Arun broke away from her—for while she spoke she had drawn closer to him, winding a lock of his hair around her finger—“What is it?” he said through clenched teeth. “What are you trying to tell me?”
He knew all too well, for it was his own thoughts she was expressing, digging up what he was trying to suppress and hide from himself.
Last year on her birthday Dipti had cajoled Arun into coming to her house—“Yes, everyone knows you hate parties and all you do is sit there like a sick monkey—but you’ve got to come! Please? For me? Arun-ji?” He had sat at the side watching the others dance, their friends from the college and some other friends she had from prominent political families like her own. Dipti herself was a terrific dancer and she had often tried to teach him, but he stubbornly refused to have anything to do with it. He frowned while he watched them, but secretly he enjoyed seeing her spin around on her slim feet, wriggling and waggling inside her tight silk kameez, her hair and long gauze veil flying behind her.
After her father’s disgrace, she stopped having parties. In fact, it was Arun who asked her, a few days before her birthday, “Aren’t you going to invite me?” She didn’t answer for a while but turned away her face; then she said in a low voice, “Would you come?” “What do you mean, would I come?” he answered her, doing his best to sound cross. “But of course if you don’t want me—” Before he could finish, she had pressed her mouth against his, and he returned her kisses, pretending not to feel her tears on his cheek.
That evening he told his mother, “It’s Dipti’s birthday on Thursday.”
“So?”
In the past, when he had gone to Dipti’s birthday party, it was Indu who had brought the present for him to take. He relied on his mother’s fine taste, and she always got a discount at the handicrafts emporium where she worked; besides, he had no money of his own.
“Don’t tell me they’re having a party,” Indu said. “Surely they wouldn’t, at such a time. And who would go to their house anyway?”
“I’m going.”
“You’ll be the only guest then.”
“Good. Get me a nice present to take, that’s all I’m asking.”
Later, while they were eating and she was serving him what she had cooked, she said: “I’ll get her something very pretty, but give it to her at college. Don’t go to their house,” she pleaded, when he pretended not to understand.
He raised his eyes from his plate and looked at her. He had beautiful eyes, full of manly intelligence. She melted with tenderness for him, and pride, and also fear that he would not fulfill her hopes of him. “Oh I feel sorry for her, poor girl,” she said. “And I’ve always liked her, you know that. But people are very cruel—the world’s very cruel, once you’ve lost your place in it.” She stared into the distance for a moment, as though into her own past, before continuing: “If you go, her mother will get a wrong idea . . . Why aren’t you eating?” for he had pushed his plate away and got up.
“Just get me a present,” he said and walked away from her.
She did bring a very beautiful gift for Dipti—even better than anything she had brought for her before—and Arun took it with him. Although, as Indu had predicted, he was the only guest to celebrate Dipti’s birthday, her mother had attempted to reproduce the atmosphere of previous occasions. The servants had been made to shine the silver and wash the chandeliers, and the pink birthday cake she had ordered was as huge as for the previous contingent of thirty guests. But she did not manage to dispel the fog of gloom that had settled over the house—not even when the twenty birthday candles were lit and flickered on their pastel stems over the lake of pink icing with its festive inscription in green. Dipti did her best to be cheerful and smiling, in gratitude to Arun for having come and also to her mother for her efforts. These never ceased—the mother bustled about and gave orders to the servants and, a fixed smile on her face, tried to get her husband and Arun to join her in singing “Happy Birthday,” and when they wouldn’t, she sang it herself. But most of her hard work was expended on Arun, for whom she couldn’t smile enough. She had always been gracious to him, to demonstrate her acceptance of him as Dipti’s friend, but now there was something desperate in her attitude, as if she were not bestowing but herself craving acceptance.
Dipti’s father too had graciously patronized Arun in the past, sometimes singling him out among the crowd of admirers to address him with his pungently humorous remarks. Now Arun was their sole recipient, for there was no one else to hear them. And just as the mother had ordered the same size cake as for a large party, so the father, as voluminous as ever in his starched white muslin, spread out all his store of comment and conversation for Arun’s sake alone. Supplying great gusts of laughter himself, he did not notice that Arun could only summon the faintest smile in response to his best jokes. And then, when he changed his topic and with it his mood, he needed no response to his words other than his own mighty anger. This was when he spoke of his case and of his enemies who had brought it against him: and from there he went on to announce what he would do to all of them, once he had cleared his good name and confounded all their schemes and dirty tricks. His voice rose, his face swelled out in a fearful way. Dipti implored, “Daddy!” while his wife laid a hand on his arm to restrain him: “Leave off,” she said. Then his anger burst like a boil: “Leave off! I’ll show you how I’ll leave off when I’ve crushed them under my feet and plucked out their eyeballs and torn out their tongues—rogues! Liars! I’ll show them all, I’ll teach them such a lesson—” His hands fumbled in the air as though to pluck down more threats—and then fumbled in a different way like those of a drowning man attempting to save himself. His face swollen to a monstrous color, his words changed to a gasp, he keeled over in the throne-like chair on which he was seated. His wife screamed, servants came running; Dipti and Arun tried to prevent him from falling out of the chair, holding his huge throbbing body in their arms. Bereft of his guidance, everyone was calling out confused orders, several hands plucked at him to undo the studs on his kurta. “I’m dying,” he gasped. “They’ve killed me.”
