Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

‘I want you to marry someone with character,’ said her mother. ‘Someone like your father. Someone whom you cannot push around. And that’s what you want as well.’

Mrs Rupa Mehra too was staring at Kalpana Gaur and Varun in amazement. Surely not! — surely not! — she thought. Kalpana, who was like a daughter to her: how could she have battened on to her poor son? Could I be imagining things? she wondered. But Varun was so guileless — or, rather, so ineffectual even when he tried to be guileful that the symptoms of his infatuation were unmistakable.

How and when could this have happened?

‘Yes, yes, thank you, thank you,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra impatiently to someone who was congratulating her.

What could be done to prevent such a disaster? Kalpana was years older than Varun, and — even if she was like a daughter to her — Mrs Rupa Mehra had no intention of having her as a daughter-in-law.

But now Malati (‘that girl who makes nothing but mischief’) had gone up to Varun, and was looking deeply, deeply with her peerless green eyes into his. Varun’s jaw had dropped slightly and he appeared to be stammering.

Leaving Lata and Haresh to fend for themselves, Mrs Rupa Mehra marched up to Varun.

‘Hello, Ma,’ said Kalpana Gaur. ‘Many congratulations. What a lovely wedding. And I can’t help feeling responsible for it, in a way.’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra shortly.

‘Hello, Ma,’ said Malati. ‘Yes, congratulations are in order from me as well.’ Receiving no immediate response, she added, without thinking: ‘These gulab-jamuns are delicious. You must try one.’

This reference to forbidden sweets annoyed Mrs Rupa Mehra further. She glared at the offending objects for a second or two.

‘What is the matter, Malati?’ she asked with some asperity. ‘You still look a little under the weather — you’ve been running around so much, I’m not surprised — and, Kalpana, standing in the centre of the crowd is not good for your hot spots; go and sit on that bench there at once, it is much cooler. Now I must have a word with Varun, who is not doing his duties as a host.’

And she took him aside.

‘You too will marry a girl I choose,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra firmly to her younger son.

‘But — but, Ma—’ Varun shifted from foot to foot.

‘A suitable girl, that is what I want for you,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra in an admonitory voice. ‘That is what your Daddy would have wanted. A suitable girl, and no exceptions.’

While Varun was trying to figure out the implications of that last phrase, Arun joined them, together with Aparna, who held her father’s hand in one hand and an ice-cream cone in another.

‘Not pistachio, Daadi,’ she announced, disappointedly.

‘Don’t worry, sweetheart,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, ‘we’ll get you lots of pistachio ice-cream tomorrow.’

‘At the zoo.’

‘Yes, at the zoo,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra absently. She frowned. ‘Sweetheart, it’s too hot to go to the zoo.’

‘But you promised,’ Aparna pointed out.

‘Did I, sweetheart? When?’

‘Just now! Just now!’

‘Your Daddy will take you,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra.

‘Your Varun Chacha will take you,’ said Arun.

‘And Kalpana Aunty will come with us,’ said Varun.

‘No,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, ‘I will be talking with her tomorrow about old times and other matters.’

‘Why can’t Lata Bua come with us?’ asked Aparna.

‘Because she’ll be going to Calcutta tomorrow, with Haresh Phupha,’ said Varun.

‘Because they’re married?’

‘Because they’re married.’

‘Oh. And Bhaskar can come with us, and Tapan Maama.’

‘They certainly can. But Tapan says that all he wants to do is to read comics and sleep.’

‘And the Lady Baby.’

‘Uma’s too small to enjoy the zoo,’ Varun pointed out. ‘And the snakes will frighten her. They might even gobble her up.’ He laughed sinisterly and rubbed his stomach, to Aparna’s delight.

Uma was at the moment herself the object of enjoyment and admiration. Savita’s aunts were cooing over her; they were extremely pleased that, despite their predictions, she had not turned out to be ‘as black as her father’. This they said in full hearing of Pran, who laughed. For the colour of Haresh’s skin they had nothing but praise; it would cancel out the flaw of Lata’s complexion.

With matters of such Mendelian moment did the aunts from Lucknow and Kanpur and Banaras and Madras occupy themselves.

‘Lata’s baby is bound to be born black,’ suggested Pran. ‘Things balance out within a family.’

‘Chhi, chhi, how can you say such things?’ said Mrs Kakkar.

‘Pran has babies on the brain,’ said Savita.

Pran grinned — rather boyishly, Savita thought.

On the 1st of April this year, he had received a phone call that had sent him beaming back to the breakfast table. Parvati, it appeared, was pregnant. Mrs Rupa Mehra had reacted with horror.

Even when she had recalled the date, she had remained annoyed with Pran. ‘How can you joke this year when things are so sad?’ she demanded. But in Pran’s view one might as well try to be cheerful, however sad the core of things might be. And besides, he felt, it would not be such a terrible thing if Parvati and Kishy had a baby. At present they each dominated the other. A baby would redirect the equation.

‘What’s wrong with having babies on the brain?’ said Pran to the assembly of aunts. ‘Veena’s expecting, and Bhaskar and Kedarnath seem to be quite happy about it. That’s some good news in a sad year. And Uma too will need a brother and a sister sooner or later. Things won’t be quite so tight on my new salary.’

‘Quite right,’ the aunts agreed. ‘You can’t call it a family unless there are at least three children.’

‘Contract and tort permitting, of course,’ said Savita. Unhardened by the law she was looking as lovely and soft as ever in a blue-and-silver sari.

‘Yes, darling,’ said Pran. ‘Contract and tort permitting.’

‘Our congratulations, Dr Kapoor,’ said a strikingly inaudible voice behind him.

Pran found himself pulled into the middle of a little pride of literary lions: Mr Barua, Mr Nowrojee, and Sunil Patwardhan.

‘Oh, thank you,’ said Pran, ‘but I’ve been married a year and a half now.’

Mr Nowrojee’s face registered a fleeting and wintry smile.

‘I meant, of course, congratulations on your recent elevation, so’—he smiled sadly—‘so very richly deserved. And I have been meaning to tell you for many months now how very much I enjoyed your Twelfth Night. But you disappeared so early from Chatterji’s reading. I notice he is here this evening — I sent him a sheaf of villanelles a month ago, but have had no response so far; do you think I should trouble him with a reminder?’

‘It was Mr Barua who was the producer this year, Mr Nowrojee,’ replied Pran. ‘Mine was Julius Caesar , the year before.’

‘Oh, of course, of course, though one often wonders with Shakespeare — as I said to E.M. Forster in — was it—1913?—’

‘So, you bastard, you’ve managed to get Joyce on the syllabus after all,’ broke in Sunil Patwardhan. ‘An awful decision, an awful decision. I was just talking to Professor Mishra. He sounded stricken.’

‘Stick to mathematics, Sunil.’

‘I plan to,’ said Sunil. ‘Have you read Joyce on the sound of cricket bats?’ he asked, turning to Mr Barua and Mr Nowrojee: “Pick, pack, pock, puck: like drops of water in a fountain falling softly in the brimming bowl.” And that was early Joyce! Shall I do an imitation of Finnegan waking?’

‘No,’ said Pran. ‘Spare us the joy.’