by Vikram Seth
12.4
Lata told her friend about what had happened since the painful phone call—it seemed years ago—in which Malati had told her about Kabir and had made it plain (in case Lata could not see this herself—but how could she not?) that the match was impossible. They were walking not far from the spot where Lata had suggested to Kabir that they go away by themselves and ignore the closed-minded closed-hearted world around them. ‘Very melodramatic,’ commented Lata about her actions that day.
Malati could tell how hurt Lata must have been.
‘Very adventurous, rather,’ she said reassuringly, thinking, however, that it would have been disastrous if Kabir had agreed to Lata’s scheme. ‘You’re always telling me how bold I am, Lata, but you’ve outdone me.’
‘Have I?’ said Lata. ‘Well, I haven’t spoken or written a word to him since then. I can hardly bear to think of him, though. I thought that by not replying to his letter I could make myself forget him, but it hasn’t worked.’
‘His letter?’ said Malati, surprised. ‘Did he write to you in Calcutta?’
‘Yes. And now that I’ve returned to Brahmpur I keep hearing his name. Just last night Pran mentioned his father, and this morning I heard that he himself had helped at the Pul Mela after the stampede. Veena says he helped her recover her son, who was lost. And walking here with you, where we walked together—’
Lata trailed off into silence. ‘What’s your advice?’ she said after a while.
‘Well,’ said Malati, ‘when we go back, perhaps you’ll let me read his letter. I need to understand the symptoms before I can make my diagnosis.’
‘Here it is,’ said Lata, producing the letter. ‘I wouldn’t let anyone except you read it.’
‘Hmm,’ said Malati. ‘When did—oh, I see, when you went back to your room.’ The letter looked well read. Malati sat down on the root of the banyan tree. ‘You’re sure you don’t mind?’ she said when she was already halfway through.
After she had read it once, she read it again.
‘What are frangrant waters?’ she asked.
‘Oh, that’s a quotation from a guidebook.’ Lata cheered up at the memory.
‘You know, Lata,’ said Malati, folding the letter and handing it back to her, ‘I like it, and he seems quite open and good-hearted. But it reads like the letter of a teenage boy who’d rather be talking than writing to his girlfriend.’
Lata considered her friend’s remark for a while. Something similar had struck her too, but had not reduced the letter’s slow-working effect on her. She reflected that she herself might well be faulted for a lack of maturity. And Malati too. Who, for that matter, was mature? Her elder brother, Arun? Her younger brother, Varun? Her mother? Her eccentric grandfather with his sobs and his stick? And what was the point of being mature anyway? And she thought of her own unbalanced, unsent letter.
‘But it’s more than the letter, Malati,’ she said. ‘He’s going to be mentioned by Pran’s family all the time. And in a few months the cricket season will start and it’ll be impossible to avoid reading about him. Or hearing about him. I’m sure I’ll be able to pick out his name from fifty yards away.’
‘Oh, do stop moaning, Lata, in that feeble way,’ said Malati with as much impatience as affection.
‘What?’ exclaimed Lata, outraged out of her mournfulness. She glared at her friend.
‘You need to do something,’ said Malati decisively. ‘Something outside your studies. Anyway, your final exams are almost a year away, and this is the term when people take things easy.’
‘I do sing now, thanks to you.’
‘Oh, no,’ said Malati, ‘that’s not what I meant at all. If anything, you should stop singing raags and start singing film songs.’
Lata laughed, thinking of Varun and his gramophone.
‘It’s a pity this isn’t Nainital,’ continued Malati.
‘You mean, so that I could ride and row and skate?’ said Lata.
‘Yes,’ said Malati.
‘The problem is,’ said Lata, ‘if I row I’ll only think of the frangrant waters, and if I ride I’ll think of him riding his bicycle. And anyway I can neither ride nor row.’
‘Something that is active and takes you out of yourself,’ continued Malati, partly to herself. ‘Some society—how about a literary society?’
‘No,’ said Lata with a shake of her head and a smile. Mr Nowrojee’s soirées or anything resembling them were too close for comfort.
