‘Ask your mother if you can borrow her Mugh cook,’ said Lata with sudden inspiration.
Meenakshi gazed at Lata in wonder. ‘What an Einstein you are, Luts!’ she said, and immediately telephoned her mother. Mrs Chatterji rallied to her daughter’s aid. She had two cooks, one for Bengali and one for western food. The Bengali cook was told that he would have to prepare dinner in the Chatterji household that evening, and the Mugh cook, who came from Chittagong and excelled in European food, was dispatched to Sunny Park within the half hour. Meanwhile, Meenakshi had gone off for her canasta lunch with the Shady Ladies and had almost forgotten the tribulations of existence.
She returned in the middle of the afternoon to find a rebellion on her hands. The gramophone was blaring and the chickens were cackling in alarm. The Mugh cook told her as snootily as he could that he was not accustomed to being farmed out in this manner, that he was not used to working in such a small kitchen, that her cook-cum-bearer had behaved insolently towards him, that the fish and chickens that had been bought were none too fresh, and that he needed a certain kind of lemon extract for the soufflé which she had not had the foresight to provide. Hanif for his part was glaring resentfully, and was on the verge of giving notice. He was holding a squawking chicken out in front of him and saying: ‘Feel, feel its breast — Memsahib — this is a young and fresh chicken. Why should I work below this man? Who is he to boss me around in my own kitchen? He keeps saying, “I am Mr Justice Chatterji’s cook. I am Mr Justice Chatterji’s cook.”’
‘No, no, I trust you, I don’t need to—’ cried Meenakshi, shuddering fastidiously and drawing back her red-polished fingernails as her cook pushed the chicken’s feathers aside and offered its breast for her to assay.
Mrs Rupa Mehra, while not displeased at Meenakshi’s discomfiture, did not want to jeopardize this dinner for the boss of her darling son. She was good at making peace between refractory servants, and she now did so. Harmony was restored, and she went into the drawing room to play a game of patience.
Varun had put on the gramophone about half an hour earlier and was playing the same scratchy 78-rpm record again and again: the Hindi film song ‘Two intoxicating eyes’, a song that no one, not even the sentimental Mrs Rupa Mehra, could tolerate after its fifth repetition. Varun had been singing the words to himself moodily and dreamily before Meenakshi returned. In her presence Varun stopped singing, but he continued to rewind the gramophone every few minutes and hum the song softly to himself by way of accompaniment. As he put away the spent needles one by one in the little compartment that fitted into the side of the machine, he reflected gloomily on his own fleeting life and personal uselessness.
Lata took the book on Egyptian mythology down from the shelf, and was about to go into the garden with it when her mother said:
‘Where are you going?’
‘To sit in the garden, Ma.’
‘But it’s so hot, Lata.’
‘I know, Ma, but I can’t read with this music going on.’
‘I’ll tell him to turn it off. All this sun is bad for your complexion. Varun, turn it off.’ She had to repeat her request a few times before Varun heard what she was saying.
Lata took the book into the bedroom.
‘Lata, sit with me, darling,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra.
‘Ma, please let me be,’ said Lata.
‘You have been ignoring me for days,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘Even when I told you your results, your kiss was half-hearted.’
‘Ma, I have not been ignoring you,’ said Lata.
‘You have, you can’t deny it. I feel it — here.’ Mrs Rupa Mehra pointed to the region of her heart.
‘All right, Ma, I have been ignoring you. Now please let me read.’
‘What’s that you’re reading? Let me see the book.’
Lata replaced it on the shelf, and said: ‘All right, Ma, I won’t read it, I’ll talk to you. Happy?’
‘What do you want to talk about, darling?’ asked Mrs Rupa Mehra sympathetically.
‘I don’t want to talk. You want to talk,’ Lata pointed out.
‘Read your silly book!’ cried Mrs Rupa Mehra in a sudden temper. ‘I have to do everything in this house, and no one cares for me. Everything goes wrong and I have to make peace. I have slaved for you all my life, and you don’t care if I live or die. Only when I’m burned on the pyre will you realize my worth.’ The tears started rolling down her cheeks and she placed a black nine on a red ten.
Normally Lata would have made some dutiful attempt to console her mother, but she was so frustrated and annoyed by her sudden emotional sleight of hand that she did nothing. After a while, she took the book down from the shelf again, and walked into the garden.
‘It will rain,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, ‘and the book will get spoiled. You have no sense of the value of money.’
Good, thought Lata violently. I hope the book and everything in it — and I too — get washed away.
7.3
The small green garden was empty. The part-time mali had gone. An intelligent-looking crow cawed from a banana tree. The delicate spider lilies were in bloom. Lata sat down on the slatted green wooden bench in the shade of a tall flame-of-the-forest tree. Everything was rain-washed and clean, unlike in Brahmpur where each leaf had looked dusty and each blade of grass parched.
Lata looked at the envelope with its firm handwriting and Brahmpur postmark. Her name was followed immediately by the address; it was not ‘care of’ anybody.
She pulled out a hairpin and opened the envelope. The letter was only a page long. She had expected Kabir’s letter to be effusive and apologetic. It was not exactly that.
After the address and date it went:
Dearest Lata,
Why should I repeat that I love you? I don’t see why you should disbelieve me. I don’t disbelieve you. Please tell me what the matter is. I don’t want things to end in this way between us.
I can’t think about anything except you, but I am annoyed that I should have to say so. I couldn’t and I can’t run off with you to some earthly paradise, but how could you have expected me to? Suppose I had agreed to your crazy plan. I know that you would then have discovered twenty reasons why it was impossible to carry it out. But perhaps I should have agreed anyway. Perhaps you would have felt reassured because I would have proved how much I cared for you. Well, I don’t care for you so much that I’m willing to abdicate my intelligence. I don’t even care for myself that much. I’m not made that way, and I do think ahead a bit.
Darling Lata, you are so brilliant, why don’t you see things in perspective? I love you. You really owe me an apology.
Anyway, congratulations on your exam results. You must be very pleased — but I am not very surprised. You must not spend your time sitting on benches and crying in future. Who knows who might want to rescue you. Perhaps whenever you’re tempted to do so, you can think of me returning to the pavilion and crying every time I fail to make a century.
Two days ago I hired a boat and went up the Ganges to the Barsaat Mahal. But, like Nawab Khushwaqt, I was so much grieved that my mind was upset, and the place was sordid and sad. For a long time I could not forget you though all possible efforts were made. I felt a strong kinship with him even though my tears did not fall fast and furious into the frangrant waters.