Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

‘What’s the matter with you?’ asked Lata, as Malati burst into her room.

‘It was me he was with—’ said Malati.

‘Who?’

‘Kabir — that day in the Red Fox, I mean the Blue Danube.’

A pang of literally green-eyed jealousy shot through Lata.

‘No — I don’t believe it. Not you!’

The cry was so vehement that Malati was taken aback. She almost feared Lata would attack her.

‘I don’t mean that — I don’t mean that at all,’ said Malati. ‘I mean that he wasn’t seeing some other girl. He hasn’t been seeing anyone else. I was told the name of the wrong place. I should have waited to hear more. Lata, I blame myself. It’s entirely my fault. I can imagine what you’ve gone through. But please, please don’t take my mistake out on him — and on yourself.’

Lata was silent for a minute. Malati expected her to burst into tears of relief or frustration, but no tears came. Then she said: ‘I won’t. But Malu, don’t blame yourself.’

‘I do, I do. Poor fellow — he was entirely sincere all along.’

‘Don’t,’ said Lata. ‘Don’t. Don’t. I’m glad Kabir wasn’t lying to you — I can’t tell you how glad. But I’ve — well, I’ve learned something as a result of all this wretchedness — I have, Malu, I really have — about myself — and about, well, the strength of — really, the strangeness of my own feelings for him.’

Her voice seemed to come from a no-man’s-land between hope and despair.

Professor Mishra, frustrated that he had not got Pran to withdraw either his application for the readership or his harebrained schemes of syllabus reform, was grateful nevertheless that things were not going at all well for his father. Opinion in the press was strongly critical of the means deployed by his opponents, but on the question of whether he would win or lose the election, most people were agreed that he had almost certainly lost. Professor Mishra took a lively interest in politics, and almost all his informants told him that he should work on the assumption that Pran’s father would not be in a position to wield much power to undo or avenge any injustice done to his son in the matter of the readership.

Professor Mishra was also pleased that he would know this fact for certain by the time the selection committee met. Counting in Mahesh Kapoor’s constituency was due to be held on the 6th of February, and the selection committee was to meet on the 7th. He would thus be secure in the knowledge that he could safely stiletto the young lecturer who was proving to be such an obstacle in the smooth running of the department.

At the same time, since one of the prospective candidates, and by no means the worst one, was the nephew of the Chief Minister, Professor Mishra could ingratiate himself further in the eyes of S.S. Sharma by helping him out in this small particular. And Professor Mishra expected that when any committee assignments in the government, particularly — but not necessarily — in the field of education, opened up, the name of the by-then-retired Professor O.P. Mishra would be considered in a not unfavourable light by the reigning powers.

What if S.S. Sharma were called to Delhi, as it was rumoured that Nehru had not merely requested but virtually demanded of him? Professor Mishra reflected that it was not likely that even Nehru would succeed in dislodging so wily a politician as S.S. Sharma from his happy fief. And if he were to go and take charge of a ministry in Delhi, well, plums could fall from Delhi too, not merely from the Secretariat at Brahmpur.

What if S.S. Sharma went to Delhi and Mahesh Kapoor became Chief Minister in Brahmpur? This prospect was horrible, but it was utterly remote. Everything was against it: the scandal surrounding his son, his own recent widowerhood, the fact that his political credibility would be damaged as soon as it was known and published that he had lost his own seat. Nehru liked him, it was true; and was particularly impressed by his work on the Zamindari Act. But Nehru was not a dictator, and the Congress MLAs of Purva Pradesh would elect their own Chief Minister.

That it would be the great, baggy, faction-ridden Congress Party that would continue to run the country and the state was by now entirely clear. Congress, riding high on the popularity of Jawaharlal Nehru, was in the process of winning a landslide across the country. True, the party was garnering less than half the actual vote nationwide. But opposition to Congress was so fragmented and disorganized in most constituencies that it looked — from all the early returns — that Congress would be first-past-the-post in about three-quarters of the parliamentary seats, and in about two-thirds of the seats in the various state legislatures.

That Mahesh Kapoor’s candidacy had collapsed for personal and special reasons relating to his constituency and his family, including the great popularity of the man whose agent he was seen to be opposing, would not help him after the elections. If anything, he would be seen to be one of the exceptional electoral failures in a sea of successes. Sympathy for losers counts for little in politics. Mahesh Kapoor would, Professor Mishra devoutly hoped, be finished; and his upstart, Joyce-loving, professor-baiting son would come to realize in due course that he had no future prospects in this department — any more than his younger brother had in civilized society.

And yet — and yet — could anything go wrong in Professor Mishra’s plans? The five-person selection committee included himself (as Head of Department); the Vice-Chancellor of the university (who chaired the committee); the Chancellor’s nominee (who happened that year to be a distinguished but rather feeble retired professor of history); and two outside experts from the panel of experts approved by the Academic Council. Professor Mishra had looked carefully through the panel and chosen two names, which the Vice-Chancellor had accepted without discussion or demur. ‘You know what you are doing,’ he had told Professor Mishra encouragingly. Their interests lay in the same direction.

The two experts, who at this moment were travelling from different directions to Brahmpur, were Professor Jaikumar and Dr Ila Chattopadhyay. Professor Jaikumar was a mild-mannered man from Madras, whose specialism was Shelley, and who, unlike that volatile and fiery spirit, believed firmly in the stability of the cosmos and the absence of intra-departmental friction. Professor Mishra had taken him around the department on the day when Pran had had his fortuitous collapse.

Dr Ila Chattopadhyay would present no problem; she was beholden to Professor Mishra. He had sat on the committee that had made her a university reader some years ago, and he had immediately afterwards and on numerous subsequent occasions emphasized to her how instrumental he had been in the process. He had praised her work on Donne with great unctuousness and assiduity. He was certain that she would be compliant. When her train arrived at Brahmpur Station he was there to meet her and escort her to the Brahmpur University guest house.

On the way he tried to veer the conversation prematurely around to the next day’s business. But Dr Ila Chattopadhyay did not appear to be at all keen to discuss the various candidates beforehand, which disappointed Professor Mishra. ‘Why don’t we wait till the interviews?’ she suggested.

‘Quite so, quite so, dear lady, that is just what I would have suggested myself. But the background — I was sure you would appreciate being informed about — ah, here we are.’

‘I am so exhausted,’ said Dr Ila Chattopadhyay, looking around. ‘What a horrible place.’

There should have been nothing exceptionally horrible about the room to one who had been to such places often before, but it was indeed fairly depressing, Professor Mishra had to agree. The university guest house was a dark series of rooms connected by a corridor. Instead of carpets there was coir matting, and the tables were too low to write at. A bed, two chairs, a few lights that did not work well, a tap that was over-generous with water even when turned off, and a flush that was miserly with it even when tugged violently: these were some of the appurtenances. As if to compensate for this, there was a great deal of dingy and unnecessary lace hanging everywhere: on the windows, on the lampshades, on the backs of the chairs.