Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

Their conversation was interrupted by a scream of outrage from a neighbouring rooftop. A large, middle-aged woman in a scarlet cotton sari was shouting down from her roof at an invisible adversary:

‘They want to suck my blood, it’s clear! Neither can I lie down anywhere nor can I sit anywhere in peace. The sound of the thumping of balls is driving me mad. . Of course what takes place on the roof can be heard downstairs! You wretched kahars, you useless washers of dishes, can’t you keep your children under control?’

Noticing Veena and Kedarnath on their roof, she walked over the connecting rooftops, clambering through a low gap in the far wall. With her piercing voice, wild teeth and large, spreading, sagging breasts, she made a powerful impression on Maan.

After Veena had introduced them, the woman said with a fierce smile:

‘Oh, so this is the one who isn’t getting married.’

‘He’s the one,’ admitted Veena. She didn’t tempt fate by mentioning Maan’s tentative engagement to the girl from Banaras.

‘But didn’t you tell me you’d introduced him to that girl — what’s her name, remind me — the one who came here from Allahabad to visit her brother?’

Maan said: ‘Amazing how it is with some people. You write “A” and they read “Z”.’

‘Well, it’s quite natural,’ said the woman in a predatory manner. ‘A young man, a young woman. . ’

‘She was very pretty,’ Veena said. ‘With eyes like a deer.’

‘But she doesn’t have her brother’s nose — luckily,’ added the woman.

‘No — it’s much finer. And it even quivers a bit like a deer’s.’

Kedarnath, despairing of his game of chaupar, got up to go downstairs. He couldn’t stand visits from this over-friendly neighbour. Ever since her husband had got a telephone installed in their house, she had become even more self-confident and strident.

‘What shall I call you?’ Maan asked the woman.

‘Bhabhi. Just bhabhi,’ said Veena.

‘So — how did you like her?’ asked the woman.

‘Fine,’ said Maan.

‘Fine?’ said the woman, pouncing delightedly on the word.

‘I meant, fine that I should call you bhabhi.’

‘He’s very cunning,’ said Veena.

‘I’m no less so,’ asserted her neighbour. ‘You should come here, meet people, meet nice women,’ she told Maan. ‘What is the charm of living in the colonies? I tell you, when I visit Pasand Bagh or Civil Lines my brain goes dead in four hours. When I return to the lanes of our neighbourhood it starts whirring again. People here care for each other; if someone falls ill the whole neighbourhood asks about them. But it may be difficult to fix you up. You should get a slightly taller girl than average—’

‘I’m not concerned about all that,’ said Maan, laughing. ‘A short one is fine by me.’

‘So you don’t mind whether she’s tall or short, dark or fair, thin or fat, ugly or beautiful?’

‘Z for A again,’ said Maan, glancing in the direction of her roof. ‘By the way, I like your method of drying your blouses.’

The woman gave a short hoot of laughter, which might have been self-deprecatory if it hadn’t been so loud. She looked back at the rack-like arrangement of steel on the top of her water tank.

‘There’s no other place on my roof,’ she said. ‘You’ve got lines all over on your side. . You know,’ continued the woman, off on a tangent, ‘marriage is strange. I read in Star-Gazer that a girl from Madras, well married, with two children, saw Hulchul five times — five times! — and got completely besotted with Daleep Kumar — to the extent that she went off her head. She went down to Bombay, clearly not knowing what she was doing, because she didn’t even have his address. Then she found it with the help of one of these filmi fan magazines, took a taxi there, and confronted him with all kinds of mad, obsessed remarks. Eventually he gave her a hundred rupees to help her get back, and threw her out. But she returned.’

‘Daleep Kumar!’ said Veena, frowning. ‘I don’t think much of his acting. I think he must have made it all up for publicity.’

‘Oh no, no! Have you seen him in Deedar ? He is amazing! And Star-Gazer says he’s such a nice man — he would never go after publicity. You must tell Kedarnath to beware of Madrasi women, he spends so much time there, they’re very fierce. . I hear that they don’t even wash their silk saris gently, they just go dhup! dhup! dhup! like washerwomen under the tap — Oh! my milk!’ cried the woman in sudden alarm. ‘I must go — I hope it hasn’t — my husband—’ And she rushed off like a great red apparition across the rooftops.

Maan burst out laughing.

‘Now I’m off as well,’ he said. ‘I’ve had enough of life outside the colonies. My brain’s whirring too much.’

‘You can’t go,’ said Veena sternly and sweetly. ‘You’ve just come. They said you played Holi the whole morning with Pran and his professor and Savita and Lata, so you can certainly spend this afternoon with us. And Bhaskar will be very annoyed if he misses you again. You should have seen him yesterday. He looked like a black imp.’

‘Will he be at the shop this evening?’ asked Maan, coughing a bit.

‘Yes. I suppose so. Thinking about the patterns of the shoeboxes. Strange boy,’ said Veena.

‘Then I’ll visit him on my way back.’

‘On your way back from where?’ asked Veena. ‘And aren’t you coming for dinner?’

‘I’ll try — I promise,’ said Maan.

‘What’s wrong with your throat?’ asked Veena. ‘You’ve been up till late, haven’t you? How late, I wonder? Or is it just from getting soaked at Holi? I’ll give you some dushanda to cure it.’

‘No — that vile stuff! Take it yourself as a preventative,’ exclaimed Maan.

‘So — how was the singing? And the singer?’ asked Veena.

Maan shrugged so indifferently that Veena got worried.

‘Be careful, Maan,’ she warned him.

Maan knew his sister too well to try to protest his innocence. Besides, Veena would soon enough hear about his public flirting.

‘It’s not her that you’re going to visit?’ asked Veena sharply.

‘No — heaven forbid,’ said Maan.

‘Yes, heaven forbid. So where are you going?’

‘To the Barsaat Mahal,’ said Maan. ‘Come along with me! You remember we used to go there for picnics as children? Come. All you’re doing is playing chaupar.’

‘So that’s how you think I fill my days, do you? Let me tell you, I work almost as hard as Ammaji. Which reminds me, I saw yesterday that they’d chopped the top of the neem tree down, the one you used to climb to get to the upstairs window. It makes a difference to Prem Nivas.’

‘Yes, she was very angry,’ said Maan, thinking of his mother. ‘The Public Works Department were just supposed to trim it to get rid of the vulture’s roost, but they hired a contractor who chopped down as much wood as possible and made off with it. But you know Ammaji. All she said was, “What you have done is really not right.”’

‘If Baoji had been in the least concerned about these matters, he’d have done to that man what he did to that tree,’ said Veena. ‘There’s so little greenery in this part of town that you really learn to appreciate it when you see it. When my friend Priya came to Pran’s wedding, the garden was looking so beautiful that she said to me: “I feel as if I’ve been let out of a cage.” She doesn’t even have a roof garden, poor thing. And they hardly ever let her out of the house. “Come in the palanquin, leave on the bier”: that’s the way it is with the daughters-in-law in that house.’ Veena looked darkly over the rooftops towards her friend’s house in the next neighbourhood. A thought struck her. ‘Did Baoji talk to anyone about Pran’s job yesterday evening? Doesn’t the Governor have something to do with these appointments? In his capacity as Chancellor of the university?’