by Vikram Seth
Two lines from one of their meetings came to her mind:
Desert not friendship. Renegade with me
From raptured realm of Mr Nowrojee.
She got up. She made no attempt to hide her tears. ‘I’m going,’ she said.
‘Please don’t, Lata. Please listen,’ said Kabir. ‘When will we be able to speak to each other again? If we don’t talk now—’
Lata was walking quickly up the path, trying to escape from his company now.
‘Lata, be reasonable.’
She had reached the flat top of the path. Kabir walked behind her. She seemed so walled off from him that he didn’t touch her. He sensed that she would have brushed him off, maybe with another painful remark.
Halfway to the house was a shrubbery of the most fragrant kamini, some bushes of which had grown as tall as trees. The air was thick with their scent, the branches full of small white blossoms against dark-green leaves, the ground covered with petals. As they passed below, he tousled the leaves gently, and a shower of fragrant petals fell on her hair. If she even noticed this, she gave no indication of it.
They walked on, unspeaking. Then Lata turned around.
‘That’s my sister’s husband there in a dressing gown. They’ve been looking for me. Go back. No one’s seen us yet.’
‘Yes; Dr Kapoor. I know. I’ll—I’ll talk to him. I’ll convince them—’
‘You can’t run four runs every day,’ said Lata.
Kabir stopped dead in his tracks, a look of puzzlement rather than pain on his face. Lata walked on without looking back.
She never wanted to see him again.
At the house, Mrs Rupa Mehra was having hysterics. Pran was grim. Savita had been crying. Lata refused to answer any questions.
Mrs Rupa Mehra and Lata left for Calcutta that evening. Mrs Rupa Mehra kept up a litany of how shameful and inconsiderate Lata was; how she was forcing her mother to leave Brahmpur before Ramnavami; how she had been the cause of unnecessary disruption and expense.
Receiving no response, she finally gave up. For once, she hardly talked to the other passengers.
Lata kept quiet. She looked out of the train window till it became completely dark. She felt heartbroken and humiliated. She was sick of her mother, and of Kabir, and of the mess that was life.
Part Four
4.1
While Lata was falling in love with Kabir, a quite different set of events was taking place in Old Brahmpur, which, however, were to prove not irrelevant to her story. These events involved Pran’s sister, Veena, and her family.
Veena Tandon entered her house in Misri Mandi, to be greeted by her son Bhaskar with a kiss, which she happily accepted despite the fact that he had a cold. He then rushed back to the small sofa where he had been sitting—his father on one side and his father’s guest on the other—and continued his explanation of the powers of ten.
Kedarnath Tandon looked at his son indulgently but, happy in the consciousness of Bhaskar’s genius, did not pay much attention to what he was saying. His father’s guest, Haresh Khanna, who had been introduced to Kedarnath by a mutual acquaintance in the shoe business, would have been happier talking about the leather and footwear trade of Brahmpur, but felt it best to indulge his host’s son—especially as Bhaskar, carried away by his enthusiasm, would have been very disappointed to lose his indoor audience on a day when he had not been allowed to go out kite-flying. He tried to concentrate on what Bhaskar was saying.
‘Well, you see, Haresh Chacha, it’s like this. First you have ten, that’s just ten, that is, ten to the first power. Then you have a hundred, which is ten times ten, which makes it ten to the second power. Then you have a thousand, which is ten to the third power. Then you have ten thousand, which is ten to the fourth power—but this is where the problem begins, don’t you see? We don’t have a special word for that—and we really should. Ten times that is ten to the fifth power, which is a lakh. Then we have ten to the sixth power, which is a million, ten to the seventh power which is a crore, and then we come to another power for which we don’t have a word—which is ten to the eighth. We should have a word for that as well. Then ten to the ninth power is a billion, and then comes ten to the tenth. Now it’s amazing that we don’t have a word in either English or Hindi for a number that is as important as ten to the tenth. Don’t you agree with me, Haresh Chacha?’ he continued, his bright eyes fixed on Haresh’s face.
‘But you know,’ said Haresh, pulling something out of his recent memory for the enthusiastic Bhaskar, ‘I think there is a special word for ten thousand. The Chinese tanners of Calcutta, with whom we have some dealings, once told me that they used the number ten-thousand as a standard unit of counting. What they call it I can’t remember, but just as we use a lakh as a natural measuring point, they use ten-thousand.’
