A Suitable Boy

  Haresh’s thoughts were not complicated. He said to himself: This girl is intelligent without arrogance, and attractive without vanity. She does not reveal her thoughts easily, but I like that. And then he thought of Simran, and the old, not entirely appeasable pain came over his heart.

  But sometimes, for a few minutes at a time, Haresh forgot about Simran. And, for a few minutes at a time, Lata forgot about Kabir. And sometimes both of them forgot that what they were undergoing amid the clink of cutlery and crockery was a mutual interview that might decide whether or not they would own a common set of those items sometime in the whimsical future.

  9.13

  The car (with Haresh and driver) picked up Mrs Rupa Mehra and Lata and took them to the railway station early the next morning. They arrived, they thought, just in time. The timing of the Kanpur-Lucknow train, however, had been changed, and they missed it. The bus they attempted to take was full. There was nothing for it but to wait for the 9.42 train. Meanwhile they returned to Elm Villa.

  Mrs Rupa Mehra said that nothing like this would have happened in her husband’s time. Then the trains ran like clockwork, and changes in train timings were like changes in dynasties: momentous and rare. Now everything was being changed at random: road names, train schedules, prices, mores. Cawnpore and Cashmere were yielding to unfamiliar spellings. It would be Dilli and Kolkota and Mumbai next. And now, shockingly, they were threatening to go metric with the currency—and even with weights and measures.

  ‘Don’t worry, Ma,’ said Haresh with a smile. ‘We’ve tried to introduce the kilogram since 1870, and it probably won’t be brought in for another hundred years.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, pleased. Seers meant something exact to her, pounds something vague, and kilograms nothing at all.

  ‘Yes,’ said Haresh. ‘We have no sense of order or logic or discipline. No wonder we let the British rule us. What do you think, Lata?’ he added in an artless attempt to draw her in.

  But Lata had no opinion handy. She was thinking of other matters. What was foremost on her mind was Haresh’s panama hat, which (though he had doffed it) she thought exceptionally stupid. This morning too he had on his Irish linen suit.

  They got to the station a little early and sat in the railway cafe. Lata and Mrs Rupa Mehra bought first-class tickets to Lucknow—the journey was a short one and tickets did not need to be reserved in advance. Haresh pressed a cup of Pheasant’s cold chocolate—a Dutch concoction—on them. It was delicious, and Lata’s face expressed her pleasure. Haresh was so delighted at her innocent enjoyment that he suddenly said, ‘May I accompany you to Lucknow? I could stay there with Simran’s sister, and come back tomorrow after seeing you off on the train to Brahmpur.’ What he had almost said was: I would like to spend a few more hours with you today, even if it means that someone else has to purchase the sheepskin.

  Mrs Rupa Mehra did not succeed in dissuading Haresh; he bought a ticket to Lucknow for himself. He made sure that their luggage was loaded safely on and below the berths, that the porter did not swindle them, that they were comfortably seated, that each of them was provided with a magazine, that all was well with them in every way. Throughout the two-hour journey he hardly said a word. He was thinking that contentment consisted of just such moments as these.

  Lata on the other hand was thinking that it was very odd that he should have mentioned—as part of his reason for accompanying them to Lucknow—that he planned to stay with Simran’s sister. For all the method to his books and brushes, he was an unaccountable man.

  When the train steamed into Lucknow Station, Haresh said: ‘I would very much like to be of some help to you tomorrow.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, almost in a panic. ‘The tickets have been reserved already. We don’t need any help. They have been reserved by my son—my son in Bentsen Pryce. We’ll be travelling very comfortably. You must not come to the station.’

  Haresh looked at Lata for a while and was about to ask her something. Then he turned to her mother instead and said: ‘May I write to Lata, Mrs Mehra?’

  Mrs Mehra was about to agree with enthusiasm, then, checking herself she turned to Lata, and Lata nodded, rather gravely. It would have been too cruel to say no.

  ‘Yes, you may write, of course,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘And you really must call me Ma.’

  ‘Now I’d like to make sure that you get to Mr Sahgal’s place safely,’ said Haresh. ‘I’ll get a tonga.’

  It was pleasant to be taken care of, and the two women allowed Haresh to fuss competently over them.

