‘Yes, excellent idea,’ said Pran, rather eagerly for a patient. ‘What have you brought for me? This lack of exercise makes me enormously hungry. I seem to live from meal to meal. What’s for soup? Oh, vegetable soup,’ he said, disappointed. ‘Can’t I have tomato soup once in a while?’
Once in a while? thought Savita. Pran had had his favourite tomato soup the previous day and the day before, and she had thought that this would make a change.
‘Mad! Remember that!’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra sotto voce to Lata. ‘You remember that when you go gallivanting around having a gala time. Muslim and mad.’
13.4
When Maan came in, he found Pran eating his supper quite happily.
‘What’s the matter with you now?’ he asked.
‘Nothing much. Just lungs, heart and liver,’ said Pran.
‘Yes, Imtiaz said something about your heart. But you don’t look like a man with heart failure. Anyway, it doesn’t happen to people your age.’
‘Well,’ said Pran. ‘I don’t have heart failure yet. At least I don’t think I do. What I have is a severe strain.’
‘Ventricular,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra.
‘Oh. Ah, hello, Ma.’ Maan said his hellos all around, and eyed Pran’s food with intent. ‘Jamuns? Delicious!’ he exclaimed, and popped two into his mouth. He spat the seeds into the palm of his hand, placed them on the side of the plate, and took another two. ‘You should try them,’ he advised Pran.
‘So what have you been up to, Maan?’ said Savita. ‘How’s your Urdu?’
‘Oh, good, very good. Well, at any rate, I’ve certainly made progress. I can write a note in Urdu now—and what’s more, someone can read it at the other end. And that reminds me, I need to write a note today.’ His good-natured face grew perplexed momentarily, then recovered its smile. ‘And how are you? Two women in a cast of a dozen men. They must be slobbering all over you. How do you shake them off?’
Mrs Rupa Mehra looked daggers at him.
‘We don’t,’ said Lata. ‘We maintain a frigid distance.’
‘Very frigid,’ agreed Malati. ‘We have our reputations to guard.’
‘If we aren’t careful,’ said Lata severely, ‘no one will marry us. Or even elope with us.’
Mrs Rupa Mehra had had enough. ‘You can make fun,’ she exclaimed in exasperation. ‘You can make fun—but it’s not a laughing matter.’
‘You’re quite right, Ma,’ said Maan. ‘Not a laughing matter at all. Why did you allow them—I mean Lata—to act in the first place?’
Mrs Rupa Mehra kept a black silence, and Maan at last realized that this was a sensitive subject.
‘Anyway,’ he said to Pran, ‘I bring for you the affectionate regards of the Nawab Sahib, the love of Firoz, and the concern of Zainab—by way of Firoz. Yes, and that’s not all. Imtiaz wants to know if you are having your little white pills. He plans to see you tomorrow morning and count them. And someone else said something else, but I can’t remember what it was. Are you really all right, Pran? It’s quite upsetting to see you lying in the hospital like this. When’s the baby expected? Maybe, if Savita clings to you all the time, the baby’ll be born in the same hospital. Perhaps in the same room. How about that? Delicious jamuns.’ And Maan popped another two into his mouth.
‘You seem very well,’ said Savita.
‘Except I’m not,’ said Maan. ‘I fall upon the knives of life, I bleed.’
‘Thorns,’ said Pran with a grimace.
‘Thorns?’
‘Thorns.’
‘Oh, well, then that’s what I fall upon,’ said Maan. ‘At any rate, I’m miserable.’
‘Your lungs are in good shape, though,’ said Savita.
‘Yes, but my heart isn’t. Or my liver,’ said Maan, plaintively including both seats of emotion according to the conventions of Urdu poetry. ‘The huntress of my heart—’
‘Now we must really be going,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, gathering her daughters chick-like to her side. Malati also took her leave.
‘Was it something I said?’ asked Maan when he and his brother were left alone.
‘Oh, don’t worry about it,’ said Pran. It had rained again this afternoon, quite heavily, and he had become very philosophical. ‘Just sit down and be quiet. Thanks for visiting me.’
‘I say, Pran, does she love me still?’
Pran shrugged his shoulders.
‘She threw me out of the house the other day. Do you think that’s a good sign?’
