Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

‘At Brahmpur University?’ asked Malati.

‘I don’t know,’ said Lata. ‘And another thing: I think he’s fond of literature. He wanted me to come to the Lit Soc meeting tomorrow.’

‘Then why don’t you go there and ask him about himself,’ said Malati, who believed in the Approach Audacious. ‘Whether he brushes his teeth with Kolynos, for instance. “There’s magic in a Kolynos smile.”’

‘I can’t,’ said Lata, so forcefully that Malati was a little taken aback.

‘Surely you’re not falling for him!’ she said. ‘You don’t know the first thing about him — his family, or even his full name.’

‘I feel I know more important things about him than the first thing,’ said Lata.

‘Yes, yes,’ said Malati, ‘like the whiteness of his teeth and the blackness of his hair. “She floated on a magical cloud high in the sky, sensing his strong presence around her with every fibre of her being. He was her whole universe. He was the be-all and end-all and catch-all and hold-all of her existence.” I know the feeling.’

‘If you’re going to talk nonsense—’ said Lata, feeling the warmth rise to her face.

‘No, no, no, no, no,’ said Malati, still laughing. ‘I’ll find out whatever I can.’

Several thoughts went through her mind: cricket reports in the university magazine? The Mathematics Department? The Registrar’s Office?

Aloud she said, ‘Leave Boiled Potatoes to me. I’ll smother him with chillies and present him to you on a platter. Anyway, Lata, from your face, no one would know you still had a paper left. Being in love is good for you. You must do it more often.’

‘Yes, I will,’ said Lata. ‘When you become a doctor, prescribe it to all your patients.’

Lata arrived at 20 Hastings Road at five o’clock the next day. She had finished her last paper that morning. She was convinced she had not done well in it, but when she started to feel upset, she thought of Kabir and instantly cheered up. Now she looked around for him among the group of about fifteen men and women who were sitting in old Mr Nowrojee’s drawing room — the room in which the weekly meetings of the Brahmpur Literary Society had been held from as far back as anyone could remember. But either Kabir had not yet arrived or else he had changed his mind about coming.

The room was full of stuffed chairs with flowery prints and overstuffed cushions with flowery prints.

Mr Nowrojee, a thin, short and gentle man, with an immaculate white goatee beard and an immaculate light-grey suit, presided over the occasion. Noticing that Lata was a new face, he introduced himself and made her feel welcome. The others, who were sitting or standing in small groups, paid no attention to her. Feeling awkward at first, she walked over to a window and gazed out towards a small, well-tended garden with a sundial in the middle. She was looking forward so much to seeing him that she vehemently pushed aside the thought that he might not turn up.

‘Good afternoon, Kabir.’

‘Good afternoon, Mr Nowrojee.’

Lata turned around at the mention of Kabir’s name and the sound of his low, pleasant voice, and gave him such a happy smile that he put his hand to his forehead and staggered back a few steps.

Lata did not know what to make of his buffoonery, which luckily no one else had noticed. Mr Nowrojee was now seated at the oblong table at the end of the room and was coughing mildly for attention. Lata and Kabir sat down on an empty sofa near the wall farthest from the table. Before they could say anything to each other, a middle-aged man with a plump, bright-eyed, cheerful face handed them each a sheaf of carbon copies which appeared to be covered with poetry.

‘Makhijani,’ he said mysteriously as he passed.

Mr Nowrojee took a sip of water from one of the three glasses in front of him. ‘Fellow-members of the Brahmpur Literary Society — and friends,’ he said in a voice that barely carried to where Lata and Kabir were sitting, ‘we have gathered here for the 1,698th meeting of our society. I now declare the meeting open.’

He looked wistfully out of the window, and rubbed his glasses with a handkerchief. Then he continued: ‘I remember when Edmund Blunden addressed us. He said — and I remember his words to this very day — he said—’

Mr Nowrojee stopped, coughed, and looked down at the sheet of paper in front of him. His skin itself appeared to be as thin as paper.

He went on: ‘1,698th meeting. Poetry recitation of their own poetry by members of the society. Copies, I see, have been handed out. Next week Professor O.P. Mishra of the English Department will present to us a paper on the subject: “Eliot: Whither?”’

Lata, who enjoyed Professor Mishra’s lectures despite the pinkness with which he was now invested in her mind, looked interested, though the title was a bit mystifying.

‘Three poets will be reading from their own work today,’ continued Mr Nowrojee, ‘following which I hope you will join us for tea. I am sorry to see that my young friend Mr Sorabjee has not been able to make the time to come,’ he added in tones of gentle rebuke.

Mr Sorabjee, fifty-seven years old, and — like Mr Nowrojee himself — a Parsi, was the Proctor of Brahmpur University. He rarely missed a meeting of the literary societies of either the university or the town. But he always managed to avoid meetings where members read out their own literary efforts.

Mr Nowrojee smiled indecisively. ‘The poets reading today are Dr Vikas Makhijani, Mrs Supriya Joshi—’

‘Shrimati Supriya Joshi,’ said a booming female voice. The broad-bosomed Mrs Joshi had stood up to make the correction.

‘Er, yes, our, er, talented poetess Shrimati Supriya Joshi — and, of course, myself, Mr R.P. Nowrojee. As I am already seated at the table I will avail myself of the chairman’s prerogative of reading my own poems first — by way of an aperitif to the more substantial fare that is to follow. Bon appétit.’ He allowed himself a sad, rather wintry, chuckle before clearing his throat and taking another sip of water.

‘The first poem that I would like to read is entitled “Haunting Passion”,’ said Mr Nowrojee primly. And he read the following poem:

I’m haunted by a tender passion,

The ghost of which will never die.

The leaves of autumn have grown ashen:

I’m haunted by a tender passion.

And spring-time too, in its own fashion,

Burns me with love’s sweet song — so I—

I’m haunted by a tender passion,

The ghost of which will never die.

As Mr Nowrojee completed his poem, he seemed to be manfully holding back his tears. He looked out towards the garden, towards the sundial, and, pulling himself together, said:

‘That is a triolet. Now I will read you a ballade. It is called “Buried Flames”.’

After he had read this and three other poems in a similar vein with diminishing vigour, he stopped, spent of all emotion. He then got up like one who has completed an infinitely distant and exhausting journey, and sat down on a stuffed chair not far from the speaker’s table.

In the brief interval between him and the next reader Kabir looked inquiringly at Lata and she looked quizzically back at him. They were both trying to control their laughter, and looking at each other was not helping them do this.

Luckily, the happy, plump-faced man who had handed them the poems that he planned to read now rushed forward energetically to the speaker’s table and, before sitting down, said the single word:

‘Makhijani.’

After he had announced his name, he looked even more delighted than before. He riffled through his sheaf of papers with an expression of intense and pleasurable concentration, then smiled at Mr Nowrojee, who shrank in his chair like a sparrow cowering in a niche before a gale. Mr Nowrojee had tried at one stage to dissuade Dr Makhijani from reading, but had met with such good-natured outrage that he had had to give in. But having read a copy of the poems earlier in the day, he could not help wishing that the banquet had ended with the aperitif.