Raghubir Mehra’s death had fallen on the second day of a lunar fortnight, and therefore, on the second day of the annual ‘fortnight of the ancestors’, pandits should have been called to the house of his eldest son to be feasted and given gifts. But the thought of plump, bare-chested, dhoti-clad pandits sitting around in his Sunny Park flat, chanting mantras and gobbling down rice and daal, puris and halwa, curds and kheer, was anathema to Arun. Every year Mrs Rupa Mehra tried to persuade him to perform the rites for his father’s spirit. Every year Arun dismissed the whole farrago of superstitious nonsense. Mrs Rupa Mehra next worked upon Varun and sent him the necessary money for the expenses, and Varun agreed — partly because he knew it would bother his brother; partly because of love for his father (though he had a hard time believing, for instance, that the karhi, which was one of his father’s favourite foods, and that he was therefore supposed to include in the pandits’ feast, would eventually get to him); but mainly because he loved his mother and knew how badly she would suffer if he refused. She could not perform the shraadh herself; it had to be done by a man. And if not by the eldest son, then by the youngest — or, in this case, the younger.
‘I will have no such shenanigans in this house, let me tell you that!’ said Arun.
‘It’s for Daddy’s spirit,’ said Varun, with an attempt at belligerence.
‘Daddy’s spirit! Utter rubbish. Next we’ll have human sacrifice to help you pass your IAS exams.’
‘Don’t talk like that about Daddy!’ cried Varun, livid and cowering. ‘Can’t you give Ma some mental satisfaction?’
‘Mental? Sentimental!’ said Arun with a snort.
Varun didn’t talk to his brother for days and slunk around the house, glaring balefully; not even Aparna could cheer him up. Every time the phone rang he jumped. Eventually it got on Meenakshi’s nerves, and at last even Arun in his native-proof casing began to feel slightly ashamed of himself.
Finally Varun was allowed to feed a single pandit in the garden. He donated the rest of the money to a nearby temple with instructions that it should be used to feed a few poor children. And he wrote to Brahmpur to tell his mother that everything had been performed properly.
Mrs Rupa Mehra read the letter to her samdhin, translating as she went along, with tears in her eyes.
Mrs Mahesh Kapoor listened sadly. Her annual battle was fought not with her sons but with her husband. The shraadh for her own parents was satisfactorily performed each year by her late brother’s eldest son. What she wanted now was that the spirits of her father-in-law and mother-in-law should be similarly propitiated. Their son, however, would have nothing to do with it and rebuked her in his usual manner:
‘Oh, blessed one, you’ve been married to me for more than three decades and you have become more ignorant with each passing year.’
Mrs Mahesh Kapoor did not answer back. This encouraged her husband.
‘How can you believe in such idiocy? In those grasping pandits and their mumbo jumbo? “So much food I set aside for the cow. So much for the crow. So much for the dog. And the rest I will eat. More! More! More puris, more halwa.” Then they belch and hold out their hands for alms: “Give according to your grace and your feelings for the departed one. What? Only five rupees? Is that the extent of your love for them?” I even know of someone who gave snuff to a pandit’s wife because his own dead mother liked snuff! Well, I won’t disturb my parents’ souls with such mockery. All I can say is that I hope no one dares to perform shraadh for me.’
This stung Mrs Mahesh Kapoor into protest. She said: ‘If Pran refuses to perform shraadh for you, he will be no son of mine.’
‘Pran has too much good sense,’ said Mahesh Kapoor. ‘And I’m beginning to think that Maan is a sensible boy too. Don’t talk just of me — they wouldn’t even perform it for you.’
Whether Mahesh Kapoor took delight in baiting and hurting his wife or not, he certainly couldn’t stop himself. Mrs Mahesh Kapoor, who could bear much, was almost in tears. Veena was visiting when this argument broke out, and her mother said to her:
‘Bété.’
‘Yes, Ammaji.’
‘If such a thing happens, you will tell Bhaskar that he is to perform shraadh for me. Invest him with the sacred thread if necessary.’
‘Sacred thread! Bhaskar will not wear a sacred thread,’ said Mahesh Kapoor. ‘He’ll use it to fly a kite with. Or as Hanuman’s tail.’ He chuckled rather maliciously at the sacrilege.
‘That is for his father to decide,’ said Mrs Mahesh Kapoor quietly.
‘He is too young anyway.’
‘That also is for his father to decide,’ said Mrs Mahesh Kapoor. ‘Anyway, I’m not dying yet.’
‘But you certainly sound determined to die,’ said Mahesh Kapoor. ‘This time every year we go through the same stupid kind of talk.’
‘Of course I am determined to die,’ said Mrs Mahesh Kapoor. ‘How else can I go through my rebirths and finally end them?’ Looking down at her hands she said, ‘Do you want to be immortal? I can imagine nothing worse than to be immortal, nothing worse.’
Part Fifteen
15.1
Less than a week after her letter from her younger son, Mrs Rupa Mehra received a letter from her elder son. It was, as always, illegible — and illegible to the extent that it seemed almost to amount to contempt for any possible reader. The news it contained was important, however; and it did no good to Mrs Rupa Mehra’s high blood pressure as she tried desperately to decipher bits of it through a forest of random curves and spikes.
The surprising news related mainly to the Chatterji children. Of the two women, Meenakshi and Kakoli, one had lost a foetus and the other had gained a fiancé. Dipankar had returned from the Pul Mela still uncertain, ‘but at a higher level’. Young Tapan had written rather an unhappy but unspecific letter home — typical adolescent blues, according to Arun. And Amit had let it drop when he had called around one evening for a drink that he was rather fond of Lata, which, given his extreme reticence, could only mean that he was ‘interested’ in her. Making sense of the next few squiggles, Mrs Rupa Mehra was shocked to understand that Arun did not think this was such a bad idea. Certainly, according to him, it would take Lata out of the orbit of the entirely unsuitable Haresh. When the idea was put before Varun, he had frowned and said, ‘I’m studying,’ as if his sister’s future mattered not at all to him. But then, Varun was becoming moodier and moodier since his IAS preparations had restrained his Shamshuing. He had behaved most oddly over Daddy’s shraadh, attempting to turn the Sunny Park house into a restaurant for fat priests, and even asking them (Meenakshi had overheard him) if shraadh could be performed for a suicide.
With a few remarks about the impending General Elections in England (‘At Bentsen Pryce we consider it Hobson’s choice: Attlee is puerile and Churchill senile’) but none about the Indian elections, with a casual admonition to Mrs Rupa Mehra to mind her blood sugar, and to give his love to his sisters, and to assure everyone that Meenakshi was fine and had suffered no lasting harm, Arun signed off.
Mrs Rupa Mehra sat stunned, her heart beating dangerously fast. She was used to rereading her letters a dozen times, examining for days from every possible angle some remark that someone had made to someone else about something that someone had thought that someone had almost done. So much news — and all so sudden and substantial — was too much to absorb at once. Meenakshi’s miscarriage, the Kakoli-Hans nexus, the threat of Amit, the non-mention of Haresh except in an unfavourable passing remark, the disturbing attitude of Varun — Mrs Rupa Mehra did not know whether to laugh or to weep, and immediately asked for a glass of nimbu pani.