A Suitable Boy

  The conversation was interrupted by Mr Kohli, a very round teacher of physics who was fond of his drink, and was trying to avoid bumping into his reproving wife on his way to the bar. ‘Hello, judge,’ he said. ‘What do you think of the verdict in the Bandel Road case?’

  ‘Ah, well, as you know, I can’t comment on it,’ said Mr Justice Chatterji. ‘It might turn up in my court on appeal. And really, I haven’t been following it closely either, though everyone else I know appears to have been.’

  Mrs Chatterji had no such compunctions, however. All the newspapers had carried long reports about the progress of the case and everyone had an opinion about it. ‘It really is shocking,’ she said. ‘I can’t see how a mere magistrate has the right—’

  ‘A Sessions Judge, my dear,’ interjected Mr Justice Chatterji.

  ‘Yes, well, I don’t see how he can possibly have the right to overturn the verdict of a jury. Is that justice? Twelve good men and true, don’t they say? How dare he set himself up above them?’

  ‘Nine, dear. It’s nine in Calcutta. As for their goodness and truth—’

  ‘Yes, well. And to call the verdict perverse—isn’t that what he said—?’

  ‘Perverse, unreasonable, manifestly wrong and against the weight of the evidence,’ recited the bald-headed Mr Kohli with a relish he usually reserved for his whisky. His small mouth was half open, a little like that of a meditative fish.

  ‘Perverse, unreasonably wrong and so on, well, does he have a right to do that? It is so—so undemocratic somehow,’ continued Mrs Chatterji, ‘and, like it or not, we live in democratic times. And democracy is half our trouble. And that’s why we have all these disorders and all this bloodshed, and then we have jury trials—why we still have them in Calcutta when everyone else in India has got rid of them I really don’t know—and someone bribes or intimidates the jury, and they bring in these impossible verdicts. If it weren’t for courageous judges who set these verdicts aside, where would we be? Don’t you agree, dear?’ Mrs Chatterji sounded indignant.

  Mr Justice Chatterji said, ‘Yes, dear, of course. Well there you are, Mr Kohli; now you know what I think. But your glass is empty.’

  Mr Kohli, bewildered, said, ‘Yes, I think I’ll get another.’ He looked quickly around to make sure the coast was clear.

  ‘And please tell Tapan he should go to bed at once,’ said Mrs Chatterji. ‘Unless he hasn’t eaten. If he hasn’t eaten, he shouldn’t go to bed at once. He should eat first.’

  ‘Do you know, Meenakshi,’ said Mr Justice Chatterji, ‘that your mother and I were arguing with each other so convincingly one day last week that the next day by breakfast we had convinced ourselves of each other’s points of view and argued just as fiercely as before?’

  ‘What were you arguing about?’ said Meenakshi. ‘I miss our breakfast parliaments.’

  ‘I can’t remember,’ said Mr Justice Chatterji. ‘Can you? Wasn’t it something to do with Biswas Babu?’

  ‘It was something to do with Cuddles,’ said Mrs Chatterji.

  ‘Was it? I’m not sure it was. I thought it was—well, anyway, Meenakshi, you must come for breakfast one day soon. Sunny Park is almost walking distance from the house.’

  ‘I know,’ said Meenakshi. ‘But it’s so difficult to get away in the morning. Arun is very particular about things being just so, and Aparna is always so taxing and tedious before eleven. Mago, your cook really saved my life yesterday. Now I think I’ll go and say hello to Hans. And who’s that young man who’s glowering at Hans and Kakoli? He’s not even wearing a bow tie.’

  Indeed, the young man was virtually naked: dressed merely in a standard white shirt and white trousers with a regular striped tie. He was a college student.

  ‘I don’t know, dear,’ said Mrs Chatterji.

  ‘Another mushroom?’ asked Meenakshi.

  Mr Justice Chatterji, who had first coined the phrase when Kakoli’s friends started springing up in profusion, nodded. ‘I’m sure he is,’ he said.

  Halfway across the room, Meenakshi bumped into Amit, and repeated the question.

  ‘He introduced himself to me as Krishnan,’ said Amit. ‘Kakoli knows him very well, it seems.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Meenakshi. ‘What does he do?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s one of her close friends, he says.’

  ‘One of her closest friends?’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Amit. ‘He couldn’t be one of her closest friends. She knows the names of those.’

