Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

You will be glad to know that I have given up eating paan. I was warned by Kalpana that your family does not think it attractive, and, whatever I think about it, I have decided to be accommodating in this respect. I hope you are impressed by all these efforts of mine to Mehra-ise myself.

There is something I have not touched upon in either of my last two letters, and it is good of you not to have mentioned its absence. As you know, I was very upset about a word you used, which I realize in retrospect you did not intend as I took it. I wrote to Kalpana about it that same evening, because I felt the need to unburden myself. For some reason I was also uneasy in general. She ticked me off for my ‘thick-skinned sensitivity’ (she had a way with words even in college) and told me I should apologize at once and not be truculent. Well, I did not feel sorry, so I did not write it. But now with the passing of the weeks I realise that I was in the wrong.

I am a practical man and I am proud of it — but sometimes I come across situations that I do not know how to handle despite my well-formed opinions, and I find that after all perhaps there is less reason to be proud than I thought. So please accept my apologies, Lata, and forgive me for ending New Year’s Day in such an unpleasing manner.

I hope that when we get married — I am hoping that it is when , and not if —you will tell me, with that lovely quiet smile of yours, whenever I take things amiss that are not badly intended.

Baoji has been asking me about my marriage plans, but on that score I have not been able to reassure him as yet. As soon as you are sure in your mind that I would make you the right husband, please do tell me. I give thanks every day that I should have met you and that you and I should have got to know each other through words and meetings. The feelings I have for you increase every day, and, unlike my shoes, do not take Saturday and Sunday off. Needless to say, I have your framed photograph on my desk before me, and it brings to me tender thoughts of the original.

Apart from what one sometimes reads in the Calcutta papers, I have had a little news of the Kapoor family in the course of some business dealings with Kedarnath, and my deep sympathy goes to all of them. It must be a terrible time for everyone. He says that Veena and Bhaskar are most agitated, but he makes light of his own anxieties. I can also imagine how hard it is for Pran, with his brother’s difficulties and the death of his mother coming side by side. It is good that Savita has her baby and her law studies to provide other thoughts, but it could not be easy to concentrate, especially on some subject as hard as law. I do not know what I can do to help in any way, but if there is anything I can do, please tell me. Some things — the latest law-books and so on — are available in Calcutta more easily than in Brahmpur, I think.

I hope you are studying somehow through all this. I am keeping my fingers crossed for you and am very confident, my Lata, that you will come out in flying colours.

My love to Ma, whom I often thank in my mind for bringing you to Kanpur, and to Pran and Savita and the baby. Please tell Kedarnath if you happen to meet him that I will be writing to him very shortly, probably within the week, depending on certain consultations at this end.

With all my love,

Your own,

Haresh

As Lata read, she smiled to herself from time to time. He had crossed out ‘Cawnpore’ to write ‘Kanpur’. When she came to the end she read it through once more. She was glad to hear about Umesh Uncle and his resolved doubts. She could imagine Haresh’s father demanding a similar resolution to his own.

Over the months her world had begun to be populated by the various people Haresh continually mentioned. She even missed Simran; Haresh had probably left her out of this letter for fear of treading on her sensitivities. But Lata realized with a start that, however much she liked Haresh, she was not jealous of Simran.

And who were these people in reality? She thought of Haresh: generous, robust, optimistic, impatient, responsible. There he stood in Prahapore, as solid as a pair of Goodyear Welted shoes, twinkling his eyes affectionately at her from the pages of his letter and telling her as well as he could that he was lonely without her.

But Haresh stood alone: Umesh Uncle, Simran, his foster-father, all these figures whom she felt she knew, could turn out to be entirely different from what she had imagined. And his family of conservative Old Delhi khatris: how could she possibly behave with them as she behaved with Kuku or Dipankar or Mr Justice Chatterji? What would she talk about to the Czechs? But there was something adventurous in losing herself entirely in a world that she did not know with a man whom she trusted and had begun to admire — and who cared for her so deeply and steadily. She thought of a paan-less Haresh, smiling his open smile; she sat him down at a table so that she could not see his co-respondent shoes; she ruffled his hair a bit, and — well, he was quite attractive! She liked him. Perhaps, given time and luck, she could even learn to love him.

A letter from Arun arrived in the afternoon post and helped clarify her thoughts:

My dear Lata,

You will not mind if I take an elder brother’s prerogative to write to you on a matter of great importance to your future and to the future of the family. We are, as such things go, an exceptionally close family, and perhaps as a result of Daddy’s death we have been forced even closer together. I, for example, would not have taken on the responsibilities that I have, had Daddy been alive. Varun would probably not have been staying with me, nor would I feel it incumbent on myself to advise him about finding a direction in life, something that left to himself he would, I am afraid, be disinclined to do. Nor would I have the sense that I am, in a manner of speaking, in loco parentis to you.

I imagine you have already guessed the matter I am referring to. Suffice it to say that I have thought about it from every possible angle, and I find myself in disagreement with Ma’s judgement on the subject. Hence this letter. Ma has too great a tendency to be swayed by sentiment, and she appears to have taken an irrationally strong liking to Haresh — as well as a strong antipathy — irrational or otherwise — to other people. I experienced something similar in her attitude to my own marriage, which, contrary to her expectations, has turned out to be a happy one based on mutual affection and trust. I believe that as a result I have gained a more objective sense of the choices facing you.

Apart from your temporary infatuation with a certain person in Brahmpur, about which the less said the better, you do not have much experience of the tangled thickets of life, nor have you had the chance to develop criteria for judging the alternatives unguided. It is in this context that I am proffering my advice.

I believe that Haresh has some excellent qualities. He is hardworking, he is in some sense self-made, and he has been educated at — or has at least obtained a degree from — one of the better colleges in India. He is, from all accounts, competent at the trade he has chosen. He has confidence, and he is unafraid to speak his mind. One must give the man his due. That said, however, let me make it clear that I believe that he would not make a suitable addition to our family, and for the following reasons:

1. Despite his having studied English at St Stephen’s and having lived in England for two years, his use of the English language leaves a great deal to be desired. This is no trivial point. Conversation between man and wife is the staple of a marriage based on true understanding. They must be able to communicate, to be, as they say, on the same wave-length. Haresh is simply not on the same wave-length as you — or any of us for that matter. This is not merely a question of his accent, which immediately betrays the fact that English is very far from being his first language; it is a question of his idiom and diction, of his very sense, sometimes, of what is being said. I am glad I was not present at home when that ludicrous fracas about the word ‘mean’ took place but, as you know, Ma informed me (with many tears and in great detail) about what had occurred the moment Meenakshi and I returned home. If you take the view that Mother knows best, and become engaged to this man, you will continually face painful and absurd situations of this kind.