Bhaskar was electrified. ‘But Haresh Chacha, you must find that number for me,’ he said. ‘You must find out what they call it. I have to know,’ he said, his eyes burning with mystical fire, and his small frog-like features taking on an astonishing radiance.
‘All right,’ said Haresh. ‘I’ll tell you what. When I go back to Kanpur, I’ll make inquiries, and as soon as I find out what that number is, I’ll send you a letter. Who knows, perhaps they even have a number for ten to the eighth.’
‘Do you really think so?’ breathed Bhaskar wonderingly. His pleasure was akin to that of a stamp collector who finds the two missing values in an incomplete series suddenly supplied to him by a total stranger. ‘When are you going back to Kanpur?’
Veena, who had just come in bearing cups of tea, rebuked Bhaskar for his inhospitable comment, and asked Haresh how many spoonfuls of sugar he took.
Haresh could not help noticing that when he had seen her a few minutes earlier her head had been uncovered, but now, after returning from the kitchen, she had covered it with her sari. He guessed correctly that it was at her mother-in-law’s behest that she had done so. Although Veena was a little older than him, and quite plump, he could not help thinking how animated her features were. The slight touches of anxiety about her eyes only added to her liveliness of character.
Veena, for her part, could not help noticing that her husband’s guest was a good-looking young man. Haresh was short, well built without being stocky, fair in complexion, with a squarish rather than an oval face. His eyes were not large, but they had a directness of gaze which she believed was a key to straightforwardness of character. Silk shirt and agate cufflinks, she observed to herself.
‘Now, Bhaskar, go and talk to your grandmother,’ said Veena. ‘Papa’s friend wants to talk to him about important matters.’
Bhaskar looked at the two men in inquiring appeal. His father, though he had closed his eyes, sensed that Bhaskar was waiting for his word.
‘Yes. Do as your mother says,’ said Kedarnath. Haresh said nothing, but smiled. Bhaskar went off, rather annoyed at being excluded.
‘Don’t mind him, he’s never annoyed for long,’ said Veena apologetically. ‘He doesn’t like being left out of things that interest him. When we play chaupar together—Kedarnath and I—we have to make sure Bhaskar isn’t in the house, otherwise he insists on playing and beats both of us. Very bothersome.’
‘I can imagine it would be,’ said Haresh.
‘The trouble is that he has no one to talk to about his maths, and sometimes he becomes very withdrawn. His teachers at school are less proud of him than worried about him. Sometimes it seems he deliberately does badly in maths—if a question annoys him, for instance. Once, when he was very young, I remember Maan—that’s my brother—asked him for the answer to 17 minus 6. When he got 11, Maan asked him to subtract 6 again. When he got 5, Maan asked him to subtract 6 yet again. And Bhaskar actually began to cry! “No, no,” he said, “Maan Maama is playing a trick on me. Stop him!” And he wouldn’t speak to him for a week.’
‘Well, for a day or two at least,’ said Kedarnath. ‘But that was before he learned about negative numbers.
Once he did, he insisted on taking bigger things away from smaller things the whole day long. I suppose, the way things are going with my work, he’ll get plenty of practice in that line.’
‘By the way,’ said Veena to her husband anxiously, ‘I think you should go out this afternoon. Bajaj came this morning and, when he didn’t find you in, he said he would drop by at about three.’
From her expression and his, Haresh guessed that Bajaj might be a creditor.
‘Once the strike’s over, things will improve,’ said Kedarnath a bit apologetically to Haresh. ‘I’m a little over-extended at present.’
‘The trouble is,’ said Veena, ‘that there’s so much mistrust. And the local leaders make it much worse. Because my father’s so busy with his department and the legislature, Kedarnath tries to help him by keeping in touch with his constituency. So when there’s trouble of some kind, people often come to him. But this time, when Kedarnath tried to mediate, although—I know I shouldn’t be saying this and he doesn’t like me to, but it’s quite true—although he’s quite well-liked and respected by people on both sides, the shoemakers’ leaders have undermined all his efforts—just because he’s a trader.’