Dipti’s father did not die, but he had suffered a stroke and was taken to hospital. There he lay in a private room, monstrous and immobile, while his wife sat at his feet, moaning “What will become of us?” The sight and sound of her drove him mad, but he could neither shout nor throw things at her, and she refused to be driven away. His eyes swiveled imploringly toward Dipti, who had taken over the duty of caring for him. Fully occupied with her father, she could no longer attend her classes, and once or twice Arun visited her in her father’s hospital room. But he had always been impatient of anyone’s sickness—whenever Indu felt unwell, she suppressed it in his presence as long as possible—and the sight of Dipti’s father in his present state was intolerable to him. And almost worse, in a different way, was the mother groaning “What will become of us?” and then looking with begging eyes at Arun, as though he alone held the answer to that question.
The final examination was drawing near, and Arun no longer had time to visit the hospital, or for anything except his studies. His mother was delighted with the way he devoted himself to his work, and she did everything she could to encourage him. She fed him his favorite foods, and in order to buy special delicacies for him, like ham or cheese, she gave up taking a rickshaw to work and went by public transport—though secretly, for she knew how this would upset him, to think of her in the reeking, overcrowded bus, being pushed and even pinched, for she was still attractive enough to attract such unwanted attentions. It was her ambition—and his too, though he never spoke of it—that he should repeat the success of her father who, in the same examination more than half a century earlier, had stood first in the whole University. The gold medal he had won then was one of her most precious possessions. These days she took it out frequently and gazed at it in its velvet-lined case, and also left it open on the table where she served Arun his meals. She was in an unusually good mood, and was completely fre
e of the headaches and depression that so often plagued her.
Unfortunately, Arun’s father Raju again turned up unexpectedly at this time, completely broke, for the film script he had set his hopes on had fallen through. But he was as cheerful as ever, and although he tried to be respectful of his son’s studies, could not refrain from expressing the thoughts tumbling around in his lively mind, or humming the tunes that came bubbling up there. He inquired after Dipti, and when he heard what had happened and how she had had to drop out of college, he shook his head in pity for her.
His thoughts reverted to her at odd moments—for instance, at night while he was lying on the couch and Arun sat over his studies at the table, he suddenly said, “But she was a pretty girl. Really special. Intelligent but oomphy too.”
Arun looked up, frowning: “What sort of word is that?”
“Oh, you know—like in ‘She’s oomphy—toomphy—just my moomphy,’” and he sang it, in case Arun didn’t know this popular Hindi film song.
Indu thumped on the wall: “Are you disturbing Arun?”
“Oh no, I’m helping him with his physics!” Raju called back. After a while, he spoke again: “How you must miss her—oh oh, terrible! I know with Indu, when I had measles—can you imagine a youth of nineteen going down with measles—for three weeks I couldn’t see her and I thought I would surely die with longing for her . . . Yes yes, all right!” he called when Indu thumped again. “I’m already asleep!”
After a few days of this—“He’s driving me crazy,” Arun complained to Indu. That night, when Raju already lay on the couch that was his allotted space, she called him into the bedroom. Raju raised his eyebrows at his son in pleased surprise; Arun too was surprised, and more so as the minutes passed and Raju was not sent out again. Arun found it difficult to return to his books. His attention was strained toward the other room; he heard their voices rising in argument till they shushed each other and continued their fight in whispers. Finally these too ceased, but by now Arun was completely incapable of concentrating on his work. What were they doing in there? He could not hear a sound. He walked up and down and cleared his throat, to make them remember he was there; they continued silent, as though holding their breath for fear of disturbing him. He was no longer thinking of them but only of the room and its bed on which they were together, as he and Dipti had been together for so many afternoons.
