Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

‘Right,’ said the boatman.

‘Now, how much?’

‘Well, whatever you—’

‘No,’ said Kabir, ‘let’s fix a price. I’ve never dealt with boatmen any other way.’

‘All right,’ said the boatman, ‘what do you think is right?’

‘One rupee four annas.’

‘Fine.’

Kabir stepped on board, then stretched his hand out for Lata. With an assured grip he pulled her on to the boat. She looked flushed and happy. For an unnecessary second he did not release her hand. Then, sensing she was about to pull away, he let her go.

There was still a slight mist on the river. Kabir and Lata sat facing the boatman as he pulled on the oars. They were more than two hundred yards from the dhobi-ghat, but the sound of the beating of clothes, though faint, was still audible. The details of the bank disappeared in the mist.

‘Ah,’ said Kabir. ‘It’s wonderful to be here on the river surrounded by mist — and it’s rare at this time of year. It reminds me of the holiday we once spent in Simla. All the problems of the world slipped away. It was as if we were a different family altogether.’

‘Do you go to a hill station every summer?’ asked Lata. Though she had been schooled at St Sophia’s in Mussourie, there was no question now of being able to afford to take a house in the hills whenever they chose.

‘Oh yes,’ said Kabir. ‘My father insists on it. We usually go to a different hill station every year — Almora, Nainital, Ranikhet, Mussourie, Simla, even Darjeeling. He says that the fresh air “opens up his assumptions”, whatever that means. Once, when he came down from the hills, he said that like Zarathustra he had gained enough mathematical insight on the mountainside in six weeks to last a lifetime. But of course, we went up to the hills the next year as usual.’

‘And you?’ asked Lata. ‘What about you?’

‘What about me?’ said Kabir. He seemed troubled by some memory.

‘Do you like it in the hills? Will you be going this year as usual?’

‘I don’t know about this year,’ said Kabir. ‘I do like it up there. It’s like swimming.’

‘Swimming?’ asked Lata, trailing a hand in the water.

A thought suddenly struck Kabir. He said to the boatman: ‘How much do you charge local people to take them all the way up to the Barsaat Mahal from near the dhobi-ghat?’

‘Four annas a head,’ said the boatman.

‘Well then,’ said Kabir, ‘we should be paying you a rupee — at the most — considering that half your journey is downstream. And I’m paying you a rupee and four annas. So it’s not unfair.’

‘I’m not complaining,’ said the boatman, surprised.

The mist had cleared, and now before them on the bank of the river stood the grand grey edifice of the Brahmpur Fort, with a broad reach of sand stretching out in front of it. Near it, and leading down to the sands, was a huge earthen ramp, and above it a great pipal tree, its leaves shimmering in the morning breeze.

‘What did you mean by “swimming”?’ asked Lata.

‘Oh yes,’ said Kabir. ‘What I meant was that you’re in a completely different element. All your movements are different — and, as a result, all your thoughts. When I went tobogganing in Gulmarg once, I remember thinking that I didn’t really exist. All that existed was the clean, pure air, the high snows, this rush of swift movement. The flat, drab plains bring you back to yourself. Except, perhaps, well, like now on the river.’

‘Like music?’ said Lata.

The question was addressed as much to herself as to Kabir.

‘Mmm, yes, I think so, in a way,’ Kabir mused. ‘No, not really,’ he decided.

He had been thinking of a change of spirit brought about by a change of physical activity.

‘But,’ said Lata, following her own thoughts, ‘music really does do that to me. Simply strumming the tanpura, even if I don’t sing a single note, puts me into a trance. Sometimes I do it for fifteen minutes before I come back to myself. When things get to be too much for me, it’s the first thing I turn to. And when I think that I only took up singing under Malati’s influence last year I realize how lucky I’ve been. Do you know that my mother is so unmusical that when I was a child and she would sing lullabies to me, I would beg her to stop and let my ayah sing them instead?’

Kabir was smiling. He put his arm around her shoulder and, instead of protesting, she let it remain. It seemed to be in the right place.

‘Why aren’t you saying anything?’ she said.

‘I was just hoping that you’d go on talking. It’s unusual to hear you talking about yourself. I sometimes think I don’t know the first thing about you. Who is this Malati, for instance?’

‘The first thing?’ said Lata, recalling a shred of conversation she’d had with Malati. ‘Even after all the inquiries you’ve instituted?’

‘Yes,’ said Kabir. ‘Tell me about yourself.’

‘That’s not much use as a request. Be more specific. Where should I begin?’

‘Oh, anywhere. Begin at the beginning, go on until you reach the end and then stop.’

‘Well,’ said Lata, ‘it’s before breakfast, so you’ll have to hear at least six impossible things.’

‘Good,’ said Kabir, laughing.

‘Except that my life probably doesn’t contain six impossible things. It’s quite humdrum.’

‘Begin with the family,’ said Kabir.

Lata began to talk about her family — her much-beloved father, who seemed even now to cast a protective aura over her, not least significantly in the shape of a grey sweater; her mother, with her Gita, waterworks, and affectionate volubility; Arun and Meenakshi and Aparna and Varun in Calcutta; and of course Savita and Pran and the baby-to-be. She talked freely, even moving a little closer to Kabir. Strangely enough, for one who was sometimes so unsure of herself, she did not at all doubt his affection.

The Fort and the sands had gone past, as had the cremation ghat and a glimpse of the temples of Old Brahmpur and the minarets of the Alamgiri Mosque. Now as they came round a gentle bend in the river they saw before them the delicate white structure of the Barsaat Mahal, at first from an angle, and then, gradually, full face.

The water was not clear, but it was quite calm and its surface was like murky glass. The boatman moved into mid-stream as he rowed. Then he settled the boat dead centre — in line with the vertical axis of symmetry of the Barsaat Mahal — and plunged the long pole that he had earlier fetched from the opposite bank deep into the middle of the river. It hit the bottom, and the boat was still.

‘Now sit and watch for five minutes,’ said the boatman. ‘This is a sight you will never forget in your lives.’

Indeed it was, and neither of them was to forget it. The Barsaat Mahal, site of statesmanship and intrigue, love and dissolute enjoyment, glory and slow decay, was transfigured into something of abstract and final beauty. Above its sheer river wall it rose, its reflection in the water almost perfect, almost unrippled. They were in a stretch of the river where even the sounds of the old town were dim. For a few minutes they said nothing at all.

After a little while, without as such being told to, the boatman pulled his pole out of the mud at the bottom of the river. He continued to row upstream, past the Barsaat Mahal. The river narrowed slightly because of a spit of sand jutting almost into mid-stream from the opposite bank. The chimneys of a shoe factory, a tannery and a flour mill came into view. Kabir stretched and yawned, releasing Lata’s shoulder.

‘Now I’ll turn around and we’ll drift past it,’ said the boatman.

Kabir nodded.

‘This is where the easy part begins for me,’ said the boatman, turning the boat around. ‘It’s good it’s not too hot yet.’ Steering with an occasional stroke of the oar, he let the boat drift downstream on the current.