A Suitable Boy

by Vikram Seth

  Amit for his part, noticing this unconscious and intimate look pass between them, realized that Lata must know Kabir quite well. He lost the thread of his thoughts for a moment, and improvised some guff about the resemblance between cricket and poetry. He then continued to say what he had meant to, which was that it was an honour to be reading in the city associated with the name of the Barsaat Mahal and the Urdu poet Mast. Perhaps it was not widely known that Mast, apart from being a famous writer of ghazals, was also a satirist. What exactly he would have made of the recent elections one could not tell, but he would certainly have made something of the unscrupulous energy with which they had been conducted, nowhere more so than in Purva Pradesh. Amit himself had been inspired to write a short poem after reading the morning’s edition of the Brahmpur Chronicle. In lieu of ‘Vande Mataram’ or any such patriotic opening hymn he would lay his poem before this audience as a Victory Hymn to their elected or soon-to-be-elected sovereigns.

  He took a sheet of paper out of his pocket and began.

  ‘God of pebbles, help us, now the poll is past,

  Not to spurn the small bribes but to snatch the vast,

  To attack the right cause, to defend the wrong,

  To exploit the helpless and protect the strong.

  To our peculations and our victims add.

  Mighty Lord, we pray thee, make us very bad. . . .’

  There were three more stanzas, referring among other things to a few local contests that Amit had read about in the newspaper—one of which made both Pran and Lata sit up: it referred in a flippant manner to a landowner and a land-snatcher who had first come together and then bounced apart like billiard balls in the cause of garnering the vote.

  Most of the audience enjoyed the poem, especially the local references, and laughed. Mr Makhijani, however, was not amused.

  ‘He is making mockery of our Constitution. He is making mockery,’ said the patriotic bard.

  Amit went on to read a dozen poems, including ‘The Fever Bird’, which had so haunted Lata when she first read it. Professor Mishra too thought it very good, listened intently, and nodded his head.

  Several of the poems Amit read were not to be found in his books; for the most part they had been written more recently. One, however, about the death of an old aunt of his, which Lata found very moving, had been composed some time before. Amit had kept it aside and rarely read it. Lata noticed that Pran’s head was bowed as he listened to this poem, and indeed the whole audience was quite still.

  After the reading and applause was over, Amit said that he would be happy to answer any questions.

  ‘Why is it that you do not write in Bengali, your mother tongue?’ asked a challenging voice. The young man who spoke appeared to be quite angry.

  Amit had been asked this question—and had asked himself this question—many times before. His answer was that his Bengali was not good enough for him to be able to express himself in the manner he could in English. It wasn’t a question of choice. Someone who had been trained all his life to play the sitar could not become a sarangi player because his ideology or his conscience told him to. ‘Besides,’ Amit added, ‘we are all accidents of history and must do what we are best at without fretting too much about it. Even Sanskrit came to India from outside.’

  Mrs Supriya Joshi, the songbird of free verse, now stood up and said:

  ‘Why do you use rhyming? Moon, June, Moon, June? A poet must be free—free as a bird—a fever bird.’ Smiling, she sat down.

  Amit said he rhymed because he liked to. He liked the sound, and it helped give pith and memorability to what might otherwise become diffuse. He no more felt chained by it than a musician felt chained by the rules of a raag.

  Mrs Supriya Joshi, unconvinced, remarked to Mr Makhijani: ‘All is rhyming, chiming, in his poems, like Nowrojee’s triolets.’

  Professor Mishra asked a question about Amit’s influences: did he detect the shadow of Eliot in his writing? He referred to several lines in Amit’s poetry, and compared them to lines of his own favourite modern poet.

  Amit tried to answer the question as well as he could, but he thought that Eliot was not one of his major influences.

  ‘Have you ever been in love with an English girl?’

  Amit sat up sharply, then relaxed. It was a sweet, anxious old lady from the back of the room.

  ‘Well, I—I don’t feel I can answer that before an audience,’ he said. ‘When I asked for questions, I should have added that I would answer any questions so long as they were not too private—or, for that matter, too public. Government policy, for instance, would be out.’

