Rather than add news and small talk, which can wait for another occasion, I will simply end with my love and fondest hopes for your future happiness. Meenakshi, who agrees with me on all points, does the same.
Yours,
Arun Bhai
Lata read the letter through several times, the first time—owing mainly to Arun’s wildly erratic handwriting—very slowly; and, as instructed, she pondered its contents deeply. Her first instinct was to have a heart-to-heart talk with Savita, or Malati, or her mother—or with each of them. Then she decided that it would make no difference and would, if anything, only serve to confuse her. This decision was hers to make.
She wrote to Haresh the same evening, accepting with gratitude—and, indeed, warmth—his often repeated offer of marriage.
18.21
‘No!’ cried Malati, staring at Lata. ‘No! I refuse to believe it. Have you posted the letter yet?’
‘Yes,’ said Lata.
They were sitting in the shadow of the Fort on the Pul Mela sands, looking out over the warm, grey Ganga, which was glinting in the sunlight.
‘You are mad—absolutely mad. How could you do it?’
‘Don’t be like my mother—“O my poor Lata, O my poor Lata!”’
‘Was that her reaction? I thought she was keen on Haresh,’ said Malati. ‘Trust you to do just what Mummy says. But I won’t have it, Lata, you can’t ruin your life like this.’
‘I’m not ruining my life,’ said Lata heatedly. ‘And yes, that might well be her reaction. She’s taken against Haresh for some reason. And Arun’s been against him from the beginning. But no, Mummy didn’t say. In fact, Mummy doesn’t even know. You’re the first person I’m telling, and you shouldn’t be trying to make me feel miserable.’
‘I should. I should. I hope you feel really miserable,’ said Malati, her eyes flashing green fire. ‘Then perhaps you’ll see some sense and undo what you’ve done. You love Kabir, and you must marry him.’
‘There’s no must about it. Go and marry him yourself,’ said Lata, her cheeks red. ‘No—don’t! Don’t! I’ll never forgive you. Please don’t talk about Kabir, Malu, please.’
‘You’re going to regret it bitterly,’ said Malati. ‘I’m telling you that.’
‘Well, that’s my look-out,’ said Lata, struggling to control herself.
‘Why didn’t you ask me before you decided?’ demanded Malati. ‘Whom did you consult? Or did you just make up your silly mind by yourself?’
‘I consulted my monkeys,’ said Lata calmly.
Malati had the strong urge to slap Lata for making stupid jokes at such a time.
‘And a book of poetry,’ added Lata.
‘Poetry!’ said Malati with contempt. ‘Poetry has been your complete undoing. You have too good a brain to waste on English literature. No, perhaps you don’t, after all.’
‘You were the first person to tell me to give him up,’ said Lata. ‘You told me. Or have you forgotten all that?’
‘I changed my mind,’ said Malati. ‘You know I did. I was wrong, terribly wrong. Look at the danger caused to the world by that sort of attitude—’
‘Why do you think I’m giving him up?’ asked Lata, turning towards her friend.
‘Because he’s Muslim.’
Lata didn’t answer for a while. Then she said:
‘It’s not that. It’s not just that. There isn’t any single reason.’
Malati gave a disgusted snort at this pathetic prevarication.
Lata sighed. ‘Malati, I can’t describe it—my feelings for him are so confused. I’m not myself when I’m with him. I ask myself who is this—this jealous, obsessed woman who can’t get a man out of her head—why should I make myself suffer like this? I know that it’ll always be like this if I’m with him.’
‘Oh, Lata—don’t be blind—’ exclaimed Malati. ‘It shows how passionately you love him—’
‘I don’t want to,’ cried Lata, ‘I don’t want to. If that’s what passion means, I don’t want it. Look at what passion has done to the family. Maan’s broken, his mother’s dead, his father’s in despair. When I thought that Kabir was seeing someone else, what I remember feeling was enough to make me hate passion. Passionately and forever.’
‘It’s my fault,’ said Malati bitterly, shaking her head from side to side. ‘I wish to God I’d never written that letter to Calcutta. And you’re going to wish the same.’