‘Not on the face of it.’
‘I suppose you’re right,’ said Maan. ‘But I love her dreadfully. I can’t live without her.’
‘Like oxygen,’ said Pran.
‘Oxygen? Yes, I suppose so,’ said Maan gloomily. ‘Anyway, I’m going to send her a note today. I’m going to threaten to end it all.’
‘End what all?’ said Pran, not very alarmed. ‘Your life?’
‘Yes, probably,’ said Maan in a doubtful voice. ‘Do you think that’ll win her back?’
‘Well, do you plan to back your threat up with action? To fall upon the knives of life or shoot yourself with the guns of life?’
Maan started. This lapse into practicality was in poor taste. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ he said.
‘I don’t think so either,’ said Pran. ‘Anyway, don’t. I’ll miss you. So will all the people who were in this room. So will all the people whose regards you’ve brought me. So will Baoji and Ammaji and Veena and Bhaskar. So will your creditors.’
‘You’re right!’ said Maan in a determined manner. He polished off the last two jamuns. ‘You’re absolutely right. You’re a pillar of strength, you know that, Pran? Even when you’re lying down. Now I feel I can face everyone and everything. I feel as if I’m a lion.’ He roared experimentally.
The door opened, and Mr and Mrs Mahesh Kapoor, Veena, Kedarnath and Bhaskar came in.
The lion subsided, and looked a little shamefaced. He hadn’t visited home for two days, and though there was no reproach in his mother’s eyes, he felt bad. While she said a few words to Pran, she arranged a fragrant bunch of bela from the garden in a vase that she had brought with her. And she asked Maan about the Nawab Sahib’s family.
Maan hung his head. ‘They are all very well, Ammaji,’ he said. ‘And how is the frog? Recovered enough to be hopping around like this?’ He gave Bhaskar a hug, then exchanged a few words with Kedarnath. Veena went over to Pran, put her hand on his forehead, and asked not how he was but how Savita was taking his illness.
Pran shook his head. ‘I couldn’t have timed it worse,’ he said.
‘You must take care of yourself,’ said Veena.
‘Yes,’ said Pran. ‘Yes, of course.’ After a pause he added, ‘She wants to study law—in case she becomes a widow and the child an orphan—I mean, fatherless.’
‘Don’t say such things, Pran,’ said his sister sharply.
‘Law?’ said Mr Mahesh Kapoor equally sharply.
‘Oh, I only say them because I don’t believe them,’ said Pran. ‘I’m protected by a mantra.’
Mrs Mahesh Kapoor turned to him and said, ‘Pran—Ramjap Baba also said one other thing; he said your chances for a job would be affected by a death. Do not make fun of fate. It is never good. If any of my grown-up children were to die before me, I would want to die myself.’
‘What’s all this talk of dying?’ said her husband, impatient with all this needless emotion. ‘This room is full of mosquitoes. One just bit me. Tell Savita she should concentrate on her duties as a mother. All this law will do her no good.’
Mrs Mahesh Kapoor, surprisingly, demurred.
‘Unh! What do you understand about anything?’ said her husband. Women should have rights. I’m all for giving them property rights. But if they insist on working, they won’t be able to spend time on their children, and they’ll be brought up neglected. If you had been working, would you have had time to nurse Pran? Would he have been alive today?’
Mrs Mahesh Kapoor said noth
ing further on the subject. She looked back on Pran’s childhood, and thought that what her husband had said was probably true.
‘How’s the garden, Ammaji?’ asked Pran. The scent of the bela blossoms had filled the room.
‘The zinnias under Maan’s window are out,’ said his mother. ‘And the malis are laying down the new lawn. Since your father resigned, I’ve had a little time to spend on it, though we have to pay the malis ourselves now. And I’ve planted a few new rose bushes. The ground’s soft. And the pond herons have been visiting.’
Maan, who had so far been rather subdued and un-leonine, could not resist quoting from Ghalib:
‘The breeze of the garden of faithfulness has dispersed from my heart,
And nothing remains to me except unfulfilled desire.’
He lapsed into atypical moroseness.
Veena smiled; Pran laughed; Bhaskar’s expression did not change, for his mind was on other things.
