Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

As an afterthought he added:

‘Shall I buy you a sari?’

‘No — no—’ said Lata.

‘Georgette drapes better than chiffon, don’t you think?’

Lata gave no answer.

‘Recently Ajanta pallus have become the craze. The motifs are so — so — imaginative — I saw one with a paisley design, another with a lotus—’ Mr Sahgal smiled. ‘And now with these short cholis the women show their bare waists at the back as well. Do you think you are a bad girl?’

‘A bad girl?’ repeated Lata.

‘At dinner you said you were a bad girl,’ explained her uncle in a kindly, measured way. ‘I don’t think you are. I think you are a lipstick girl. Are you a lipstick girl?’

With sick horror Lata remembered that he had asked her the same question when they were sitting together in his car five years ago. She had completely buried the memory. She had been fourteen or so at the time, and he had asked her calmly, almost considerately: ‘Are you a lipstick girl?’

‘A lipstick girl?’ Lata had asked, puzzled. At that time she had believed that women who wore lipstick, like those who smoked, were bold and modern and probably beyond the pale. ‘I don’t think so,’ she had said.

‘Do you know what a lipstick girl is?’ Mr Sahgal had asked with a slow smirk on his face.

‘Someone who uses lipstick?’ Lata had said.

‘On her lips?’ asked her uncle slowly.

‘Yes, on her lips.’

‘No, not on her lips, not on her lips — that is what is known as a lipstick girl.’ Mr Sahgal shook his head gently from side to side and smiled, as if enjoying a joke, while looking straight into her bewildered eyes.

Kiran had returned to the car — she had gone to buy something — and they had driven on. But Lata had felt almost ill. Later, she had blamed herself for misunderstanding what her uncle had said. She had never mentioned the incident to her mother or to anyone, and had forgotten it. Now it came back to her and she stared at him.

‘I know you are a lipstick girl. Do you want some lipstick?’ said Mr Sahgal, moving forward along the bed.

‘No—’ cried Lata. ‘I don’t — Mausaji — please stop this—’

‘It is so hot — I must take off this dressing gown.’

‘No!’ Lata wanted to shout, but found she couldn’t. ‘Don’t, please, Mausaji. I–I’ll shout — my mother is a light sleeper — go away — go away — Ma — Ma—’

The clock chimed one.

Mr Sahgal’s mouth opened. He said nothing for a moment. Then he sighed.

He looked very tired again. ‘I thought you were an intelligent girl,’ he said in a disappointed voice. ‘What are you thinking of? If you had a father to bring you up properly, you would not behave in this way.’ He got up. ‘I must get a chair for this room, every deluxe hotel should have a chair in every room.’ He was about to touch Lata’s hair, but perhaps he could sense that she was tense with terror. Instead, in a forgiving voice, he said: ‘I know that deep down you are a good girl. Sleep well, God bless you.’

‘No!’ Lata almost shouted.

When he left, his footsteps padding gently back towards his room, Lata began to tremble. ‘Sleep well, God bless you,’ is what she remembered her father used to say to her, his ‘little monkey’. She switched off the light, then immediately switched it on again. She went to the door, and found that there was no way to lock it. Finally she dragged her suitcase and placed it against the door. There was water in a jug by the bedside lamp, and she drank a glass. Her throat was parched, and her hands trembling. She buried her face in her mother’s handkerchief.

She thought of her father. During the school holidays, whenever he came back from work, he would ask her to make tea for him. She adored him, and she adored his memory. He was a jolly man and liked to have his family around him in the evenings. When he had died in Calcutta after a long cardiac illness, she had been at Sophia Convent in Mussourie. The nuns had been very kind. It was not just that she had been excused the test that had been set that day. They had given her an anthology of poetry that was still among the most valued of her possessions. And one nun had said, ‘We are so sorry — he was very young to die.’ ‘Oh no,’ Lata had replied. ‘He was very old — he was forty-seven years old.’ Even then, it had not seemed believable. The term would end in a few months, and she would go home as usual. She had found it difficult to cry.

A month later her mother had come up to Mussourie. Mrs Rupa Mehra had been almost prostrate with grief and had not been able to come up earlier, even to see her daughter. She was dressed in white, and there was no tika on her forehead. That was what had brought things home to Lata, and she had wept.

‘He was very old.’ Again she heard her uncle’s voice saying: ‘You were very young.’ Lata put off her light once more, and lay in the darkness.

She could not speak to anyone about what had happened. Mrs Sahgal doted on her husband; could she even be aware of what he was like? They had separate rooms: Mr Sahgal often worked late. Mrs Rupa Mehra would hardly have believed Lata. If she had, she would have imagined — or wanted to imagine — that Lata had placed a dramatic construction on innocent events. And even if she had believed Lata entirely, what could she have done? Denounced Maya’s husband and destroyed her stupid happiness?

Lata recalled that neither her mother nor Savita had told her even about menstruation before it had suddenly happened to her with no warning while they were on a train. Lata had been twelve. Her father was dead. They were no longer travelling in saloons, but in the intermediate class between second and third. It was the heat of late summer — as now, the monsoons had not yet broken. For some reason she and her mother were travelling alone. She had gone to the toilet when she felt the onset of something uncomfortable — and there, when she saw what it was, she had thought she was bleeding to death. Terrified, she had rushed back to her compartment. Her mother had given her a handkerchief to absorb the flow, but had been very embarrassed. She had told Lata that she must not talk to anybody about it, especially men. Sita and Savitri didn’t talk about such things. Lata wondered what she had done to deserve it. Finally, Mrs Rupa Mehra had told her not to get alarmed — that it happened to all women — that it was what made women very special and precious — and that it would happen every month.

‘Do you have it?’ Lata had asked.

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘Previously I used to use soft cloth, but now I use padded napkins, and you must keep a few with you. I have some at the bottom of the suitcase.’

It had been sticky and uncomfortable in the strong heat, but it had to be borne. Nor did it improve over the years. The mess, the backaches, its irregular arrival before exams — Lata felt there was nothing very special or precious about it. When she asked Savita why she hadn’t told her about it, Savita said: ‘But I thought you knew. I did, before it happened to me.’

The clock down the corridor struck three, and Lata was still awake. Then, once again, she caught her breath with fear. The padded footsteps were coming down the carpeted corridor. She knew they were going to pause at her door. Oh, Ma, Ma — thought Lata.

But the footsteps padded on, softly down the corridor towards the far end, towards Pushkar’s and Kiran’s rooms. Perhaps Mr Sahgal was going to see that his son was all right. Lata waited for his footsteps to return any minute. She could not sleep. But it was two hours later, a little before five in the morning, that they passed by her room gently, after a momentary pause by her door.