  In fifteen minutes they had arrived at the Sahgals’. Mrs Sahgal was Mrs Rupa Mehra’s first cousin. She was a weak-brained, sweet-natured woman of about forty-five, married to a well-known Lucknow lawyer. ‘Who is this gentleman?’ she asked of Haresh.

  ‘This is a young man who knew Kalpana Gaur at St Stephen’s,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra by way of non-explanatory explanation.

  ‘But he must come in and have tea with us,’ said Mrs Sahgal. ‘Sahgal Sahib will be so angry if he doesn’t.’

  Mrs Sahgal’s saccharine, foolish life revolved around her husband. No sentence was complete for her without a reference to Mr Sahgal. Some people thought her a saint, some a fool. Mrs Rupa Mehra recalled that her own late husband, usually a good-natured and tolerant man, had thought Mrs Sahgal a doting idiot. He had said this angrily rather than amusedly. The Sahgals’ son, who was about seventeen, was mentally deficient. Their daughter, who was Lata’s age, was highly intelligent and highly neurotic.

  Mr Sahgal was very pleased to see Lata and her mother. He was a sober, wise-looking man with a short-trimmed grey-and-white beard. If an expressionless portrait had been made of him, he would have looked like a judge. Rather than welcoming Haresh, however, he gave him a strange, conspiratorial smirk. Haresh took an instant dislike to him.

  ‘Are you quite sure I can’t be of any help to you tomorrow?’ he asked.

  ‘Quite sure, Haresh, God bless you,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra.

  ‘Lata?’ said Haresh, smiling, but with a trace of uncertainty; perhaps, for once, he was not entirely sure whether he was liked or disliked. Certainly the signals he was receiving were perplexingly mixed. ‘You’re sure I may write?’

  ‘Yes, that would be nice,’ said Lata, as if someone had offered her a piece of toast.

  This sounded so lukewarm, even to her, that she added:

  ‘It would really be very nice. It’s a good way to get to know each other.’

  Haresh was about to say something more, but decided against it.

  ‘Au revoir, then,’ he said, smiling. He had taken a few French lessons in England.

  ‘Au revoir,’ replied Lata with a laugh.

  ‘Why are you laughing?’ asked Haresh. ‘Were you laughing at me?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lata honestly. ‘I was. Thank you.’

  ‘For what?’ asked Haresh.

  ‘For a very enjoyable day.’ She glanced once more at his co-respondent shoes. ‘I won’t forget it.’

  ‘Neither will I,’ said Haresh. Then he thought of several things to say but rejected each one.

  ‘You must learn to say shorter goodbyes,’ said Lata.

  ‘Do you have any other advice for me?’ asked Haresh.

  Yes, thought Lata; at least seven pieces. Aloud she said: ‘Yes, I do. Keep to the left.’

  Grateful for the affectionate banality, Haresh nodded; and his tonga plodded off towards Simran’s sister’s house.

  9.14

  Both Lata and Mrs Rupa Mehra were so tired after their Kanpur visit that they went off to sleep soon after lunch. Each had her own room, and Lata welcomed these rare hours of privacy. She knew that the moment they were alone together her mother would begin asking her about what she thought of Haresh.

  Before she dropped off to sleep her mother came to her room. The bedrooms were arranged in rows on both sides of a long corridor—as if in a hotel. It was a hot afternoon. Mrs Rupa Mehra had with her
her bottle of 4711 Eau de Cologne, one of the objects that had a permanent home in her bag. With this she soaked a corner of one of her rose-embroidered handkerchiefs and dabbed Lata’s head affectionately.

  ‘I thought I would say a word to my darling daughter before she fell off to sleep.’

  Lata waited for the question.

  ‘Well, Lata?’

  ‘Well, Ma?’ Lata smiled. Now that it was a reality rather than an anticipation, the question was not so formidable.

  ‘Don’t you think he’s suitable?’ Mrs Rupa Mehra’s voice made it clear that any rejection of Haresh would hurt her to the quick.

  ‘Ma, I’ve only met him for twenty-four hours!’

  ‘Twenty-six.’

  ‘What do I really know of him, Ma?’ said Lata. ‘Let’s say—it’s not negative: he’s all right. I’ve got to know him better.’

