A Suitable Boy

1.11

When they got to the zoo, Bhaskar and Aparna joined forces and asked to ride on

the children’s railway, which, Bhaskar noted, also went around anticlockwise.

Lata and Malati wanted a walk after the tonga ride, but they were overruled. All

five of them sat in a small, post-box-red compartment, squashed together and

facing each other this time, while the little green steam engine puffed along on

its one-foot-wide track. Varun sat opposite Malati, their knees almost touching.

Malati enjoyed the fun of this, but Varun was so disconcerted that he looked

desperately around at the giraffes, and even stared attentively at the crowds of

schoolchildren, some of whom were l*****g huge bobbins of pink spun candy.

Aparna’s eyes began to shine with anticipation.

Since Bhaskar was nine, and Aparna a third of his age, they did not have

much to say to each other. They attached themselves to their most-favoured

adults. Aparna, brought up by her socialite parents with alternating indulgence

and irritation, found Lata reassuringly certain in her affection. In Lata’s company

she behaved in a less brat-like manner. Bhaskar and Varun got on famously once

Bhaskar succeeded in getting him to concentrate. They discussed mathematics,

with special reference to racing odds.

They saw the elephant, the camel, the emu, the common bat, the brown

pelican, the red fox, and all the big cats. They even saw a smaller one, the black￾spotted leopard-cat, as he paced frenziedly across the floor of his cage.

But the best stop of all was the reptile house. Both children were eager to see

the snake pit, which was full of fairly sluggish pythons, and the glass cases with

their deadly vipers and kraits and cobras. And also, of course, the cold,

corrugated crocodiles on to whose backs some schoolchildren and visiting

villagers were throwing coins—while others, as the white, serrated mouths

opened lazily far below, leaned over the railings and pointed and squealed and

shuddered. Luckily Varun had a taste for the sinister, and took the kids inside.

Lata and Malati refused to go in.

‘I see enough horrifying things as a medical student,’said Malati.

‘I wish you wouldn’t tease Varun,’said Lata after a while.

‘Oh, I wasn’t teasing him,’ said Malati. ‘Just listening to him attentively. It’s

good for him.’ She laughed. ‘Mm—you make him nervous.’

‘You’re very protective of your elder brother.’

‘He’s not—oh, I see—yes, my younger elder brother. Well, since I don’t have

a younger brother, I suppose I’ve given him the part. But seriously, Malati, I am

worried about him. And so is my mother. We don’t know what he’s going to do

when he graduates in a few months. He hasn’t shown much aptitude for

anything. And Arun bullies him fearfully. I wish some nice girl would take him

in charge.’

‘And I’m not the one? I must say, he has a certain feeble charm. Heh, heh!’

Malati imitated Varun’s laugh.

‘Don’t be facetious, Malati. I don’t know about Varun, but my mother would

have a fit,’said Lata.

This was certainly true. Even though it was an impossible proposition

geographically, the very thought of it would have given Mrs Rupa Mehra

nightmares. Malati Trivedi, apart from being one of a small handful of girls

among the almost five hundred boys at the Prince of Wales Medical College,

was notorious for her outspoken views, her participation in the activities of the

Socialist Party, and her love affairs—though not with any of those five hundred

boys, whom, by and large, she treated with contempt.

‘Your mother likes me, I can tell,’said Malati.

‘That’s beside the point,’ said Lata. ‘And actually, I’m quite amazed that she

does. She usually judges things by influences. I would have thought you’re a bad

influence on me.’

But this was not entirely true, even from Mrs Rupa Mehra’s viewpoint.

Malati had certainly given Lata more confidence than she had had when she had

emerged wet-feathered from St Sophia’s. And Malati had succeeded in getting

Lata to enjoy Indian classical music, which (unlike ghazals) Mrs Rupa Mehra

approved of. That they should have become room-mates at all was because the

government medical college (usually referred to by its royal title) had no

provision for housing its small contingent of women and had persuaded the

university to accommodate them in its hostels.

Malati was charming, dressed conservatively but attractively, and could talk

to Mrs Rupa Mehra about everything from religious fasts to cooking to

genealogy, matters that her own westernized children showed very little interest

in. She was also fair, an enormous plus in Mrs Rupa Mehra’s subconscious

calculus. Mrs Rupa Mehra was convinced that Malati Trivedi, with her dangerously attractive greenish eyes, must have Kashmiri or Sindhi blood in her.

So far, however, she had not discovered any.

Though they did not often talk about it, the bond of paternal loss also tied

Lata and Malati together.

Malati had lost her adored father, a surgeon from Agra, when she was eight.

