Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

None of this convinced Mrs Rupa Mehra, who — glancing at Savita for a second — had begun to think of the brood of misfits that this unimaginable match could create.

‘He is half-mad, do you even know that?’ asked Mrs Rupa Mehra.

To her bafflement and shock, this only produced a smile from Lata.

‘You are laughing at me?’ she said, appalled.

‘No, Ma, at him. He’s achieving madness quite nicely,’ said Lata. Kabir had taken to the part of Malvolio alarmingly well; his initial awkwardness had vanished.

‘How can you laugh at this? How can you laugh at this?’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, rising from her chair. ‘Two tight slaps will do you some good. Laughing at your own mother.’

‘Ma, softly, please,’ said Savita.

‘I think I’d better go,’ said Malati.

‘No, you stay there,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘You should hear this too, then you will advise Lata better. I met this boy’s father at the Subzipore Club. He told me that his wife was fully mad. And the peculiar way he said it made me think that he was also partly mad.’ Mrs Rupa Mehra could not entirely conceal from her voice the triumph of vindication.

‘Poor Kabir!’ said Lata, appalled.

Kabir’s long-forgotten remark about his mother began to make a horrible kind of sense.

But before Mrs Rupa Mehra could reproach Lata further, Pran had woken up. Looking around him, he said: ‘What’s going on? Hello Ma, hello Lata. Ah, Malati, you’ve come too — I asked Savita what had happened to you. What’s the matter? Something dramatic, I hope. Come on, tell me. I heard someone say someone was mad.’

‘Oh, we were discussing the play,’ said Lata. ‘Malvolio, you know.’ It cost her an effort to speak.

‘Oh, yes. How’s your part going?’

‘Fine.’

‘And yours, Malati?’

‘Fine.’

‘Good, good, good. Whether I’m allowed to or not, I’ll come and see it. It must be just a month or so away. Wonderful play, Twelfth Night— just the thing for Annual Day. How’s Barua running the rehearsals?’

‘Very well,’ said Malati, taking over; she could see that Lata was in no mood to speak. ‘He’s got real flair. One wouldn’t think so, he’s so mild-mannered. But from the very first line—’

‘Pran is very tired,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, interrupting this unpleasant description. She wanted to hear nothing positive about the play. In fact she wanted to hear nothing at all from that brazen girl, Malati. ‘Pran, you have your dinner now.’

‘Yes, excellent idea,’ said Pran, rather eagerly for a patient. ‘What have you brought for me? This lack of exercise makes me enormously hungry. I seem to live from meal to meal. What’s for soup? Oh, vegetable soup,’ he said, disappointed. ‘Can’t I have tomato soup once in a while?’

Once in a while? thought Savita. Pran had had his favourite tomato soup the previous day and the day before, and she had thought that this would make a change.

‘Mad! Remember that!’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra sotto voce to Lata. ‘You remember that when you go gallivanting around having a gala time. Muslim and mad.’

When Maan came in, he found Pran eating his supper quite happily.

‘What’s the matter with you now?’ he asked.

‘Nothing much. Just lungs, heart and liver,’ said Pran.

‘Yes, Imtiaz said something about your heart. But you don’t look like a man with heart failure. Anyway, it doesn’t happen to people your age.’

‘Well,’ said Pran. ‘I don’t have heart failure yet. At least I don’t think I do. What I have is a severe strain.’

‘Ventricular,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra.

‘Oh. Ah, hello, Ma.’ Maan said his hellos all around, and eyed Pran’s food with intent. ‘Jamuns? Delicious!’ he exclaimed, and popped two into his mouth. He spat the seeds into the palm of his hand, placed them on the side of the plate, and took another two. ‘You should try them,’ he advised Pran.

‘So what have you been up to, Maan?’ said Savita. ‘How’s your Urdu?’

‘Oh, good, very good. Well, at any rate, I’ve certainly made progress. I can write a note in Urdu now — and what’s more, someone can read it at the other end. And that reminds me, I need to write a note today.’ His good-natured face grew perplexed momentarily, then recovered its smile. ‘And how are you? Two women in a cast of a dozen men. They must be slobbering all over you. How do you shake them off?’

Mrs Rupa Mehra looked daggers at him.

‘We don’t,’ said Lata. ‘We maintain a frigid distance.’

‘Very frigid,’ agreed Malati. ‘We have our reputations to guard.’

‘If we aren’t careful,’ said Lata severely, ‘no one will marry us. Or even elope with us.’

Mrs Rupa Mehra had had enough. ‘You can make fun,’ she exclaimed in exasperation. ‘You can make fun — but it’s not a laughing matter.’

‘You’re quite right, Ma,’ said Maan. ‘Not a laughing matter at all. Why did you allow them — I mean Lata — to act in the first place?’

Mrs Rupa Mehra kept a black silence, and Maan at last realized that this was a sensitive subject.

‘Anyway,’ he said to Pran, ‘I bring for you the affectionate regards of the Nawab Sahib, the love of Firoz, and the concern of Zainab — by way of Firoz. Yes, and that’s not all. Imtiaz wants to know if you are having your little white pills. He plans to see you tomorrow morning and count them. And someone else said something else, but I can’t remember what it was. Are you really all right, Pran? It’s quite upsetting to see you lying in the hospital like this. When’s the baby expected? Maybe, if Savita clings to you all the time, the baby’ll be born in the same hospital. Perhaps in the same room. How about that? Delicious jamuns.’ And Maan popped another two into his mouth.

‘You seem very well,’ said Savita.

‘Except I’m not,’ said Maan. ‘I fall upon the knives of life, I bleed.’

‘Thorns,’ said Pran with a grimace.

‘Thorns?’

‘Thorns.’

‘Oh, well, then that’s what I fall upon,’ said Maan. ‘At any rate, I’m miserable.’

‘Your lungs are in good shape, though,’ said Savita.

‘Yes, but my heart isn’t. Or my liver,’ said Maan, plaintively including both seats of emotion according to the conventions of Urdu poetry. ‘The huntress of my heart—’

‘Now we must really be going,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, gathering her daughters chick-like to her side. Malati also took her leave.

‘Was it something I said?’ asked Maan when he and his brother were left alone.

‘Oh, don’t worry about it,’ said Pran. It had rained again this afternoon, quite heavily, and he had become very philosophical. ‘Just sit down and be quiet. Thanks for visiting me.’

‘I say, Pran, does she love me still?’

Pran shrugged his shoulders.

‘She threw me out of the house the other day. Do you think that’s a good sign?’

‘Not on the face of it.’

‘I suppose you’re right,’ said Maan. ‘But I love her dreadfully. I can’t live without her.’

‘Like oxygen,’ said Pran.

‘Oxygen? Yes, I suppose so,’ said Maan gloomily. ‘Anyway, I’m going to send her a note today. I’m going to threaten to end it all.’

‘End what all?’ said Pran, not very alarmed. ‘Your life?’

‘Yes, probably,’ said Maan in a doubtful voice. ‘Do you think that’ll win her back?’

‘Well, do you plan to back your threat up with action? To fall upon the knives of life or shoot yourself with the guns of life?’

Maan started. This lapse into practicality was in poor taste. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ he said.

‘I don’t think so either,’ said Pran. ‘Anyway, don’t. I’ll miss you. So will all the people who were in this room. So will all the people whose regards you’ve brought me. So will Baoji and Ammaji and Veena and Bhaskar. So will your creditors.’