The clock down the corridor struck three, and Lata was still awake. Then, once again, she caught her breath with fear. The padded footsteps were coming down the carpeted corridor. She knew they were going to pause at her door. Oh, Ma, Ma—thought Lata.
But the footsteps padded on, softly down the corridor towards the far end, towards Pushkar’s and Kiran’s rooms. Perhaps Mr Sahgal was going to see that his son was all right. Lata waited for his footsteps to return any minute. She could not sleep. But it was two hours later, a little before five in the morning, that they passed by her room gently, after a momentary pause by her door.
9.17
At breakfast the next morning, Mr Sahgal was absent.
‘Sahgal Sahib is not feeling very well. He is tired from working so hard,’ said Mrs Sahgal.
Mrs Rupa Mehra shook her head: ‘Maya, you must tell him to take it easy. It was overwork that killed my husband. And for what final aim? One must work hard, but enough is really enough. Lata, why aren’t you eating your toast? It will get cold. And see, Maya Masi has made that lovely white butter you like so much.’
Mrs Sahgal smiled sweetly at Lata. ‘She looks so tired and worried, poor girl. I think she is already in love with H. Now she is spending sleepless nights.’ She sighed happily.
Lata buttered her toast in silence.
Without his father to help him, Pushkar was having a hard time with his toast. Kiran, who was looking as sleepy as Lata, went over to give him a hand.
‘What does he do when he needs to shave?’ asked Mrs Rupa Mehra in a low voice.
‘Oh, Sahgal Sahib helps him,’ said Mrs Sahgal. ‘Or one of the servants does—but Pushkar prefers us to help him. Oh Rupa, I wish you could stay for a few more days. We have so much to talk about. And the girls can get to know each other also.’
‘No!’ The word was out before Lata could think of what she was saying. She looked frightened and disgusted.
Kiran dropped the knife on Pushkar’s plate. Then she rushed out of the room.
‘Lata, you must say sorry at once,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘What do you mean by this? Have you no decency?’
Lata was about to tell her mother that all she had meant was that she did not want to stay in the house any longer, and had not meant to hurt Kiran. That, however, would merely exchange one offence for another. So she kept her mouth shut and her head bowed.
‘Did you hear me?’ Mrs Rupa Mehra’s high voice held an edge of anger.
‘Yes.’
‘Yes what?’
‘Yes, Ma, I heard you. I heard you. I heard you.’
Lata got up and went to her room. Mrs Rupa Mehra could hardly believe her eyes.
Pushkar began singing to himself and stuffing the small squares of toast that his sister had cut and buttered for him into his mouth. Mrs Sahgal looked distressed.
‘I wish Sahgal Sahib was here. He knows how to deal with the children.’
Mrs Rupa Mehra said: ‘Lata is a thoughtless girl sometimes. I am going to have a word with her.’ Then she thought that perhaps she was being too harsh. ‘Of course, Kanpur was a strain on her. It was on me, too, of course. She does not appreciate the efforts I have made for her. Only He appreciated me.’
‘Finish your tea, first, Rupa mine,’ said Mrs Sahgal.
A few minutes later, when Mrs Rupa Mehra entered Lata’s room, she found her asleep. So soundly was she sleeping that she had to be woken for lunch a few hours later.
At lunch, Mr Sahgal smiled at Lata and said, ‘See what I have got for you.’ It was a small, flat, square packet wrapped in red paper. The wrapping paper was decorated with holly, bells and other Christmas paraphernalia.
‘How lovely!’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, without knowing what it was.
Lata’s ears burned with embarrassment and anger.
‘I don’t want it.’
Mrs Rupa Mehra was too shocked to speak.
‘And then we can go to the cinema. There will be time before your train leaves.’
Lata stared at him.
Mrs Rupa Mehra, who had been brought up never to open gifts when they were given but to wait till she was alone, quite forgot herself.
‘Open it,’ she ordered Lata.
‘I don’t want it,’ said Lata. ‘You open it.’ She pushed the packet across. Something jangled inside.