He had been a successful and handsome man with a wide acquaintance and a

varied history of work: he had been attached to the army for a while and had

gone to Afghanistan; he had taught in Lucknow at the medical college; he had

also been in private practice. At the time of his death, although he had not been

very good at saving money, he had owned a fair amount of property—largely in

the form of houses. Every five years or so he would uproot himself and move to

another town in U.P.—Meerut, Bareilly, Lucknow, Agra. Wherever he lived he

built a new house, but without disposing of the old ones. When he died, Malati’s

mother went into what seemed like an irreversible depression, and remained in

that state for two years.

Then she pulled herself together. She had a large family to take care of, and it

was essential that she think of things in a practical way. She was a very simple,

idealistic, upright woman, and she was concerned more with what was right than

with what was convenient or approved of or monetarily beneficial. It was in that

light that she was determined to bring up her family.

And what a family!—almost all girls. The eldest was a proper tomboy,

sixteen years old when her father died, and already married to a rural landlord’s

son; she lived about twenty miles away from Agra in a huge house with twenty

servants, lichi orchards, and endless fields, but even after her marriage she

joined her sisters in Agra for months at a time. This daughter had been followed

by two sons, but they had both died in childhood, one aged five, the other three.

The boys had been followed by Malati herself, who was eight years younger

than her sister. She also grew up as a sort of boy—though not by any means like

the tomboy her sister was—for a variety of reasons connected with her infancy:

the direct gaze in her unusual eyes, her boyish look, the fact that the boys’

clothes were at hand, the sadness that her parents had experienced at the death of

their two sons. After Malati came three girls, one after another; then another

boy; and then her father died.

Malati had therefore been brought up almost entirely among women; even her

little brother had been like a little sister; he had been too young to be treated as

anything different. (After a while, perhaps out of perplexity, he had gone the way

of his brothers.) The girls grew up in an atmosphere where men came to be seen as exploitative and threatening; many of the men Malati came into contact with

were precisely that. No one could touch the memory of her father. Malati was

determined to become a doctor like him, and never allowed his instruments to

rust. She intended one day to use them.

Who were these men? One was the cousin who did them out of many of the

things that her father had collected and used, but which were lying in storage

after his death. Malati’s mother had cleared out what she had seen as inessentials

from their life. It was not necessary now to have two kitchens, one European and

one Indian. The china and fine cutlery for western food was put away, together

with a great deal of furniture, in a garage. The cousin came, got the keys from

the grieving widow, told her he would manage matters, and cleaned out whatever

had been stored. Malati’s mother never saw a rupee of the proceeds. ‘Well,’ she

had said philosophically, ‘at least my sins have lessened.’

Another was the servant who acted as an intermediary for the sale of the

houses. He would contact property agents or other prospective buyers in the

towns where the houses were located, and make deals with them. He had

something of a reputation as a cheat.

Yet another was her father’s younger brother, who still lived in the Lucknow

house, with his wife downstairs and a dancing girl upstairs. He would happily

have cheated them, if he had been able to, over the sale of that house. He needed

money to spend on the dancing girl.

Then there was the young—well, twenty-six-year-old—but rather sleazy

college teacher who had lived downstairs in a rented room when Malati was

fifteen or so. Malati’s mother wanted her to learn English, and had no

compunction, no matter what the neighbours said (and they said a great deal, not

much of it charitable) about sending Malati to learn from him—though he was a

bachelor. Perhaps in this case the neighbours were right. He very soon fell madly

in love with Malati, and requested her mother for permission to marry her. When

Malati was asked by her mother for her views on the matter, she was amazed and

shocked, and refused point-blank.

At the medical college in Brahmpur, and before that, when she had studied

Intermediate Science in Agra, Malati had had a lot to put up with: teasing,

gossip, the pulling of the light chunni around her neck, and remarks such as ‘She

wants to be a boy.’ This was very far from the truth. The remarks were

unbearable and only diminished when, provoked by one boy beyond endurance,

she had slapped his face hard in front of his friends.

Men fell for her at a rapid rate, but she saw them as beneath her attention. It

was not as if she truly hated men; most of the time she didn’t. It was just that her

standards were too high. No one came near the image she and her sisters had of

their father, and most men struck her as being immature. Besides, marriage was a

distraction for someone who had set her sights upon the career of medicine, and

she was not enormously concerned if she never got married.