  ‘Well, I’m going to meet Kuku’s Kraut,’ said Meenakshi with decision. ‘Where’s Luts? She was with you a few minutes ago.’

  ‘I don’t know. Somewhere there.’ Amit pointed in the direction of the piano, to a dense and voluble section of the crowd. ‘By the way, watch your hands when watching Hans.’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Meenakshi. ‘Daddy warned me too. But it’s a safe moment. He’s eating. Surely he won’t set down his plate to seize my hand?’

  ‘You can never tell,’ said Amit darkly.

  ‘Too delicious,’ said Meenakshi.

  7.11

  Meanwhile Lata, who was in the thickest part of the party, felt as if she was swimming in a sea of language. She was quite amazed by the glitter and glory of it all. Sometimes a half-comprehensible English wave would rise, sometimes an incomprehensible Bengali one. Like magpies cackling over baubles—or discovering occasional gems and imagining them to be baubles—the excited guests chattered on. Despite the fact that they were shovelling in a great deal of food, everyone managed to shovel out a great many words.

  ‘Oh, no, no, Dipankar . . . you don’t understand—the fundamental construct of Indian civilization is the Square—the four stages of life, the four purposes of life—love, wealth, duty, and final liberation—even the four arms of our ancient symbol, the swastika, so sadly abused of late . . . yes, it is the square and the square alone that is the fundamental construct of our spirituality . . . you will only understand this when you are an old lady like me. . . .’

  ‘She keeps two cooks, that is the reason, no other. Truly—but you must try the luchis. No, no, you must have everything in the right order . . . that is the secret of Bengali food. . . .’

  ‘Such a good speaker at the Ramakrishna Mission the other day; quite a young man but so spiritual . . . Creativity in an Age of Crisis . . . you really must go next week: he will be talking about the Quest for Peace and Harmony. . . .’

  ‘Everyone said that if I went down to the Sundarbans I’d see scores of tigers. I didn’t even see a mosquito. Water, water everywhere—and nothing else at all. People are such dreadful liars.’

  ‘They should be expelled—stiff exam or no stiff exam, is that a reason for snatching papers in the examination hall? These are commerce students of Calcutta University, mind you. What will happen to the economic order without discipline? If Sir Asutosh were alive today what would he say? Is this what Independence means?’

  ‘Montoo is looking so sweet. But Poltoo and Loltoo are looking a little under par. Ever since their father’s illness, of course. They say it is—that it is, you know . . . well, liver . . . from too much drink.’

  ‘Oh, no, no, no, Dipankar—the elemental paradigm—I would never have said construct—of our ancient civilization is of course the Trinity . . . I don’t mean the Christian trinity, of course; all that seems so crude somehow—but the Trinity as Process and Aspect—Creation and Preservation and Destruction—yes, the Trinity, that is the elemental paradigm of our civilization, and no other. . . .’

  ‘Ridiculous nonsense, of course. So I called the union leaders in and I read them the riot act. Naturally it took a little straight talk for them to come into line again. Well, I won’t say there wasn’t a payment to one or two of the most recalcitrant of them, but all that is handled by Personnel.’

  ‘That’s not Je Reviens—that’s Quelques Fleurs—all the difference in the world. Not that my husband would know the difference. He can’t even recognize Chanel!’

>   ‘Then I said to Robi Babu: “You are like a God to us, please give me a name for my child,” and he consented. That is the reason why she is called Hemangini. . . . Actually, the name was not to my liking, but what could I do?’

  ‘If the mullahs want war, they can have one. Our trade with East Pakistan has virtually come to a halt. Well, one happy side effect is that the price of mangoes has come down! The Maldah growers had a huge crop this year, and they don’t know what to do with them. . . . Of course it’s a transport problem too, just like the Bengal Famine.’

  ‘Oh, no, no, no, Dipankar, you haven’t got it at all—the primeval texture of Indian philosophy is that of Duality . . . yes, Duality. . . . The warp and weft of our ancient garment, the sari itself—a single length of cloth which yet swathes our Indian womanhood—the warp and weft of the universe itself, the tension between Being and Non-Being—yes, indubitably it is Duality alone that reigns over us here in our ancient land.’

  ‘I felt like crying when I read the poem. They must be so proud of him. So proud.’

  ‘Hello, Arun, where’s Meenakshi?’

