The groom’s party was fifteen minutes late already. Mrs Rupa Mehra was starving: she was not meant to eat until she had given her daughter away, and she was glad that the astrologers had set the actual time of the wedding for eight o’clock, and not, say, eleven.
‘Where are they?’ she demanded of Maan, who happened to be standing nearby and was gazing in the direction of the gate.
‘I’m sorry, Ma,’ said Maan. ‘Who do you mean?’ He had been looking out for Firoz.
‘The baraat, of course.’
‘Oh, yes, the baraat — well, they should be coming at any minute. Shouldn’t they be here already?’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, as impatient and anxious as the Boy standing on the Burning Deck. ‘Yes, of course they should.’
The baraat was at last sighted, and everyone crowded towards the gate. A large, maroon, flower-adorned Chevrolet drove up. It narrowly avoided scratching Dr Kishen Chand Seth’s grey Buick, which was parked somewhat obstructively near the entrance. Haresh stepped out. He was accompanied by his parents and his brothers and was followed by, among others, a motley crowd of his college friends. Arun and Varun escorted him to the verandah. Lata emerged from inside the house, dressed in a red-and-gold sari, and with her eyes lowered, as befitted a bride. They exchanged garlands. Sunil Patwardhan broke into loud cheers, and the photographer clicked away.
They walked across the lawn to the wedding platform, decorated with roses and tuberoses, and sat down facing the young priest from the local Arya Samaj temple. He lit the fire and began the ceremony. Haresh’s foster-parents sat near Haresh, Mrs Rupa Mehra sat near Lata, and Arun and Varun sat behind her.
‘Sit up straight,’ said Arun to Varun.
‘I am sitting straight!’ retorted Varun Mehra, IAS, angrily. He noticed that Lata’s garland had slipped off her left shoulder. He helped rearrange it and glared at his brother.
The guests, unusually for a wedding, were quiet and attentive as the priest went through the rites. Mrs Rupa Mehra was sobbing through her Sanskrit, and Savita was sobbing too, and soon Lata was crying as well. When her mother took her hand, filled it with rose petals and pronounced the words, ‘O bridegroom, accept this well-adorned bride called Lata,’ Haresh, prompted by the priest, took her hand firmly in his own and repeated the words: ‘I thank you, and accept her willingly.’
‘Cheer up,’ he added in English. ‘I hope you won’t have to go through this again.’ And Lata, whether at that thought or at his tone of voice, did indeed cheer up.
Everything went well. Her brothers poured puffed rice on to her hands and into the fire each time she and Haresh circled it. The knot between their scarves was tied, and bright red sindoor was applied to the parting of Lata’s hair with the gold ring that Haresh was to give her. This ring ceremony puzzled the priest (it didn’t fit in with his idea of Arya Samaji rituals), but because Mrs Rupa Mehra insisted on it, he went along with it.
One or two children squabbled tearfully over the possession of some rose petals; and an insistent old woman tried without success to get the priest to mention Babé Lalu, the clan deity of the Khannas, in the course of his liturgy; other than that, everything went harmoniously.
But when the people who were gathered together recited the Gayatri Mantra three times before the witnessing fire, Pran, glancing at Maan, noticed that his head was bowed and his lips trembling as he mumbled the words. Like his elder brother, he could not forget the last time that the ancient words had been recited in his presence, and before a different fire.
19.11
It was a warm evening, and there was less silk and more fine cotton than at Savita’s wedding. But the jewellery glittered just as gloriously. Meenakshi’s little pear-earrings, Veena’s navratan and Malati’s emeralds glinted across the garden, whispering to each other the stories of their owners.
The younger Chatterjis were out in full force, but there were very few politicians, and no children from Rudhia running wildly around. A couple of executives from the small Praha factory in Brahmpur were present, however, as were some of the middlemen from the Brahmpur Shoe Mart.
Jagat Ram too had come, but not his wife. He stood by himself for a while until Kedarnath noticed him and beckoned him to join them.
When he was introduced to old Mrs Tandon, she was unable to stifle her discomfiture. She looked at him as if he smelt, and gave him a weak namaste.
Jagat Ram said to Kedarnath: ‘I have to go now. Would you give this to Haresh Sahib and his bride?’ He handed him what looked like a small shoebox covered in brown paper.
‘But aren’t you going to congratulate him?’
‘Well, there’s a long line,’ said Jagat Ram, tugging a little at his moustache. ‘Please congratulate him for me.’
Old Mrs Tandon had turned to Haresh’s parents, and was talking to them about Neel Darvaza, which she had visited as a child. She congratulated them and, in the course of the conversation, contrived to mention that Lata was rather too fond of music.
‘Oh, good,’ said Haresh’s foster-father. ‘We too are very fond of music.’
Old Mrs Tandon was displeased, and decided to say nothing more.
Malati, meanwhile, was talking to the musicians themselves, a shehnai player who had been known to her own musician-friend, and the tabla player Motu Chand.
Motu, who remembered Malati from the day he had stood in at the Haridas College of Music, asked her about Ustad Majeed Khan and his famous disciple Ishaq, whom, sadly, he very rarely met these days. Malati told him about the concert she had very recently attended, praised Ishaq’s musicianship, and mentioned that she had been struck by the indulgence which the arrogant maestro granted to him: he rarely, for instance, broke in with a dominating improvisation of his own when Ishaq was singing. In a world of professional jealousy and rivalry even between teacher and student, they performed with a sense of complementarity that was wonderful to see.
It had begun to be said of Ishaq — and that too within a year of his first strumming the tanpura before his Ustad — that he had the makings of one of the great singers of his time.
‘Well,’ said Motu Chand, ‘things are not the same without him where I work.’ He sighed, then, noticing Malati look a bit blank, said: ‘Were you not at Prem Nivas at Holi last year?’
‘No,’ said Malati, realizing from his question that Motu must be Saeeda Bai’s tabla player. ‘And this year, of course. . ’
‘Of course,’ said Motu sadly. ‘Terrible, terrible. . and now with that fellow Rasheed’s suicide. . He taught Saeeda Bai’s, well, sister, you know. . but he caused so much trouble that they had to get the watchman to beat him up. . and then we heard later. . Well, there’s nothing but trouble in the world, nothing but trouble—’ He began to hammer at the little wooden cylinders around his tabla to tighten the straps and adjust the pitch. The shehnai player nodded at him.
‘This Rasheed you’re talking about—’ asked Malati, suddenly quite troubled herself. ‘He’s not the socialist, is he? — the history student—’
‘Yes, I think so,’ said Motu, flexing his well-padded fingers; and the tabla and shehnai began to play again.
19.12
Maan, dressed in a kurta-pyjama, as suited the weather, was standing a little distance away and heard nothing of this conversation. He looked sad, almost unsociable.
For a moment he wondered where the harsingar tree was, before he realized that he was in a different garden altogether. Firoz came up to him, and they stood there, silent, for a while. A rose petal or two floated down from somewhere. Neither bothered to brush it off. Imtiaz joined them after a while, then the Nawab Sahib and Mahesh Kapoor.