Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

Pran’s interview was scheduled for the early afternoon. The Vice-Chancellor asked him the usual questions about the relevance of teaching English in India. Professor Jaikumar asked him a careful question about Scrutiny and F.R. Leavis. Professor Mishra asked tenderly after his health and fussed about the onerous burdens of academia. The old history professor who was the Chancellor’s nominee said nothing at all.

It was with Dr Ila Chattopadhyay that Pran got along really well. She drew him out on the subject of The Winter’s Tale , one of Pran’s favourite plays, and they both got carried away, talking freely of the implausibilities of the plot, the difficulties of imagining, let alone performing, some of the scenes, and the absurd and deeply moving climax. They both thought it should be on every syllabus. They agreed with each other violently and disagreed with each other pleasurably. At one point Dr Chattopadhyay told him outright that he was talking nonsense, and Professor Mishra’s troubled face wreathed itself in a smile. But even if she thought that the point Pran had just made was nonsense, it was obviously very stimulating nonsense; her attention was entirely engaged in rebutting it.

Pran’s interview — or, rather, his conversation with her — lasted twice as long as the time allotted to him. But, as Dr Chattopadhyay remarked, some of the other candidates had been disposed of in five minutes, and she looked forward to other candidates of Pran’s calibre.

By four o’clock the interviews were over, and they broke off for a short tea break. The peon who brought in the tea was not deferential to anyone except the Vice-Chancellor. This irked Professor Mishra, whose afternoon tea was usually sweetened by a little cringing.

‘You are looking very pensive, Professor Mishra,’ said Professor Jaikumar.

‘Pensive?’

‘Yes, indeed.’

‘Well, I was wondering why it was that Indian academics publish so little. So few of our candidates have worthwhile publications to their name. Dr Chattopadhyay, of course, is a remarkable exception. Many moons ago, my dear lady,’—he turned towards her—‘I remember how impressed I was by reading your work on the Metaphysicals. That was long before I sat on the committee which—’

‘Well, we’re neither of us young now,’ interrupted Dr Ila Chattopadhyay, ‘and neither of us has published anything of worth in the last ten years. I wonder why that is.’

While Professor Mishra was still recovering from this remark, Professor Jaikumar put forth an explanation which caused him a different kind of pain. ‘Our typical young university teacher,’ he began, ‘is overworked when he is junior — he has to teach yelementary prose and compulsory Yinglish. If he is yinnately conscientious, he has no time for yennything else. By then the fire is out—’

‘If it was ever there,’ added Dr Ila Chattopadhyay.

‘—and the family is growing up, yemoluments are small, and making yends meet is a problem. Luckily,’ added Professor Jaikumar, ‘my wife was yeconomical in her habits, and I got the opportunity to go to Yingland and that is how I managed to develop my yinterest in Shelley.’

Professor Mishra, his mind distracted by Professor Jaikumar’s almost instinctive choice of words beginning with dangerous vowels, said: ‘Yes, but I really fail to see why, once we have riper academic experience and more leisure—’

‘But by then we have yimportant committees like this one to take up our time,’ Professor Jaikumar pointed out. ‘And also we may know too much by then and have no yexpress motivation for writing. Writing is yitself discovery. Yexplication is yexploration.’ Professor Mishra shuddered inwardly while his colleague continued: ‘Ripeness is not all. Perhaps, ripe in years, and thinking he academically now knows yevrything, our university teacher turns from knowledge to religion that goes beyond knowledge — from gyaan to bhakti. Rationality has a very tenuous hold on the Indian psyche.’ (He rhymed it with bike.) ‘Even the great Shankara, Adi-Shankara, who said in his advaita that the great yinfinite idea was that of Brahman — which needed to be brought down by uncomprehending Man to mere Ishvara, whom did he pray to? To Durga!’ Professor Jaikumar nodded his head around the room and in particular to Dr Ila Chattopadhyay. ‘To Durga!’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Dr Ila Chattopadhyay. ‘But I have a train to catch.’

‘Well,’ said the Vice-Chancellor. ‘Let us then make our decision.’

‘That shouldn’t take us long,’ said Dr Ila Chattopadhyay. ‘That thin, dark fellow, Prem Khanna, is head and shoulders above everyone else.’

‘Pran Kapoor,’ Professor Mishra corrected her, pronouncing the syllables with delicate distaste.

‘Yes, Prem, Pran, Prem, Pran: I’m always getting things like this wrong. Really, I sometimes wonder what has happened to my brain. But you know whom I mean.’

‘Indeed.’ Professor Mishra pursed his lips. ‘Well, there might be certain difficulties there. Let us look at a few more possibilities — in justice to the other candidates.’

‘What difficulties?’ said Dr Ila Chattopadhyay bluntly, thinking of the prospect of another night amid lace and coir, and determined not to let this discussion go on at any great length.

‘Well, he has had a bereavement recently. His poor mother. He will be in no condition to undertake—’

‘Well, he certainly didn’t let the thought of his dead mother get in the way of his duelling this afternoon.’

‘Yes, when he said that Shakespeare was implausible,’ said Professor Mishra, pursing his lips to indicate his sense of how unsound and even sacrilegious Pran’s opinions were.

‘Nonsense!’ said Dr Ila Chattopadhyay, looking quite fierce. ‘He said that the plotting of The Winter’s Tale was implausible. And so it is. But seriously, this question of duty and bereavement is surely none of our concern.’

‘Dear lady,’ said Professor Mishra in exasperation, ‘I am the one who has to run this department. I must see that everyone pulls his weight. Professor Jaikumar will, I am sure, agree that one must not rock the boat.’

‘And I suppose that those whom the captain deems unfit for first-class accommodation must be kept firmly, by whatever means necessary, in steerage,’ said Dr Ila Chattopadhyay.

She had sensed that Professor Mishra did not like Pran. In the subsequent heated discussion she discovered that he and the Vice-Chancellor had a favourite candidate, one whom she had judged very ordinary, but to whom, she recalled, they had been excessively courteous during the interview.

Assisted by the Vice-Chancellor and with the extremely tacit acquiescence of the Chancellor’s nominee, Professor Mishra built up a case for this candidate. Pran was tolerable as an academic, but not very cooperative in the running of the department. He needed to mature. Perhaps, in two years’ time, they could consider him again. This other candidate was equally good and a greater asset. Besides, Pran had the strangest views about the syllabus. He thought that Joyce — yes, Joyce — should be thrust down people’s throats. His brother was a bad lot and would bring scandal to the name of the department; these might seem to outsiders to be extraneous matters, but one had to observe certain proprieties. And his health was poor; he came late for classes; why, Professor Jaikumar himself had once seen him collapse in mid-lecture. And there had been complaints that he was involved with a certain woman student. In the nature of things, it would be unreasonable to expect concrete evidence for these complaints, but they had to be considered.

‘Yes, and I suppose he drinks as well?’ said Dr Ila Chattopadhyay. ‘I was wondering when the passes-classes-glasses argument was going to come up.’