‘Savita would never behave like this,’ began her mother. ‘And Mausaji has taken the afternoon off just for you—just so that Maya and I can have the time to talk. You don’t know how much of an interest he takes in you. He is always saying you are so intelligent, but I am beginning to doubt it. Say thank you.’
‘Thank you,’ said Lata, feeling dirtied and humiliated.
‘And you must tell me all about the film when you come back.’
‘I will not go to the film.’
‘What?’
‘I will not go to the film.’
‘Mausaji will be with you, Lata—what are you worried about?’ said her mother uncomprehendingly.
Kiran looked at Lata with a bitter glance of jealousy. Mr Sahgal said, ‘She is like my own daughter. I will see that she doesn’t eat too many ice-creams and other unhealthy things.’
‘I will not go!’ Lata’s voice rose in defiance and panic.
Mrs Rupa Mehra was struggling with the packet. At this cry of rank rebellion, her fingers lost control of themselves. Normally she unpacked every gift with infinite care in order to be able to reuse the paper later. But now the paper ripped open.
‘See what you’ve made me do,’ she said to Lata. But then, looking at the contents, she turned to Mr Sahgal, perplexed.
The present was a puzzle, a pink plastic maze with a transparent top. Seven little silver balls were to be jiggled around the square maze so that, with luck, they would eventually come to rest in the central cell.
‘She is such a clever girl, I thought I would give her a puzzle. Normally she would be able to do it in five minutes. But on the train everything shakes so much that it will take her an hour,’ Mr Sahgal explained in a gentle voice. ‘Time passes so slowly sometimes.’
‘How thoughtful,’ murmured Mrs Rupa Mehra, frowning a little.
Lata lied that she had a headache, and returned to her room. But she did, indeed, feel ill—sick to the pit of her stomach.
9.18
Mr Sahgal’s car took them to the station late in the afternoon. He was working, and did not come. Kiran stayed behind with Pushkar. Mrs Sahgal came with them and chattered sweetly and vacuously throughout.
Lata did not say a word.
They were immersed in the crowds on the platform. Suddenly Haresh appeared.
‘Hello, Mrs Mehra. Hello, Lata.’
‘Haresh? I said you were not to come,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘And I told you to call me Ma,’ she added mechanically.
Haresh smiled, pleased to have surprised them.
‘My own train back to Cawnpore leaves in fifteen minutes so I thought I would give you a hand. Now where is your coolie?’
He installed them in their compartment cheerfully and efficiently, and made sure that Mrs Rupa Mehra’s black handbag was placed where it was both within reach and theft-proof.
Mrs Rupa Mehra looked mortified; it had been a hard decision for her to buy two first-class tickets from Kanpur to Lucknow, but she had felt she had to convey a certain impression to a potential son-in-law. Now he could clearly see that they usually travelled not even by second but by Inter class. And indeed, Haresh was puzzled, though he did not show it. After all this talk by Mrs Rupa Mehra about travelling in saloons and having a son in Bentsen Pryce, he had expected a different style from them.
But what does all that matter? he asked himself. I like the girl.
Lata, who had first seemed glad—relieved, he would have said—to see him, now appeared withdrawn, hardly aware of her own presence, or her mother’s, or her aunt’s, let alone his.
As the whistle blew, a scene came to Haresh’s mind. It was set at about this time of day.
It had been warm, so it could not have been many months ago. He had been standing at the platform of a busy station, about to catch a train himself, and his coolie had been about to disappear into the crowd ahead. A middle-aged woman, her back turned partly towards him, had been boarding another train together with a younger woman. This younger woman—he knew now that it had been Lata—had had on her face such a look of intensity and inwardness, perhaps even hurt or anger, that he had caught his breath. There had been a man with them, the young man whom he had met at Sunil Patwardhan’s party—that English teacher whose name eluded him. Brahmpur, yes—that was where he had seen them before. He had known it; he had known it, and now it all came back to him. He had not been mistaken, after all. He smiled, his eyes disappearing.
