Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

‘You are not to play there, do you understand? Neither there nor in any part of the back garden. Do you understand me? Or I won’t let you out in the garden at all.’

‘But, Mummy—’

‘No “but Mummy” or “please Mummy”—you are not to play there. Now go back inside and have your milk.’

‘I’m sick of milk,’ said Bhaskar. ‘I’m nine years old — almost ten. Why should I drink milk forever?’ He was not pleased to have been disciplined in front of his grandmother. He also felt that Gajraj, whom he had looked upon as a friend, had betrayed him.

‘Milk is good for you. Many boys don’t get any milk at all,’ said Veena.

‘They are lucky,’ said Bhaskar. ‘I hate the skin that forms on it as it cools. And the glasses here are one-sixth larger than those at home,’ he added ungratefully.

‘If you drink your milk quickly, nothing will form on it at all,’ said his mother unsympathetically. It was very unlike Bhaskar to be so sullen, and she was determined not to encourage it. ‘Now, if you disobey me again and behave as if you’re six, I’m going to slap you — and Nani won’t stop me either.’

There was a roll of thunder, and a few drops of rain pattered down.

Bhaskar withdrew into the house with some dignity. His mother and grandmother smiled at each other.

Neither of them needed to mention that Veena too used to make a great fuss about drinking her milk when she was a child, and that she often gave it to her younger brothers to dispose of.

After a while Mrs Mahesh Kapoor said:

‘He looked in good spirits last night despite all that the doctors said. Didn’t you think so?’

‘Yes, Ammaji, I did.’ There was a silence. ‘It’s a difficult time for them,’ Veena continued. ‘Why don’t you ask Savita, Lata and Ma to stay here in Prem Nivas until the baby’s born? We’re going to be leaving in a day or two anyway.’

Her mother nodded. ‘I asked once before, but Pran thought she wouldn’t like it, that she’d feel happier in familiar surroundings.’

Mrs Mahesh Kapoor also reflected that Mrs Rupa Mehra, when she visited Prem Nivas, was liable to mention that she found the rooms exceedingly bare. And this was true. Mahesh Kapoor, though he was of no help in running the house, often exercised his veto on proposed furnishing. It was only on the puja-room and the kitchen that his wife had been able to exercise that loving care that she lavished on the garden.

‘And Maan?’ said Veena. ‘This house feels odd without him. When he’s in Brahmpur it is very bad that he isn’t staying with his family. We hardly get a chance to meet as it is.’

‘No,’ said her mother. ‘I felt hurt at first, but I think he’s right, it’s for the best that he stays with his friend. Minister Sahib is going through a hard time, and they would find each other’s company difficult, I think.’

This was a mild prediction. Mahesh Kapoor was short with everyone these days. It was not merely the fact that the house was suddenly less full of hangers-on and aspirants of various kinds, company he claimed to despise but in fact now fretted for; it was also the unpredictability of the future that ate at him and made him snap with less than usual cause at whoever happened to be around.

‘But apart from his moods, I enjoy this relief,’ said Mrs Mahesh Kapoor, completing the arc of her own thoughts aloud. ‘In the evening there is time for some bhajans. And I can walk around the garden in the morning now, without feeling that I am ignoring some important political guest.’

By now the clouds had blotted out the sun completely. Gusts of wind were blowing across the garden and turning the silver undersides of the leaves on a nearby poplar tree so violently that it appeared not dark green but silver. But the verandah where they were sitting was protected by a low wall decorated with shallow urns of portulaca and was covered with a corrugated roof, and neither of them felt like moving indoors.

Veena hummed to herself the first few lines of a bhajan, one of her mother’s favourites: ‘Rise, traveller, the sky is bright’. It came from the anthology used at Gandhi’s ashram, and reminded Mrs Mahesh Kapoor of how they would give themselves courage in the most hopeless days of the freedom struggle.

After a few seconds, she too began to hum along, and then to sing the words:

‘Uth, jaag, musafir, bhor bhaee

Ab rayn kahan jo sowat hai. . ’

Rise, traveller, the sky is bright.

Why do you sleep? It is not night. .

Then she laughed. ‘Think of the Congress Party in those days. And look at it now.’

Veena smiled. ‘But you still get up early,’ she said. ‘You don’t need this bhajan.’

‘Yes,’ said her mother. ‘Old habits die hard. And I need less sleep these days. But I still need the help of that bhajan several times a day.’

She sipped her tea for a while. ‘How is your music?’ she asked.

‘My serious music?’ asked Veena.

‘Yes,’ said her mother with a smile. ‘Your serious music. Not bhajans, but what you learn from your Ustad.’

‘My mind’s not really on it,’ said Veena. After a pause she continued: ‘Kedarnath’s mother has stopped objecting to it. And it’s closer from Prem Nivas than from Misri Mandi. But I can’t concentrate these days. I can’t shut the world out. First it was Kedarnath, then Bhaskar, now Pran; and I hope it isn’t Savita next. If only they would all have their troubles simultaneously, it would help: my hair might go white once, but I’d make some real progress the rest of the time.’ She paused again. ‘But Ustad Sahib is more patient with me than with his other disciples. Or perhaps it’s just that he is more content these days, less bitter about life.’

After a while Veena went on: ‘I wish I could do something about Priya.’

‘Priya Goyal?’

‘Yes.’

‘What made you think of her?’

‘I don’t know. I just suddenly thought of her. What was her mother like when she was young?’

‘Ah, she was a good woman,’ said Mrs Mahesh Kapoor.

‘I think,’ said Veena, ‘the state would be in better shape if you and she ran it rather than Baoji and L.N. Agarwal.’

Instead of ticking Veena off for this subversive remark, Mrs Mahesh Kapoor merely said: ‘I don’t think so, you know. Two illiterate women — we wouldn’t even be able to read a file.’

‘At least you would have been generous to each other. Not like men.’

‘Oh no,’ said her mother sadly. ‘You know nothing of the pettiness of women. When brothers agree to split a joint family they sometimes divide lakhs of rupees’ worth of property in a few minutes. But the tussle of their wives over the pots and pans in the common kitchen — that nearly causes bloodshed.’

‘At any rate,’ said Veena, ‘Priya and I would run things well. And it would enable her to escape from that wretched house in Shahi Darvaza and from her husband’s sister and sisters-in-law. Yes, you’re right about women, perhaps. But do you think a woman would have ordered that lathi charge on the students?’

‘No, maybe not,’ said her mother. ‘At any rate, it’s pointless thinking about such things. Women will never be called upon to make such decisions.’

‘Some day,’ said Veena, ‘this country will have a woman Prime Minister or a woman President.’

Veena’s mother laughed at this forecast. ‘Not in the next hundred years,’ she said gently, and looked out at the lawn again.

A few plump brown partridges, some big, some small, ran awkwardly across the far end of the lawn and with an immense effort got themselves airborne for a few seconds. They landed on the broad swing that hung down from a branch of the tamarind tree. There the partridges sat while the rain suddenly pelted down.