Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

But soon the pilgrims did disperse entirely. The army engineers removed the electricity poles and the steel plates off the roads, and dismantled the pontoon bridges. River traffic began to move downstream.

In time the Ganga rose with the monsoon rains and covered the sands.

Ramjap Baba remained on his platform, surrounded now on all sides by the Ganga, and continued to recite unceasingly the eternal name of God.

Mrs Rupa Mehra and Lata returned from Lucknow to Brahmpur about a week before the Monsoon Term of the university began. Pran was at the station to meet them. It was late at night, and though it was not cold, Pran was coughing.

Mrs Rupa Mehra scolded him for coming.

‘Don’t be silly, Ma,’ said Pran. ‘Do you think I’d have sent Mansoor instead?’

‘How is Savita?’ asked Mrs Rupa Mehra, just as Lata was about to ask the same question.

‘Very well,’ said Pran. ‘But she’s getting bigger by the minute—’

‘No complications at all?’

‘She’s fine. She’s waiting for you at home.’

‘She should be asleep.’

‘Well, that’s what I told her. But she obviously cares more for her mother and sister than for her husband. She thought you might need a bite to eat when you got home. How was your trip? I hope there was someone to help you at Lucknow Station.’

Lata and her mother exchanged a quick glance.

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra in a definitive manner. ‘The very nice young man I wrote to you about from Delhi.’

‘The shoemaker Haresh Khanna.’

‘You shouldn’t call him a shoemaker, Pran,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘He will probably turn out to be my second son-in-law, God willing.’

Now it was Pran’s turn to give Lata a quick glance. Lata was shaking her head gently from side to side. Pran did not know if she was disavowing the opinion or the certainty of it.

‘Lata encouraged him to write to her. That can only mean one thing,’ continued Mrs Rupa Mehra.

‘On the contrary, Ma,’ said Lata, who could hold back no longer. ‘It can mean one of several things.’ She did not add that she had not encouraged Haresh to write, merely consented to his doing so.

‘Well, I agree, he’s a good fellow,’ said Pran. ‘Here’s the tonga.’ And he got busy telling the coolies how to arrange the luggage.

Lata didn’t quite catch Pran’s remark, or she would have responded very much as her mother did, which was with great surprise.

‘A good fellow? How do you know he is a good fellow?’ asked Mrs Rupa Mehra, frowning.

‘No mystery,’ said Pran, enjoying Mrs Rupa Mehra’s perplexity. ‘I just happen to have met him, that’s all.’

‘You mean you know Haresh?’ said his mother-in-law.

Pran was coughing and nodding simultaneously. Now both Mrs Rupa Mehra and Lata were looking at him in astonishment.

After his voice returned he said, ‘Yes, yes, I know your cobbler.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t call him that,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra in exasperation. ‘He has a degree from England. And I wish you would take care of your health. How can you take care of Savita if you don’t?’

‘I like him well enough,’ said Pran. ‘But I can’t help thinking of him as a cobbler. When he came to Sunil Patwardhan’s party he brought along a pair of brogues he’d made just that morning. Or that he wanted made. Or something like that—’ he ended.

‘What are you talking about, Pran?’ cried Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘I wish you wouldn’t speak in riddles. How can you bring along something that you want made? Who is this Sunil Patwardhan, and what brogues are these? And’—she added with a particular air of grievance—‘why didn’t I know about all this?’

That Mrs Rupa Mehra, whose special business it was to know everyone else’s, should not have known that Haresh had met Pran, in all likelihood before she had, irked her greatly.

‘Now don’t be annoyed with me, Ma, it’s not my fault that I didn’t tell you. I think things were a bit fraught here at home at the time — or perhaps it just slipped my mind. He was here on business a few months ago, and stayed with a colleague and I happened to meet him. A short man, well-dressed, straightforward, and quite definite in his opinions. Haresh Khanna, yes. I particularly remembered his name because I thought he might be a suitable prospect for Lata.’

‘You remember thinking—’ began Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘And you did nothing about it?’ Here was unbelievable dereliction of duty. Her sons were thoroughly irresponsible in this regard, but she had not believed it of her son-in-law.

‘Well—’ Pran paused for a while, considering his words, then said:

‘Now I don’t know how much or how little you know about him, Ma, and it’s been a little while since the party, and I can’t say that it all comes back to me exactly as I heard it, but it is my understanding from Sunil Patwardhan that there was some girl in his life, some Sikh girl, who—’

‘Yes, yes, we know,’ Mrs Rupa Mehra cut him off. ‘We know perfectly well. But that will not stand in our way.’ Mrs Rupa Mehra made it clear by her tone that an armoured corps of Sikh damsels could not come between her and her target.

Pran continued: ‘Sunil had some perfectly idiotic couplet about him and this girl. I can’t recall it right now. At any rate he gave me to understand that our cobbler was spoken for.’

Mrs Rupa Mehra let the appellation pass. ‘Who is this Sunil?’ she demanded.

‘Don’t you know him, Ma?’ said Pran. ‘Well, I suppose we haven’t had him over when you’ve been here. Savita and I like him a lot. He’s very lively, very good at imitations. He’d enjoy meeting you, and I think you’d enjoy meeting him. After a few minutes you’ll imagine you’re speaking to yourself.’

‘But what does he do?’ asked Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘What is his work?’

‘Oh, sorry, Ma, I see what you mean. He’s a lecturer in the Mathematics Department. He works in some of the same areas as Dr Durrani.’

Lata turned her head at the name. A look of tenderness and unhappiness passed over her face. She knew how difficult it would be to avoid Kabir on the campus, and she was uncertain now about whether she wanted to — or would be able to force herself to — avoid him. But after her long silence, what would his feelings towards her be? She feared that she had hurt him, as he had her, and neither thought gave her anything but pain.

‘Now you must tell me all the other news about Brahmpur,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra quickly. ‘Tell me about this terrible thing we’ve all been hearing about — at the Pul Mela. This stampede. No one we know was injured, I hope.’

‘Well, Ma,’ said Pran thoughtfully, unwilling to mention anything about Bhaskar tonight, ‘let’s talk about the news tomorrow morning. There’s lots to tell — the Pul Mela disaster, the zamindari verdict, its effect on my father — oh yes, and on your father’s car, the Buick’—here he began coughing—‘and, of course, my asthma’s been cured by Ramjap Baba, except that the news doesn’t seem to have reached my lungs yet. You’re both tired, and I admit I feel a bit exhausted myself. Here we are. Ah, darling’—for Savita had come up to the gate—‘you really are foolish.’ He kissed her forehead.

Savita and Lata kissed. Mrs Rupa Mehra hugged her elder daughter tearfully for a minute, then said: ‘My father’s car?—’

It was, however, not the time for talk. The tonga was unloaded, hot soup offered and declined, goodnights exchanged. Mrs Rupa Mehra yawned, got ready for bed, removed her false teeth, gave Lata a kiss, said a prayer, and went off to sleep.

Lata stayed awake longer, but — unlike in the tonga — she was thinking of neither Kabir nor Haresh. Even her mother’s quiet and regular breathing failed to reassure her. The moment she lay down she remembered where she had spent the previous night. She thought at first that she would not be able to close her eyes. She kept imagining the sound of footsteps outside the door, and her imagination recreated for her the chimes of the grandfather clock that stood at the end of that long corridor, near Pushkar’s and Kiran’s rooms.