  Lata turned around and saw Arun’s rather displeased expression. It was his friend Billy Irani. This was the third time someone had spoken to him with the sole intention of finding out where his wife was. He looked around the room for her orange sari, and spied her near the Kakoli crowd.

  ‘There she is, Billy, near Kuku’s nest. If you want to meet her, I’ll walk over with you and detach her,’ he said.

  Lata wondered for a second what her friend Malati would have made of all this. She attached herself to Arun as if to a life raft, and floated across to where Kakoli was standing. Somehow or other Mrs Rupa Mehra, as well as an old Marwari gentleman clad in a dhoti, had infiltrated the crowd of bright young things.

  The old gentleman, unconscious of the gilded youth surrounding him, was saying, rather fussily, to Hans:

  ‘Ever since the year 1933 I have been drinking the juice of bitter gourds. You know bitter gourd? It is our famous Indian vegetable, called karela. It looks like this’—he gesticulated elongatedly—‘and it is green, and ribbed.’

  Hans looked mystified. His informant continued:

  ‘Every week my servant takes a seer of bitter gourd, and from the skin only, mark you, he will make juice. Each seer will yield one jam jar of juice.’ His eyes squinted in concentration. ‘What they do with the rest I do not care.’

  He made a dismissive gesture.

  ‘Yes?’ said Hans politely. ‘That makes me so interested.’

  Kakoli had begun to giggle. Mrs Rupa Mehra was looking deeply interested. Arun caught Meenakshi’s eye and frowned. Bloody Marwari, he was thinking. Trust them to make a fool of themselves in front of foreigners.

  Sweetly oblivious of Arun’s disapproval, the gourd-proponent continued:

  ‘Then every morning for my breakfast he will give me one sherry glass or liqueur glass—so much—of this juice. Every day since 1933. And I have no sugar problems. I can eat sweetmeats without anxiety. My dermatology is also very good, and all bowel movements are very satisfactory.’

  As if to prove the point he bit into a gulab-jamun which was dripping with syrup.

  Mrs Rupa Mehra, fascinated, said: ‘Only the skin?’ If this was true, diabetes need no longer interpose itself between her palate and her desires.

  ‘Yes,’ said the man fastidiously. ‘Only the skin, like I have said. The rest is a superfluity. Beauty of bitter gourd is only skin-deep.’

  7.12

  ‘Enjoying yourself?’ Jock Mackay asked Basil Cox as they wandered out on to the verandah.

  ‘Well, yes, rather,’ said Basil Cox, resting his whisky precariously on the white cast-iron railing. He felt light-headed, almost as if he wanted to balance on the railings himself. The fragrance of gardenias wafted across the lawn.

  ‘First time I’ve seen you at the Chatterjis. Patricia’s looking ravishing.’

  ‘Thanks . . . she is, isn’t she? I can never predict when she’s going to have a good time. Do you know, when I had to come out to India, she was most unwilling. She even, well. . . .’

  Basil, moving his thumb gently across his lower lip, looked out into the garden, where a few mellow golden globes lit up the underside of a huge laburnum tree covered with grape-like clusters of yellow flowers. There appeared to be a hut of sorts under the tree.

  ‘But you’re enjoying it here, are you?’

  ‘I suppose so. . . . Puzzling sort of place, though. . . . Of course, I’ve been here less than a year.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, what’s that bird for instance that was singing a moment ago—pu-puuuuuu-pu! pu-puuuuu-pu! higher and higher. It certainly isn’t a cuckoo and I rather wish it was. Disconcerting. And I find all these lakhs and crores and annas and pice quite confusing still. I have to recalculate things in my head. I suppose I’ll get used to it all with time.’ From the expression on Basil Cox’s face it didn’t look likely. Twelve pence to the shilling and twenty shillings to the pound was infinitely more logical than four pice to the anna and sixteen annas to the rupee.

  ‘Well, it is a cuckoo, as a matter of fact,’ said Jock Mackay, ‘it’s the hawk cuckoo—or brainfever bird . . . didn’t you know that? It’s hard to believe, but I’ve got so used to it that I miss it when I’m back home on leave. The song of the birds I don’t mind at all, what I can’t abide is the dreadful music Indian singers make . . . awful wailing stuff. . . . But do you know the question that disconcerted me most of all when I first came here twenty years ago and saw all these beautiful, elegantly dressed women?’ Jock Mackay cheerfully and confidingly jerked his head towards the drawing room. ‘How do you fuck in a sari?’

