‘Your husband said that?’ said Amit.
‘Yes. Then I never had the urge again. I don’t know why.’
‘You’ve killed a poet,’ said Amit to her husband, who seemed a good enough fellow.
‘Come,’ he continued to Lata, who had been listening to the last part of the conversation, ‘I’ll introduce you to a few people, as I promised. Excuse me for a minute.’
Amit had made no such promise, but it enabled him to get away.
7.9
‘Well, whom do you want to meet?’ said Amit to Lata.
‘No one,’ said Lata.
‘No one?’ asked Amit. He looked amused.
‘Anyone. How about that woman there with the red-and-white cotton sari?’
‘The one with the short grey hair — who looks as if she’s laying down the law to Dipankar and my grandfather?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s Ila Chattopadhyay. Dr Ila Chattopadhyay. She’s related to us. She has strong and immediate opinions. You’ll like her.’
Though Lata was unsure about the value of strong and immediate opinions, she liked the look of the woman. Dr Ila Chattopadhyay was shaking her finger at Dipankar and saying something to him with great and apparently affectionate vigour. Her sari was rather crushed.
‘May we interrupt?’ asked Amit.
‘Of course you may, Amit, don’t be stupid,’ said Dr Ila Chattopadhyay.
‘This is Lata, Arun’s sister.’
‘Good,’ said Dr Ila Chattopadhyay, appraising her in a second. ‘I’m sure she’s nicer than her bumptious brother. I was telling Dipankar that economics is a pointless subject. He would have done far better to study mathematics. Don’t you agree?’
‘Of course,’ said Amit.
‘Now that you’re back in India you must stay here permanently, Amit. Your country needs you — and I don’t say that lightly.’
‘Of course,’ said Amit.
Dr Ila Chattopadhyay said to Lata: ‘I never pay any attention to Amit, he always agrees with me.’
‘Ila Kaki never pays any attention to anyone,’ said Amit.
‘No. And do you know why? It’s because of your grandfather.’
‘Because of me?’ asked the old man.
‘Yes,’ said Dr Ila Chattopadhyay. ‘Many years ago you told me that until you were forty you were very concerned about what people thought of you. Then you decided to be concerned about what you thought of other people instead.’
‘Did I say that?’ said old Mr Chatterji, surprised.
‘Yes, indeed, whether you remember it or not. I too used to make myself miserable bothering about other people’s opinions, so I decided to adopt your philosophy immediately, even though I wasn’t forty then — or even thirty. Do you really not remember that remark of yours? I was trying to decide whether to give up my career, and was under a lot of pressure from my husband’s family to do so. My talk with you made all the difference.’
‘Well,’ said old Mr Chatterji, ‘I remember some things but not other things these days. But I’m very glad my remark made such a, such a, well, profound impression on you. Do you know, the other day I forgot the name of my last cat but one. I tried to recall it, but it didn’t come to me.’
‘Biplob,’ said Amit.
‘Yes, of course, and it did come back to me eventually. I had named him that because I was a friend of Subhas Bose — well, let me say I knew the family. . Of course, in my position as a judge, a name like that would have to be, er—’
Amit waited while the old man searched for the right word, then helped him out.
‘Ironic?’
‘No, I wasn’t looking for that word, Amit, I was — well, “ironic” will do. Of course, those were different times, mm, mm. Do you know, I can’t even draw a map of India now. It seems so unimaginable. And the law too is changing every day. One keeps reading about writ petitions being brought up before the High Courts. Well, in my day we were content with regular suits. But I’m an old man, things must move ahead, and I must fall back. Now girls like Ila, and young people like you’—he gesticulated towards Amit and Lata—‘must carry things forward.’
‘I’m hardly a girl,’ said Dr Ila Chattopadhyay. ‘My own daughter is twenty-five now.’
‘For me, dear Ila, you will always be a girl,’ said old Mr Chatterji.
Dr Ila Chattopadhyay made an impatient sound. ‘Anyway, my students don’t treat me like a girl. The other day I was discussing a chapter in one of my old books with a junior colleague of mine, a very serious young man, and he said, “Madam, far be it for me, not only as your junior but also as one who is appreciative of the situation of the book in the context of its time and the fact that you have not many years remaining, to suggest that—” I was quite charmed. Remarks like that rejuvenate me.’
‘What book was that?’ asked Lata.
‘It was a book about Donne,’ said Dr Ila Chattopadhyay. ‘Metaphysical Causality. It’s a very stupid book.’
‘Oh, so you teach English!’ said Lata, surprised. ‘I thought you were a doctor — I mean, a medical doctor.’
‘What on earth have you been telling her?’ said Dr Ila Chattopadhyay to Amit.
‘Nothing. I didn’t really get the chance to introduce you properly. You were telling Dipankar so forcefully that he should have dropped economics that I didn’t dare to interrupt.’
‘So I was. And so he should have. But where has he got to?’
Amit scanned the room cursorily, and noticed Dipankar standing with Kakoli and her babble-rabble. Dipankar, despite his mystical and religious tendencies, was fond of even foolish young women.
‘Shall I deliver him back to you?’ asked Amit.
‘Oh, no,’ said Dr Ila Chattopadhyay, ‘arguing with him only upsets me, it’s like battling a blancmange. . all his mushy ideas about the spiritual roots of India and the genius of Bengal. Well, if he were a true Bengali, he’d change his name back to Chattopadhyay — and so would you all, instead of continuing to cater to the feeble tongues and brains of the British. . Where are you studying?’
Lata, still a little shaken by Dr Ila Chattopadhyay’s emphatic energy, said: ‘Brahmpur.’
‘Oh, Brahmpur,’ said Dr Ila Chattopadhyay. ‘An impossible place. I once was — no, no, I won’t say it, it’s too cruel, and you’re a nice girl.’
‘Oh, do go on, Ila Kaki,’ said Amit. ‘I adore cruelty, and I’m sure Lata can take anything you have to say.’
‘Well, Brahmpur!’ said Dr Ila Chattopadhyay, needing no second bidding. ‘Brahmpur! I had to go there for a day about ten years ago to attend some conference or other in the English Department, and I’d heard so much about Brahmpur and the Barsaat Mahal and so on that I stayed on for a couple of extra days. It made me almost ill. All that courtly culture with its Yes Huzoor and No Huzoor and nothing robust about it at all. “How are you?” “Oh, well, I’m alive.” I just couldn’t stand it. “Yes, I’ll have two florets of rice, and one drop of daal. . ” All that subtlety and etiquette and bowing and scraping and ghazals and kathak. Kathak! When I saw those fat women twirling around like tops, I wanted to say to them, “Run! Run! don’t dance, run!”’
‘It’s a good thing you didn’t, Ila Kaki, you’d have been strangled.’
‘Well, at least it would have meant an end to my suffering. The next evening I had to undergo some more of your Brahmpuri culture. We had to go and listen to one of those ghazal singers. Dreadful, dreadful, I’ll never forget it! One of those soulful women, Saeeda something, whom you couldn’t see for her jewellery — it was like staring into the sun. Wild horses wouldn’t drag me there again. . and all those brainless men in that silly northern dress, the pyjama, looking as if they’d just got out of bed, rolling about in ecstasy — or agony — groaning “wah! wah!” to the most abjectly self-pitying insipid verse — or so it seemed to me when my friends translated it. . Do you like that sort of music?’