Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

Dipankar smiled. ‘I’ll have to let my Experiences merge with my Being, Dada, before I can come to an Answer.’

Amit shook his head in exasperation.

‘Don’t bully him, Dada,’ said Kuku. ‘He’s just come back.’

‘I know I’m indecisive,’ said Amit, midway between despair and mock-despair, ‘but Dipankar really takes the cake. Or, rather, doesn’t even know whether to.’

The Chatterji parliament convened as usual at breakfast; apart from Tapan, who was back in boarding school, everyone was there; Aparna was attended by her ayah; and even old Mr Chatterji had joined them, as he sometimes did after walking his cat.

‘Where’s Cuddles?’ asked Kakoli, looking around.

‘Upstairs, in my room,’ said Dipankar. ‘Because of Pillow.’

‘Piddles and Cullow — like the Whalephant,’ said Kakoli, referring to her favourite Bengali book, Abol Tabol.

‘What’s that about Pillow?’ asked old Mr Chatterji.

‘Nothing,’ said Mrs Chatterji. ‘Dipankar was only saying that Cuddles is afraid of him.’

‘Oh, yes?’ said the old man, nodding. ‘Pillow can hold his own against any dog.’

‘Doesn’t Cuddles have to go to the vet today?’ asked Kakoli.

‘Yes,’ said Dipankar. ‘So I’ll need the car.’

Kakoli made a long face. ‘But I need it too,’ she said. ‘Hans’s car is out of order.’

‘Kuku, you always need the car,’ said Dipankar. ‘If you’re willing to take Cuddles to the vet yourself, you can have it.’

‘I can’t do that, it’s terribly boring, and he snaps at whoever’s holding him.’

‘Well, then, take a taxi to meet Hans,’ said Amit, who always found this breakfast tussle over the car immensely irritating, and the worst way to begin the day. ‘Do stop bickering about it. Pass me the marmalade, please, Kuku.’

‘I’m afraid neither of you can have it,’ said Mrs Chatterji. ‘I am taking Meenakshi to see Dr Evans. She needs a check-up.’

‘I don’t really, Mago,’ said Meenakshi. ‘Stop fussing.’

‘You’ve had a very unpleasant shock, darling, and I’m taking no chances,’ said her mother.

‘Yes, Meenakshi, no harm in having a check-up,’ said her father, lowering the Statesman.

‘Yes,’ agreed Aparna, spooning her quarter-boiled egg into her mouth with a great deal of energy. ‘No harm.’

‘Eat your food, darling,’ said Meenakshi to Aparna, a little annoyed.

‘The marmalade, Kuku, not the gooseberry jam,’ said Amit in a brittle voice. ‘Not the gazpacho, not the anchovies, not the sandesh, not the soufflé; the marmalade.’

‘What’s got into you?’ said Kakoli. ‘You’ve been very short-tempered of late. Worse than Cuddles. It must be sexual frustration.’

‘Something that you wouldn’t know about,’ said Amit.

‘Kuku! Amit!’ said Mrs Chatterji.

‘But it’s true,’ said Kakoli. ‘And he’s taken to chewing ice cubes, which I’ve read somewhere is an infallible sign of it.’

‘Kuku, I will not have you talking this way at breakfast — with A sitting here.’

Aparna sat up with interest, setting her egg-coated spoon down on the embroidered tablecloth.

‘Mago, A doesn’t understand the first word we’re saying,’ said Kakoli.

‘Anyway, I’m not,’ said Amit.

‘I think you must be dreaming about her.’

‘Who?’ said Mrs Chatterji.

‘The heroine of your first book. The White Lady of your sonnets,’ said Kakoli, looking at Amit.

‘You should talk!’ said Amit.

‘Foreign woman is so shameless.

Indian also is not blameless,’

murmured Kakoli.

She had tried to eschew couplets, but this one had simply presented itself and rolled off her tongue.

Amit said: ‘Marmalade, please, Kuku, my toast is getting cold.’

‘Foreign woman is a vulture.

Goes against our ancient culture—’

blurted Kuku blindly. ‘It’s a good thing you made poetry out of that affair rather than little Chatterjis. Marry someone nice and Indian, Dada; don’t follow my example. Have you sent Luts that book yet? She told me you’d promised her one.’

‘Less wit. More marmalade,’ requested Amit.

Kuku passed it to him at last and he spread it on his toast very carefully, covering every corner. ‘She told you that, did she?’ asked Amit.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Kakoli. ‘Meenakshi will vouch for me.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Meenakshi, looking intently at her tea. ‘Everything Kakoli says is true. And we’re concerned about you. You’re almost thirty now—’

‘Don’t remind me,’ said Amit with dramatic melancholy. ‘Just pass me the sugar before I’m thirty-one. What else did she say?’

Rather than invent something entirely implausible and thus risk undoing the effect of her previous statement, Meenakshi wisely refrained.

‘Nothing very specific,’ she said. ‘But with Lata, a small comment goes a long way. And she mentioned you several times.’

‘Quite wistfully, I thought,’ said Kakoli.

‘How is it,’ said Amit, ‘that Dipankar and I — and Tapan — have turned out to be so honest and decent, and you girls have learned to lie so brazenly? It’s amazing that we belong to the same family.’

‘How is it,’ countered Kakoli, ‘that Meenakshi and I, whatever our faults, can make important decisions and make them fast, when you refuse to make them and Dipankar can never decide which one to make?’

‘Don’t get annoyed, Dada,’ said Dipankar, ‘they’re just trying to bait you.’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Amit. ‘They won’t succeed. I’m in too good a mood.’

Late, I admit, but better late than not, /never

A gift to one who can appraise its worth, /need not spare its

This book got ever lot /got /rot /hot /shot /over-shot /sot comes to you from a word-drunk sot, flaws

A earth hackney bard and bachelor of laws laws.

Amit paused in his scribbling and doodling. He was attempting an inscription for Lata. Now that he had run out of inspiration he began to wonder which of his two books of poems he should send her. Or should he send her both? Perhaps the first one was not such a good idea. The White Lady of his sonnets might give Lata the wrong idea. Besides, the second, though it too contained some love poems, had more of Calcutta in it, more of the places that reminded him of her, and might perhaps remind her of him.

Resolving this problem helped Amit get on with his poem, and by lunchtime he was ready to write his dédicace on the flyleaf of The Fever Bird. His scrawled draft was legible only to himself, but what he wrote for Lata was easy enough to read. He wrote it out slowly, using the sterling silver fountain pen which his grandfather had given him on his twenty-first birthday, and he wrote in the comparatively handsome British edition of his poems, of which he had only three copies left.

Late, I admit, but better late than not,

A gift to one who need not spare its flaws,

This book comes to you from a verbal sot,

A babu bard and bachelor of laws.

Lest you should think the man you meet here seems

A lesser cynic than the one you knew,

The truth is that apart from wine and dreams

And children, truth inheres in poems too.

Lies too lie here, and words I do not say

Aloud for fear they savour of despair.

Thus, passionless, I wing my even way

And beat a soundless tattoo on the air.

Love and remembrance, mystery and tears,

A surfeit of pineapples or of bliss,

The swerve of empires and the curve of years,

Accept these in the hand that carves you this.

He signed his name at the bottom, wrote the date, reread the poem while the ink dried, closed the dark-blue-and-gold cover of the book, packed it, sealed it, and had it sent off by registered post to Brahmpur that same afternoon.