Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

Though Lata had been to Lucknow twice before — once when she was nine, when her father was alive, once when she was about fourteen, after his death — and had stayed each time with the Sahgals, she had never visited the ruined Residency. It was in fact a mere fifteen minutes’ walk from the Sahgals’ house near Kaiserbagh. What she remembered about her two previous stays were not the historical monuments of Lucknow but the fresh, home-made white butter Mrs Sahgal served; and for some reason she recalled being given a whole bunch of grapes for breakfast. She also remembered how friendly Kiran had been on her first trip, and how unfriendly — even resentful — she had been on the second. By then it was clear that all was not well with her brother, and perhaps she had envied Lata her two brothers, noisy, affectionate, and normal. But you have your father, Lata had thought, and I have lost mine. Why do you dislike me? Lata was glad that Kiran was at last trying to restore the friendship; she only wished that she herself were better placed today to reciprocate.

For today she had no wish at all to talk to Kiran or anyone — least of all to Mrs Rupa Mehra. She wanted to be by herself — to think about her life, and what was happening to it, to her. Or perhaps not even to think about it — to be distracted, rather, by something so far and past and grand that it would limit the scope of her own elations and distresses. She had felt something of that spirit in the Park Street Cemetery that day in the pouring rain. It was that spirit of distance that she was trying to recapture.

The great, shattered, bullet-mottled remains of the Residency rose above them on a hill. The grass at the foot of the hill was brown for lack of rain but green above, where it had been watered. All around, among the broken buildings, were trees and bushes — pipal, jamun, neem, mango, and here and there at least four huge banyan trees. Mynas cried from the rough-barked and smooth-barked palms, a spray of magenta bougainvillaea fell in a massive shower on a lawn. Chameleons and squirrels wandered around among the ruins and obelisks and cannons. Wherever the plaster of the thick walls had crumbled, the thin hard bricks of which it was built were exposed. Plaques and gravestones lay scattered through the sad acres. In the centre of it all, in the main surviving building, was a museum.

‘Shall we go to the Museum first?’ asked Lata. ‘That might close early.’

The question threw Kiran into abrupt anxiety. ‘I don’t know — I–I don’t know. We can do anything now,’ she said. ‘There’s no one to say anything.’

‘Let’s do that then,’ said Lata. They went in.

Kiran was so nervous that she bit — not her nails, but the flesh at the base of her thumb. Lata looked at her in astonishment.

‘Are you all right, Kiran?’ she asked. ‘Shall we go back?’

‘No — no,’ cried Kiran. ‘Don’t read that—’ she said.

Lata promptly read the plaque that Kiran was pointing at.

SUSANNA PALMER

killed in this room

by a cannon ball on the

1st July 1857

in her nineteenth year

Lata laughed. ‘Really, Kiran!’ she said.

‘Where was her father?’ said Kiran. ‘Where was he? Why couldn’t he protect her?’

Lata sighed. She now wished she had come here alone, but there had been no getting around her mother’s insistence that she go nowhere in a strange town unaccompanied.

Since her sympathy appeared to disturb Kiran, Lata tried to ignore her, interesting herself instead in a minutely detailed model of the Residency and the surrounding area during the siege of Lucknow. On one wall hung sepia pictures of battle, of the storming of the batteries, of the billiard room, of an English spy disguising himself to get through the native lines.

There was even a poem by Tennyson, one of Lata’s favourite poets. She had, however, never read this particular poem, ‘The Relief of Lucknow’. It had seven stanzas, and she read them at first with interest, then with increasing disgust. She wondered what Amit would have thought of them. Each stanza ended with the line:

And ever upon the topmost roof our banner of England blew!

Occasionally the ‘and’ was replaced by ‘but’ or ‘that’. Lata could scarcely believe that this was the poet of ‘Maud’ and ‘The Lotos-Eaters’. It was hardly possible, she thought, to be more racially smug than this:

Handful of men as we were, we were English in heart and in limb,

Strong with the strength of the race to command, to obey, to endure. .

Now let it speak, and you fire, and the dark pioneer is no more. .

Blessing the wholesome white faces of Havelock’s good fusiliers. .

And so on and so forth.

She did not consider the fact that if the conquest had taken place the other way around, there would have been equally unspeakable poems, probably in Persian, possibly in Sanskrit, dotting England’s green and pleasant land. She felt a great burst of pride for Savita’s father-in-law who had played his part in throwing the English out of this country, and she momentarily forgot all about Sophia Convent and Emma.

In her indignation she had even forgotten about Kiran, whom she now found staring at the plaque commemorating poor Susanna Palmer. Kiran’s body was shaking with sobs, and people were looking at her. Lata put her arm around her shoulder, but did not know what else to do. She drew her out of the building and sat her down on a bench. It was getting dark, and they would have to go home soon.

Kiran resembled her mother in her looks, though there was nothing stupid about her. Tears were now streaming down her face, but she was speechless. Lata tried fumblingly to find out what had upset her. The death of a girl her age almost a century before? The entire atmosphere of the Residency, haunted as it was by desperation? Was there something the matter at home? Near them a boy was standing on the grass, flying an orange-and-purple kite. Sometimes he stared at them.

Twice it seemed to Lata that Kiran was on the verge of a confidence or at least an apology. But since nothing was forthcoming, Lata suggested:

‘We should go home now, it’s getting late.’

Kiran sighed, got up, and walked down the hill with Lata. Lata started humming a line in Raag Marwa, a raag she loved with a passion. By the time they had got home, Kiran appeared to have recovered. As they got to the house she asked Lata:

‘You’re going by the evening train tomorrow, aren’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘I wish I could visit you in Brahmpur. But Savita’s house, I hear, is so small, not like my father’s luxury hotel.’ She spoke the last words bitterly.

‘You must come, Kiran. You can easily stay with us for a week — or more. Your term starts fifteen days after ours. And we’ll get to know each other better.’

Again Kiran’s silence grew almost guilty. She did not even respond aloud to what Lata had said.

Lata was relieved to see her mother again. Mrs Rupa Mehra ticked them off for taking such a long time to return. To Lata’s ears the familiar reprimands were like music.

‘You must tell me—’ Mrs Rupa Mehra began.

‘Ma, first we went along the road past the Chief Court, and then we got to the Residency. At the foot of the Residency was an obelisk which commemorated the officers and sepoys who had remained loyal to the British. Three squirrels sat at the base of—’

‘Lata!’

‘Yes, Ma?’

‘You are behaving very badly. All I wanted to know was—’

‘Everything.’

Mrs Rupa Mehra frowned, then turned to her cousin.

‘Do you have the same trouble with Kiran?’ she asked.

‘Oh, no,’ said Mrs Sahgal. ‘Kiran is a very good girl. It is all due to Sahgal Sahib. Sahgal Sahib is always talking to her and giving her advice. There could be no father like him. Even when clients are waiting. . But Lata is a good girl too.’