  An eager young student, blinking in adoration, and unable to restrain the nervousness in his voice, said: ‘Of the 863 lines of poetry in your two published books, thirty-one refer to trees, twenty-two have the word “love” or “loving” in them, and eighteen consist of words of only one syllable. How significant is this?’

  Lata noticed Kabir smile; she was smiling herself. Amit attempted to extricate an intelligent question out of what had just been said and talked a little about his themes. ‘Does that answer the question?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ nodded the young man happily.

  ‘Do you believe in the virtue of compression?’ asked a determined academic lady.

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Amit warily. The lady was rather fat.

  ‘Why, then, is it rumoured that your forthcoming novel—to be set, I understand, in Bengal—is to be so long? More than a thousand pages!’ she exclaimed reproachfully, as if he were personally responsible for the nervous exhaustion of some future dissertationist.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know how it grew to be so long,’ said Amit. ‘I’m very undisciplined. But I too hate long books: the better, the worse. If they’re bad, they merely make me pant with the effort of holding them up for a few minutes. But if they’re good, I turn into a social moron for days, refusing to go out of my room, scowling and growling at interruptions, ignoring weddings and funerals, and making enemies out of friends. I still bear the scars of Middlemarch.’

  ‘How about Proust?’ asked a distracted-looking lady, who had begun knitting the moment the poems stopped.

  Amit was surprised that anyone read Proust in Brahmpur. He had begun to feel rather happy, as if he had breathed in too much oxygen.

  ‘I’m sure I’d love Proust,’ he replied, ‘if my mind was more like the Sundarbans: meandering, all-absorptive, endlessly, er, sub-reticulated. But as it is, Proust makes me weep, weep, weep with boredom. Weep,’ he added. He paused and sighed. ‘Weep, weep, weep,’ he continued emphatically. ‘I weep when I read Proust, and I read very little of him.’

  There was a shocked silence: why should anyone feel so strongly about anything? It was broken by Professor Mishra.

  ‘Needless to say, many of the most lasting monuments of literature are rather, well, bulky.’ He smiled at Amit. ‘Shakespeare is not merely great but grand, as it were.’

  ‘But only as it were,’ said Amit. ‘He only looks big in bulk. And I have my own way of reducing that bulk,’ he confided. ‘You may have noticed that in a typical Collected Shakespeare all the plays start on the right-hand side. Sometimes, the editors bung a picture in on the left to force them to do so. Well, what I do is to take my pen-knife and slit the whole book up into forty or so fascicles. That way I can roll up Hamlet or Timon—and slip them into my pocket. And when I’m wandering around—in a cemetery, say—I can take them out and read them. It’s easy on the mind and on the wrists. I recommend it to everyone. I read Cymbeline in just that way on the train here; and I never would have otherwise.’

  Kabir smiled, Lata burst out laughing, Pran was appalled, Mr Makhijani gaped and Mr Nowrojee looked as if he were about to faint dead away.

  Amit appeared pleased with the effect.

  In the silence that followed, a middle-aged man in a black suit stood up. Mr Nowrojee began to tremble slightly. The man coughed a couple of times.

  ‘I have formulated a con
ception as the result of your reading,’ he announced to Amit. ‘It has to do with the atomic age and the place of poetry, and the influence of Bengal. Many things have happened since the War, of course. I have been listening for an hour to the very scintillation of India, that is what I said to myself when I formulated my conception. . . .’

  Immensely pleased with himself, he continued in this vein for the oral equivalent of about six paragraphs, punctuated with ‘You understand?’ Amit nodded, less amiably each time. Some people got up, and Mr Nowrojee in his distress pounded an imaginary gavel on the table.

  Finally the man said to Amit: ‘Would you care to comment?’

  ‘No thank you,’ said Amit. ‘But I appreciate your sharing your remarks with us. Any other questions?’ he asked, emphasizing the last word.

  But there were no more questions. It was time for Mrs Nowrojee’s tea and her famous little cakes, the delight of dentists.

