But she was trembling. She walked down towards the mud cliffs, then down the path. Kabir was waiting for her, sitting on their root in the banyan grove. He got up when he heard her coming. His hair was ruffled, and he looked sleepy. He even yawned while she walked up towards him. In the dawn light his face looked even more handsome than when he had thrown his head back and laughed near the cricket field.
She seemed to him to be very tense and excited, but not unhappy. They kissed. Then Kabir said:
‘Good morning.’
‘Good morning.’
‘Did you sleep well?’
‘Very well, thank you,’ said Lata. ‘I dreamed of a donkey.’
‘Oh, not of me?’
‘No.’
‘I can’t remember what I dreamed of,’ said Kabir, ‘but I didn’t have a restful night.’
‘I love sleeping,’ said Lata. ‘I can sleep for nine or ten hours a day.’
‘Ah. . aren’t you cold? Why don’t you wear this?’ Kabir made to take off his sweater.
‘I’ve been longing to see you again,’ said Lata.
‘Lata?’ said Kabir. ‘What’s happened to upset you?’ Her eyes were unusually bright.
‘Nothing,’ said Lata, fighting back her tears. ‘I don’t know when I’ll see you again.’
‘What’s happened?’
‘I’m going to Calcutta tonight. My mother’s found out about us. When she heard your name she threw a fit — I told you what my family was like.’
Kabir sat down on the root and said, ‘Oh no.’
Lata sat down too. ‘Do you still love me?’ she said after a while.
‘Still?’ Kabir laughed bitterly. ‘What is the matter with you?’
‘You remember what you said the last time: that we loved each other and that that was all that mattered?’
‘Yes,’ said Kabir. ‘It is.’
‘Let’s go away—’
‘Away,’ said Kabir sadly. ‘Where?’
‘Anywhere — to the hills — anywhere, really.’
‘And leave everything?’
‘Everything. I don’t care. I’ve even packed some things.’
This hint of practicality made him smile instead of alarming him. He said, ‘Lata, we don’t have a chance if we go away. Let’s wait and see how things work out. We’ll make them work out.’
‘I thought you lived from our one meeting to the next.’
Kabir put an arm around her.
‘I do. But we can’t decide everything. I don’t want to disillusion you, but—’
‘You are, you are disillusioning me. How long will we have to wait?’
‘Two years, I think. First I have to finish my degree. After that I’m going to apply to get into Cambridge — or maybe take the exam for the Indian Foreign Service—’
‘Ah—’ It was a low cry of almost physical pain.
He stopped, realizing how selfish he must have sounded.
‘I’ll be married off in two years,’ said Lata, covering her face in her hands. ‘You’re not a girl. You don’t understand. My mother might not even let me come back to Brahmpur—’
Two lines from one of their meetings came to her mind:
Desert not friendship. Renegade with me
From raptured realm of Mr Nowrojee.
She got up. She made no attempt to hide her tears. ‘I’m going,’ she said.
‘Please don’t, Lata. Please listen,’ said Kabir. ‘When will we be able to speak to each other again? If we don’t talk now—’
Lata was walking quickly up the path, trying to escape from his company now.
‘Lata, be reasonable.’
She had reached the flat top of the path. Kabir walked behind her. She seemed so walled off from him that he didn’t touch her. He sensed that she would have brushed him off, maybe with another painful remark.
Halfway to the house was a shrubbery of the most fragrant kamini, some bushes of which had grown as tall as trees. The air was thick with their scent, the branches full of small white blossoms against dark-green leaves, the ground covered with petals. As they passed below, he tousled the leaves gently, and a shower of fragrant petals fell on her hair. If she even noticed this, she gave no indication of it.
They walked on, unspeaking. Then Lata turned around.
‘That’s my sister’s husband there in a dressing gown. They’ve been looking for me. Go back. No one’s seen us yet.’
‘Yes; Dr Kapoor. I know. I’ll — I’ll talk to him. I’ll convince them—’
‘You can’t run four runs every day,’ said Lata.
Kabir stopped dead in his tracks, a look of puzzlement rather than pain on his face. Lata walked on without looking back.
She never wanted to see him again.
At the house, Mrs Rupa Mehra was having hysterics. Pran was grim. Savita had been crying. Lata refused to answer any questions.
Mrs Rupa Mehra and Lata left for Calcutta that evening. Mrs Rupa Mehra kept up a litany of how shameful and inconsiderate Lata was; how she was forcing her mother to leave Brahmpur before Ramnavami; how she had been the cause of unnecessary disruption and expense.
Receiving no response, she finally gave up. For once, she hardly talked to the other passengers.
Lata kept quiet. She looked out of the train window till it became completely dark. She felt heartbroken and humiliated. She was sick of her mother, and of Kabir, and of the mess that was life.
Part Four
4.1
While Lata was falling in love with Kabir, a quite different set of events was taking place in Old Brahmpur, which, however, were to prove not irrelevant to her story. These events involved Pran’s sister, Veena, and her family.
Veena Tandon entered her house in Misri Mandi, to be greeted by her son Bhaskar with a kiss, which she happily accepted despite the fact that he had a cold. He then rushed back to the small sofa where he had been sitting — his father on one side and his father’s guest on the other — and continued his explanation of the powers of ten.
Kedarnath Tandon looked at his son indulgently but, happy in the consciousness of Bhaskar’s genius, did not pay much attention to what he was saying. His father’s guest, Haresh Khanna, who had been introduced to Kedarnath by a mutual acquaintance in the shoe business, would have been happier talking about the leather and footwear trade of Brahmpur, but felt it best to indulge his host’s son — especially as Bhaskar, carried away by his enthusiasm, would have been very disappointed to lose his indoor audience on a day when he had not been allowed to go out kite-flying. He tried to concentrate on what Bhaskar was saying.
‘Well, you see, Haresh Chacha, it’s like this. First you have ten, that’s just ten, that is, ten to the first power. Then you have a hundred, which is ten times ten, which makes it ten to the second power. Then you have a thousand, which is ten to the third power. Then you have ten thousand, which is ten to the fourth power — but this is where the problem begins, don’t you see? We don’t have a special word for that — and we really should. Ten times that is ten to the fifth power, which is a lakh. Then we have ten to the sixth power, which is a million, ten to the seventh power which is a crore, and then we come to another power for which we don’t have a word — which is ten to the eighth. We should have a word for that as well. Then ten to the ninth power is a billion, and then comes ten to the tenth. Now it’s amazing that we don’t have a word in either English or Hindi for a number that is as important as ten to the tenth. Don’t you agree with me, Haresh Chacha?’ he continued, his bright eyes fixed on Haresh’s face.
‘But you know,’ said Haresh, pulling something out of his recent memory for the enthusiastic Bhaskar, ‘I think there is a special word for ten thousand. The Chinese tanners of Calcutta, with whom we have some dealings, once told me that they used the number ten-thousand as a standard unit of counting. What they call it I can’t remember, but just as we use a lakh as a natural measuring point, they use ten-thousand.’