‘Brahmpur—a pale blue sari,’ he said, almost to himself.
Lata turned to him through the window with a questioning look.
The train began to move.
Haresh shook his head, still smiling. Even if the train had been stationary, he would probably not have explained himself.
He waved as the train pulled out, but neither mother nor daughter waved back. However, being an optimist, Haresh put this down to their anglicized reticence.
A blue sari. That’s what it was, he kept thinking to himself.
9.19
Haresh had spent his day in Lucknow at Simran’s sister’s house. He told her that he had met a woman just yesterday who—since he had no chance of succeeding with Simran—was someone he was thinking seriously about as wife material.
He did not put it exactly like that; but even if he had it would not have been intrinsically offensive. Most marriages he knew had been decided on that basis, and the deciders were usually not even the couple themselves but their elders: fathers or male heads of the concerned families—with the wished-for or unwished-for counsel of dozens of others thrown in. In the case of one of Haresh’s distant rural cousins, the go-between had been the village barber; by virtue of his access to most of the houses in the village, this had been the fourth marriage he had been instrumental in arranging that year.
Simran’s sister sympathized with Haresh. She knew how long and faithfully Haresh had loved her sister, and she felt that his heart still belonged to her.
Haresh himself would not have thought of this as casually metaphorical. He and his heart did belong to her. She could do with it and with him what she pleased, and he would still love her. The pleasure in Simran’s eyes whenever they met—the sadness underlying that pleasure—the increasing certainty that her parents would not yield, that they would cut her off from themselves—that her mother, emotional woman that she was, might very well even carry out the threat against herself that she now spoke of in every letter to her and every day when she was home—all these had worn Simran down. Her correspondence, erratic even in England (partly because she herself would receive Haresh’s letters erratically, whenever the friend to whose address they were sent visited her) became even more so. Sometimes weeks would pass, and Haresh would not hear from her; then he would get three letters in as many days.
Simran’s sister knew how hard it would be for her to hear the news that Haresh had decided he might live his life with someone else—or even consider doing so. Simran loved Haresh. Her sister loved him too—even if he was the son of a Lala, which among the Sikhs was something of a term of contempt for Hindus. Her brother too had been part of the conspiracy. When he and Haresh were both seventeen he had been paid to sing ghazals on his friend’s behalf under his sister’s window: Simran had been annoyed with Haresh for some reason, and Haresh had been trying to appease her. He had had to hire her brother because he himself had, together with a love of music and a belief in its power to move unyielding hearts, a singing voice that even his beloved Simran (who liked his speaking voice well enough) had declared to be tuneless.
‘Haresh, have you made up your mind?’ said Simran’s sister in Punjabi. She was three years older than Simran, and her own marriage had been an arranged one—to a Sikh officer in the army.
‘What choice do I have?’ replied Haresh. ‘I have to think of someone else sooner or later. Time is passing. I am twenty-eight. I’m thinking of her good too—she will refuse everyone whom your parents suggest until she knows that I’m married.’
Haresh’s eyes grew moist. Simran’s sister patted him on the shoulder.
‘When did you make up your mind that this girl might suit you?’
‘At Kanpur Station. She was drinking that chocolate drink—you know, Pheasant’s.’ Haresh, noticing the look on Simran’s sister’s face, realized she wished to be spared the exact details.
‘Have you made any proposal?’
‘No. We have agreed to write to each other. Her mother arranged the meeting. They are in Lucknow at the moment, but they didn’t seem keen to see me here.’
‘Have you written to your father?’
‘I’ll write to him tonight, when I get back to Kanpur.’ Haresh had chosen a train that would enable him to meet Mrs Rupa Mehra and her daughter as if by chance at Lucknow Station.
‘Don’t write to Simran just yet.’
Haresh said in a hurt voice: ‘But why? I’ll have to say something sooner or later.’
‘If nothing comes out of this you will have hurt her for nothing.’
‘She’ll wonder if she doesn’t hear from me.’
