A Suitable Boy

1.9

The crowds had thinned; the guests, some chewing paan, were departing at the

gate; a heap of gifts had grown by the side of the bench where Pran and Savita

had been sitting. Finally only they and a few members of the family were left—

and the yawning servants who would put away the more valuable furniture for

the night, or pack the gifts in a trunk under the watchful eye of Mrs Rupa Mehra.

The bride and groom were lost in their thoughts. They avoided looking at

each other now. They would spend the night in a carefully prepared room in

Prem Nivas, and leave for a week’s honeymoon in Simla tomorrow.

Lata tried to imagine the nuptial room. Presumably it would be fragrant with

tuberoses; that, at least, was Malati’s confident opinion. I’ll always associate

tuberoses with Pran, Lata thought. It was not at all pleasant to follow her

imagination further. That Savita would be sleeping with Pran tonight did not

bear thinking of. It did not strike her as being at all romantic. Perhaps they

would be too exhausted, she thought optimistically.

‘What are you thinking of, Lata?’ asked her mother.

‘Oh, nothing, Ma,’said Lata automatically.

‘You turned up your nose. I saw it.’

Lata blushed.

‘I don’t think I ever want to get married,’she said emphatically.

Mrs Rupa Mehra was too wearied by the wedding, too exhausted by emotion,

too softened by Sanskrit, too cumbered with congratulations, too overwrought,

in short, to do anything but stare at Lata for ten seconds. What on earth had got

into the girl? What was good enough for her mother and her mother’s mother

and her mother’s mother’s mother should be good enough for her. Lata, though,

had always been a difficult one, with a strange will of her own, quiet but

unpredictable—like that time in St Sophia’s when she had wanted to become a

nun! But Mrs Rupa Mehra too had a will, and she was determined to have her

own way, even if she was under no illusions as to Lata’s pliability.

And yet, Lata was named after that most pliable thing, a vine, which was

trained to cling: first to her family, then to her husband. Indeed, when she was a

baby, Lata’s fingers had had a strong and coiling grasp which even now came

back with a sweet vividness to her mother. Suddenly Mrs Rupa Mehra burst out

with the inspired remark:

‘Lata, you are a vine, you must cling to your husband!’

It was not a success.

‘Cling?’ said Lata. ‘Cling?’ The word was pronounced with such quiet scorn

that her mother could not help bursting into tears. How terrible it was to have an

ungrateful daughter. And how unpredictable a baby could be.

Now that the tears were running down her cheeks, Mrs Rupa Mehra

transferred them fluidly from one daughter to the other. She clasped Savita to her

bosom and wept loudly. ‘You must write to me, Savita darling,’ she said. ‘You

must write to me every day from Simla. Pran, you are like my own son now, you

must be responsible and see to it. Soon I will be all alone in Calcutta—all alone.’

This was of course quite untrue. Arun and Varun and Meenakshi and Aparna

would all be crowded together with her in Arun’s little flat in Sunny Park. But Mrs Rupa Mehra was one who believed with unformulated but absolute

conviction in the paramountcy of subjective over objective truth.