A Fine Family: A Novel (33 page)

The next morning Arjun was woken up at four, when the ashram gong went off. From his childhood he remembered that the day at the hermitage started early. While he used to be allowed to sleep, the others would have to wake up, bathe with cold water and begin meditation. Today he felt the same sense of guilt as he did as a child as he lazed in bed. While the ashram meditated Arjun thought about the objections which Tara would raise to his marriage. The previous day he had been content to hear the family news and engage in small talk about life at the ashram. He did not have the courage to bring up the subject of his mission.

Tara would object to Priti’s age: she had once said that a bride ought to be ideally nine years younger than the groom, ‘because a woman ages faster’. That she herself was only a couple of years younger to Seva Ram, she had once argued, was part of the reason for their problems. But Priti was a year older and that just would not do.

More than age, Tara would be uncomfortable with Priti’s past. Ever since the scandal with Karan, Priti had been dubbed ‘a fast girl’ by her sympathizers and plain immoral by the rest of society.

‘Haven’t you learned your lesson once?’ he could hear Tara saying. It would be difficult to argue with his mother, who would naturally be concerned about her son getting hurt for the second time.

That Priti’s family were now in a bad way financially, and the lack of a dowry would also bother Tara. But Arjun hoped that he could overcome her objections by appealing to his mother’s idealistic side. Still it wouldn’t be easy, for in matters which affected her, she was known to jealously guard the family interest. Despite her liberal education, the prospect of a dowry-less bride would hurt her deeply. She would reason like a typical Indian mother that she had invested in her son, who had done well in life, and therefore she was naturally due a return on her investment. Besides in the eyes of her friends, the extent of the dowry was a measure of her son’s worth.

It was now dawn, and Arjun could hear the house stirring with activity. For the past fifteen minutes he had sat on the bed covered with a quilt, his legs drawn up under him and his chin in his hand, wondering how he would impart the news of his marriage. He quickly dressed and came out in time for a walk with his father. In such a mood every promise of distraction offered relief. And Seva Ram seemed delighted to have his son’s company.

‘I suppose in Bombay you don’t go to bed until late.’

‘No, as a matter of fact, I am usually asleep by eleven.’

His father smiled shyly, and with an embarrassed laugh he said, ‘Well, we go to bed here by nine.’

‘But you also wake up at four,’ said Arjun.

They arrived by the river. Arjun saw a bluish fog rising from the water. The air was crisp, not quite frosty. The sun was ascending behind the ashram. Sevan Ram led the way, and they walked along the bank, slowly making a circuit of the holy colony. Seva Ram discussed the progress of the land reclamation. Arjun noted the total absence of machinery, but he quickly remembered that all work at the ashram was done by hand—a labour of love for the guru. He could picture an endless procession of devotees carrying baskets of mud on their heads. Father and son walked on in silence. Between the arable land and the river there was a vast and desolate wasteland where the river had changed course. Only giant reeds and bulrushes grew here or an occasional thorn bush. They walked among towering rushes whose stems were bleached by the sun. At last they were at the railway bridge and they paused and breathed in the pure draughts of river air. They looked down the river and into the horizon and the early sky filled with silence and majesty. Arjun was overcome with memories of his childhood, when he had walked along here and even camped several times under a sky drenched with stars.

On the way back they came across a small party of devotees. They greeted Seva Ram, and immediately plunged into a metaphysical discussion on a point raised by the guru in the previous day’s discourse. Arjun waited, feeling suddenly like a city-bred outsider, with his western clothes and manners, and unspiritual mind. The discussion carried with it all the feeling of a tight, inbred world.

Left to himself, Arjun again looked down the river and tried to imagine how it flowed into the mighty Indus. He thought about how the earliest Hindus had occupied these lands, and recorded their primordial experience in man’s first book, the
Rig Veda.
From this river bed in the Punjab, Hindu civilization had flowed over into the valley of the Ganges, and as it was spread by Brahmins over the rest of India it had suffered many changes, but it kept intact its old Vedic ideas, born on these banks. This realization had a powerful effect on Arjun.