But Kedarnath looked more perturbed than usual; Mrs Mahesh Kapoor scanned her younger son’s face with fresh anxiety; and the ex-Minister of Revenue told him irritably to shut up.
13.5
Mrs Mahesh Kapoor walked around her garden slowly. It was early morning, cloudy, and comparatively cool. A tall jamun tree, though rooted in the pavement outside, spread its branches over a corner of the garden walk. The purple fruit had indelibly stained the stone path; the pits lay scattered around a corner of her lawn.
Mrs Mahesh Kapoor, like Maan, was very fond of jamuns, and felt that their arrival was more than adequate compensation for the departure of the mango season. The jamun-pickers, who had been given a contract by the horticultural section of the Public Works Department, walked along the street in the early morning, climbing each tree and shaking down with their long lathis the dark, olive-sized, sweetly acerbic fruit. Their women, standing below, collected them on large sheets to sell them in the busy market near Chowk. Every year there would be a tussle about the rights to the fruit that fell on Mrs Mahesh Kapoor’s side, and every year it would be peacefully settled. The jamun-pickers would be allowed to enter her garden as long as they gave her a share of the fruit and an undertaking not to trample all over her lawn and flower beds.
The jamun-pickers tried to be careful, but the lawn and flower beds did suffer. Well, thought Mrs Mahesh Kapoor, at least it is the monsoon, and the beauty of the garden at this time of year doesn’t really lie in its flowers but in its greenery. She had learned by now not to plant the few bright monsoon flowers—zinnias, balsam, orange cosmos—in the beds that lay close to the jamun trees. And she liked the jamun-pickers, who were cheerful, and without whom she would probably not have benefited even from those branches that did stretch out over her lawn.
Now she walked slowly around the garden of Prem Nivas, thinking of many things, but mainly of Pran. She was dressed in an old sari: a short, nondescript woman who to a stranger might almost have looked like one of the servants. Her husband dressed very well—if, as a Congress MLA, he was compelled to wear homespun cotton it had nevertheless to be of the best quality—and he had often rebuked her for her dowdiness. But since this was only one of many rebukes, just or unjust, she felt that she had neither the energy nor the taste to act on it. It was like her lack of knowledge of English. What could she do about it? Nothing, she had long since decided. If she was stupid, she was stupid; it was God’s doing.
The fact that year after year she carried away some of the best prizes in the Rose and Chrysanthemum Show in December as well as in the Annual Flower Show in February never ceased to amaze the more sophisticated inhabitants of Brahmpur. The committee of the Race Club marvelled that her roses displayed a compactness and freshness that theirs could never attain; and the wives of the executives of Burmah Shell or the Praha Shoe Company even deigned, in their anglicized Hindi, to ask her once or twice what it was she put into her lawn that made it so even and springy and green. Mrs Mahesh Kapoor would have been hard-pressed to answer even if she had fully understood their brand of Hindi. She simply stood with gratefully folded hands, accepting their compliments and looking rather foolish, until they gave up. Shaking their heads they decided that she was indeed foolish, but that she—or more probably her head gardener—‘had a gift’. Once or twice they had tried to bribe him to leave her by offering him twice his present salary; but the head mali, who was originally from Rudhia, was content to remain at Prem Nivas and see the trees he had planted grow tall and the roses he had pruned bloom brightly. His disagreement with her about the side lawn had been amicably resolved. It had been left slightly uneven, and had become something of a sanctuary for her favourite bird.
The two under-gardeners were in government service, and had been allotted to Mahesh Kapoor in his capacity as Minister of Revenue. They loved the garden at Prem Nivas, and were unhappy that they were to be torn away from it. ‘Why did Minister Sahib resign?’ they asked sadly.
‘You will have to ask Minister Sahib,’ said Mrs Mahesh Kapoor, who herself was not happy about his decision, and thought it was an unwise one. Nehru, after all, despite his carping and complaining about his party, was still in Congress. Surely any precipitate action by his followers—such as resignation—was premature. The question was, would it help to force the Prime Minister’s hand, and make him leave as well, thus giving birth to a new and possibly more vigorous party? Or would it merely weaken his position in his own party and make things worse than before?
