Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

Arun arrived a few days early and tried to take over the management of events from his grandfather. But Parvati, who apparently realized how good it was for her husband to exhaust himself with excitement, put paid to his attempts at usurpation. She even shouted at Arun in front of the servants, and he retreated before ‘that harridan’.

The arrival from Delhi of the baraat — the groom’s party — brought its own excitement and complications. Haresh’s foster-parents had been satisfied on the score of astrology; his mother, however, insisted on various precautions being taken about the preparation of her food. She would have been horrified to know that at Pran’s house, where she ate one day, the cook was a Muslim. His name was therefore converted from Mateen to Matadeen for the duration.

Two of Haresh’s foster-brothers and their wives came with the baraat, as did the doubting Umesh Uncle. Their English was terrible and their sense of punctuality so lax as to be almost non-existent, and in general they confirmed Arun’s worst fears. Mrs Rupa Mehra, however, gave the women saris and talked to them endlessly.

They approved of Lata.

Haresh was not allowed to meet Lata. He stayed with Sunil Patwardhan, and the St Stephen’s contingent gathered around him in the evenings to tease him and enact Scenes from Married Life. The vast Sunil was usually the shrinking bride.

Haresh visited Kedarnath’s house in Misri Mandi. He told Veena how sorry he was to hear of Mrs Mahesh Kapoor’s death and all the anxieties that the family had had to undergo. Old Mrs Tandon and Bhaskar were happy that he had visited. And Haresh was delighted to be able to mention to Kedarnath that the order for brogues from Prahapore would be coming through within the week, together with a short-term loan for the purchase of materials.

Haresh also visited Ravidaspur one morning. He took with him some bananas for Jagat Ram’s children, the good news about the Praha order, and an invitation to his wedding.

The fruit was a luxury; there were no fruit sellers in Ravidaspur. The barefooted sons of the shoemaker accepted the bananas with suspicious reluctance and ate them with relish, dropping the skins into the drain that ran alongside the house.

The news about the Praha order was met with satisfaction, and the fact that a loan for the purchase of raw materials was to accompany it was greeted with intense relief. Jagat Ram was looking rather subdued, thought Haresh. He had expected elation.

Jagat Ram reacted to Haresh’s wedding invitation with visible shock, not so much because Haresh was getting married, and in Brahmpur at that, but because he should have thought of inviting him.

Moved as he was, he had to refuse. The two worlds did not mix. He knew it; it was a fact of life. That a jatav from Ravidaspur should be present as a guest at a wedding at the house of Dr Kishen Chand Seth would cause social distress that he did not wish to be the centre of. It would injure his dignity. Apart from the practical problems of what to wear and what to give, he knew that he would feel no joy and only intense awkwardness at being present on the occasion.

Haresh, reading his mind only partially, said, with brusque tact: ‘You’re not to bring a gift. I’ve never been a believer in gifts at weddings. But you must come. We are colleagues. I won’t hear of your not coming. And the invitation is also for your wife if you want her to come.’

It was only with the greatest of reluctance that Jagat Ram agreed. The red-and-gold invitation, meanwhile, was being passed by the boys from hand to hand.

‘Haven’t they left anything for your daughter?’ asked Haresh, as the last of the bananas disappeared.

‘Oh, her dust has been washed away,’ said Jagat Ram quietly.

‘What?’ said Haresh, shocked.

Jagat Ram shook his head. ‘What I mean to say—’ he began, and his voice was choked.

‘What happened, for heaven’s sake?’

‘She got an infection. My wife said it was serious, but I thought, children get high fever so quickly, and it comes down just as quickly. And so I delayed. It was the money too; and the doctors here are, well, high-handed with us.’

‘Your poor wife—’

‘My wife said nothing, she said nothing against me. What she thinks, I don’t know.’ After a pause he quoted two lines:

‘Don’t break the thread of love, Raheem has said.

What breaks won’t join; if joined, it knots the thread.’

When Haresh commiserated, Jagat Ram merely sucked in his breath through his teeth and shook his head again.

When Haresh returned to Sunil’s, he found his father waiting for him impatiently.

‘Where have you been?’ he asked Haresh, crinkling his nose. ‘It’s almost ten. The Registrar will be at Dr Seth’s house in a few minutes.’

‘Oh!’ said Haresh, looking surprised. ‘I’d better take a quick shower.’

He had forgotten about the time of the civil ceremony, which Mrs Rupa Mehra had insisted on having on the day before the wedding proper. She felt that she had to protect her daughter from the injustices of the traditional Hindu Law; marriages solemnized before a Registrar were governed by laws that were much fairer to women.

The civil ceremony, however, was such a brief and dry affair that almost no one attached any significance to it, although from the moment it was over, Haresh and Lata were legally man and wife. Only a dozen or so people attended, and Haresh was reproved by his mother for being late.

Lata had alternated between serene optimism and terrifying attacks of uncertainty for the last week. After the civil ceremony was over, she felt calm and almost happy, and fonder of Haresh than before. From time to time he had smiled at her as if he knew exactly when she had most needed reassurance.

Amit, Kakoli, Dipankar, Meenakshi, Tapan, Aparna, Varun and even Hans had arrived together from Calcutta early that morning and had been present at the civil ceremony. Pran’s house was bursting at the seams. Dr Kishen Chand Seth’s house too was entirely overrun. Only Prem Nivas, lacking its mistress, remained almost empty.

All manner of known and unknown people wandered in and out of Dr Kishen Chand’s house. Since he had decided to operate on the unusually pacific assumption that anyone whom he didn’t recognize must have been asked by someone else, or else must be involved with the lighting or the catering arrangements, he threatened very few people with his stick. Parvati kept an eye on him and made sure that no one came to grief.

It was a hot day. A few birds — mynas, babblers, sparrows, bulbuls, and barbets — were disturbed in their nesting by this constant throng of noisy, busy humans. The beds in the garden had gone to seed; except for a few tobacco flowers, nothing on the ground was in bloom. But the trees — champa, jacaranda, and Sita ashok — were full of white or mauve or red blossom, and bougainvillaea — orange, red, pink, and magenta — fell in great masses over the walls of the house and down the trunks of trees. From time to time, amid the continuous racket of the barbets, the call of a distant brainfever bird sounded high and insistent and clear.

Lata sat in an inner room with the other women for the singing and henna ceremonies. Kuku and Meenakshi, Malati and Savita, Mrs Rupa Mehra, Veena, Hema and her Taiji, all kept themselves entertained and Lata distracted by singing wedding songs, some innocent, some risqué, and dancing to the beat of a dholak while an old woman fitted them all with glass bangles of their choice — from Firozabad, she claimed — and another squeezed bold but delicate patterns of henna on their hands and feet. Lata looked at her hands, covered now with the moist, beautiful tracery, and began to weep.