‘A play, then. They’re putting on Twelfth Night. Get a part in the play. That’ll make you laugh at love and life.’
‘My mother wouldn’t stand for my acting in a play,’ said Lata.
‘Don’t be such a mouse, Lata,’ said Malati. ‘Of course she’ll agree. After all, Pran produced Julius Caesar last year and there were a couple of women in it. Not many, not important parts perhaps, but real girl students, not boys dressed up as girls. He was engaged to Savita at the time. Did your mother object? No, she didn’t. She didn’t see the play, but she was delighted at its success. If she didn’t object then, she can’t now. Pran will be on your side. And the students in Patna University and in Delhi too have mixed casts now. This is a new age!’
Lata could only imagine what her mother might have to say about the new age.
‘Yes!’ said Malati with high enthusiasm. ‘It’s being put up by that philosophy teacher, what’s his name—it will come back to me—and auditions are in a week. Female auditions one day, male auditions two days later. Very chaste. Perhaps they’ll even rehearse separately. Nothing that a cautious parent could object to. And it’s for Annual Day, so that lends it an additional stamp of respectability. You need something like that or you’ll just wilt away. Activity—furious, unmeditative activity, in lots of company. Take my word for it, that’s what you need. That’s how I got over my musician.’
Lata, though she felt that Malati’s heartbreaking affair with a married musician was hardly a matter to make light of, was grateful to her for trying to cheer her up. After the unsettling strength of her feelings for Kabir, she could understand better what she had not understood before: why Malati had allowed herself to get involved in something as complicated and hazardous as she had.
‘But anyway,’ Malati was saying, ‘I’m bored with Kabir: I want to hear about all the other men you’ve met. Who is this Kanpur prospect? And what about Calcutta? And didn’t your mother plan to take you to Delhi and Lucknow too? They should have been worth at least one man apiece.’
After Lata had rendered her a full account of her voyage, which turned out not to be a catalogue of men so much as a lively description of events, omitting only the indescribable episode in Lucknow, Malati said:
‘It seems to me that the poet and the paan-eater are neck and neck in the matrimonial stakes.’
‘The poet?’ Lata was dumbfounded.
‘Yes, I don’t consider his brother Dipankar or the covenanted Bish to be in the running at all.’
‘Nor do I,’ said Lata, annoyed. ‘But nor, I assure you, is Amit. He is a friend. Just as you are. He was the one person whom I felt I could really talk to in Calcutta.’
‘Go on,’ said Malati. ‘This is very interesting. And did he give you a copy of his poems?’
‘No, he did not,’ said Lata crossly. After a while she reflected that Amit had in fact promised in a vague manner to give her a copy. But if he had really meant to, he could surely have sent one through Dipankar, who had been in Brahmpur and had met Pran and Savita. Lata felt, though, that she was not being quite honest with Malati, and now appended the remark: ‘At least he hasn’t yet.’
‘Well, I’m sorry,’ said Malati, uncontritely. ‘This is a sensitive point with you.’
‘It is not,’ said Lata. ‘It is not sensitive. It’s just irritating. I find it reassuring to think of Amit as a friend, and very unreassuring to think of him in any other way. It’s just because you saddled yourself with a musician that you want to saddle me with a poet.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Malati, please believe me, you’re barking up a non-existent tree.’
‘All right,’ said Malati. ‘Here’s an experiment. Close your eyes, and think of Kabir.’
Lata wanted to refuse to go along. But curiosity is a curious thing, and after hesitating for a while she frowned and complied. ‘Surely it isn’t necessary to close my eyes,’ she said.
‘No, no, close your eyes,’ insisted Malati. ‘Now describe what he’s wearing—and one or two physical features. Don’t open your eyes while you’re speaking.’
Lata said: ‘He’s wearing cricket clothes; a cap; he’s smiling—and—this is ridiculous, Malati.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, his cap’s come off: he’s got wavy hair, and broad shoulders, and nice even teeth. Rather a—what do they call it in silly romantic novels?—an aquiline nose. What is the purpose of all this?’
‘All right, now think of Haresh.’