‘It isn’t, Malati. And I’m not. Thank God you did.’
Malati looked at Lata with sick unhappiness. ‘You just don’t realize what you’re throwing away, Lata. You’re choosing the wrong man. Stay unmarried for a while. Take your time to make up your mind again. Or simply remain unmarried—it’s not so tragic.’
Lata was silent. On the side that Malati could not see, she let a handful of sand pass through her fingers.
‘What about that other chap?’ said Malati. ‘That poet, Amit? How has he put himself out of the running?’
Lata smiled at the thought of Amit. ‘Well, he wouldn’t be my undoing, as you put it, but I don’t see myself as his wife at all. We’re too alike. His moods veer and oscillate as wildly as mine. Can you imagine the lives of our poor children? And if his mind’s on a book I don’t know if he’ll have any time for me. Sensitive people are usually very insensitive—I should know. As a matter of fact, he’s just proposed to me.’
Malati looked shocked and angry.
‘You never tell me anything!’
‘Everything happened all of a sudden yesterday,’ said Lata, fishing Amit’s acrostic out of the pocket of her kameez. ‘I brought this along, since you usually like to see the documents in the case.’
Malati read it in silence, then said: ‘I’d marry anyone who wrote me this.’
‘Well, he’s still available,’ laughed Lata. ‘And I won’t veto that marriage.’ She put her arm around Malati’s shoulder before continuing: ‘For me, marrying Amit would be madness. Quite apart from everything else, I get more than enough of my brother Arun. To live five minutes away from him would be the ultimate lunacy!’
‘You could live somewhere else.’
‘Oh no—’ said Lata, picturing Amit in his room overlooking the laburnum in bloom. ‘He’s a poet and a novelist. He wants things laid on for him. Meals, hot water, a running household, a dog, a lawn, a Muse. And why not? After all, he did write “The Fever Bird”! But he won’t be able to write if he has to fend for himself away from his family. Anyway, you seem to be happy with anyone but Haresh. Why? Why are you so dead-set against him?’
‘Because I see nothing, nothing, nothing at all in common between you two,’ said Malati. ‘And it’s completely obvious you don’t love him. Have you thought this thing through, Lata, or are you just making up your mind in a sort of trance? Like that nun business that Ma keeps talking about. Think. Do you like the idea of sharing your possessions with this man? Of making love with him? Does he attract you? Can you cope with the things that irritate you about him—Cawnpore and paan and all that? Please, please, Lata, don’t be stupid. Use your brains. What about this Simran woman—doesn’t that bother you? And what do you want to do with yourself after your marriage—or are you just content to be a housewife in a walled compound full of Czechs?’
‘Do you think I haven’t thought about any of this?’ said Lata, removing her arm, annoyed once more. ‘Or that I haven’t tried to visualize what life will be like with him? It’ll be interesting, I think. Haresh is practical, he’s forceful, he isn’t cynical. He gets things done and he helps people without making a fuss about it. He’s helped Kedarnath and Veena a great deal.’
‘So what? . . . Will he let you teach?’
‘Yes, he will.’
‘Have you asked him?’ pressed Malati.
‘No. That’s not the best idea,’ said Lata. ‘But I’m sure of it. I think I know him well enough by now. He hates to see anyone’s talent wasted. He encourages them. And he’s really concerned about people—about me, about
Maan, about Savita and her studies, about Bhaskar—’
‘—who, incidentally, is alive today only because of Kabir,’ Malati could not resist interposing.
‘I don’t deny it.’ Lata sighed deeply, and looked at the warm sands all around.
For a while neither said anything. Then Malati spoke.
‘But what has he done, Lata?’ she said quietly. ‘What has he done that is wrong—that he should be treated like this? He loves you and he never deserved to be doubted. Is it fair? Just think, is it fair?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Lata slowly, looking over towards the far shore. ‘No, it isn’t, I suppose. But life isn’t always a question of justice, is it? What is that line?—“Use every man after his desert, and who should ’scape whipping?” But it’s true the other way around as well. Use every man after his desert and you’ll become a complete emotional bankrupt.’
