Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

‘Oh, nothing’s going to happen to Pran,’ said Lata, smiling at the baby. ‘Is it, now? Nothing’s going to happen to Papa, nothing, nothing, nothing. He will play his silly, silly April fool jokes for many, many years to come. Do you know, you can actually feel her pulse through her head?’

‘How amazing!’ said Savita. ‘It’s going to be very difficult for me to get used to being slim again. When you’re pregnant and bulge, you are popular with all the cats on the university campus, and people tell you intimate things about themselves.’

Lata crinkled her nose. ‘But what if we don’t want to hear intimate things?’ she inquired of the baby. ‘What if we are quite happy to paddle our own canoe in a pleasant little backwater — and are not interested in the Niagara Falls and the Barsaat Mahal?’

Savita was quiet for a few moments, then she said: ‘OK, I’ll take her back now. And you can read to me a bit more. What’s that book?’

‘ Twelfth Night. ’

‘No, the other one — the one with the green and white cover.’

‘ Contemporary Verse ,’ murmured Lata, blushing for some unaccountable reason.

‘Oh, read me some of that,’ said Savita. ‘Ma thinks poetry is good for me. Soothing. Calming.

It was a summer evening,

Old Caspar’s work was done.’

Lata took up the recitation:

‘And he beside his cottage door

Was sitting in the sun.

There’s a skull in that poem somewhere, I remember. Oh yes, and Ma also loves that grisly “Casabianca” with the boy burning on the deck — and “Lord Ullin’s Daughter”. There has to be some death and heartbreak in it somewhere or it isn’t real poetry. I don’t know what she’d make of the poetry in this book. All right, what do you want to hear?’

‘Open it at random,’ suggested Savita. And the book opened to Auden’s ‘Law, Say the Gardeners’.

‘Apt,’ said Lata, and began to read. But as she turned the page to the last few lines, and read the poet’s similitude between law and love, her face grew pale:

‘Like love we don’t know where or why

Like love we can’t compel or fly

Like love we often weep

Like love we seldom keep.’

She shut the book.

‘Strange poem,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ said Savita carefully. ‘Let’s go back to tort.’

Meenakshi Mehra arrived in Brahmpur three days after the birth of the baby. She came with her sister Kakoli but without her daughter Aparna. She was tired of Calcutta and needed a break, and the telegram provided her with an excuse.

She was tired, for a start, of Arun, who was being very boring and covenanted these days, and appeared to have lost interest in anything but premiums on tea to Khurramshahr. She was exhausted with Aparna, who had begun to get on her nerves with her ‘Mummy this’ and ‘Mummy that’ and ‘Mummy you aren’t listening’. She was sick of arguing with the Toothless Crone and Hanif and the part-time mali. She felt she was going mad. Varun would slope and slither guiltily in and out of the house, and every time he went ‘heh-heh-heh’ in his furtive Shamshu way she would feel like screaming. Even occasional afternoons with Billy and canasta with the Shady Ladies seemed to have lost their savour. It was too too awful. Truly, Calcutta was nothing but tinsel in the mouth.

And then came this telegram informing them that Arun’s sister had had a baby. Well, it was nothing less than a godsend. Dipankar had filled postcard after postcard with descriptions of what a beautiful place Brahmpur was, and how nice Savita’s in-laws were. They were bound to be hospitable and she would be able to lie under a fan and calm her fraught nerves. Meenakshi felt she needed a holiday, and this was a wonderful opportunity to pounce upon Brahmpur with the intention of helping out. She could give her sister-in-law excellent advice on how to take care of her daughter. She had successfully managed Aparna, and this gave her the authority to manage her niece.

Meenakshi was quite pleased to be an aunt, even if only through her husband’s sister. Her own brothers and sister had not provided her with a single nephew or niece. Amit was the most culpable in this regard; he should have got married at least three years ago. In fact, thought Meenakshi, he should make up for his error at once: by marrying Lata.

Here was another reason for going to Brahmpur; she would prepare the ground when she got there. Of course there was no question of mentioning her plan to Amit; he would have hit the roof in so far as he was capable of it. Sometimes she wished he would hit the roof. Surely poets should be more passionate than Amit was. But she could certainly imagine him saying acidly: ‘Do your own wooing, Meenakshi darling, and let me do mine.’ No, she had better not mention anything to Amit.

Kakoli, however, when she came to visit Sunny Park late one afternoon, was let into the plot, and was delighted. She considered Lata to be quiet but nice, with sudden surprising sparks here and there to leaven things. Amit appeared to like her, but he was incapable of doing anything determined for himself, being content simply to contemplate things and let the years roll on. Kakoli felt that Lata and Amit were well matched but that each needed prodding. She rolled off a Kakoli-couplet to consecrate their match:

‘Luscious Lata, born to be

Lady Lata Chatterji.’

She was rewarded by the tinkle of Meenakshi’s laughter, and the return of her service:

‘Luscious Lata, is it hard

Being wife of famous bard?’

Kakoli, giggling, volleyed the ball low across the net:

‘Oh, so hard it is in rhyme:

Loving, doving, all the time.’

And Meenakshi continued the rally:

‘Kissing, missing, every day,

Cuddling, muddling all the way.’

Kakoli, suddenly remembering that she had left Cuddles tied up to her bedpost, told Meenakshi she had to go home immediately. ‘But why don’t both of us go to Brahmpur together?’ she suggested. ‘To the provinces,’ she added airily.

‘Why not?’ said Meenakshi. ‘We could chaperone each other. But wouldn’t you miss Hans?’

‘We need only go for a week. It’ll be good for him to miss me. It’ll be well worth the pain of my missing him.’

‘And Cuddles? It really is very tiresome of Dipankar not to say when he’s coming back. He’s been gone for years, and now that he’s run out of postcards, we’ll never hear from him.’

‘It’s just typical of him. Well, Amit can be Cuddles’ keeper.’

When Mrs Chatterji heard of the trip, she was more concerned with Kakoli missing classes than missing Hans.

‘Oh, Ma,’ wailed Kakoli, ‘don’t be such a bore. Weren’t you ever young? Didn’t you ever want to flee from the chains of life? I have excellent attendance at college, and a week won’t make any difference. We can always get a doctor to certify that I’ve been ill. With a wasting sickness.’ She quoted two snowy lines from Winterreise about the Inn that represented Death. ‘Or malaria,’ she continued. ‘Look, there’s a mosquito.’

‘We will do no such thing,’ said Mr Justice Chatterji, looking up from his book.

But Kakoli, while conceding this point, wore her parents down on the general question of the Brahmpur jaunt. ‘Meenakshi needs me to accompany her. Arun’s too busy with work. The family needs us,’ she pleaded. ‘Babies are so complicated. Every pair of hands helps. And Lata’s such a nice girl, her company will improve me. Ask Amit if she isn’t nice. And improving.’

‘Oh shut up, Kuku, leave me to Keats,’ said Amit.

‘Kuku, Keats, Kuku, Keats,’ said Kakoli, sitting down at the piano. ‘What shall I play for you, Amit? La-La-Liebestraum?’