Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

Haresh was very conscious that he was under close family scrutiny, but he was not sure how to handle it. This was no Czech interview where he could talk about brass tacks and production. Some subtlety was required, and Haresh was not given to subtlety.

He talked a little about ‘Cawnpore’, until Arun said something denigratory about provincial industrial towns. Middlehampton too met with a similar response. Arun’s amour propre and his habit of laying down his opinions as statute had clearly recovered from his setback at the Khandelwals’.

Haresh noticed that Lata was looking at his co-respondent shoes with what appeared almost to be distaste. But the moment he looked at her, she turned away a bit guiltily towards his small bookshelf with its maroon-bound set of Hardy novels. Haresh felt a little downcast; he had thought a great deal about what to wear.

But the grand luncheon was still to come, and he was sure that the Mehras would be more than impressed by the spread that Khushwant would lay on, as well as by the great wood-floored hall that constituted almost the entire premises of the Prahapore Officers’ Club. Thank God he was not living outside the gates where the other foremen lived. The juxtaposition of those humble quarters with the pink silk handkerchief tucked into Arun’s grey suit pocket, with Meenakshi’s silvery laugh, with the white Humber parked outside, would have been disastrous.

By the time the party of eight was walking towards the club in the warm winter sunshine, Haresh’s general optimism had reasserted itself. He pointed out that beyond the compound walls lay the river Hooghly and that the tall hedge that they were passing bounded the General Manager Havel’s house. They walked past a small playground for children and a chapel. The chapel too was festooned for Christmas.

‘The Czechs are good chaps at heart,’ said Haresh expansively to Arun. ‘They believe in results, in being shown rather than told something. I believe they’ll even agree to my plan for brogues to be made in Brahmpur — and not by the Praha factory there but by small-scale manufacturers. They’re not like the Bengalis, who want to talk everything over the table and do as little work as possible. It is amazing what the Czechs have managed to create — and that too in Bengal.’

Lata listened to Haresh, quite astonished by his bluntness. She had had something of the same opinion about Bengalis, but once their family had become allied to the Chatterjis, she did not make or take such generalizations easily. And didn’t Haresh realize that Meenakshi was Bengali? Apparently not, because he was continuing regardless:

‘It’s hard for them, it must be, to be so far away from home and not be able to go back. They don’t even have passports. Just what they call white papers, which makes it difficult for them to travel. They’re mostly self-taught, though Kurilla has been to Middlehampton — and a few days ago even Novak was playing the piano at the club.’

But Haresh didn’t explain who either of these two gentlemen were; he assumed that everyone else knew them. Lata was reminded of his explanations at the tannery.

By now they had got to the club, and Haresh, proud Prahaman that he had become, was showing them around with a proprietorial air.

He pointed out the pool — which had been drained and repainted a pleasant light blue, and a children’s paddling pool nearby, the offices, the palm trees in pots, and the tables where a few Czechs were sitting outside under umbrellas, eating. There was nothing else to point out except the huge hall of the club. Arun, who was used to the subdued elegance of the Calcutta Club, was amazed by Haresh’s bumptious self-assurance.

They entered the festooned hall; after the brightness outside, it was rather dark; there were a few groups here and there sitting down to lunch. Along the far wall was their own table for eight, created by joining three small square tables together.

‘The hall is used for everything,’ said Haresh. ‘For dining, for dancing, as a cinema hall, and even for important meetings. When Mr Tomin’—and here Haresh’s voice took on a somewhat reverential note—‘when Mr Tomin came here last year, he gave a speech from the podium there. But these days it is used for the dance band.’

‘Fascinating,’ said Arun.

‘How wonderful,’ breathed Mrs Rupa Mehra.

Mrs Rupa Mehra was very impressed by all the arrangements. A thick white tablecloth and napkins, several sets of knives and forks, good glasses and crockery, and three flower arrangements consisting of an assortment of sweetpeas.

As soon as Haresh and his party entered, two waiters approached the table, and placed some bread on it, together with three dishes containing curlicues of Anchor butter. The bread had been baked under Khushwant’s supervision; he had learned the technique from the Czechs. Varun, who had been walking a little unsteadily, was feeling quite peckish. After a few minutes, when the soup had not yet arrived, he took a slice. It was delicious. He took another.

‘Varun, don’t eat so much bread,’ chided his mother. ‘Can’t you see how many courses there are?’

‘Mm, Ma,’ said Varun, his mouth full, and his mind on other things. When more beer was offered to him, he accepted with alacrity.

‘How lovely the flower arrangements are,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra. Sweetpeas could never take the place of roses in her heart, but they were a lovely flower. She sniffed the air and took in the delicate colours: pale pink, white, mauve, violet, crimson, maroon, dark pink.

Lata was thinking that the sweetpeas made rather an odd arrangement.

Arun displayed his expertise on the subject of bread. He talked about caraway bread and rye bread and pumpernickel. ‘But if you ask me,’ he said (though no one had), ‘there’s nothing like the Indian naan for sheer delicacy.’

Haresh wondered what other kind of naan there was.

After the soup (cream of asparagus) came the first course, which was fried fish. Khushwant made quite a few Czech specialities, but only the simplest and most staple of English dishes. Mrs Rupa Mehra found that she was facing a cheese-covered vegetable bake for the second time in two days.

‘Delicious,’ she said, smiling at Haresh.

‘I didn’t know what to ask Khushwant to make for you, Ma; but he thought that this would be a good idea. And he has a treat for the second course, so he says.’

Tears threatened to come to Mrs Rupa Mehra’s eyes at the thought of Haresh’s kindness and consideration. Over the last few days she felt she had been starved of it. Sunny Park was like a zoo and Arun’s explosions had been more frequent as a result. They were all staying together in the same small house, some of them sleeping on mattresses laid out at night in the drawing room. Though the Chatterjis had offered to put the Kapoors up in Ballygunge, Savita had felt that Uma and Aparna should be given the chance to get acquainted with each other. Also, she had quite unwisely wished to recreate the atmosphere of the old days in Darjeeling — or the railway saloons — when the four brothers and sisters had shared the same roof and pleasantly cramped quarters with their father and mother.

Politics was discussed. Results had started coming in from those states that had had early elections. According to Pran, the Congress would make a clean sweep of the elections. Arun did not contest the issue as he had the previous evening. By the end of the fish course politics was exhausted.

The second course was occupied mainly by Haresh impressing the assembled company with various facts of Praha history and production. He mentioned that Pavel Havel had praised him for ‘working very hardly’. Although no communist, there was something in Haresh that resembled a cheerfully Stakhanovite Hero of Labour. He told them with pride that he was only the second Indian in the colony, and mentioned the weekly figure of 3,000 pairs to which he had increased production. ‘I tripled it,’ he added, very happy to share his sense of his own achievement. ‘The welt-stitching operation was the real bottleneck.’