Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

Mrs Rupa Mehra had nearly swallowed some nimbu pani the wrong way.

In order to cover her embarrassment, Dr Durrani tried to pretend that nothing was amiss. He kept on talking — hesitantly, of course — about this and that. When Mrs Rupa Mehra had partially recovered from the shock, she found him discussing the Pergolesi Lemma in a courtly and sympathetic manner.

‘It was my paper on that, er, Lemma which my, um, wife nearly destroyed,’ he was saying.

‘Oh, why?’ asked Mrs Rupa Mehra, seizing upon the first two sensible syllables on hand in order to show that she had been following him.

‘Ah,’ said Professor Durrani. ‘Because my wife is, er, mad.’

‘Mad?’ whispered Mrs Rupa Mehra.

‘Yes, er, quite mad. It seems that the film is, er, about to, er, er, commence. Shall we go in?’ asked Dr Durrani.

They entered the dance hall of the club, where, in the cold or rainy seasons, the weekly films were screened. It was much pleasanter in the open air, for the hall was inevitably crowded; but these days there was the risk of a sudden evening shower.

City Lights began, and laughter resounded all around. For Mrs Rupa Mehra, however, this was the laughter of mockery. Too clearly now she saw the deeply laid plot, the scheme whereby Lata, with Malati’s connivance, had contrived to act in the same play as Kabir. Lata had not mentioned him once since their return to Brahmpur. When his involvement in the Bhaskar episode had come up in conversation, she had pointedly ignored it. She could well afford to do so, thought Mrs Rupa Mehra indignantly, because she could get all the facts from the protagonist himself in their tête-à-têtes.

That Lata should have acted so furtively with her mother, her mother who loved her and had sacrificed every comfort for the education and happiness of her children, wounded Mrs Rupa Mehra deeply. So this was her reward for being tolerant and understanding. This was what happened if you were a widow, and all alone in the world, with no one to help you control your children for their own good. Her nose had reddened in the darkened hall; and when she thought of her late husband, she started sobbing.

‘My wife is, er, mad.’ The words started echoing in her head. Who had spoken them? Dr Durrani? A voice in the film? Her own husband Raghubir? Not content with being Muslim, this wretched boy was half-mad as well. Poor Lata, poor, poor Lata. And Mrs Rupa Mehra, out of pity for and anger at her daughter, began to weep noisily and unashamedly.

To her surprise, she saw that people to both left and right of her were sobbing as well. Dr Kishen Chand Seth, for instance, who was sitting next to her, was juddering with grief. When she realized what had brought this about, she glanced sharply up at the small screen. But concentration was impossible. She was not feeling well. She opened her black handbag to get out her eau de cologne.

Someone else who was not feeling at all well was Pran. He could sense, in the crowded and enclosed atmosphere of the slightly musty hall, one of his frightening attacks coming on. He had been feeling a little breathless earlier, but this had improved when he had sat down. Now it was again becoming hard to breathe. He opened his mouth. It was difficult either to expel the stale air or to take in fresh air. He leaned forward, bent over, sat up straight. It was no good. He began to gasp for breath. His chest and neck moved, but to no effect. In a fog of desperation he heard the laughter of the audience, but he had closed his eyes, and could not see the screen.

Pran began to wheeze, and Savita, who had half-turned to him, thinking that his paroxysm was probably one brought on by laughter, and would subside, heard the characteristic danger signal. She held his hand. But Pran had only one thought: how to get oxygen into his lungs. The more he tried, the harder it seemed to be. His efforts became more frantic. He was forced to stand up and bend over. Now other people had turned around, and were beginning to look at the source of the disturbance. Savita spoke in a low voice to the other members of the family, and they all got up to leave. Mrs Rupa Mehra’s sobbing for her daughter was converted into a new and more urgent concern for her son-in-law. But Dr Kishen Chand Seth, welded mentally as he was to the joys and woes of City Lights , was gnashing his teeth in frustration, and was only restrained from going up in smoke by a warning word from his wife.

Somehow they got to his car, and there Pran collapsed. His struggles to breathe were painful to observe, and Mrs Rupa Mehra tried to prevent her daughter from observing them. The baby was due in two weeks, and she had advised Savita against even the mild excitement of the movie.

Savita held Pran’s hand tightly and said to Dr Kishen Chand Seth: ‘This is a worse attack than usual, Nanaji. We should go to the hospital.’ But Pran managed to gasp out the single word: ‘Home.’ He felt that once he was there the spasm would subside of its own accord.

They drove back to the house. Pran was put to bed. But the spasm continued. The veins in his neck and forehead stood out. His eyes, even when open, registered very little of the outside world. His chest continued to heave. His coughing, gasping, and wheezing filled the room, and there was a desperate darkness in his mind.

It was now almost an hour since it had begun. Dr Kishen Chand Seth phoned a colleague. Then, despite her mother’s dissuasion on the grounds that she should be resting, not distressing herself like this, Savita walked carefully out of the bedroom, picked up the receiver, phoned Baitar House and asked for Imtiaz. By some miracle he was in, though in that vast house it took a little while to summon him to the phone.

‘Imtiaz Bhai,’ said Savita, ‘Pran is having one of his asthma attacks, but it is much worse than usual. Could you come over, please?. . It’s been an hour or more. . Yes, I’ll remain calm — but please come over. . please. . At the club during the movie. . No, your father’s still there, but my grandfather is with us, here at home. . Yes, yes, I will remain calm, but I’ll be calmer once you’re here. . I can’t describe it. It’s much worse than usual, and I’ve seen many of them.’

While she was talking, the young servant, Mansoor, concerned that in her situation she should be standing, had brought a chair for her. Now she sat down, looked at the phone, and sobbed.

After a while, having collected herself, she went back to the bedroom, where everyone was standing around, upset and agitated.

A sound was heard at the front door. ‘I’ll see who it is,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra.

It was Lata and Malati, back from the rehearsal of Twelfth Night.

‘Whenever I act or sing,’ said Malati, ‘I feel I could eat a horse.’

‘We’re not serving horse today,’ said Lata, as the door opened. ‘It’s one of Ma’s fast days. Where is everyone?’ she continued, noticing that, despite the car standing outside, the drawing room was empty. ‘Ma? Now what are you crying for? I didn’t mean to tease you. It was a stupid joke, anyway. . Is something the matter? Is anything wrong?’

Maan, Firoz and Imtiaz were over very shortly. Maan tried to cheer Savita up a bit. Firoz said little. Like everyone else, he was distressed to see Pran in such a pitiable state, labouring and panting for breath.

Imtiaz, on the other hand, was not visibly upset by his friend’s painful struggles and went about his task of diagnosis swiftly. Parvati Seth was a trained nurse and helped move Pran when necessary. Imtiaz knew that Pran was not in a position to answer questions except occasionally by nodding or shaking his head, so he addressed what questions he could about the background as well as the suddenness of this recent attack to Savita. Malati described fairly clinically the incident in the lecture room a few days earlier. Firoz had already told Imtiaz on the way to the house that Pran had been complaining of exhaustion when he had met him at the High Court a few days earlier — and, of all things, discomfort around his heart.