Dipti’s father was in the news again when the results of the inquiry against him were made public. He had been found guilty on every count—taking money from interested parties, acquiring properties, accepting imported cars and going on shopping trips to Hong Kong in return for favors received—and the report expressed itself in the strongest terms on his conduct. Although he was named as the prime culprit, several senior bureaucrats were drawn into the same web of accusations, as were other members of the cabinet. The whole government was brought under suspicion, the opposition clamored for its resignation, while frantic meetings were held at the highest level to save the situation. By then he had been discharged from the hospital and lay helpless and speechless on his bed at home, with his wife at his feet and Dipti ministering to his needs. No newspapers were allowed into his room, and when he made signs to ask for them, everyone pretended not to understand. All this time Arun had not seen or spoken to Dipti. He had tried to phone her once, from the college—he had no phone at home—but he knew she was in her father’s room, with both parents present, so that it was difficult for him to speak. And while he was groping for words, other students waiting behind him for the phone kept saying, “Come on, hurry up.” After that he had not tried to contact her again.
When the report about her father came out, it gave rise to a lot of discussion in which he refused to participate either at college or at home. When Indu said she had known it all along, that one look at the way they lived had told her that it was all based on bribery and corruption, he cut her short with “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It’s all here—in black and white.”
“Oh yes,” he sneered, “you’re just the type to believe everything that’s written in some rag of a newspaper.”
“The Times of India,” she protested—but he was already out of the house and on one of his furious walks.
He had not yet returned when his parents were getting ready for bed. “He’s thinking of the girl,” Raju said to Indu in the bedroom where he was still allowed to remain. “He feels for her—poor child, what is her future now? He loves her,” he concluded in a musing, sentimental voice.
“He doesn’t see her. Of course he doesn’t! He’s much too busy studying for his exam to waste his time on a girl.”
Raju smiled: “Time spent on a girl is never wasted.”
“That’s your philosophy, but thank God it’s not his.”
“Yes, thank God,” Raju echoed but continued smiling. His arms clasped behind his head, his eyes meditating on the ceiling, he began to recite in a soft poetic voice: “‘My thoughts buzz like bees around the blossom of your—’”
“Sh!” she said, putting her hand over his mouth. “He’s come home . . . Arun?”
She had to call twice more before Arun answered: “What do you want? Why do you have to keep disturbing me?”
“Are you studying?”
“Well, what do you think I’m doing?”
“He’s studying,” Indu said to Raju. She took her hand from his mouth: “Go on, but keep your voice down.”
Raju continued: “‘My sting is transformed into desire to suck the essence of your beauty . . .’ Do you like it?”
“Is it something you made up? I don’t know why you can never think of anything except bees and flowers.”
“Should I turn off the light?”
She assented, yawning to show how tired she was. “I must get to sleep. I have to be up early to go to work, unlike some people.”
But once the light was off, it turned out she wasn’t so tired after all. Although they tried to make no noise, they became so lively together that Arun in the next room had to cover his ears, in an effort to muffle the sounds from the bedroom as well as those pounding in his own head.
Next day Arun had an important pre-exam tutorial, but instead of attending, he went to see Dipti. He prepared himself to find her house as silent and gloomy as on her birthday, but instead it was in turmoil. They were moving out—having lost his official position, the father also lost his official residence, and all its contents were being carried into cars and moving vans parked around the house. In supervising this operation, Dipti’s mother had regained her former bustling, domineering personality. She was on the front lawn, fighting with a government clerk who had been sent to ensure that no government property was removed. Whenever he challenged a piece of furniture being carried away, she told him that whatever was not theirs by private purchase had been earned by years of selfless public service, and overruling his protests, she waved the coolies on with a lordly gesture.
Arun found her attitude to himself completely changed. She greeted him haughtily, and when he tried to enter the house in search of Dipti, she barred his way. She told him that her daughter was busy, and working herself up, went on indignantly, “My goodness, the girl has a sick father to look after, and here we are in the middle of a move to a big house of our own, not to mention other important family matters—you can’t expect to walk in here whenever you please to take up our time.”
Arun flushed angrily but was not to be put off. When she turned away to resume her argument with the clerk, he strode past her into the house. He picked his way among sofa-sets, chandeliers and china services, through the courtyard full of packing cases and cooking pots to the family rooms at the back of the house. All the doors here were wide open except one: he did not hesitate to turn its handle and found himself in the father’s room. The invalid had been placed in an armchair, with Dipti beside him feeding him something out of a cup.
Her reception of him made Arun even more angry than
her mother’s: “What a lovely surprise,” she said in a bright, social voice. “And I was thinking of you only yesterday.”
“I was thinking of you,” he replied, but in a very different tone, his voice lowered and charged. “That’s why I’m here.”
“I was going to send you a note—to wish you good luck. For your finals. Isn’t it next week? You must be so jittery, poor Arun.”
“I have to talk to you.”
“One more spoon, Daddy, for me.” She put it in his mouth, but whatever was on it came dribbling out again.
“I must see you. Alone. Where can we go?” He didn’t know if Dipti’s father understood anything or not, and he didn’t care. He thought only to leap over all the barriers between Dipti and himself—her huge helpless father, the house in upheaval, her mother, and most of all Dipti’s own manner toward him.
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