  This last sentence being ambiguous, Mrs Rupa Mehra wanted an immediate clarification. Lata, smiling to herself said:

  ‘Let me put it like this. He’s not rejected. He says he wants to write to me. Let’s see what he has to say for himself.’

  ‘You are a very fussy and ungrateful girl,’ said her mother. ‘You are always thinking of the wrong people.’

  Lata said:

  ‘Yes, Ma, you’re quite right. I am very fussy and very ungrateful, but at the moment I am also very sleepy.’

  ‘Here. You keep this handkerchief.’ And her mother left her to herself.

  Lata fell off to sleep almost immediately. The Sunny Park household in Calcutta, the long journey to Kanpur in the heat, the strain of being on display before a marriageable man, the tannery, the tension between her liking and distaste for Haresh, the journey from Kanpur to Lucknow, and her repeated and unbidden thoughts of Kabir, all had exhausted her. She slept well. When she woke up it was four o’clock and teatime. She washed her face, changed, and went to the drawing room.

  Her mother, Mr Sahgal, Mrs Sahgal, and their two children were sitting there having tea and samosas. Mrs Rupa Mehra was catching up as usual on her enormous network of acquaintances. Though Mrs Sahgal was, strictly speaking, her cousin, they actually thought of each other as sisters: they had spent a great deal of their childhood together after Rupa’s mother’s death in the great influenza epidemic.

  Mrs Sahgal’s wish to please her husband was comic, or perhaps pathetic. Her eyes were constantly following his. ‘Shall I bring that newspaper?’ ‘Will you have another cup?’ ‘Do you want me to bring the photograph album?’ His eyes had only to rest on some object in the room for her to anticipate his wishes and scurry to fulfil them. He did not treat her with contempt, however; he praised her in measured tones. Sometimes he would stroke his short grey-and-white beard and say: ‘You see my luck? With Maya as a wife I have to do nothing! I worship her as a goddess.’ His wife would preen with pleasure.

  And indeed, there were several photographs of his wife on the wall or in small frames here and there. She was a physically attractive woman (as was her daughter) and Mr Sahgal was something of an amateur photographer. He pointed out one or two to Lata; Lata couldn’t help thinking that the poses were a little—she tried to think of a word—‘film-starrish’. There were also a couple of pictures of Kiran, the daughter, who was about Lata’s age and was studying at Lucknow University. Kiran was tall and pale and quite attractive; but she was abrupt in her movements, and had agitated eyes.

  ‘And now you will be embarking on the journey of life,’ said Mr Sahgal to Lata. He leaned forward slightly, and spilt a little tea. His wife rushed to mop it up.

  ‘Mausaji, I don’t want to embark on any journey without checking the ticket first,’ said Lata, trying to make light of his remark, but annoyed that her mother had presumed to talk about such matters to them.

  Mrs Rupa Mehra did not consider her mention of Haresh to be an act of presumption, but, on the contrary, of consideration. Mr and Mrs Sahgal were simply being told that they would not have to trawl their nets through the khatri community of Lucknow for Lata’s sake—which they would otherwise certainly have been required to do.

  At this point the feeble-minded son, Pushkar, who was a couple of years younger than Lata, began to sing to himself and rock slightly to and fro.

  ‘What is the matter, son?’ asked his father gently.

  ‘I want to marry Lata Didi,’ said Pushkar.

  Mr Sahgal shrugged apologetically towards Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘He is like this sometimes,’ he said. ‘Come, Pushkar—let us go and make something with your Meccano set.’ They left the room.

  Lata suddenly felt a peculiar sense of unease, which seemed to reach back to the memory of an earlier visit to Lucknow. But it was so unspecific that she could not recall what had caused it. She felt she needed to be by herself, to get out of the house, to go for a walk.

  ‘I’ll take a walk to the old British Residency,’ she said. ‘It’s cooler now, and it’s only a few minutes away.’

  ‘But you haven’t eaten even one samosa yet,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra.

  ‘Ma, I’m not hungry. But I do want to go for a walk.’

  ‘You can’t go by yourself,’ said her mother firmly. ‘This isn’t Brahmpur. Wait till Mausaji comes back, maybe he’ll go with you.’

  ‘I’ll go with Lata,’ said Kiran quickly.

