Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

Mrs Rupa Mehra was impressed by the establishment at Elm Villa. She deferred drinking the nimbu pani for a few minutes after taking her homoeopathic powder. But when she did, she found it satisfactory.

Though the purpose of their meeting was continuously on all three minds, the conversation was easier than before. Haresh talked about England and his teachers, about his plans for improving his position, above all about his work. The order he had procured was much on his mind, and he assumed that Mrs Rupa Mehra and Lata too must be anxiously awaiting the outcome of that project. He talked about his life abroad — without, however, mentioning any of the English girls whom he had had affairs with. On the other hand he could not refrain from mentioning Simran once or twice, and could not entirely conceal his emotion when he did so. Lata did not mind; she was almost indifferent to the proceedings. From time to time her eye would fall on his co-respondent shoes, and she invented a Kakoli-couplet to amuse herself.

Lunch was presided over by Miss Mason, a desperately ugly and lifeless woman of forty-five. Her mother was still out; and the two other lodgers were lunching out as well. In contrast to the drawing room, the dining room was dingy and flowerless (except for a dark still life, which, though it contained roses, did not please Mrs Rupa Mehra). It was full of heavy furniture — two sideboards, an almirah and a huge, heavy table — and at the far end of the room, opposite the still life, hung an oil painting of an English country scene containing cows. Mrs Rupa Mehra immediately thought of their edibility, and was upset. But the meal itself was innocuous, and served on flower-patterned plates with wavy edges.

First there was tomato soup. Then fried fish for everyone except Mrs Rupa Mehra, who had vegetable cutlets. Then there was chicken curry and rice with fried brinjal and mango chutney. (Mrs Rupa Mehra had a vegetable curry.) And finally there was caramel custard. The imperial deference of the liveried servant and the lifelessness of Miss Mason succeeded in freezing most of the conversation.

After lunch Haresh offered to show Mrs Rupa Mehra and Lata his rooms. Mrs Rupa Mehra agreed eagerly. One could learn much from a room. They went upstairs. There was a bedroom, an anteroom, a verandah and a bathroom. Everything was neat, tidy, smart — to Lata it appeared to be in extreme, almost disturbing, order. Even the volumes of Hardy on the small bookshelf were arranged alphabetically. The shoes standing on a shoe rack in a corner of the room were polished to a glacial shine. Lata looked out from the verandah at the garden of Elm Villa, which included a bed of orange cosmos.

Mrs Rupa Mehra, on the other hand — while Haresh was in the bathroom — looked around the room and drew in her breath sharply. A photograph of a smiling, long-haired young woman stood in a silver frame on Haresh’s writing table. There were no other photographs in the room, none even of Haresh’s family. The girl was fair — Mrs Rupa Mehra could make that out even from the black-and-white picture — and her features were classically beautiful.

She felt that Haresh, before inviting them to Elm Villa, could at least have put the photograph away.

Such a thought, however, would not even have occurred to Haresh. And had Mrs Rupa Mehra by any chance thought fit to talk slightingly about this omission, that would have been the end of matters as far as Haresh went. He would have forgotten about the Mehras’ visit in a week.

When Haresh returned after washing his hands, Mrs Rupa Mehra said to him, frowning slightly:

‘Let me ask you a question, Haresh. Is there someone else in your life still?’

‘Mrs Mehra,’ said Haresh, ‘I told Kalpana and I am sure she has told you that Simran was and still is very dear to me. But I know that that door is closed to me. I cannot tear her away from her family, and for her family the fact that I am not a Sikh is all that matters. I am now looking for someone with whom I can live a happy married life. You need have no fears on that score. I am very glad that Lata and I have had the chance to get to know each other a little.’

Lata had come back in from the verandah during this exchange. She had overheard his forthright remarks and, without thinking, said to him: ‘Haresh, what part will your family play in all this? You have talked very little about them. If — if — you intend to marry someone, will they have any say in the matter?’ Her lips were trembling slightly. The thought of talking about such matters in such direct terms embarrassed her painfully. But something about the manner in which Haresh had said, ‘I know that that door is closed to me,’ had moved her, and so she had spoken.

Haresh, noticing her embarrassment, liked her for it, and smiled; as usual his eyes disappeared. ‘No. I will ask for Baoji’s blessing, naturally, but not for his consent. He knows that I feel strongly about my engagements.’

After a few moments of silence, Lata said:

‘I see you like Hardy.’

‘Yes,’ said Haresh. ‘But not The Well Beloved. ’ Then he looked at his watch and said: ‘I have enjoyed this so much that I’ve lost track of the time. I have to do a bit of work at the factory, but I wonder if you’d like to come and see where I work? I don’t want to hide anything from you; the atmosphere there is a little different from Elm Villa. Today I have managed to get the use of the car, so I could either take you there or have you dropped at Mr Kakkar’s place. But perhaps you’ll want to rest a little. It’s a hot day and you must be tired.’

This time it was Lata who said, ‘I would like to see the factory. But could I first—?’

Haresh indicated the bathroom.

Before she emerged she looked at the dressing table. Here too everything was neatly and methodically laid out: the Kent combs, the badger-hair shaving brush, the solidified stick of Pinaud deodorant that lent a cool fragrance to the warm day. Lata rubbed a little on the inside of her left wrist, and came out smiling. It was not that she didn’t like Haresh. But the thought of their getting married was ridiculous.

She was no longer smiling a little later in the stench of the tannery. Haresh had to take the new employee Lee around CLFC’s own tannery to show him the various kinds of leather (other than sheep, which they bought on the open market) that were available for making shoes. Lee’s designs would depend partly on the leather available; and in his turn he could influence the choice of colours that the tannery would supply in the future. Haresh’s nose, after a year at CLFC, was somewhat used to its distinctive smell, but Mrs Rupa Mehra felt almost faint, and Lata sniffed her left wrist from time to time, amazed that Lee and Haresh could treat the foul stench almost as if it didn’t exist.

Haresh was quick to explain to Lata’s mother that the hides were from ‘fallen animals’, in other words cows that had died a natural death and had not, as in other countries, been slaughtered. He said that they did not accept hides from Muslim slaughterhouses. Mr Lee gave her a reassuring smile, and she looked a little less miserable if not much more enthusiastic.

After a quick visit to the temporary storage godowns where the hides lay piled in salt, they went to the soaking pits. Men with orange rubber gloves were pulling the swollen hides out with grappling-hooks and transferring them to the liming drums where the hair and fat would be removed. As Haresh explained the various processes — de-hairing, de-liming, pickling, chrome tanning and so on — in a voice of enthusiasm, Lata felt a sudden revulsion for his work, and a sense of disquiet about someone who could enjoy this sort of thing. Haresh meanwhile was continuing confidently: ‘But once you have it at the wet-blue stage, it’s easy enough to see what comes next: fat liquoring, samming, splitting, shaving, dyeing, setting, drying, and then there we are! The leather that we actually think of as leather! All the other processes — glazing, boarding, ironing and so on — are optional, of course.’