  18.3

  Amit had hoped to talk to Lata a little, but he was mobbed. He had to sign books, he had to eat cake for fear of offending, and the sweet old lady, foiled once, insisted on asking him again whether he had been in love with an English girl. ‘Now you can answer, there is no audience now,’ she said. Several other people agreed with her. But Amit was spared: Mr Nowrojee, murmuring that his defence of rhyme had been so very heartening and that he himself was an unashamed devotee of rhyme, pressed into Amit’s hand the suppressed triolet, and asked Amit to read it and tell him what he thought. ‘Now, please be quite honest. Honesty such as yours is so refreshing, and only honesty will do,’ said Mr Nowrojee. Amit looked down at the poem in Mr Nowrojee’s thin, small, careful, upright handwriting:

  A TRIOLET TO THE SONGSTRESS OF BENGAL

  Fate snatched away sweet Toru Dutt

  At the soft age of twenty-two.

  The casuarina tree was cut.

  Fate snatched away sweet Toru Dutt.

  No bulbuls haunt its branches but

  Her poems still haunt me and you.

  Fate snatched away sweet Toru Dutt

  At the soft age of twenty-two.

  Meanwhile, Professor Mishra was talking to Pran in another corner of the room. ‘My dear boy,’ he was saying, ‘my commiserations go deeper than words. The sight of your hair, so short still, reminds me of that cruelly abridged life. . . .’

  Pran froze.

  ‘You must take care of your health. You must not undertake new challenges at a time of bereavement—and, of course, family anxiety. Your poor brother, your poor brother,’ said Professor Mishra. ‘Have a cake.’

  ‘Thank you, Professor,’ said Pran.

  ‘So you agree?’ said Professor Mishra. ‘The meeting is too soon, and to subject you to an interview—’

  ‘Agree to what?’ said Pran.

  ‘To withdrawing your candidature, of course. Don’t worry, dear boy, I will handle all the formalities. As you know, the selection committee is meeting on Thursday. It took so long to arrange a date,’ he went on. ‘But finally, in the middle of January, I succeeded in fixing one. And now, alas—but you are a young man, and will have many more opportunities for advancement, here in Brahmpur or elsewhere.’

  ‘Thank you for your concern, Professor Mishra, but I believe I will feel well enough to attend,’ said Pran. ‘That was an interesting question you asked about Eliot,’ he added.

  Professor Mishra, his pallid face still frozen in disapproval at Pran’s unfilial attitude and tempted almost to refer to funeral baked meats, was silent for a while. Then he pulled himself together and said: ‘Yes, I gave a paper here a few months ago entitled “Eliot: Whither?” It is a pity you were unable to attend.’

  ‘I didn’t hear about it till later,’ said Pran. ‘I regretted it for weeks afterwards. Do have a cake, Professor Mishra. Your plate is empty now.’

  Meanwhile Lata and Kabir were talking.

  ‘So you invited him when you came to Calcutta?’ said Lata. ‘Did he come up to your expectations?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Kabir. ‘I enjoy his poetry. But how did you know I went to Calcutta?’

  ‘I have my sources,’ said Lata. ‘And how do you know Amit?’

  ‘Amit, is it?’

  ‘Mr Chatterji, if you like. How do you know him?’

  ‘I don’t—I mean, I didn’t,’ said Kabir, correcting himself. ‘We were introduced by someone.’

  ‘By Haresh Khanna?’

  ‘You really do have your sources,’ said Kabir, looking straight into Lata’s eyes. ‘Perhaps you would care to tell me what I was doing this afternoon.’

  ‘That’s easy,’ said Lata. ‘You were playing cricket.’

  Kabir laughed. ‘That was too easy,’ he said. ‘Yesterday afternoon?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Lata. ‘I really can’t eat this cake,’ she added.

  ‘I’ve put up with some of this cake in the past in the hope of seeing you,’ said Kabir. ‘But you’re worth any amount of chipped enamel.’

  Very charming, thought Lata coldly, and did not respond. Kabir’s compliment seemed rather too facile.

  ‘So, how do you know Amit—I mean Mr Chatterji?’ continued Kabir. His voice had an edge to it.

  ‘What is this, Kabir, an interrogation?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, what is it then?’

  ‘A civil question, which might merit a similar answer,’ said Kabir. ‘I asked out of interest. Do you want me to withdraw it?’