‘Write as you always write.’
‘How can I do that?’ Haresh baulked at the deception.
‘Don’t say anything that isn’t true. Just don’t touch on this.’
Haresh thought for a while. ‘All right,’ he said at last. But he felt that Simran knew him too well not to sense from his letters that something had begun to happen in his life, not just in hers, that could draw the two of them apart.
9.20
The conversation turned after a while to Simran’s sister herself. Her young son Monty (only three years old) wanted to join the navy and her husband (who was crazy about the boy) was taking this decision extraordinarily badly. He treated it as a vote of no confidence in himself, and was, it seemed to her, sulking as a result. She herself attributed Monty’s preference to the fact that he enjoyed playing with boats in his tub, and had not yet arrived at the model-soldier stage.
Monty, incidentally, had difficulty pronouncing certain words, and just the other day had said (talking in English instead of Punjabi) while splashing around in his favourite element after one brief pre-monsoon shower, that he wanted to go to ‘the miggle of the puggle’. This Simran’s sister took as being symptomatic of his intrinsic sweetness. She hoped that in years to come he would order his men ‘into the heart of backle’. Monty sat through all this with a look of offended dignity. From time to time he tugged at his mother’s fingers to get her to stop prattling.
Since he wasn’t feeling hungry, Haresh decided to forgo lunch and went to see the twelve o’clock show of a film instead. Hamlet was playing at the local cinema hall. He enjoyed it, but Hamlet’s indecisiveness irritated him.
He then had a good haircut for a rupee. Finally, he had a paan and went off to the station in order to catch the train back to Kanpur—and, he hoped, to meet Lata and her mother, both of whom he had become quite fond of. That he was successful in this pleased him greatly; that they did not wave to him as the train moved out did not distress him unduly. The coincidence connecting Brahmpur Station and Lucknow Station he took as a propitious sign.
On the two-hour train journey back to Kanpur, Haresh took out a blue writing pad from his portfolio (‘H.C. Khanna’ was embossed on the top of each page) and a cheap white scribbling pad as well. He looked from one to the other, then to a woman sitting opposite him, then out of the window. It was getting dark. Soon the train lights came on. Finally he decided that it would not do to write a serious letter in a jolting train. He put away the writing pad.
At the top of his scribbling pad, he wrote: ‘To Do’. Then he crossed it out and wrote: ‘Points to remember’. Then he cro
ssed that out and wrote: ‘Action Points’. It occurred to him that he was behaving as stupidly as Hamlet.
After he had listed his correspondence and various work-related items, his thoughts moved to more general matters, and he made a third list, under the heading, ‘My Life’:
1. Must catch up with news and world affairs.
Haresh felt he had not come off well on this account during his meetings with the Mehras. But his work kept him so busy that sometimes he hardly had time even to glance at the papers.
2. Exercise: at least 15 minutes each morning. How to find the time?
3. Make 1951 the deciding year of my life.
4. Pay off debts to Umesh Uncle in full.
5. Learn to control temper. Must learn to suffer fools, gladly or not.
6. Get brogue scheme with Kedarnath Tandon in Brahmpur working properly.
This he later crossed out and transferred to the work-related list.
7. Moustache?
This he crossed out, and then rewrote together with the question mark.
8. Learn from good people, like Babaram.
9. Finish reading major novels of T.H.
10. Try to keep my diary regularly as before.
11. Make notes of my five best and five worst qualities. Conserve latter and eradicate former.
Haresh read over this last sentence, looked surprised, and corrected it.
9.21
It was late when he got back to Elm Villa. Mrs Mason, however, who sometimes complained when Haresh came late for meals (on the grounds that it would upset the staff), was very welcoming.
‘Oh, you look so tired. My daughter has been telling me how busy you have been. And you didn’t leave word that you would be gone for more than a day. We prepared lunch for you. And dinner. And lunch again today. But no matter. You’re here, back at last, and that’s the main thing. It’s mutton. A good, hearty roast.’