Arjun felt the pull of the old culture, but yet he could not resist the seductive charm of the other, more virile one of the West. Given that he had succumbed to the tatter’s temptations, leaving far behind the warm, traditional world of the kindly man who stood beside him, he felt guilty as if he were being disloyal. He wondered if his father too had faced this dilemma, as he had gone about his job of building canals and bridges, using the vigorous engineer’s mind and tools of the modern West. Seva Ram seemed relaxed in both worlds, seemingly existing in separate compartments, oblivious to feelings of ambivalence or uprootedness. Arjun felt this was because the Hindu had a peculiar ability to flit from one compartment to another. What might be contradictory to someone else, seemed perfectly natural to the Hindu because of a peculiar detachment in his temperament.

Arjun’s feelings of disloyalty were considerably diminished as he realized that the civilization of the West had long become the dominant culture of the world. He stood back and marvelled at the amazing phenomenon of the surging Western ad venture in science and civilization as the mellow glow of European Enlightenment spread over the world. As a reaction to the West, thinking Indians, like the guru had tried to reform Hinduism by synthesizing the new ideas with the old, philosophical views of the Upanishads. These Hindus had tried to purge Hinduism of Brahmins, superstitions, and rituals. In this manner they had prevented the conversion of Hindus to Christianity and withstood the pressure of the Western missionaries. Their efforts had resulted in a revival in faith amongst the people, and had given educated Indians like Seva Ram a pride in their own.

A quarter-of-a-hour later father and son were walking home at ease, watching the sun come up in a silence broken only by the distant singing of the Himalayan cuckoo. Quite suddenly Arjun felt the barrier lifted, and he said, ‘I’m going to be married. I want you to tell mother for me. I don’t know why, but I feel shy about it.’

If Seva Ram was surprised, he did not show it. After a few minutes of walking he gently asked, ‘To whom Arjun?’

‘To Priti. Priti Mehta,’ replied Arjun with controlled precision.

They walked on in silence. Arjun asked, ‘What do you think?’ not because he wished for an opinion but simply to bridge the wide silence, which seemed to grow wider. Seva Ram’s face lit up with a smile, as it always did, and he said, ‘I am happy, Arjun. You will be happy and have children.’

Overcome with shyness, Arjun talked to Seva Ram about how he had come to his decision. It felt strange to be talking to his father, with whom he had never in his life shared any confidence. It was always to Tara that he had gone.

‘What do you think about mother? She’s not going to like it.’

‘No, she is not. She had other plans.’

‘You will tell her. Please, father.’

‘Yes.’

‘After I’ve gone this evening.’

‘Yes.’

With the release of this tension and Seva Ram’s ready compliance, Arjun suddenly felt a load lifted from his heart. He felt light-footed and wanted to hug his father. Briskly they walked back, but before they entered the house, Seva Ram said, ‘Why don’t you meet the guru, Arjun? Tell him about your plans. It’s an important step after all. He’ll give you strength.’

‘Do I have to?’ said Arjun shyly.

‘No.’

‘Then I’d rather not.’

‘You’re not a believer, I know, but he’s a good guide. On a human level I mean.’

‘I know. But I don’t want to talk to anyone about it.’

‘Anyway, I hope you will bring her to us soon—to your mother. I think she will appreciate it.’

For two days after Arjun’s departure, Seva Ram did not say anything. Tara was conscious that there was something on his mind, but she bided her time patiently. On the third day Seva Ram broke the news and Tara was plunged into the depths of gloom. For days she was unable to think or act. She knew her son, and realized that it was futile to change his mind. Nevertheless, after several weeks she wrote to him; among other things she said:

Marriage, my son, is a serious business, and has to be entered into soberly and irrevocably. I don’t want to suggest that it need be gloomy. But the emotions and upsets of courtship which characterize marriage in the West are not a part of our tradition in India. . . . The main reason we marry is that we shall not be lonely in old age. So we should ask ourselves if we shall be able to converse well with this person into old age. They say that a man should choose a wife by his ear than by his eye. . . . You have the good sense to realize that beauty is only skin deep, and there are more important considerations. . . . It is your decision entirely, but do also look into her age, her past, her character, and the financial condition of her family. . . . When a match has equal partners, then there is nothing to fear. Ask yourself: is she your equal? Are you her equal?. . . . Finally, my son, beware of the love of a woman, beware of ecstasy: both are a slow poison. . . .