  Lata reflected that the tone of the question had not been civil. It had been jealous. Good!

  ‘No. Let it stand,’ she said. ‘He’s my brother-in-law. I mean,’—and here she flushed—‘he’s not my own brother-in-law but my brother’s.’

  ‘And I imagine you’ve had plenty of opportunity of meeting him in Calcutta.’

  The word Calcutta was like a goad.

  ‘Just what are you trying to get at, Kabir?’ said Lata angrily.

  ‘Just that I’ve been watching him for the last few minutes and during the reading too, and everything he does seems to be aimed at you.’

  ‘Nonsense.’

  ‘Look at him now.’

  Lata turned instinctively; and Amit, who had had half an eye on her while he was attempting not too dishonestly to comment on Nowrojee’s triolet, gave her a smile. Lata smiled back weakly. Amit, however, was soon obscured by the bulk of Professor Mishra.

  ‘And I suppose you take walks?’

  ‘Sometimes—’

  ‘Reading Timon to each other in cemeteries.’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘And I suppose you go up and down the Hooghly on a boat at dawn.’

  ‘Kabir—how dare you, you of all people—’

  ‘And I suppose he writes you letters as well?’ continued Kabir, who looked as if he wanted to shake her.

  ‘What if he did?’ said Lata. ‘What if he does? But he doesn’t. It’s the other man you met, Haresh, who writes to me—and I write back.’

  The colour drained from Kabir’s face. He grabbed her right hand and held it tight.

  ‘Let go,’ whispered Lata. ‘Let me go at once. Or I’ll drop this plate.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ said Kabir. ‘Drop it. It’s probably a Nowrojee heirloom.’

  ‘Please—’ said Lata, tears starting to her eyes. He was actually hurting her physically, but she was very annoyed about her tears. ‘Please don’t, Kabir—’

  He released her hand.

  ‘Ah, Malvolio’s revenge—’ said Mr Barua, coming up to them. ‘Why have you made Olivia cry?’ he asked Kabir.

  ‘I haven’t made her cry,’ said Kabir. ‘No one has an obligation to cry. Any crying of hers is purely voluntary.’

  And with that he left.

  18.4

  Lata, refusing to explain anything to Mr Barua, went to wash her face. She did not return to the room until she felt that it would not be obvious that she had been in tears. But the crowd had thinned, and Pran and Amit were ready to take their leave.

  Amit was staying
at the home of Mr Maitra, the retired Superintendent of Police; but he was having dinner with Pran, Savita, Mrs Rupa Mehra, Lata, Malati and Maan.

  Though Maan, out on bail, was living once again at Prem Nivas, he could not bear to take his meals there. The polls were over, and his father had returned to Brahmpur. He was an angry and grieving man—and wanted Maan with him all the time. He did not know what would happen to his son once a proper charge-sheet was delivered. Everything was collapsing about Mahesh Kapoor’s ears. He hoped that he might at least retain his power in politics. But if he did not succeed even in winning his own seat, he knew how drastically this would weaken his following.

  He had no immediate activity to lose himself in. Some days he received visitors; on other days, he sat and looked out at the garden, saying nothing. The servants knew that he did not wish to be disturbed. Veena would bring him tea. The counting of the vote for his constituency was due to take place a few days from now; he would go to Rudhia for the day. By the evening of the 6th of February he would know if he had won or lost.

  Maan was riding in a tonga to Pran’s house for dinner when he saw Malati Trivedi walking along. He greeted her. She said hello, then suddenly looked awkward.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ said Maan. ‘I haven’t been convicted yet. And Pran says you’re having dinner with us. Get in.’

  Malati, feeling ashamed of her hesitancy, did get in, and they rode towards the university together, not saying much for two such outgoing people.

  Maan had met three of the Chatterjis—Meenakshi, Kakoli and Dipankar—at various times. He remembered Meenakshi most of all: she had stood out at Pran’s wedding—and had made even a hospital room appear a glamorous backdrop for her own dramatic presence. He now looked forward to meeting their brother, whom Lata had mentioned to him during her jail visit. Amit greeted him in a sympathetic and curious manner.