Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

This language was also presumably foreign to Mrs Rupa Mehra, who stopped knitting the baby’s booties on the day of Karva Chauth. Indeed, she locked up her knitting needles together with any sewing and darning needles that were lying about the house. Her reason was simple. Savita was fasting until moonrise for her husband’s health and longevity, and touching a needle, even inadvertently, on that day would be disastrous.

One year an unfortunate young woman, famished during her fast, was persuaded by her anxious brothers that the moon had risen when all they had done was to light a fire behind a tree to simulate the moonglow. She had eaten a little before she had realized the trick, and soon enough the news was brought to her of her husband’s sudden death. He had been pierced through and through by thousands of needles. By performing many austerities and making many offerings to the goddesses, the young widow had finally extracted their promise that if she kept the fast properly the next year her husband would return to life. Each day for the whole year she removed the needles one by one from her husband’s lifeless body. The very last one, however, was removed on the day of Karva Chauth itself by a maidservant just as her master came back to life. Since she was the first woman he saw after opening his eyes, he believed that it was through her pains that he had revived. He had no choice but to discard his wife and marry her. Needles on Karva Chauth were therefore fearfully inauspicious: touch a needle and lose a husband.

What Savita, fortified in logic by law-books and grounded in reality by her baby, thought of all this was not obvious. But she observed Karva Chauth to the letter, even going to the extent of first viewing the rising moon through a sieve.

The Sahib and Memsahib of Calcutta, on the other hand, considered Karva Chauth a signal idiocy, and were unmoved by Mrs Rupa Mehra’s frantic implorations that Meenakshi — even if Brahmo by family — should observe it. ‘Really, Arun,’ said Meenakshi. ‘Your mother does go on about things.’

One by one the Hindu festivals fell, some observed fervently, some lukewarmly, some merely noted, some entirely ignored. On five consecutive days around the end of October came Dhanteras, Hanuman Jayanti, Divali, Annakutam, and Bhai Duj. The day immediately following was observed most religiously by Pran, who kept his ear to the radio for hours: it was the first day of the first Test match of the cricket season, played in Delhi against a visiting English side.

A week later the gods at last awoke from their four months’ slumber, having wisely slept through a very boring and slow-scoring draw.

But though India vs England was humdrum in the extreme, the same could not be said for the University vs Old Brahmpurians match held that Sunday at the university cricket ground.

The university team was not quite as good as it might have been, owing to a couple of injuries. Nor were the Old Brahmpurians a pushover, for their side contained not merely the usual players rustled up from here and there, but also two men who had captained the university in the last ten years or so.

Among the rustled, however, was Maan. Among the uninjured was Kabir. And Pran was one of the umpires.

It was a brilliant, clear, crisp, early November day, and the grass was still fresh and green. The mood was festive, and — with exams and other woes a million miles away — the students were out in force. They cheered and booed and stood around the field talking to the outfielders and generally creating as much excitement off the field as on. A few teachers could be seen among them.

One of these was Dr Durrani; he found cricket curiously fertile. At the moment, unmoved by the fact that his son had just bowled Maan out with a leg-break, he was thinking about the hexadic, octal, decimal and duodecimal systems and attempting to work out their various advantages.

He turned to a colleague:

‘Interesting, er, wouldn’t you say, Patwardhan, that the number six, which, though “perfect”, has a, well, an almost fugitive existence in mathematics — except, er, in geometry, of course, should um, be the — the presiding, one might say, the presiding, um, deity of cricket, wouldn’t you say?’

Sunil Patwardhan nodded but would not say. His eyes were glued to the pitch. The next player was no sooner in than out; he had been dispatched on Kabir’s next ball: a googly this time. A huge roar of delight rose from the crowd.

‘Six balls to an, um, over, don’t you see, Patwardhan, six runs to a boundary, a, a lofted boundary, of course, and, um, six stumps on the, er, field!’

The incoming player had hardly had time to pad up. The previous batsman was already back in the pavilion by the time he walked out on to the field, flexing his bat impatiently and aggressively. He was one of the two former captains, and he was damned if he was going to provide Kabir with a hat-trick. In he went and fiercely he glared, in a sweep that encompassed not only the tense but appraising bowler, but also his own batting partner, the opposite stumps, the umpire, and a few innocuous mynas.

Like Arjun aiming his arrow at the eye of the invisible bird, Kabir stared down single-mindedly at the invisible middle stump of his adversary. Straight down the pitch came the ball, but deceptively slowly this time. The batsman tried to play it. He missed; and the dull thump of the ball as it hit his pad was like the sound of muffled doom.

Eleven voices appealed in triumphant delight, and Pran, smiling, raised his finger in the air.

He nodded at Kabir, who was grinning broadly and accepting the congratulations of his teammates.

The cheering of the crowd took more than a minute to die down, and continued sporadically for the rest of Kabir’s over. Sunil executed a few swift steps of joy — a sort of kathak jig. He looked at Dr Durrani to see what effect his son’s triumph had had on him.

Dr Durrani was frowning in concentration, his eyebrows working up and down.

‘Curious, though, isn’t it, um, Patwardhan, that the number, er, six should be, um, embodied in one of the most, er, er, beautiful, er, shapes in all nature: I refer, um, needless to say, to the er, benzene ring with its single and, er, double carbon bonds. But is it, er, truly symmetrical, Patwardhan, or, um, asymmetrical? Or asymmetrically symmetrical, perhaps, like those, er, sub-super-operations of the, er, Pergolesi Lemma. . not really like the, er, rather unsatisfactory petals of an, um, iris. Curious, wouldn’t you say. .?’

‘Most curious,’ agreed Sunil.

Savita was talking to Firoz:

‘Of course, it’s different for you, Firoz, I don’t mean because you’re a man as such, but because, well, you don’t have a baby to distract you from your clients. Or perhaps that comes to the same thing. . I was talking to Jaya Sood the other day, and she tells me that there are bats — and I don’t mean cricket bats! — in the High Court bathroom. When I told her I couldn’t bear the thought, she said, “Well, if you’re frightened of bats, why are you doing law in the first place?” But, do you know, though I never imagined I would, I actually find law interesting now, really interesting. Not like this awful sleepy game. They haven’t made a run for the last ten minutes. . Oh no, I’ve just dropped a stitch, I always feel drowsy in the sun. . I simply can’t see what Pran sees in it, or why he insists on ignoring all of us for five days with his ear glued to the radio, or being a referee and standing in the sun the whole day, but do you think my protests have any effect? “Standing in the sun is good for me,” he insists. . Or Maan, for that matter. Before lunch he runs from one wicket to the other seven times, and now after lunch he runs along the edge of the field for a few minutes at the most, and that’s that: the whole Sunday’s gone! You’re very sensible to stick to polo, Firoz — at least that’s over in an hour — and you do get some exercise.’