‘Well, that’s not quite it,’ said Kedarnath, but decided to defer his explanation until he and Haresh were alone. He had closed his eyes again. Haresh looked a little concerned.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Veena to Haresh. ‘He’s not asleep or bored or even praying before lunch.’ Her husband opened his eyes quickly. ‘He does it all the time,’ she explained. ‘Even at our wedding—but it was less obvious behind those strings of flowers.’
She got up to see if the rice was ready. After the men had been served and had eaten, old Mrs Tandon came in for a short while to exchange a few words. Upon hearing that Haresh Khanna was originally from Delhi she asked him whether he belonged to the Khannas of Neel Darvaza or those who lived in Lakkhi Kothi. When Haresh said he was from Neel Darvaza, she told him she had visited it once as a girl.
Haresh described a few changes, recounted a few personal anecdotes, praised the simple but tasty vegetarian food that the two women had prepared, and was a hit with the old lady.
‘My son has to travel a lot,’ she confided to Haresh, ‘and no one feeds him properly on the way. Even here, if it wasn’t for me—’
‘Quite right,’ said Veena, attempting to take the wind out of her sails. ‘It is so important for a man to be treated as a child. In matters of food, of course. Kedarnath—I mean Bhaskar’s father’—she corrected herself as her mother-in-law shot a look at her—‘simply loves the food his mother prepares. It’s a pity men don’t like being sung to sleep with lullabies.’
Haresh’s eyes twinkled and almost disappeared between his eyelids, but he kept his lips steady.
‘I wonder if Bhaskar will continue to like the food I prepare,’ continued Veena. ‘Probably not. When he gets married—’
Kedarnath held up his hand. ‘Really,’ he said, in mild reproof.
Haresh noticed that Kedarnath’s palm was badly scarred.
‘Now what have I done?’ asked Veena innocently, but she changed the subject. Her husband had a decency which rather frightened her, and she didn’t want to be judged badly by him.
‘You know, I blame myself for Bhaskar’s obsession with mathematics,’ she continued. ‘I named him Bhaskar after the sun. Then, when he was a year old, someone told me that one of our ancient mathematicians was called Bhaskar, and now our Bhaskar can’t live without his mathematics. Names are terribly important. My father wasn’t in town when I was born, and my mother named me Veena, thinking it would please him because he’s so fond of music. But as a result I’ve become obsessed with music, and I can’t live without it either.’
‘Really?’ said Haresh. ‘And do you play the veena?’
‘No,’ laughed Veena, her eyes shining. ‘I sing. I sing. I can’t live without singing.’
Old Mrs Tandon got up and left the room.
After a while, with a shrug, Veena followed her.
4.2
When the men were left alone, Haresh—who had been sent to Brahmpur for a few days to purchase some materials by his employers, the Cawnpore Leather & Footwear Company—turned to Kedarnath and said: ‘Well, I’ve been around the markets during the last couple of days and have got some idea of what goes on there, or at least what is supposed to go on there. But despite all this running around, I don’t think I’ve been able to make complete sense of it. Especially your system of credit—what with all these chits and promissory notes and so on. And why have the small manufacturers—who make shoes in their own homes—gone on strike? Surely it must cause them terrible hardship. And it must be very bad for traders like yourself who buy directly from them.’
‘Well,’ said Kedarnath, passing his hand through his slightly greyed hair, ‘about the chit system—it confused me too at the beginning. As I mentioned, we were forced out of Lahore at the time of Partition and even then I was not exactly in the footwear trade. I did happen to go through Agra and Kanpur on the way here and you’re quite right, Kanpur has nothing like the system that we have here. But have you been to Agra?’
‘Yes,’ said Haresh. ‘I have. But that was before I entered the industry.’
‘Well, Agra has a system somewhat similar to ours.’ And Kedarnath outlined it roughly.
Because they were perennially short of cash, the traders paid the shoemakers partly with post-dated chits. The shoemakers could only get cash to buy raw materials by discounting these chits elsewhere. They had felt for years that the traders had been squeezing a kind of unwarranted credit out of them. Finally, when the traders, as a body, had tried to winch up the proportion of chit to cash, the shoemakers had struck.
‘And of course, you’re right,’ Kedarnath added, ‘the strike hurts everyone—they could starve and we could be ruined.’