‘I’m trying,’ said Lata. ‘All right, I have him in focus now. He’s wearing a silk shirt—cream-coloured—and fawn trousers. Oh—and those horrible co-respondent shoes I told you about.’
‘Features?’
‘He’s got small eyes, but they’ve crinkled up very nicely into a smile—they’ve almost disappeared.’
‘Is he chewing paan?’
‘No, thank God. He’s drinking a cup of cold chocolate. Pheasant’s, he said it was called.’
‘And now Amit.’
‘All right,’ sighed Lata. She tried to picture him, but his features remained vague. After a while she said: ‘He refuses to come into focus.’
‘Oh,’ said Malati, with something like disappointment in her voice. ‘But what’s he wearing?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Lata. ‘How odd. Am I allowed to think instead of imagine?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Malati.
But try as she might, Lata could not imagine what kind of shirts and trousers and shoes Amit wore.
‘Where are you?’ asked Malati. ‘A house? A street? A park?’
‘A cemetery,’ said Lata.
‘And what are you doing?’ said Malati, laughing.
‘Talking in the rain. Oh yes, he has an umbrella. Would that count as an item of clothing?’
‘All right,’ admitted Malati. ‘I was wrong. But trees do grow, you know.’
Lata refused to follow up this unprofitable speculation. A little later, as they returned to the house for the promised tea, she said: ‘There’ll be no avoiding him, Malati. I’m bound to meet him. When he helped out after the disaster, that wasn’t the mark of “just a teenage boy”. He did that because he felt he had to, not because he meant me to hear about it.’
Malati said: ‘What you have got to do is to build up your life without him, intolerable though that may appear at first. Accept the fact that your mother will never accept him. That is an absolute given. You’re right, you’re bound to bump into him sooner or later, and the one thing that you must make sure of is that you have very little idle time. Yes, a play’s just the thing for you. You should act as Olivia.’
‘You must think me a fool,’ said Lata.
‘Well, foolish,’ said Malati.
‘It’s terrible, Malati,’ Lata continued. ‘I want to meet him more than anything. And I’ve told my Co-respondent to correspond. He asked at the station, and I couldn’t bear to be mean to him when he’d been so helpful to Ma and me.’
‘Oh, there’s no harm in that,’ said Malati. ‘So long as you don’t either dislike or love him, you can correspond with him. And didn’t he make it clear that he was still half in love with someone else?’
‘Yes,’ said Lata, rather thoughtfully. ‘Yes, he did.’
12.5
Two days later Lata got a short note from Kabir asking her whether she was still annoyed with him. Couldn’t they meet at the Brahmpur Literary Society on Friday? He would only go if there was a chance of meeting her.
At first Lata thought of asking Malati once again what she should do. Then, partly because Malati could hardly be expected to manage her love-life in every detail, and partly because Malati would probably have told her not to go and to ignore the letter, Lata decided to consult herself and the monkeys.
She took a walk, scattered some peanuts to the monkeys on the cliff, and was the centre of their approving attention for a while. During the Pul Mela the monkeys had been royally feasted, but now it was back to normal lean times; and very few people paused to consider their welfare.
Having performed a generous action, Lata felt she could think more clearly. Kabir had once before waited for her in vain at the Brahmpur Literary Society. He had even had to eat some of Mrs Nowrojee’s cake. Lata felt she could not inflict such an experience on him again. She wrote him a short note:
Dear Kabir,
I have got your note, but will not be going to the Nowrojees’ this Friday. I got your letter too when I was in Calcutta. It made me think over and remember everything. I am not annoyed with you in any way; please do not think so. But I feel that there is no purpose at all in our writing or meeting. There would be a lot of pain and very little point.
Lata
After reading over her note three times, and wondering whether to rewrite it without the last sentence, Lata became impatient with herself and posted it as it was.
She did visit Prem Nivas that day, and was relieved to discover that Kabir was not visiting Bhaskar at the time.
