Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

She reflected that Haresh was not westernized in the proper sense: she sensed that in his manners and style he was a bit half-baked (at least by Calcutta standards), and that consequently he sometimes put on airs. But though he wished to be liked by her, he did not ingratiate himself by attempting to anticipate her opinions before putting forward his own. If anything, he was too certain about the correctness of his views. Nor did he lay on the odious, insincere charm that she had got used to with Arun’s young Calcutta friends. Amit, of course, was different; but he was Meenakshi’s brother rather than Arun’s friend.

Haresh found Mrs Rupa Mehra affectionate as well as good-looking. He had tried to maintain a respectful distance by calling her Mrs Mehra throughout, but she had eventually insisted on him calling her Ma. ‘Everyone else does so after five minutes, so you must as well,’ she told Haresh. She waxed voluble about her late husband and her coming grandson. She had already forgotten her afternoon’s trauma and had appended her future son-in-law to the family.

Over ice-cream, Lata decided she liked his eyes. They were lovely, she thought, and surprisingly so; they were small and lively, did not spoil his good looks, and when he was amused they disappeared completely! It was fascinating. Then, for no accountable reason, she began to dread the thought that after dinner, while driving her back, he would offer to stop for paan — unconscious of how horribly it would jar with the spirit of the evening, the linen, the silverware, the china, how it would undo the threads of her goodwill with the blind torque of distaste, how it would sandwich the entire day with the image of a red mouth stained with betel juice.

Haresh’s thoughts were not complicated. He said to himself: This girl is intelligent without arrogance, and attractive without vanity. She does not reveal her thoughts easily, but I like that. And then he thought of Simran, and the old, not entirely appeasable pain came over his heart.

But sometimes, for a few minutes at a time, Haresh forgot about Simran. And, for a few minutes at a time, Lata forgot about Kabir. And sometimes both of them forgot that what they were undergoing amid the clink of cutlery and crockery was a mutual interview that might decide whether or not they would own a common set of those items sometime in the whimsical future.

The car (with Haresh and driver) picked up Mrs Rupa Mehra and Lata and took them to the railway station early the next morning. They arrived, they thought, just in time. The timing of the Kanpur-Lucknow train, however, had been changed, and they missed it. The bus they attempted to take was full. There was nothing for it but to wait for the 9.42 train. Meanwhile they returned to Elm Villa.

Mrs Rupa Mehra said that nothing like this would have happened in her husband’s time. Then the trains ran like clockwork, and changes in train timings were like changes in dynasties: momentous and rare. Now everything was being changed at random: road names, train schedules, prices, mores. Cawnpore and Cashmere were yielding to unfamiliar spellings. It would be Dilli and Kolkota and Mumbai next. And now, shockingly, they were threatening to go metric with the currency — and even with weights and measures.

‘Don’t worry, Ma,’ said Haresh with a smile. ‘We’ve tried to introduce the kilogram since 1870, and it probably won’t be brought in for another hundred years.’

‘Do you think so?’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, pleased. Seers meant something exact to her, pounds something vague, and kilograms nothing at all.

‘Yes,’ said Haresh. ‘We have no sense of order or logic or discipline. No wonder we let the British rule us. What do you think, Lata?’ he added in an artless attempt to draw her in.

But Lata had no opinion handy. She was thinking of other matters. What was foremost on her mind was Haresh’s panama hat, which (though he had doffed it) she thought exceptionally stupid. This morning too he had on his Irish linen suit.

They got to the station a little early and sat in the railway cafe. Lata and Mrs Rupa Mehra bought first-class tickets to Lucknow — the journey was a short one and tickets did not need to be reserved in advance. Haresh pressed a cup of Pheasant’s cold chocolate — a Dutch concoction — on them. It was delicious, and Lata’s face expressed her pleasure. Haresh was so delighted at her innocent enjoyment that he suddenly said, ‘May I accompany you to Lucknow? I could stay there with Simran’s sister, and come back tomorrow after seeing you off on the train to Brahmpur.’ What he had almost said was: I would like to spend a few more hours with you today, even if it means that someone else has to purchase the sheepskin.

Mrs Rupa Mehra did not succeed in dissuading Haresh; he bought a ticket to Lucknow for himself. He made sure that their luggage was loaded safely on and below the berths, that the porter did not swindle them, that they were comfortably seated, that each of them was provided with a magazine, that all was well with them in every way. Throughout the two-hour journey he hardly said a word. He was thinking that contentment consisted of just such moments as these.

Lata on the other hand was thinking that it was very odd that he should have mentioned — as part of his reason for accompanying them to Lucknow — that he planned to stay with Simran’s sister. For all the method to his books and brushes, he was an unaccountable man.

When the train steamed into Lucknow Station, Haresh said: ‘I would very much like to be of some help to you tomorrow.’

‘No, no,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, almost in a panic. ‘The tickets have been reserved already. We don’t need any help. They have been reserved by my son — my son in Bentsen Pryce. We’ll be travelling very comfortably. You must not come to the station.’

Haresh looked at Lata for a while and was about to ask her something. Then he turned to her mother instead and said: ‘May I write to Lata, Mrs Mehra?’

Mrs Mehra was about to agree with enthusiasm, then, checking herself she turned to Lata, and Lata nodded, rather gravely. It would have been too cruel to say no.

‘Yes, you may write, of course,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘And you really must call me Ma.’

‘Now I’d like to make sure that you get to Mr Sahgal’s place safely,’ said Haresh. ‘I’ll get a tonga.’

It was pleasant to be taken care of, and the two women allowed Haresh to fuss competently over them.

In fifteen minutes they had arrived at the Sahgals’. Mrs Sahgal was Mrs Rupa Mehra’s first cousin. She was a weak-brained, sweet-natured woman of about forty-five, married to a well-known Lucknow lawyer. ‘Who is this gentleman?’ she asked of Haresh.

‘This is a young man who knew Kalpana Gaur at St Stephen’s,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra by way of non-explanatory explanation.

‘But he must come in and have tea with us,’ said Mrs Sahgal. ‘Sahgal Sahib will be so angry if he doesn’t.’

Mrs Sahgal’s saccharine, foolish life revolved around her husband. No sentence was complete for her without a reference to Mr Sahgal. Some people thought her a saint, some a fool. Mrs Rupa Mehra recalled that her own late husband, usually a good-natured and tolerant man, had thought Mrs Sahgal a doting idiot. He had said this angrily rather than amusedly. The Sahgals’ son, who was about seventeen, was mentally deficient. Their daughter, who was Lata’s age, was highly intelligent and highly neurotic.

Mr Sahgal was very pleased to see Lata and her mother. He was a sober, wise-looking man with a short-trimmed grey-and-white beard. If an expressionless portrait had been made of him, he would have looked like a judge. Rather than welcoming Haresh, however, he gave him a strange, conspiratorial smirk. Haresh took an instant dislike to him.