‘They will assign us some other house,’ said the under-gardeners with tears in their eyes. ‘Some other Minister and some other Memsahib. No one will treat us as well as you have.’
‘I’m sure they will,’ said Mrs Mahesh Kapoor. She was a gentle-hearted and soft-spoken woman, and never raised her voice at her employees. In consequence, and because she often asked about their families, and helped them out in small ways, they loved her.
‘What will you do without us, Memsahib?’ asked one.
‘Can you work for me part-time at Prem Nivas?’ she asked. ‘That way you won’t lose the garden you’ve worked so hard on.’
‘Yes—for an hour or two each morning. The only thing is—’
‘Of course, you’ll be paid for your work,’ said Mrs Mahesh Kapoor, anticipating their awkwardness and making a calculation of her household expenses. ‘But I will have to employ someone else full-time. Do you know of anyone?’
‘My brother would be a good man,’ said one.
‘I didn’t know you had a brother,’ said Mrs Mahesh Kapoor in surprise.
‘Not my real brother—my uncle’s son.’
‘All right. I’ll let him work for a month on probation, and Gajraj will tell me how good he is.’
‘Thank you, Memsahib. This year we will see that you win First Prize for the best garden.’
This was one prize that had eluded Mrs Mahesh Kapoor, and she thought how pleasant it would be to win it. But, doubting her own abilities, she smiled at their ambition.
‘That would be a great feat,’ she said.
‘And don’t worry about Sahib not being a Minister. We’ll get you plants from the government nursery at cheap rates. And from other places too.’ Good gardeners were adept at filching plants from here and there, or coaxing their fellow-gardeners to part with some of their superfluous seedlings.
‘Good,’ said Mrs Mahesh Kapoor. ‘Tell Gajraj to come here. I want to discuss the layout of things now that I have a bit of time. If Sahib becomes a Minister again, I’ll be doing nothing except arranging for cups of tea.’
The malis were rather pleased at this small irreverence. The head mali was summoned, and Mrs Mahesh Kapoor talked to him for a while. The new front lawn was being planted in careful rows, shoot by shoot, and a corner of the lawn was already a mild emerald in colour. The rest was mud, except for the stone path on which they were walking.
Mrs Mahesh Kapoor told him what the others had said about the Flower Show. His opinion was that the reason why they won second and not first prize for the best garden ov
erall was twofold. First, that Mr Justice Bailey (who had won for three years in succession) was bullied by his wife into spending half his income on his garden. They hired a dozen gardeners. Secondly, every bush, shrub or flower in his garden was planted with a particular date in mid-February in mind, the date of the Flower Show. That was when everything was at its most brilliant. Gajraj could arrange something similar if Mrs Mahesh Kapoor desired. But it was clear from his expression that he was sure she did not desire it. And the unevenness of the side lawn this year would not help either.
‘No, no—that wouldn’t be a garden at all,’ said Mrs Mahesh Kapoor. ‘Let’s plan the winter garden just like we always do—with different flowers blooming at different times, so that it is always a pleasure to sit out. And where that neem tree stood, we should plant a Sita ashok. Now is a good time.’ With great regret Mrs Mahesh Kapoor had agreed to have an old neem tree cut down two years ago because of her painful allergy to its blossom; the blankness of the spot had been a continual rebuke to her. But the one outside Maan’s window that he used to climb as a boy she had not had the heart to cut down.
Gajraj folded his hands. He was a thin, short man, gaunt of feature, barefooted, and dressed in a plain white dhoti and kurta. He looked dignified, more like the priest of a garden than a gardener. ‘Whatever you say, Memsahib,’ he said. After a while he added: ‘What do you think of the water lilies this year?’ He felt they deserved comment, and so far Mrs Mahesh Kapoor had said nothing about them. Her mind had probably been on other matters of late.
‘Let’s go over and have a look at them again,’ she said.
Gajraj, quietly pleased, walked on the muddy lawn beside Mrs Mahesh Kapoor as she negotiated the path slowly, pausing for a second by the pomelo tree. They stopped by the lily pond. The water was turbid, and filled with tadpoles. Mrs Mahesh Kapoor gazed for a minute at the round lily pads and the half-open lilies: pink, red, blue, and white. Three or four bees were buzzing about them.