Mr Jauhri did not dispute the issue further. ‘It will take two weeks,’ he said.
‘That’s rather a long time.’
‘Well, you know how it is, Madam. Artisans of the requisite skill are scarce, and we have many orders.’
‘But it is March. The wedding season is virtually over.’
‘Nevertheless, Madam.’
‘Well, I suppose that will have to do,’ Meenakshi said. She picked up one medal — it happened to be the Physics one — and popped it back in her purse. The jeweller looked somewhat regretfully at the Engineering Medal lying on a small velvet square on his table. He had not dared to ask whose it was, but when Meenakshi took a receipt for the medal after it had been weighed exactly on his scales, he had deduced from her name that it must have been awarded to her father-in-law. He was not to know that Meenakshi had never known her father-in-law and felt no particular closeness to him.
As Meenakshi turned to leave, he said, ‘Madam, if you happen to change your mind. .’
Meenakshi turned to him, and snapped: ‘Mr Jauhri, if I wish for your advice I will ask for it. I came to you specifically because you were recommended to me.’
‘Quite right, Madam, quite right. Of course it is entirely up to you. In two weeks then.’ Mr Jauhri frowned sadly at the medal before summoning his master artisan.
Two weeks later, Arun discovered through a casual conversational slip what Meenakshi had done. He was livid.
Meenakshi sighed. ‘It’s pointless talking to you when you are as cross as this,’ she said. ‘You behave quite heartlessly. Come, Aparna darling, Daddy’s angry with us, let’s go into the other room.’
A few days later Arun wrote — or, rather, scrawled — a letter to his mother:
Dear Ma,
Sorry not written to you earlier in response to your letter re Lata. Yes, by all means, will look for someone. But don’t be sanguine, the covenanted are almost twice-born and get dowry offers in the tens of thousands, even lakhs. Still, situation not entirely hopeless. Will try, but I suggest Lata come to Calcutta in the summer. Will effect introductions &c. But she must cooperate. Varun lackadaisical, studies hard only when I take a hand. Shows no interest in girls, only the fourfooted as usual, and dreadful songs. Aparna in fine fettle, asks after her Daadi continually so rest assured she misses you. Daddy’s Engg. Medal melted down for ear-drops and chain by M, but I’ve placed injunction on Physics, not to worry. All else well, back OK, Chatterjis much the same, will write at length when time.
Love and xxx from all,
Arun
This brief note, written in Arun’s illegible telegraphese (the upright lines of the letters tilting at angles of thirty degrees randomly to left or right), landed like a grenade in Brahmpur by the second post one afternoon. When Mrs Rupa Mehra read it, she burst into tears without even (as Arun might have been tempted to remark had he been there) the customary preliminary of a reddening nose. In fact, not to make cynical light of the matter, she was deeply upset, and for every obvious reason.
The horror of the melted medal, the callousness of her daughter-in-law, her disregard of every tender feeling as evidenced by this shallow act of vanity upset Mrs Rupa Mehra more than anything had in years, more even than Arun’s marriage to Meenakshi in the first place. She saw before her very eyes her husband’s golden name being physically melted away in a crucible. Mrs Rupa Mehra had loved and admired her husband almost to excess, and the thought that one of the few things that tied his presence to the earth was now maliciously — for what was such wounding indifference but a kind of malice — and irretrievably lost made her weep tears of bitterness, anger and frustration. He had been a brilliant student at the Roorkee College and his memories of his student days had been happy ones. He had hardly studied, yet had done extremely well. He had been liked by both his fellow-students and his teachers. The only subject he had been weak in had been Drawing. In that he had barely scraped through. Mrs Rupa Mehra remembered his little sketches in the children’s autograph books and felt that the examiners had been ignorant and unjust.
Collecting herself after a while and dabbing her forehead with eau de cologne, she went out into the garden. It was a warm day, but a breeze was blowing from the river. Savita was sleeping, and all the others were out. She looked over at the unswept path past the bed of cannas. The young sweeper-woman was talking to the gardener in the shade of a mulberry tree. I must speak to her about this, thought Mrs Rupa Mehra absently.
Mansoor’s father, the far shrewder Mateen, came out on to the verandah with the account book. Mrs Rupa Mehra was in no mood for the accounts, but felt it was her duty to do them. Wearily she returned to the verandah, got her spectacles out of her black bag and looked at the book.
The sweeper-woman took up a broom and started sweeping up the dust, dried leaves, twigs, and fallen flowers from the path. Mrs Rupa Mehra glanced unseeingly at the open page of the account book.
‘Should I come back later?’ asked Mateen.
‘No, I’ll do them now. Wait a minute.’ She got out a blue pencil and looked at the lists of purchases. Doing the accounts had become much more of a strain since Mateen’s return from his village. Quite apart from his odd variant of the Hindi script, Mateen was more experienced than his son at cooking the books.
‘What is this?’ asked Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘Another four-seer tin of ghee? Do you think we are millionaires? When did we order our last tin?’
‘Must be two months ago, Burri Memsahib.’
‘When you were away loafing in the village, didn’t Mansoor buy a tin?’
‘He may have, Burri Memsahib. I don’t know; I didn’t see it.’
Mrs Rupa Mehra started riffling back through the pages of the account book until she came upon the entry in Mansoor’s more legible hand. ‘He bought one a month ago. Almost twenty rupees. What happened to it? We’re not a family of twelve to go through a tin at such a rate.’
‘I’ve just returned, myself,’ Mateen ventured, with a glance at the sweeper-woman.
‘You’d buy us a sixteen-seer tin of ghee a week if given half the chance,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘Find out what happened to the rest of it.’
‘It goes in puris and parathas and on the daal — and Memsahib likes Sahib to put some ghee every day on his chapatis and rice—’ began Mateen. ‘Yes, yes,’ Mrs Rupa Mehra interrupted. ‘I can work out how much should go into all that. I want to find out what happened to the rest of it. We don’t keep open house — nor has this become the shop of a sweetseller.’
‘Yes, Burri Memsahib.’
‘Though young Mansoor seems to treat it like one.’
Mateen said nothing, but frowned, as if in disapproval.
‘He eats the sweets and drinks the nimbu pani that is kept aside for guests,’ continued Mrs Rupa Mehra.
‘I’ll speak to him, Burri Memsahib.’
‘I’m not sure about the sweets,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra scrupulously. ‘He is a self-willed boy. And you — you never bring my tea regularly. Why does no one take care of me in this house? When I am at Arun Sahib’s house in Calcutta his servant brings me tea all the time. No one even asks here. If I had my own house, it would have been different.’
Mateen, understanding that the accounts session was over, went to get Mrs Rupa Mehra her tea. About fifteen minutes later, Savita, who had emerged from her afternoon nap looking groggily beautiful, came on to the verandah to find her mother rereading Arun’s letter in tears, and saying, ‘Ear-drops! He even calls them ear-drops!’ When Savita found out what the matter was she felt a rush of sympathy towards her mother and indignation towards Meenakshi.