‘That’s a really mean-spirited view of the world,’ said Malati.
‘Don’t call me mean,’ cried Lata passionately.
Malati looked at her in astonishment.
Lata shivered. ‘All I meant was, Malati, that when I’m with Kabir, or even away from him but thinking about him, I become utterly useless for anything. I feel I’m out of control—like a boat heading for the rocks—and I don’t want to become a wreck.’
‘So you’re going to instruct yourself not to think of him?’
‘If I can,’ said Lata, almost to herself.
‘What did you say? Speak up,’ demanded Malati, wanting to shake her into seeing sense.
‘If I can,’ said Lata.
‘How can you deceive yourself like this?’
Lata was silent.
‘Malu, I’m not going to quarrel with you,’ she said after a while. ‘I care for you as much as I care for any of these men, and I always will. But I’m not going to undo what I’ve done. I do love Haresh, and—’
‘What?’ cried Malati, looking at Lata as if she were an imbecile.
‘I do.’
‘You’re full of surprises today,’ said Malati, very angry now.
‘And, well, you’re full of incredulities. But I do. Or I think I do. Thank God it isn’t what I feel for Kabir.’
‘I don’t believe you. You’re just making that up.’
‘You must. He’s grown on me, he really has. I don’t find him unattractive. And there’s something else—I won’t feel I’ll be making a fool of myself with him—with regard to, well, with regard to sex.’
Malati stared at her. What a crazy thing to say.
‘And with Kabir you will?’
‘With Kabir—I just don’t know—’
Malati said nothing. She shook her head slowly, not looking at Lata, half lost in her own thoughts.
Lata said: ‘Do you know those lines of Clough that go: “There are two different kinds, I believe, of human attraction”?’
Again Malati said nothing but merely shook her head.
‘Well, they go something like this:
There are two different kinds, I believe, of human attraction. One that merely excites, unsettles, and makes you uneasy; The other that—
Well, I can’t remember exactly, but he talks about a calmer, less frantic love, which helps you to grow where you were already growing, “to live where as yet I had languished”—I just read it yesterday, it isn’t in my head yet, but it said everything that I couldn’t express on my own. Do you understand what I mean? . . . Malati?’
‘All I understand,’ said Malati, ‘is that you can’t live on other people’s words. You’re throwing away the golden casket and the silver one, and you seem to think that you’ll be as lucky with the bronze casket as your English literature tells you you’ll be. Well, I hope you will, I really hope you will. But you won’t be. You won’t.’
‘You’ll grow to like him too, Malu.’
Malati didn’t answer.
‘You haven’t even met him,’ continued Lata with a smile. ‘And I remember at first you refused to like Pran.’
‘I hope you’re right.’ Malati sounded weary. Her heart was sick for both Lata and Kabir.
‘It’s more like Nala and Damyanti than Portia and Bassanio,’ said Lata, trying to cheer her up. ‘Haresh’s feet touch the ground, and he has dust and sweat and a shadow. The other two are a bit too God-like and ethereal to be any good for me.’
‘So you’re at ease,’ said Malati, searching her friend’s face. ‘You’re at ease with yourself. And you know exactly what you’re going to do. Well, tell me, out of curiosity, before you write him off, are you at least going to drop a line to Kabir?’
Lata’s lips began to tremble.
‘I’m not at ease—I’m not—’ she cried. ‘It’s not easy—Malu, how can you think it is? I hardly know who I am or what I’m doing—I can’t study or even think these days—everything is pressing in on me. I can’t bear it when I’m with him, and I can’t bear not to see him. How do I know what I may or may not do? I only hope I have the courage to stick to my decision.’
18.22
Maan sat at home or in the garden with his father or visited Pran or Veena. Other than that he did very little. He had been eager to visit Saeeda Bai when he was in jail, but now that he was out of jail, he found that he had inexplicably lost his eagerness to do so. She sent him a note, which he did not reply to. Then she sent him another, more urgent one, upbraiding him for his desertion of her, but to no effect.
