Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

‘I thought you were an intelligent girl,’ the odious, disappointed, forgiving voice was saying.

But in a while her eyes closed of their own accord, and her mind yielded to a blessed exhaustion.

Mrs Rupa Mehra and her two daughters had just finished breakfast and had so far had no time to talk about anything of significance when two visitors from Prem Nivas arrived: Mrs Mahesh Kapoor and Veena.

Mrs Rupa Mehra’s face lit up at the thought of their kindness and consideration. ‘Come in, come in, come in,’ she said in Hindi. ‘I was just thinking about you, and here you are. You must have breakfast,’ she continued, taking over her daughter’s house in a manner that was impossible for her in Calcutta under the eye of the gorgon. ‘No? Well, tea at least. How is everyone at Prem Nivas? And in Misri Mandi? Why has Kedarnath not come — or his mother? And where is Bhaskar? School hasn’t begun yet — or has it? I suppose he is out flying kites with his friends and has forgotten all about his Rupa Nani. Minister Sahib of course is busy, I can imagine, so I don’t blame him for not visiting us, but Kedarnath should certainly have come. He doesn’t do much in the morning. But tell me all the news. Pran promised to, but far from being able to talk to him, I haven’t even seen him this morning. He’s gone to attend a meeting of some committee. You should tell him, Savita, not to overexert. And’—turning to Pran’s mother—‘you should also advise him not to be so active. Your words will carry a lot of weight. A mother’s words always do.’

‘Who listens to my words?’ said Mrs Mahesh Kapoor in her quiet way. ‘You know how it is.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Mrs Rupa Mehra, shaking her head in vehement agreement. ‘I know exactly how it is. No one listens to their parents these days. It’s a sign of the times.’ Lata and Savita glanced at each other. Mrs Rupa Mehra went on: ‘Now with my father, no one dares to disobey him. Or he slaps them. He slapped me once even after Arun was born because he said I wasn’t handling him properly; Arun was being very difficult, crying for no reason, and it disturbed my father. I began crying of course when he slapped me. And Arun, who was only one at the time, began crying even louder. My husband was on tour at the time.’ Her eyes misted over, then cleared up as she remembered something.

‘My father’s car — the Buick — what has happened to it?’ she asked.

‘It was requisitioned to help with the casualties at the Pul Mela,’ said Veena. ‘I think it’s been returned; it should have been returned by now. But we haven’t followed things up these days, we’ve been so worried about Bhaskar.’

‘Worried? Whatever for?’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra.

‘What’s happened to Bhaskar?’ said Lata, simultaneously.

Veena, her mother and Savita were all greatly surprised that Mrs Rupa Mehra hadn’t been informed fully by Pran within minutes of her arrival the previous night of Bhaskar’s accident and its aftermath. Each filled in the picture with eagerness and distress, and Mrs Rupa Mehra’s cries of alarm and sympathy added to the concern, excitement and noise.

If five of us can make the racket we’re making, Birbal really did see a miracle under that tree, said Lata to herself, and her thoughts turned temporarily from Bhaskar to Kabir at the very moment that the conversation itself did the same.

Veena Tandon was saying: ‘And, really, if it hadn’t been for that boy who recognized Bhaskar, God knows what we would ever have done — or who would ever have found him. He was still unconscious when we saw him — and when he came to, he couldn’t even remember his own name.’ She began to tremble at the thought that an even worse disaster had been so close, so almost unavoidable. Even in her waking hours, even when holding her son’s hand by his bedside, she often remembered with frightening distinctness the sense of his fingers slipping out of her grasp. And the return of that hand had depended on so tenuous a chance that there could be no possible explanation for it but the goodness and grace of God.

‘Ah, the tea,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra in a rush of tenderness now that she had three young women to mother. ‘You must have a cup immediately, Veena, no, you must, even if your hands are trembling. It will do you good instantly. No, Savita, you sit down, it isn’t sensible for you in this condition to insist on acting as hostess. What is a mother for, don’t you agree?’ This last phrase was addressed to Mrs Mahesh Kapoor. ‘Lata, darling, give this cup to Veena. Who was this boy who recognized Bhaskar? One of his friends?’

‘Oh no,’ said Veena, her voice a little steadier. ‘He was a young man, a volunteer. We didn’t know him, but he knew Bhaskar. He’s Kabir Durrani, the son of Dr Durrani, who has been so good to Bhaskar—’

But Mrs Rupa Mehra’s own hands, suddenly grown unsteady with shock, spilled the tea that she had just been pouring.

Lata had grown very still upon hearing the name.

What could Kabir have been doing down by the Pul Mela — and as a volunteer — at a Hindu festival?

Mrs Rupa Mehra put down the teapot and looked towards Lata, the original cause of her distress. She was about to say: ‘Now look what you’ve made me do!’ when some better instinct prevented her. After all, Veena and Mrs Mahesh Kapoor had no idea about Kabir’s interest in Lata. (She preferred to think of it in that direction.)

Instead she said: ‘But he’s — well, he’s — I mean, he must be from his name — what was he doing at the Pul Mela? Surely—’

‘I think he was just a volunteer from the university,’ said Veena. ‘They sent an appeal for volunteers after the disaster, and he went to help. What a decent young man. He refused to leave his duty at the first-aid centre even to oblige a Minister — you know how abrupt Baoji can be on the phone. We had to go down ourselves to see Bhaskar. That was good, because Bhaskar shouldn’t have been moved. And though Durrani’s son was tired, he spoke to us for quite a long time, reassuring us, telling us how Bhaskar had been brought in, how he did not appear to have any external injury. I was almost beside myself with worry. It makes you think there is God in all of us. He comes quite often to Prem Nivas these days. His father, who knows Bhaskar, often comes along as well. None of us have any idea what they talk about. It makes Bhaskar happy, though, so we just leave them alone with paper and pencil.’

‘Prem Nivas?’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘Why not Misri Mandi?’

‘Well, Rupaji,’ said Mrs Mahesh Kapoor. ‘I have insisted that Veena stay with us until Bhaskar has quite recovered. It’s not good for him to move around too much, the doctor says.’ Mrs Mahesh Kapoor had in fact taken the doctor aside and insisted that he say this. ‘And for Veena too, it’s exhausting enough to take care of Bhaskar without having to run a household. Kedarnath and his mother are staying with us too, naturally. They’re both with Bhaskar now. Someone has to be.’

Mrs Mahesh Kapoor made no mention of any additional strain this arrangement imposed on her. Indeed, she did not consider the additional effort of putting four people up in her house to be anything out of the ordinary. The kind of household she ran — had always run — at Prem Nivas involved offering hospitality at all hours to all kinds of people — often strangers, political associates of her husband. If that was an effort she undertook willingly if not gladly, this was one which she undertook both gladly and willingly. She was happy that at a time of crisis like this one, she could be close enough to help. If there had been one silver lining to the dark cloud of Partition, it had been that it had brought her married daughter and her grandson back from Lahore to live in the same town as her. And now, by virtue of another trauma, they were back in Prem Nivas itself.