She overfilled the unforgiving minute. As a girl of twelve or thirteen, she had

been a loner, even in her crowded family. She loved reading, and people knew

better than to talk to her when she had a book in her hands. When this happened,

her mother did not insist that she help with cooking and housework. ‘Malati’s

reading,’ was enough for people to avoid the room where she lay or sat

crouched, for she would pounce angrily on anyone who dared disturb her.

Sometimes she would actually hide from people, seeking out a corner where no

one would be likely to find her. They got the message soon enough. As the years

passed, she guided the education of her younger sisters. Her elder sister, the

tomboy, guided them all—or, rather, bossed them around—in other matters.

Malati’s mother was remarkable in that she wished her daughters to be

independent. She wanted them, apart from their schooling at a Hindi-medium

school, to learn music and dancing and languages (and especially to be good at

English); and if this meant that they had to go to someone’s house to learn what

was needed, they would go—regardless of what people said. If a tutor had to be

called to the house of the six women, he would be called. Young men would

look up in fascination at the first floor of the house, as they heard five girls

singing along undemurely together. If the girls wanted ice-cream as a special

treat, they would be allowed to go to the shop by themselves and eat it. When

neighbours objected to the shamelessness of letting young girls go around by

themselves in Agra, they were allowed occasionally to go to the shop after dark

instead—which, presumably, was worse, though less detectable. Malati’s mother

made it clear to the girls that she would give them the best education possible,

but that they would have to find their own husbands.

Soon after she came to Brahmpur, Malati fell in love with a married musician,

who was a socialist. She remained involved with the Socialist Party even when

their affair ended. Then she had another rather unhappy love affair. At the

moment she was unattached.

Though full of energy most of the time, Malati would fall ill every few

months or so, and her mother would come down from Agra to Brahmpur to cure

her of the evil eye, an influence that lay outside the province of western medicine. Because Malati had such remarkable eyes herself, she was a special

target of the evil eye.

A dirty, grey, pink-legged crane surveyed Malati and Lata with its small,

intense red eyes; then a grey film blinked sideways across each eyeball, and it

walked carefully away.

‘Let’s surprise the kids by buying some of that spun candy for them,’ said

Lata as a vendor went past. ‘I wonder what’s keeping them. What’s the matter,

Malati? What are you thinking of?’

‘Love,’said Malati.

‘Oh, love, what a boring subject,’ said Lata. ‘I’ll never fall in love. I know

you do from time to time. But—’ She lapsed into silence, thinking once again,

with some distaste, of Savita and Pran, who had left for Simla. Presumably they

would return from the hills deeply in love. It was intolerable.

‘Well, s*x then.’

‘Oh please, Malati,’ said Lata looking around quickly. ‘I’m not interested in

that either,’she added, blushing.

‘Well, marriage then. I’m wondering whom you’ll get married to. Your

mother will get you married off within a year, I’m sure of it. And like an

obedient little mouse, you’ll obey her.’

‘Quite right,’said Lata.

This rather annoyed Malati, who bent down and plucked three narcissi

growing immediately in front of a sign that read, Do not pluck the flowers. One

she kept, and two she handed to Lata, who felt very awkward holding such

illegally gotten gains. Then Malati bought five sticks of flossy pink candy,

handed four to Lata to hold with her two narcissi, and began to eat the fifth.

Lata started to laugh.

‘And what will happen then to your plan to teach in a small school for poor

children?’ demanded Malati.

‘Look, here they come,’said Lata.

Aparna was looking petrified and holding Varun’s hand tightly. For a few

minutes they all ate their candy, walking towards the exit. At the turnstile a

ragged urchin looked longingly at them, and Lata quickly gave him a small coin.

He had been on the point of begging, but hadn’t yet done so, and looked

astonished.

One of her narcissi went into the horse’s mane. The tonga-wallah again began

to sing of his shattered heart. This time they all joined in. Passers-by turned their

heads as the tonga trotted past.

The crocodiles had had a liberating effect on Varun. But when they got back

to Pran’s house on the university campus, where Arun and Meenakshi and Mrs

Rupa Mehra were staying, he had to face the consequences of returning an hour

late. Aparna’s mother and grandmother were looking anxious.

‘You damn irresponsible fool,’ said Arun, dressing him down in front of

everyone. ‘You, as the man, are in charge, and if you say twelve thirty, it had

better be twelve thirty, especially since you have my daughter with you. And my

sister. I don’t want to hear any excuses. You damned idiot.’ He was furious. ‘And

you—’ he added to Lata, ‘you should have known better than to let him lose

track of the time. You know what he’s like.’

Varun bowed his head and looked shiftily at his feet. He was thinking how

satisfying it would be to feed his elder brother, head first, to the largest of the

crocodiles.