‘I suppose the shoemakers would claim,’ said Haresh, with a meditative air, ‘that as a result of the chit system they are the ones who are financing your expansion.’
There was no tone of accusation in Haresh’s voice, simply the curiosity of a pragmatic man trying to get facts and attitudes straight. Kedarnath responded to his interest and went on:
‘That’s indeed what they claim,’ he agreed. ‘But it is also their own expansion, the expansion of the whole market, that they are financing,’ he said. ‘And, besides, it is only a portion of their payment that is made by post-dated chits. Most of it is still made by cash. I’m afraid that everyone has begun to see matters in black and white, with the traders usually being the ones who are painted black. It’s a good thing that the Home Minister, L.N. Agarwal, comes from a trading community. He’s the MLA for a part of this area, and he does at least see our side of the matter. My wife’s father doesn’t get along well with him at all politically—or even personally, really—but, as I tell Veena when she’s in a mood to listen, Agarwal understands the ways of business better than her father does.’
‘Well, do you think that you could take me around Misri Mandi in the afternoon?’ asked Haresh. ‘I’ll get a more informed perspective that way.’
It was interesting, thought Haresh, that the two powerful—and rival—Ministers should represent contiguous constituencies.
Kedarnath was in two minds as to whether to agree, and Haresh must have seen this in his face. Kedarnath had been impressed by Haresh’s technical knowledge of shoe manufacture, and by his enterprising spirit, and was thinking of proposing a business connection. Perhaps, he thought, the Cawnpore Leather & Footwear Company would be interested in buying shoes directly from him. After all, it sometimes happened that companies like CLFC received small orders from shoe stores, perhaps for 5,000 pairs of a particular kind of shoe, and it was not worth their while to retool their own plant to fulfil such orders. In such a case, if Kedarnath could ensure that he got shoes from local Brahmpur shoemakers that fulfilled CLFC’s quality requirements, and shipped them to Kanpur, it might work out well both for
him and for Haresh’s employers.
However, these were disturbed days, everyone was under great financial pressure, and the impression that Haresh might obtain of the reliability or efficiency of the shoe trade in Brahmpur would not be a favourable one.
But Haresh’s small kindness to his son and his respectful attitude to his mother tilted the balance. ‘All right, we’ll go,’ he said. ‘But the market will really only open later, towards the evening—even at the level to which the strike has reduced it. The Brahmpur Shoe Mart, where I have my stall, opens at six. But I have a suggestion in the meanwhile. I’ll take you to see a few places where shoes are actually made. It’ll be a change for you from the conditions of manufacture that you’ve seen in England—or at your Kanpur factory.’
Haresh agreed readily.
As they walked downstairs, with the afternoon sunlight falling on them from above through the layers of grating, Haresh thought how similar in design this house was to his foster-father’s house in Neel Darvaza—though of course, much smaller.
At the corner of the alley, where it opened out into a slightly broader and more crowded lane, there was a paan stand. They stopped. ‘Plain or sweet?’ asked Kedarnath.
‘Plain, with tobacco.’
For the next five minutes, as they walked along together, Haresh did not say anything because he kept the paan in his mouth without swallowing it. He would spit it out later into an opening in the small drain that ran along the side of the alley. But for the moment, under the pleasant intoxication of the tobacco, amid the bustle all around him, the shouts and chatter and the sound of bicycle-bells, cow-bells, and bells from the Radhakrishna Temple, he was again reminded of the alley near his foster-father’s house in Old Delhi where he had been brought up after his parents died.
As for Kedarnath, though he had got a plain paan for himself, he did not speak much either. He would be taking this silk-shirted young man to one of the poorest parts of the city, where the jatav shoemakers lived and worked in conditions of wretched squalor, and he wondered how he would react. He thought of his own sudden fall from wealth in Lahore to the virtual destitution of 1947; the hard-won security he had obtained for Veena and Bhaskar over the last few years; the problems of the present strike and the dangers it would mean for them. That there was some special spark of genius in his son he believed with utter conviction. He dreamed of sending him to a school like Doon, and perhaps later even to Oxford or Cambridge. But times were hard, and whether Bhaskar would obtain the special education he deserved, whether Veena could keep up with the music she craved, whether they could even continue to afford their modest rent, were questions that troubled and aged him.