Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

‘It’s my fault,’ said Malati bitterly, shaking her head from side to side. ‘I wish to God I’d never written that letter to Calcutta. And you’re going to wish the same.’

‘It isn’t, Malati. And I’m not. Thank God you did.’

Malati looked at Lata with sick unhappiness. ‘You just don’t realize what you’re throwing away, Lata. You’re choosing the wrong man. Stay unmarried for a while. Take your time to make up your mind again. Or simply remain unmarried — it’s not so tragic.’

Lata was silent. On the side that Malati could not see, she let a handful of sand pass through her fingers.

‘What about that other chap?’ said Malati. ‘That poet, Amit? How has he put himself out of the running?’

Lata smiled at the thought of Amit. ‘Well, he wouldn’t be my undoing, as you put it, but I don’t see myself as his wife at all. We’re too alike. His moods veer and oscillate as wildly as mine. Can you imagine the lives of our poor children? And if his mind’s on a book I don’t know if he’ll have any time for me. Sensitive people are usually very insensitive — I should know. As a matter of fact, he’s just proposed to me.’

Malati looked shocked and angry.

‘You never tell me anything!’

‘Everything happened all of a sudden yesterday,’ said Lata, fishing Amit’s acrostic out of the pocket of her kameez. ‘I brought this along, since you usually like to see the documents in the case.’

Malati read it in silence, then said: ‘I’d marry anyone who wrote me this.’

‘Well, he’s still available,’ laughed Lata. ‘And I won’t veto that marriage.’ She put her arm around Malati’s shoulder before continuing: ‘For me, marrying Amit would be madness. Quite apart from everything else, I get more than enough of my brother Arun. To live five minutes away from him would be the ultimate lunacy!’

‘You could live somewhere else.’

‘Oh no—’ said Lata, picturing Amit in his room overlooking the laburnum in bloom. ‘He’s a poet and a novelist. He wants things laid on for him. Meals, hot water, a running household, a dog, a lawn, a Muse. And why not? After all, he did write “The Fever Bird”! But he won’t be able to write if he has to fend for himself away from his family. Anyway, you seem to be happy with anyone but Haresh. Why? Why are you so dead-set against him?’

‘Because I see nothing, nothing, nothing at all in common between you two,’ said Malati. ‘And it’s completely obvious you don’t love him. Have you thought this thing through, Lata, or are you just making up your mind in a sort of trance? Like that nun business that Ma keeps talking about. Think. Do you like the idea of sharing your possessions with this man? Of making love with him? Does he attract you? Can you cope with the things that irritate you about him — Cawnpore and paan and all that? Please, please, Lata, don’t be stupid. Use your brains. What about this Simran woman — doesn’t that bother you? And what do you want to do with yourself after your marriage — or are you just content to be a housewife in a walled compound full of Czechs?’

‘Do you think I haven’t thought about any of this?’ said Lata, removing her arm, annoyed once more. ‘Or that I haven’t tried to visualize what life will be like with him? It’ll be interesting, I think. Haresh is practical, he’s forceful, he isn’t cynical. He gets things done and he helps people without making a fuss about it. He’s helped Kedarnath and Veena a great deal.’

‘So what?. . Will he let you teach?’

‘Yes, he will.’

‘Have you asked him?’ pressed Malati.

‘No. That’s not the best idea,’ said Lata. ‘But I’m sure of it. I think I know him well enough by now. He hates to see anyone’s talent wasted. He encourages them. And he’s really concerned about people — about me, about Maan, about Savita and her studies, about Bhaskar—’

‘—who, incidentally, is alive today only because of Kabir,’ Malati could not resist interposing.

‘I don’t deny it.’ Lata sighed deeply, and looked at the warm sands all around.

For a while neither said anything. Then Malati spoke.

‘But what has he done, Lata?’ she said quietly. ‘What has he done that is wrong — that he should be treated like this? He loves you and he never deserved to be doubted. Is it fair? Just think, is it fair?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Lata slowly, looking over towards the far shore. ‘No, it isn’t, I suppose. But life isn’t always a question of justice, is it? What is that line? — “Use every man after his desert, and who should ’scape whipping?” But it’s true the other way around as well. Use every man after his desert and you’ll become a complete emotional bankrupt.’

‘That’s a really mean-spirited view of the world,’ said Malati.

‘Don’t call me mean,’ cried Lata passionately.

Malati looked at her in astonishment.

Lata shivered. ‘All I meant was, Malati, that when I’m with Kabir, or even away from him but thinking about him, I become utterly useless for anything. I feel I’m out of control — like a boat heading for the rocks — and I don’t want to become a wreck.’

‘So you’re going to instruct yourself not to think of him?’

‘If I can,’ said Lata, almost to herself.

‘What did you say? Speak up,’ demanded Malati, wanting to shake her into seeing sense.

‘If I can,’ said Lata.

‘How can you deceive yourself like this?’

Lata was silent.

‘Malu, I’m not going to quarrel with you,’ she said after a while. ‘I care for you as much as I care for any of these men, and I always will. But I’m not going to undo what I’ve done. I do love Haresh, and—’

‘What?’ cried Malati, looking at Lata as if she were an imbecile.

‘I do.’

‘You’re full of surprises today,’ said Malati, very angry now.

‘And, well, you’re full of incredulities. But I do. Or I think I do. Thank God it isn’t what I feel for Kabir.’

‘I don’t believe you. You’re just making that up.’

‘You must. He’s grown on me, he really has. I don’t find him unattractive. And there’s something else — I won’t feel I’ll be making a fool of myself with him — with regard to, well, with regard to sex.’

Malati stared at her. What a crazy thing to say.

‘And with Kabir you will?’

‘With Kabir — I just don’t know—’

Malati said nothing. She shook her head slowly, not looking at Lata, half lost in her own thoughts.

Lata said: ‘Do you know those lines of Clough that go: “There are two different kinds, I believe, of human attraction”?’

Again Malati said nothing but merely shook her head.

‘Well, they go something like this:

There are two different kinds, I believe, of human attraction. One that merely excites, unsettles, and makes you uneasy; The other that—

Well, I can’t remember exactly, but he talks about a calmer, less frantic love, which helps you to grow where you were already growing, “to live where as yet I had languished”—I just read it yesterday, it isn’t in my head yet, but it said everything that I couldn’t express on my own. Do you understand what I mean?. . Malati?’

‘All I understand,’ said Malati, ‘is that you can’t live on other people’s words. You’re throwing away the golden casket and the silver one, and you seem to think that you’ll be as lucky with the bronze casket as your English literature tells you you’ll be. Well, I hope you will, I really hope you will. But you won’t be. You won’t.’

‘You’ll grow to like him too, Malu.’

Malati didn’t answer.

‘You haven’t even met him,’ continued Lata with a smile. ‘And I remember at first you refused to like Pran.’