‘A glamorous diplomat,’ replied Amit. ‘Very vacant, very charming. The kind of person whom Meenakshi used to sigh after. And talking of which, one of them is coming around to visit me this morning. He wants to ask me about culture and literature.’
‘Really, Amit?’ asked Mrs Chatterji eagerly. ‘Who?’
‘Some South American ambassador — from Peru or Chile or somewhere,’ said Amit, ‘with an interest in the arts. I got a phone call from Delhi a week or two ago, and we fixed it up. Or was it Bolivia? He wanted to meet an author on his visit to Calcutta. I doubt he’s read anything by me.’
Mrs Chatterji looked flustered. ‘But then I must make sure that everything is in order—’ she said. ‘And you told Biswas Babu you’d see him this morning.’
‘So I did, so I did,’ agreed Amit. ‘And so I will.’
‘He is not just a glamdip,’ said Kakoli suddenly. ‘You’ve hardly met him.’
‘No, he is a good boy for our Kuku,’ said Tapan. ‘He is so shinsheer.’
This was one of Biswas Babu’s adjectives of high praise. Kuku felt that Tapan should have his ears boxed.
‘I like Hans,’ said Dipankar. ‘He was very polite to the man who told him to drink the juice of bitter gourds. He does have a good heart.’
‘O my darling, don’t be heartless.
Hold my hand. Let us be partless,’
murmured Amit.
‘But don’t hold it too hard,’ laughed Tapan.
‘Stop it!’ cried Kuku. ‘You are all being utterly horrible.’
‘He is good wedding-bell material for our Kuku,’ continued Tapan, tempting retribution.
‘Wedding bell? Or bedding well?’ asked Amit. Tapan grinned delightedly.
‘Now, that’s enough, Amit,’ said Mr Justice Chatterji before his wife could intervene. ‘No bloodshed at breakfast. Let’s talk about something else.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Kuku. ‘Like the way Amit was mooning over Lata last night.’
‘Over Lata?’ said Amit, genuinely astonished.
‘Over Lata?’ repeated Kuku, imitating him.
‘Really, Kuku, love has destroyed your brain,’ said Amit. ‘I didn’t notice I was spending any time with her at all.’
‘No, I’m sure you didn’t.’
‘She’s just a nice girl, that’s all,’ said Amit. ‘If Meenakshi hadn’t been so busy gossiping and Arun making contacts I wouldn’t have assumed any responsibility for her at all.’
‘So we needn’t invite her over unnecessarily while she’s in Calcutta,’ murmured Kuku.
Mrs Chatterji said nothing, but had begun to look anxious.
‘I’ll invite whoever I like over,’ said Amit. ‘You, Kuku, invited fifty-odd people to the party last night.’
‘Fifty odd people,’ Tapan couldn’t resist saying.
Kuku turned on him severely.
‘Little boys shouldn’t interrupt adult conversations,’ she said.
Tapan, from the safety of the other side of the table, made a face at her. Once Kuku had actually got so incensed she had chased him around the table, but usually she was sluggish till noon.
‘Yes,’ Amit frowned. ‘Some of them were very odd, Kuku. Who is that fellow Krishnan? Dark chap, south Indian, I imagine. He was glaring at you and your Second Secretary very resentfully.’
‘Oh, he’s just a friend,’ said Kuku, spreading her butter with more than usual concentration. ‘I suppose he’s annoyed with me.’
Amit could not resist delivering a Kakoli-couplet:
‘What is Krishnan in the end?
Just a mushroom, just a friend.’
Tapan continued:
‘Always eating dosa-iddly,
Drinking beer and going piddly!’
‘Tapan!’ gasped his mother.
Amit, Meenakshi and Kuku, it appeared, had completely corrupted her baby with their stupid rhyming.
Mr Justice Chatterji put down his toast. ‘That’s enough from you, Tapan,’ he said.
‘But Baba, I was only joking,’ protested Tapan, thinking it unfair that he should have been singled out. Just because I’m the youngest, he thought. And it was a pretty good couplet too.
‘A joke’s a joke, but enough’s enough,’ said his father. ‘And you too, Amit. You’d have a better claim to criticizing others if you did something useful yourself.’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ added Kuku happily, seeing the tables turning. ‘Do some serious work, Dada. Act like a useful member of society before you criticize others.’
‘What’s wrong with writing poems and novels?’ asked Amit. ‘Or has passion made you illiterate as well?’
‘It’s all right as an amusement, Amit,’ said Mr Justice Chatterji. ‘But it’s not a living. And what’s wrong with the law?’
‘Well, it’s like going back to school,’ said Amit.
‘I don’t quite see how you come to that conclusion,’ said his father dryly.
‘Well,’ said Amit, ‘you have to be properly dressed — that’s like school uniform. And instead of saying “Sir” you say “My Lord”—which is just as bad — until you’re raised to the bench and people say it to you instead. And you get holidays, and you get good chits and bad chits just like Tapan does: I mean judgements in your favour and against you.’
‘Well,’ said Justice Chatterji, not entirely pleased by the analogy, ‘it was good enough for your grandfather and for me.’
‘But Amit has a special gift,’ broke in Mrs Chatterji. ‘Aren’t you proud of him?’
‘He can practise his special gifts in his spare time,’ said her husband.
‘Is that what they said to Rabindranath Tagore?’ asked Amit.
‘I’m sure you’ll admit there’s a difference between you and Tagore,’ said his father, looking at his eldest son in surprise.
‘I’ll admit there’s a difference, Baba,’ said Amit. ‘But what’s the relevance of the difference to the point I’m making?’
But at the mention of Tagore, Mrs Chatterji had entered a mode of righteous reverence.
‘Amit, Amit,’ she cried, ‘how can you think of Gurudeb like that?’
‘Mago, I didn’t say—’ began Amit.
Mrs Chatterji broke in. ‘Amit, Robi Babu is like a saint. We in Bengal owe everything to him. When I was in Shantiniketan, I remember he once said to me—’
But now Kakoli joined forces with Amit.
‘Please, Mago, really — we’ve heard enough about Shantiniketan and how idyllic it is. I know that if I had to live there I’d commit suicide every day.’
‘His voice is like a cry in the wilderness,’ continued her mother, hardly hearing her.
‘I’d hardly say so, Ma,’ said Amit. ‘We idolize him more than the English do Shakespeare.’
‘And with good reason,’ said Mrs Chatterji. ‘His songs come to our lips — his poems come to our hearts—’
‘Actually,’ said Kakoli, ‘Abol Tabol is the only good book in the whole of Bengali literature.
The Griffonling from birth
Is indisposed to mirth.
To laugh or grin he counts a sin
And shudders, “Not on earth.”
Oh, yes, and I like The Sketches of Hutom the Owl. And when I take up literature, I shall write my own: The Sketches of Cuddles the Dog.’
‘Kuku, you are a really shameless girl,’ cried Mrs Chatterji, incensed. ‘Please stop her from saying these things.’
‘It’s just an opinion, dear,’ said Mr Justice Chatterji, ‘I can’t stop her from holding opinions.’
‘But about Gurudeb, whose songs she sings — about Robi Babu—’
Kakoli, who had been force-fed, almost from birth, with Rabindrasangeet, now warbled out to the tune of a truncated ‘Shonkochero bihvalata nijere apoman’:
‘Robi Babu, R. Tagore, O, he’s such a bore!