A couple of days after the Monsoon Term began, Malati and Lata went to the auditions for Twelfth Night. A nervous young philosophy teacher with a lively interest in the theatre was directing the Annual Day play this year. The auditions—it was the day for female auditions—took place not in the university auditorium but in the staff room of the Philosophy Department. It was five o’clock in the afternoon. About fifteen girls were gathered there, chattering nervously in knots, or just looking at Mr Barua with fascinated anxiety. Lata recognized several girls from the English Department, a couple even from her year, but none whom she knew very well. Malati had come along with her in order to ensure that she didn’t back out at the last moment. ‘I’ll audition as well, if you want.’
‘But don’t you have some of your practicals in the afternoon?’ asked Lata. ‘If you get a part and have to rehearse—’
‘I won’t get a part,’ said Malati firmly.
Mr Barua made the girls stand up one by one and read various passages from the play. There were only three female parts and, besides, Mr Barua had not decided definitely that the part of Viola would go to a girl, so the competition was severe. Mr Barua read every role—male or female—other than the one that the auditioner was reading, and he read them so well, discarding entirely the nervousness of his ordinary manner, that many of the girls in the audience, and one or two who were auditioning, started giggling.
Mr Barua first made them read Viola’s part beginning: ‘Good madam, let me see your face.’ Then, depending upon what they made of it, he asked them to read something else, either from Olivia’s role or from Maria’s, but only in Lata’s case from both. Some girls read in a singsong voice or had some other irksome trait of speech; Mr Barua, reverting to his nervous manner, cut them off with: ‘Good, thank you, thank you very much, that was good, very good, very good indeed, I have an excellent idea now, well, good, good—’ until the girl who was reading got the idea, and (in a couple of cases, tearfully) returned to her chair.
After the auditions, Mr Barua said to Lata, within the hearing of a couple of other girls: ‘That was well read, Miss Mehra, I’m surprised I haven’t seen you on, well, on stage before.’ Overcome by embarrassment he turned to gather his papers.
Lata was delighted with the nervous compliment. Malati told her that she had better prepare Mrs Rupa Mehra for the fact that she was bound to get a part.
‘Oh, I’m not bound to get a part at all,’ said Lata.
‘Make sure that Pran’s in the room when you bring up the subject,’ said
Malati.
Pran, Savita, Mrs Rupa Mehra, and Lata were sitting together after dinner that night when Lata said:
‘Pran, what do you think of Mr Barua?’
Pran paused in his reading. ‘The philosophy lecturer?’
‘Yes—he’s doing the Annual Day play this year, and I wanted to know whether you think he’ll direct it well.’
‘Mm, yes,’ said Pran. ‘I’d heard he was doing it. Twelfth Night or As You Like It or something. Makes a good contrast to Julius Caesar. He’s very good—he’s very good as an actor as well, you know,’ continued Pran. ‘But they say he’s rather poor as a lecturer.’
After a moment’s pause Lata said: ‘It’s Twelfth Night. I went to the auditions, and it’s possible I might get a part in it, so I thought I’d better be forewarned about things.’
Pran, Savita, and Mrs Rupa Mehra all looked up. Mrs Rupa Mehra paused in her sewing and took in her breath sharply.
‘Wonderful,’ said Pran enthusiastically. ‘Well done!’
‘Which part?’ asked Savita.
‘No,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra vehemently, shaking her needle for emphasis. ‘My daughter is not going to act in any play. No.’ She glared at Lata over the top of her reading glasses.
There was silence all around. After a while Mrs Rupa Mehra added: ‘Not at all.’
After a further while, not encountering any response, she went on: ‘Boys and girls together—acting!’ It was obvious that such a tawdry, immoral thing could not be countenanced.
‘Like in Julius Caesar last year,’ ventured Lata.
‘You be quiet,’ snapped her mother. ‘No one has asked you to speak. Have you ever heard of Savita wanting to act? To act on the stage with hundreds of people staring? And going to those nightly gatherings with boys—’
‘Rehearsals,’ prompted Pran.
‘Yes, yes, rehearsals,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra impatiently. ‘It was on the tip of my tongue. I won’t have it. Think of the shame. What would your father have said?’
‘Now, now, Ma,’ said Savita. ‘Don’t get upset. It’s just a play.’