Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

‘Oh, do stop moaning, Lata, in that feeble way,’ said Malati with as much impatience as affection.

‘What?’ exclaimed Lata, outraged out of her mournfulness. She glared at her friend.

‘You need to do something,’ said Malati decisively. ‘Something outside your studies. Anyway, your final exams are almost a year away, and this is the term when people take things easy.’

‘I do sing now, thanks to you.’

‘Oh, no,’ said Malati, ‘that’s not what I meant at all. If anything, you should stop singing raags and start singing film songs.’

Lata laughed, thinking of Varun and his gramophone.

‘It’s a pity this isn’t Nainital,’ continued Malati.

‘You mean, so that I could ride and row and skate?’ said Lata.

‘Yes,’ said Malati.

‘The problem is,’ said Lata, ‘if I row I’ll only think of the frangrant waters, and if I ride I’ll think of him riding his bicycle. And anyway I can neither ride nor row.’

‘Something that is active and takes you out of yourself,’ continued Malati, partly to herself. ‘Some society — how about a literary society?’

‘No,’ said Lata with a shake of her head and a smile. Mr Nowrojee’s soirées or anything resembling them were too close for comfort.

‘A play, then. They’re putting on Twelfth Night. Get a part in the play. That’ll make you laugh at love and life.’

‘My mother wouldn’t stand for my acting in a play,’ said Lata.

‘Don’t be such a mouse, Lata,’ said Malati. ‘Of course she’ll agree. After all, Pran produced Julius Caesar last year and there were a couple of women in it. Not many, not important parts perhaps, but real girl students, not boys dressed up as girls. He was engaged to Savita at the time. Did your mother object? No, she didn’t. She didn’t see the play, but she was delighted at its success. If she didn’t object then, she can’t now. Pran will be on your side. And the students in Patna University and in Delhi too have mixed casts now. This is a new age!’

Lata could only imagine what her mother might have to say about the new age.

‘Yes!’ said Malati with high enthusiasm. ‘It’s being put up by that philosophy teacher, what’s his name — it will come back to me — and auditions are in a week. Female auditions one day, male auditions two days later. Very chaste. Perhaps they’ll even rehearse separately. Nothing that a cautious parent could object to. And it’s for Annual Day, so that lends it an additional stamp of respectability. You need something like that or you’ll just wilt away. Activity — furious, unmeditative activity, in lots of company. Take my word for it, that’s what you need. That’s how I got over my musician.’

Lata, though she felt that Malati’s heartbreaking affair with a married musician was hardly a matter to make light of, was grateful to her for trying to cheer her up. After the unsettling strength of her feelings for Kabir, she could understand better what she had not understood before: why Malati had allowed herself to get involved in something as complicated and hazardous as she had.

‘But anyway,’ Malati was saying, ‘I’m bored with Kabir: I want to hear about all the other men you’ve met. Who is this Kanpur prospect? And what about Calcutta? And didn’t your mother plan to take you to Delhi and Lucknow too? They should have been worth at least one man apiece.’

After Lata had rendered her a full account of her voyage, which turned out not to be a catalogue of men so much as a lively description of events, omitting only the indescribable episode in Lucknow, Malati said:

‘It seems to me that the poet and the paan-eater are neck and neck in the matrimonial stakes.’

‘The poet?’ Lata was dumbfounded.

‘Yes, I don’t consider his brother Dipankar or the covenanted Bish to be in the running at all.’

‘Nor do I,’ said Lata, annoyed. ‘But nor, I assure you, is Amit. He is a friend. Just as you are. He was the one person whom I felt I could really talk to in Calcutta.’

‘Go on,’ said Malati. ‘This is very interesting. And did he give you a copy of his poems?’

‘No, he did not,’ said Lata crossly. After a while she reflected that Amit had in fact promised in a vague manner to give her a copy. But if he had really meant to, he could surely have sent one through Dipankar, who had been in Brahmpur and had met Pran and Savita. Lata felt, though, that she was not being quite honest with Malati, and now appended the remark: ‘At least he hasn’t yet.’

‘Well, I’m sorry,’ said Malati, uncontritely. ‘This is a sensitive point with you.’

‘It is not,’ said Lata. ‘It is not sensitive. It’s just irritating. I find it reassuring to think of Amit as a friend, and very unreassuring to think of him in any other way. It’s just because you saddled yourself with a musician that you want to saddle me with a poet.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Malati, please believe me, you’re barking up a non-existent tree.’

‘All right,’ said Malati. ‘Here’s an experiment. Close your eyes, and think of Kabir.’

Lata wanted to refuse to go along. But curiosity is a curious thing, and after hesitating for a while she frowned and complied. ‘Surely it isn’t necessary to close my eyes,’ she said.

‘No, no, close your eyes,’ insisted Malati. ‘Now describe what he’s wearing — and one or two physical features. Don’t open your eyes while you’re speaking.’

Lata said: ‘He’s wearing cricket clothes; a cap; he’s smiling — and — this is ridiculous, Malati.’

‘Go on.’

‘Well, his cap’s come off: he’s got wavy hair, and broad shoulders, and nice even teeth. Rather a — what do they call it in silly romantic novels? — an aquiline nose. What is the purpose of all this?’

‘All right, now think of Haresh.’

‘I’m trying,’ said Lata. ‘All right, I have him in focus now. He’s wearing a silk shirt — cream-coloured — and fawn trousers. Oh — and those horrible co-respondent shoes I told you about.’

‘Features?’

‘He’s got small eyes, but they’ve crinkled up very nicely into a smile — they’ve almost disappeared.’

‘Is he chewing paan?’

‘No, thank God. He’s drinking a cup of cold chocolate. Pheasant’s, he said it was called.’

‘And now Amit.’

‘All right,’ sighed Lata. She tried to picture him, but his features remained vague. After a while she said: ‘He refuses to come into focus.’

‘Oh,’ said Malati, with something like disappointment in her voice. ‘But what’s he wearing?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Lata. ‘How odd. Am I allowed to think instead of imagine?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Malati.

But try as she might, Lata could not imagine what kind of shirts and trousers and shoes Amit wore.

‘Where are you?’ asked Malati. ‘A house? A street? A park?’

‘A cemetery,’ said Lata.

‘And what are you doing?’ said Malati, laughing.

‘Talking in the rain. Oh yes, he has an umbrella. Would that count as an item of clothing?’

‘All right,’ admitted Malati. ‘I was wrong. But trees do grow, you know.’

Lata refused to follow up this unprofitable speculation. A little later, as they returned to the house for the promised tea, she said: ‘There’ll be no avoiding him, Malati. I’m bound to meet him. When he helped out after the disaster, that wasn’t the mark of “just a teenage boy”. He did that because he felt he had to, not because he meant me to hear about it.’

Malati said: ‘What you have got to do is to build up your life without him, intolerable though that may appear at first. Accept the fact that your mother will never accept him. That is an absolute given. You’re right, you’re bound to bump into him sooner or later, and the one thing that you must make sure of is that you have very little idle time. Yes, a play’s just the thing for you. You should act as Olivia.’