  Basil Cox made a sudden movement, and his drink fell over into a flower bed. Jock Mackay looked faintly amused.

  ‘Well,’ said Basil Cox, rather annoyed, ‘did you find out?’

  ‘Everyone makes his own discoveries sooner or later,’ said Jock Mackay in an enigmatic manner. ‘But it’s a charming country on the whole,’ he continued expansively. ‘By the end of the Raj they were so busy slitting each other’s throats that they left ours unslit. Lucky.’ He sipped his drink.

  ‘Well, there doesn’t seem to be any resentment—quite the opposite, if anything,’ said Basil Cox after a while, looking over into the flower bed. ‘But I wonder what people like the Chatterjis really think of us. . . . After all, we’re still quite a presence in Calcutta. We still run things here—commercially speaking, of course.’

  ‘Oh, I shouldn’t worry if I were you. What people think or don’t think is never very interesting,’ said Jock Mackay. ‘Horses, now, I often wonder what they’re thinking. . . .’

  ‘Well, I had dinner with their son-in-law the other day—yesterday, as a matter of fact—Arun Mehra, he works with us—oh, of course, you know Arun—and suddenly his brother tumbles in, drunk as a lord and singing away—and reeking of some fearsome Shimsham fire-water—well, I’d never in a hundred years have guessed that Arun had a brother like that. And dressed in crumpled pyjamas!’

  ‘No, it is puzzling,’ agreed Jock Mackay. ‘I knew an old ICS chap, Indian, but pukka enough, who, when he retired, renounced everything, became a sadhu and was never heard of again. And he was a married man with a couple of grown-up children.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. But a charming people, I’d say: face-flattering, back-biting, name-dropping, all-knowing, self-praising, law-mongering, power-worshipping, road-hogging, spittle-hawking. . . . There were a few more items to my litany once, but I’ve forgotten them.’

  ‘You sound as if you hate the place,’ said Basil Cox.

  ‘Quite the contrary,’ said Jock Mackay. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if I decided to retire here. But should we go back in? I see you’ve lost your drink.’

  7.13

  ‘Don’t think of anything serious before you are thirty,’ young Tapan was being advised by the round Mr Kohli, who had managed to fre
e himself of his wife for a few minutes. He had his glass in his hand, and looked like a large, worried, almost disconsolate teddy bear in a slow hurry; his huge dome—a phrenological marvel—glistened as he leaned over the bar; he half closed his heavily lidded eyes and half opened his small mouth after he had delivered himself of one of his bon mots.

  ‘Now, Baby Sahib,’ said the old servant Bahadur firmly to Tapan, ‘Memsahib says you must go to bed at once.’

  Tapan began laughing.

  ‘Tell Ma I’ll go to bed when I’m thirty,’ he said, dismissing Bahadur.

  ‘People are stuck at seventeen, you know,’ continued Mr Kohli. ‘That’s where they imagine themselves ever afterwards—always seventeen, and always happy. Not that they’re happy when they’re actually seventeen. But you have some years to go still. How old are you?’

  ‘Thirteen—almost.’

  ‘Good—stay there, that’s my advice,’ suggested Mr Kohli.

  ‘Are you serious?’ said Tapan, suddenly looking more than a little unhappy. ‘You mean things don’t get any better?’

  ‘Oh, don’t take anything I say seriously,’ said Mr Kohli. He paused for a sip. ‘On the other hand,’ he added, ‘take everything I say more seriously than what other adults say.’

  ‘Go to bed at once, Tapan,’ said Mrs Chatterji, coming up to them. ‘What’s this you’ve been saying to Bahadur? You won’t be allowed to stay up late if you behave like this. Now pour Mr Kohli a drink, and then go to bed at once.’

  7.14

  ‘Oh, no, no, no, Dipankar,’ said the Grande Dame of Culture, slowly shaking her ancient and benevolent head from side to side in pitying condescension as she held him with her dully glittering eye, ‘that’s not it at all, not Duality, I could never have said Duality, Dipankar, oh dear me, no—the intrinsic essence of our being here in India is a Oneness, yes, a Oneness of Being, an ecumenical assimilation of all that pours into this great subcontinent of ours.’ She gestured around the drawing room tolerantly, maternally. ‘It is Unity that governs our souls, here in our ancient land.’