‘Yes, well, I think so,’ said Dr Narayanan with the faintest of responding smiles, before Professor Mishra could interrupt.
‘Dr Gupta?’ asked Pran.
Dr Gupta could not look Professor Mishra in the eye.
‘I agree with Dr Narayanan,’ said Professor Gupta.
There was silence for a few seconds. Pran thought, I can’t believe it. I’ve won. I’ve won. I can’t believe it.
And indeed, it seemed that he had. Everyone knew that the approval of the Academic Council of the university was usually a formality once the syllabus committee of a department had decided matters.
As if nothing in the least untoward had occurred, the head of the department gathered together the reins of the meeting. The great soft hands scuttled across the cyclostyled sheets. ‘The next item. .’ said Professor Mishra with a smile, then paused and began again: ‘but before we go on to the next item, I should say that I personally have always greatly admired James Joyce as a writer. I am delighted, needless to say—’
A couple of lines of poetry came terrifyingly unbidden to Pran’s mind:
Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar,
Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell?
and he burst into a fit of sudden laughter, incomprehensible even to himself, which went on for twenty seconds and ended in a spasm of coughing. He bent his head and tears streamed down his cheeks. Professor Mishra rewarded him with a look of unfeigned fury and hatred.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ muttered Pran as he recovered. Dr Gupta was thumping him vigorously on the back, which was not helpful. ‘Please continue — I was overcome — it sometimes happens. . ’ But to offer any further explanation was impossible.
The meeting was resumed and the next two points discussed quickly. There was no real disagreement. It was dark now; the meeting was adjourned. As Pran left the room Professor Mishra put a friendly arm around his shoulder. ‘My dear boy, that was a fine performance.’ Pran shuddered at the memory. ‘You are clearly a man of great integrity, intellectual and otherwise.’ Oh, oh, what is he up to now? thought Pran. Professor Mishra continued: ‘The Proctor has been badgering me since last Tuesday to submit a member of my department — it’s our turn, you know — to join the student welfare committee of the university. . ’ Oh no, thought Pran, there goes one day every week. ‘. . and I have decided to volunteer you.’ I didn’t know the verb was transitive, thought Pran. In the darkness — they were now walking across the campus — it was difficult for Professor Mishra entirely to disguise the active dislike in his high voice. Pran could almost see the pursed lips, the specious twinkle. He was silent, and that, to the head of the English Department, implied acceptance.
‘I realize you are busy, my dear Dr Kapoor, what with your extra tutorials, the Debating Society, the Colloquium, putting on plays and so on. . ’ said Professor Mishra. ‘The sort of thing that makes one deservedly popular with students. But you are comparatively new here, my dear fellow — five years is not a long time from the perspective of an old fogey like me — and you must allow me to give you a word of advice. Cut down on your unacademic activities. Don’t tire yourself out unnecessarily. Don’t take things so seriously. What were those wonderful lines of Yeats?
She bid me take life easy as the leaves grown on the tree,
But I being young and foolish with her did not agree.
I’m sure your charming wife would endorse that. Don’t drive yourself so hard — your health depends on it. And your future, I dare say. . In some ways you are your own worst enemy.’
But I am only my metaphorical enemy, thought Pran. And obstinacy on my part has earned me the actual enmity of the formidable Professor Mishra. But was Professor Mishra more dangerous or less dangerous to him — in this matter of the readership, for instance, now that Pran had won his hatred?
What was Professor Mishra thinking, wondered Pran. He imagined his thoughts went something like this: I should never have got this uppity young lecturer on to the syllabus committee. It’s too late, however, to regret all that. But at least his presence here has kept him from working mischief in, say, the admissions committee; there he could have brought up all kinds of objections to students I wanted to bring in if they weren’t selected entirely on the basis of merit. As for the university’s selection committee for the readership in English, I must rig this somehow before I allow it to meet—
But Pran got no further clues to the inner working of that mysterious intelligence. For at this point the paths of the two colleagues diverged and, with expressions of great mutual respect, they parted from each other.
1.18
Meenakshi, Arun’s wife, was feeling utterly bored, so she decided to have her daughter Aparna brought to her. Aparna was looking even more pretty than usuaclass="underline" round and fair and black-haired with gorgeous eyes, as sharp as those of her mother. Meenakshi pressed the electric buzzer twice (the signal for the child’s ayah) and looked at the book in her lap. It was Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks, and it was unutterably dull. She didn’t know how she was going to get through another five pages of it. Arun, delighted though he normally was with her, had the irksome habit of throwing an improving book her way now and then, and Meenakshi felt his suggestions were more in the way of subtle commands. ‘A wonderful book. . ’ Arun would say some evening, laughing, in the company of the oddly flippant crowd they mixed with, a crowd that Meenakshi felt convinced could not possibly be more interested than she was in Buddenbrooks or any other such clotted Germanic construct. ‘. . I have been reading this marvellous book by Mann, and I’m now getting Meenakshi involved in it.’ Some of the others, especially the languid Billy Irani, would look from Arun to Meenakshi in momentary wonderment, and the topic would pass to office matters or the social world or racing or dancing or golf or the Calcutta Club or complaints about ‘these bloody politicians’ or ‘these brainless bureaucrats’, and Thomas Mann would be quite forgotten. But Meenakshi would now feel obliged to read enough of the book to convey an acquaintance with its contents, and it seemed to make Arun happy to see her do so.
How wonderful Arun was, thought Meenakshi, and how pleasant it was to live in this nice flat in Sunny Park, not far from her father’s house on Ballygunge Circular Road, and why did they have to have all these furious tiffs? Arun was incredibly hotheaded and jealous, and she had only to look languidly at the languid Billy for Arun to start smouldering somewhere deep inside. It might be wonderful to have a smouldering husband in bed later, Meenakshi reflected, but such advantages did not come unadulterated. Sometimes Arun would go off into a smouldering sulk, and was quite spoilt for love-making. Billy Irani had a girlfriend, Shireen, but that made no difference to Arun, who suspected Meenakshi (quite correctly) of harbouring a casual lust for his friend. Shireen for her part occasionally sighed amidst her cocktails and announced that Billy was incorrigible.
When the ayah arrived in answer to the bell, Meenakshi said, ‘Baby lao!’ in a kind of pidgin Hindi. The aged ayah, most of whose reactions were slow, turned creakingly to fulfil her mistress’s behest. Aparna was fetched. She had been having her afternoon nap, and yawned as she was brought in to her mother. Her small fists were rubbing her eyes.
‘Mummy!’ said Aparna in English. ‘I’m sleepy, and Miriam woke me up.’ Miriam, the ayah, upon hearing her name spoken, although she could understand no English, grinned at the child with toothless goodwill.