Maan was not very fond of reading, but these days he spent whole mornings with the newspapers, reading everything from the international news to the advertisements. Now that Firoz was out of danger he had begun to worry about himself and what was going to happen to him once the charge-sheet was prepared.
Firoz had remained in hospital for about twenty days before the doctors consented to his being moved back to Baitar House. He was physically weak, but on the mend. Imtiaz took charge of him, Zainab stayed on in Brahmpur to nurse him, and the Nawab Sahib watched over him and prayed for his full recovery. For his mind was still clouded and agitated, and he would sometimes cry out in his sleep. These fragments of speech, which would have meant nothing to anyone earlier, could now be fitted into the frame of the rumours by anyone who sat by his bedside.
The Nawab Sahib had turned to religion almost two decades ago partly as the result of his appalled realization of what he had done when he emerged from the worst of his drunken binges, and partly because of the quiet influence of his wife. He had always had a taste for scholarly and analytical pursuits but, being a sensualist, had allowed these to be overlaid by his more urgent needs and pleasures. The change in his life had been sudden; and he had hoped to save his own children from the sins and the repentance that he himself had undergone. The boys knew he did not approve of their drinking, and they never did so in his presence. As for his grandchildren, they would never have been able to imagine him as a young—or even a middle-aged—man. They had known their Nana-jaan throughout their lives as a quiet, pious old man whom only they were permitted to disturb in his library—and who could easily be persuaded to grant them a respite from bedtime by the telling of a ghost story. The Nawab Sahib understood all too well the infidelities of their father and, while his heart went out to his daughter, he was reminded of the suffering he had in his own time inflicted on his own wife. Not that Zainab would have wanted him to speak to her husband. She had needed comfort, but had not expected relief.
The Nawab Sahib now suffered once again, but this time not only from the memory of the past but from the present opinion of the world, and—worst of all—from the sense of what his children must think of him. He did not know what interpretation to place upon the rejection of his continuing financial help to Saeeda Bai. He was more troubled by it than relieved. He did not really think of Tasneem as his daughter, or feel any affection for this unseen being, but he did not want her to suffer. Nor did he wish Saeeda Bai now to feel free to publish to the world whatever it suited her convenience to publish. He begged God to
forgive him for the unworthiness of this concern, but he was unable to put it aside.
He had shrunk further into his library in the course of the last month, but every visit to Firoz’s bedside and every appearance at meal-time was infinitely painful to him. His children, however, understood this, and continued to be outwardly as respectful towards him as before. Firoz’s illness or the acts of the distant past were not to be allowed to split the shell of the family. The grace was said, the meat stew was passed, the kababs served, the permission to rise accepted with routine decorum. Nothing was said or shown to him that might add to his disequilibrium. He had still not heard about the fliers announcing that Firoz had died.
And if I had died, thought Firoz to himself, what would it have mattered to the universe? What have I ever done for anyone? I am a man without attributes, very handsome, very forgettable. Imtiaz is a man of substance, of some use to the world. All that would be left of me is a walking stick, the grief of my family, and terrible danger for my friend.
He had asked to see Maan once or twice, but no one had passed the message on to Prem Nivas. Imtiaz could see no good coming of the meeting, either for his brother or for his father. He knew Maan well enough to realize that the attack had been a sudden one, unpremeditated, almost unintentional. But his father did not see it that way; and Imtiaz wanted to spare him any avoidable shock of emotion, any access of hatred or recrimination. Imtiaz believed that Mrs Mahesh Kapoor’s death had indeed been hastened by the sudden and terrible events that had struck their two houses. He would insulate his father from anything similar, and his brother from any agitation about Maan or, through the revival of his memory of that night, about Tasneem.
Tasneem, though she was no doubt his half-sister, meant nothing to Imtiaz at all. Zainab too, though she was curious, realized that wisdom lay in closing the door of interpretation.
Finally, Firoz wrote a note to Maan, which read simply: ‘Dear Maan, Please visit me. I’m well enough to see you. Firoz.’ He half-suspected his brother of mollycoddling him, and he had had enough of it. He gave the note to Ghulam Rusool, and told him that he was to see that it got to Prem Nivas.