  ‘That’s very sweet of you, Kiran,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘But don’t dawdle. When girls get together they talk for hours without noticing the time go by.’

  ‘We’ll be back by dark,’ said Kiran. ‘Don’t worry, Rupa Masi.’

  9.15

  There were a few clouds in the eastern sky, greyish, but not rain-bearing. The road to the Residency past the fine red-brick building of the Lucknow Chief Court—now the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court—was uncrowded. This was where Mr Sahgal practised. Kiran and Lata hardly talked at all, and this suited Lata.

  Though Lata had been to Lucknow twice before—once when she was nine, when her father was alive, once when she was about fourteen, after his death—and had stayed each time with the Sahgals, she had never visited the ruined Residency. It was in fact a mere fifteen minutes’ walk from the Sahgals’ house near Kaiserbagh. What she remembered about her two previous stays were not the historical monuments of Lucknow but the fresh, home-made white butter Mrs Sahgal served; and for some reason she recalled being given a whole bunch of grapes for breakfast. She also remembered how friendly Kiran had been on her first trip, and how unfriendly—even resentful—she had been on the second. By then it was clear that all was not well with her brother, and perhaps she had envied Lata her two brothers, noisy, affectionate, and normal. But you have your father, Lata had thought, and I have lost mine. Why do you dislike me? Lata was glad that Kiran was at last trying to restore the friendship; she only wished that she herself were better placed today to reciprocate.

  For today she had no wish at all to talk to Kiran or anyone—least of all to Mrs Rupa Mehra. She wanted to be by herself—to think about her life, and what was happening to it, to her. Or perhaps not even to think about it—to be distracted, rather, by something so far and past and grand that it would limit the scope of her own elations and distresses. She had felt something of that spirit in the Park Street Cemetery that day in the pouring rain. It was that spirit of distance that she was trying to recapture.

  The great, shattered, bullet-mottled remains of the Residency rose above them on a hill. The grass at the foot of the hill was brown for lack of rain but green above, where it had been watered. All around, among the broken buildings, were trees and bushes—pipal, jamun, neem, mango, and here and there at least four huge banyan trees. Mynas cried from the rough-barked and smooth-barked palms, a spray of magenta bougainvillaea fell in a massive shower on a lawn. Chameleons and squirrels wandered around among the ruins and obelisks and cannons. Wherever the plaster of the thick walls had crumbled, the thin hard bricks of which it was built were exposed. Plaques and gravestones lay scattered through the sad acres. In the centre of it all, in th
e main surviving building, was a museum.

  ‘Shall we go to the Museum first?’ asked Lata. ‘That might close early.’

  The question threw Kiran into abrupt anxiety. ‘I don’t know—I—I don’t know. We can do anything now,’ she said. ‘There’s no one to say anything.’

  ‘Let’s do that then,’ said Lata. They went in.

  Kiran was so nervous that she bit—not her nails, but the flesh at the base of her thumb. Lata looked at her in astonishment.

  ‘Are you all right, Kiran?’ she asked. ‘Shall we go back?’

  ‘No—no,’ cried Kiran. ‘Don’t read that—’ she said.

  Lata promptly read the plaque that Kiran was pointing at.

  SUSANNA PALMER

  killed in this room

  by a cannon ball on the

  1st July 1857

  in her nineteenth year

  Lata laughed. ‘Really, Kiran!’ she said.

  ‘Where was her father?’ said Kiran. ‘Where was he? Why couldn’t he protect her?’

  Lata sighed. She now wished she had come here alone, but there had been no getting around her mother’s insistence that she go nowhere in a strange town unaccompanied.

  Since her sympathy appeared to disturb Kiran, Lata tried to ignore her, interesting herself instead in a minutely detailed model of the Residency and the surrounding area during the siege of Lucknow. On one wall hung sepia pictures of battle, of the storming of the batteries, of the billiard room, of an English spy disguising himself to get through the native lines.

  There was even a poem by Tennyson, one of Lata’s favourite poets. She had, however, never read this particular poem, ‘The Relief of Lucknow’. It had seven stanzas, and she read them at first with interest, then with increasing disgust. She wondered what Amit would have thought of them. Each stanza ended with the line: