‘I was much more good-looking before the car accident,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, stirring her tea and looking through the window — towards a gardenia bush, dry with summer dust.

‘Do you have a photograph of Lata? A recent one?’

‘Of course.’ There was very little that Mrs Rupa Mehra’s black bag did not contain. She had a very simple black-and-white photograph of Lata with no jewellery or make-up; there were some flowers — a few phlox — in her hair. There was even a photograph of Lata as a baby, though it was unlikely that this would have impressed the family of a potential groom. ‘But first you must get well, darling,’ she said to Kalpana. ‘I came with no warning at all. You asked me to come at Divali or Christmas but time and tide wait for no man.’

‘I’m perfectly well,’ said Kalpana Gaur, blowing her nose. ‘And this problem will make me better.’

‘She’s quite right,’ said her father. ‘Half her illness is laziness. If she isn’t careful, she’ll die young, like her mother.’

Mrs Rupa Mehra smiled weakly.

‘Or your husband,’ added Mr Gaur. ‘He was a foolish man if ever there was one. Climbing the mountains of Bhutan with a weak heart — and overworking — for whom? For the British and their railways.’ He sounded resentful, as he missed his old friend.

Mrs Rupa Mehra reflected that they were everyone’s railways, and that what the late Raghubir Mehra was keen on was the work as such and not who his paymasters were. Everyone who was a government servant could be said to have served the British.

‘He worked hard, but for the action, not for the fruits of the action. He was a true karma-yogi,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra sadly. The late Raghubir Mehra, though he did work excessively hard, would have been amused at this elevated description of himself.

‘Go in and see to the guest room,’ said Mr Gaur. ‘And make sure that there are flowers in it.’

The days passed pleasantly. When Mr Gaur returned from his general store, they talked of old times. At night, with the jackals howling behind the house, and the scent of gardenias in her room, Mrs Rupa Mehra would think back anxiously on the day’s events. She could not summon Lata to Delhi and out of harm’s way without having something tangible in hand. So far, for all Kalpana’s efforts, she had found no one suitable. She often thought of her husband, who would have allayed her fears — either by getting angry with her or by teasing her and then making up. Before she went to sleep she looked at the photograph of him she kept in her bag, and that night she dreamed of him playing rummy with the children in their saloon car.

In the morning Mrs Rupa Mehra woke up even before the Gaurs to chant in a soft voice her verses from the Bhagavad Gita:

‘You grieve for those beyond grief,

and you speak words of insight;

but learned men do not grieve

for the dead or the living.

Never have I not existed

nor you, nor these kings;

and never in the future

shall we cease to exist.

Just as the embodied self

enters childhood, youth, and old age,

so does it enter another body;

this does not confound a steadfast man.

Contacts with matter make us feel

heat and cold, pleasure and pain.

Arjuna, you must learn to endure

fleeting things — they come and go!

When these cannot torment a man,

when suffering and joy are equal

for him and he has courage,

he is fit for immortality.

Nothing of nonbeing comes to be,

nor does being cease to exist;

the boundary between these two

is seen by men who see reality.

Indestructible is this presence

that pervades all this;

no one can destroy

this unchanging reality. . ’

But it was not the all-pervading essence of reality that clutched at Mrs Rupa Mehra’s consciousness but the loved particularities that she had lost or that were losable. What body was her husband in now? If he was born again in human form would she even recognize him if he passed by her in the street? What did it mean when they said of the sacrament of marriage that they would be bound together for seven lives? If they had no memory of who they had been, what use was such knowledge? For all she knew, this last marriage might have been her seventh one. Emotion made her literal; she longed for tangible assurance. The soothing Sanskrit of the small, green, cloth-bound volume passed through her lips, but, while it gave her peace — tears rarely came to her eyes while she was reciting the Gita — it answered none of her questions. And while ancient wisdom so often proved unconsoling, photography, that cruel modern art, helped to ensure that even the image of her husband’s face would not grow dim with time.

Meanwhile, Kalpana tried her best to ferret out likely prospects for Lata. In all she found seven, which was not bad at such short notice. Three were friends or acquaintances, three were friends or acquaintances of friends or acquaintances, and one was the friend of a friend of a friend.

The first, a lively and friendly young man, had been with her at university, and had acted with her in plays. He was rejected by Mrs Rupa Mehra as being too rich. ‘You know our circumstances, Kalpana,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra.

‘But he is sure not to want a dowry. He’s very flush,’ said Kalpana.

‘They are far too well-to-do,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra with decision. ‘There’s no point talking about it. Even their normal expectations for the wedding will be too high. We’ll have to feed a thousand people. Of those, probably seven hundred will be guests from their side. And we’ll have to put them up, and give all the women saris.’