Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

‘Like a law-book?’ There were still tears in her eyes, but she was trying to smile.

‘Yes,’ said Savita. ‘Or — since Sophia Convent is what started this confusion in the first place — why not read your autograph book from school? It’s full of old friends and eternal thoughts. I often look through mine when I’m feeling bad. I am quite serious. I’m not merely echoing Ma.’

It was good advice. A hot cup of vegetable soup appeared, and Lata, amused a bit by the idiocy of the suggested remedy, looked through her book. On the small pages of pink and cream and pale blue, in English and (from her aunts, and once from Varun in nationalistic mood) in Hindi, and even in Chinese (an unreadable but beautiful inscription from her classmate Eulalia Wong), the edifying or moving or amusing or facetious lines in their different inks and different hands stirred her memories and diminished her confusion. She had even pasted in a small fragment of a letter from her father, which ended with a rough pencil sketch of four little monkeys, his own ‘bandar-log’, as he used to call them. More than ever now she missed him. She read her mother’s inscription, the first in the book:

When the world has been unkind, when life’s troubles cloud your mind,

Don’t sit down and frown and sigh and moon and mope.

Take a walk along the square, fill your lungs with God’s fresh air,

Then go whistling back to work and smile and hope.

Remember, Lata darling, that the fate of each man (and woman) rests with himself.

Yours everloving,

Ma

On the next page a friend had written:

Lata—

Love is the star men look up to as they walk along, and marriage is the coal-hole they fall into.

Love and all good wishes,

Anuradha

Someone else had suggested:

It is not the Perfect but the Imperfect who have need of Love.

Yet another had written on a page of blue in a hand that sloped slightly backwards:

Cold words will break a fine heart as winter’s first frost does a crystal vase. A false friend is like the shadow on a sun-dial which appears in very fine weather but vanishes at the approach of a cloud.

Fifteen-year-old girls, thought Lata, took a serious view of life.

Savita’s own sisterly contribution was:

Life is merely froth and bubble.

Two things stand like stone:

Kindness in another’s trouble,

Courage in our own.

To her own surprise, her eyes became moist again.

I am going to turn into Ma before I’m twenty-five, thought Lata to herself. This quickly stemmed the last of her tears.

The phone rang. It was Amit for Lata.

‘So everything’s ready for tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Tapan’s coming along with us. He likes the banyan tree. You can tell Ma that I’ll take good care of you.’

‘Amit, I’m in a terrible mood. I’ll be terrible company. Let’s go some other time.’ Her voice, not yet quite clear, sounded strange even to herself, but Amit did not comment on it.

‘That will be for me to decide,’ he said. ‘Or rather, for both of us. If, when I come to pick you up tomorrow, you decide not to go, I won’t force the issue. How’s that? Tapan and I will go by ourselves. I’ve promised him now — and I don’t want to disappoint him.’

Lata was wondering what to say when Amit added: ‘Oh, I myself have them often enough: breakfast blues, lunchtime lows, dinner doldrums. But if you’re a poet, that’s your raw material. I suppose that the poem you gave me must have had some such origin.’

‘It did not!’ said Lata, with some indignation.

‘Good, good, you’re on your way to recovery,’ laughed Amit. ‘I can tell.’ He rang off.

Lata, still holding the receiver, was left with the thought that some people appeared to understand her far too little and others far too much.

Dearest Lata,

I have been thinking of you often since you’ve been away, but you know how busy I always succeed in making myself, even in the holidays. Something, however, has happened which I feel I should write to you about. I have been torturing myself about whether to tell you, but I think the thing to do is simply to go ahead. I was so happy to get your letter and I dread the thought of making you unhappy. Maybe what with the election mail and the Christmas rush this letter will be delayed or will disappear entirely. I don’t suppose I’ll be sorry.

I’m sorry my thoughts are so scattered. I’m just writing on impulse. I was looking through my papers yesterday and came across the note you wrote to me when I was in Nainital, saying you had found the pressed flower again. I read it twice and suddenly thought of that day in the zoo, and tried to remember why I gave you that flower! I think it unconsciously was a seal to our friendship. It expressed my feelings for you, and I’m glad I can share my joys and sorrows with this wonderful, affectionate person who is so far away from me and yet so close.

Well, Calcutta isn’t so far away really, but friends matter all the time, and it’s good to know you haven’t forgotten me. I was looking at the photographs of the play again while I was sorting things out in my mind, and was thinking how wonderfully you acted. It amazed me at the time and still amazes me — especially from someone who is sometimes so reserved, who doesn’t often talk about her fears, fantasies, dreams, anxieties, loves and hates — and whom I would probably never have got to know if it hadn’t been for the good luck of sharing the same hospital room — sorry! hostel room.

Well, I’ve avoided the subject long enough, and I can see your anxious face. The news I have to give you is about K, which — well, I should just give it and be done with it and I hope you’ll find it in your heart to forgive me. I’m just doing the unpleasant duty of a friend.

After you left for Cal, K sent me a note and we met at the Blue Danube. He wanted me to get you to talk to him or write to him. He said all sorts of things about how much he cared for you, sleepless nights, restless wanderings, lovelorn longings, the lot. He spoke very convincingly, and I felt quite sorry for him. But he must be rather practised at that sort of thing, because he was seeing another girl — at the Red Fox — on about the same day. You told me he doesn’t have a sister, and anyway, it’s clear from my informant, who is completely reliable, that he wasn’t behaving in a particularly brotherly way. I was surprised how furious I was to hear of this, but in a way I was glad that this made things quite clear. I made up my mind to fire him up face to face, but found he’d disappeared from town on some university cricket tour, and anyway now I don’t think it’s worth the stress and bother.

Now, please, Lata, don’t let this open up all the old wounds. Just treat it as confirmation of the course of action you’ve chosen. I’m sure we women make things far worse for ourselves by dwelling endlessly on matters that are best pushed aside. This is my professional opinion too. Some moderate mooning is OK, but please, no perennial pining! He isn’t worth it, Lata, and this proves it. If I were you, I would just crush him with the flat of my spoon into mashed potatoes and forget him entirely.

Now for other news.

What with elections coming up, everything is bubbling and swirling around here, and the Socialist Party is mapping out policies and strategies and quackeries and sorceries with the best of them. I attend all the meetings, and canvass and campaign, but I am rather disillusioned. Everyone is involved in pushing himself forward, spouting slogans, making promises, and not bothering about how these promises are to be paid for, let alone implemented. Even sensible people seem to have gone off their heads. One fellow here used to talk a good deal of sense before, but he froths so much and makes such ‘big-big eyes’ that I’m sure he is quite certifiable now.