Arjun’s reply came promptly, and it was most unsatisfactory. He was firmly set in his decision. Tara asked Seva Ram whether it would be worthwhile for her to go to Bombay and to try to dissaude him. He emphatically replied, ‘No.’ She realized the futility of discussing it further and she concluded that putting pressure on him might only alienate him from her. She continued to feel hurt, however. She had had so many plans for him. Over the years she had suggested a number of girls from fine families. But each time he had refused, saying that he was not ready. In her heart she had secretly hoped that he would make ‘a great match’ with someone from the highest society, but it was not to be. Priti too would have been fine if it had not been for the scandal in her past and the changed circumstances of her family. But perhaps this is how it was destined to be, she thought with resignation.

As the days went by, Tara became more philosophical about Arjun’s marriage. She thought it ridiculous the manner in which the human species paired. Animals in comparison seemed more sensible. The inordinate energy and emotion that humans expended on this matter seemed quite unnecessary. Did it really matter whom one married in order to procreate the species? Would it not be better if one’s partner were pre-ordained just as one’s time and place of birth and death. The important thing was to take choice out of human control for humans were not good at exercising choice. Seva Ram of course disagreed with her as to the existence of choice at all.

Tara eventually gave her consent and Arjun and Priti were married. Tara was also denied a grand wedding because both the young people insisted on a simple ceremony. They moved into a larger apartment in Colaba and Priti spent the first few weeks furnishing the new flat. She had the walls white-washed, bought new hand-woven curtains and chick blinds for the windows, and equipped their new house with cane and rattan furniture since they could not afford teak. She bought some crotons, ferns and umbrella palms from the nursery near the Sachivalya. A leather chair for Arjun was the only expensive thing she acquired. She also stopped working because she wanted, as she put it, ‘fulfilment as a wife and a mother.’

Arjun was happy, without a care in the world. He plunged into his work with a new vigour. The sight of her in the window waiting for him as he returned home, and a walk together on Cuffe Parade, followed by a simple dinner, and many such small things in which he had never thought he would find pleasure, now made up much of his happiness. Every morning he would wake up with surprise to find her beside him on the pillow. He would watch the early sunlight falling on her cheeks, and then observe her eyes at close range, looking larger than ever especially when she blinked them several times in quick succession on waking. Dark brown in the filtered light of the blinds, they seemed to contain layers of colour, dark at the depths and growing brighter towards the surface. He saw himself reflected in her eyes, and he would lose himself in them.

Leaning on the window sill, her magnificent head slanted to one side, and her dressing gown wrapped carelessly around her, she would wave to him as she saw him off. As he set off to work, with the sun on his back and his nostrils filled with the morning air of the sea, he thought himself one of the luckiest men alive.

When had life been so good to him, he wondered? Certainly not in his childhood in Simla, when he was alone among boys who were cleverer and had more money in their pockets. Nor as an adolescent, when he could only remember how he had made a fool of himself in the Green Room, and had suffered such anguish on Priti’s account. And then for years he had lived loveless and alone in Bombay. But now this beautiful woman, who he had desired since he was nineteen, was his for life! He could not bear to be away from her for long. Each day he would hurry back from work, and mount the stairs to their flat with excitement in his heart.

They would sometimes sit together in the evening and look at old photographs, which he kept in a shoe box. One picture struck her particularly. It was printed in sepia ink and was quite unlike any other. The picture had been composed with an eye for detail. It showed a man standing in the foreground, with several English soldiers lounging about in front of a barrack-like structure. In the background a broad plain stretched into the hazy distance, merging on the left with a row of trees on the dusty horizon. A yellowish sky complemented the harmony of the landscape.

‘Your grandfather?’ she asked.

‘Yes, that’s Bauji,’ he replied.

‘Where was it taken?’

‘Lyallpur.’

‘When?’

‘1919. The year that Gandhi entered Indian politics.’

The photographer had captured a sense of mischief and triumph on Bauji’s face. But underneath it, as one looked into the eyes, there was also another tangible emotion: a deep sadness. Either it was the figures of the foreign soldiers in the back, or the distant expanse of the desolate plain and the horizon bathed in a strange half-light, which seemed to add to the feeling of tragic grandeur. Both the age of the picture and the sepia ink contributed to the poignance of the scene.

Arjun got up and moved away from Priti and he said, ‘It was taken soon after the massacre at Jallianwalla Bagh, during the dark days of the Rowlatt Act, when Indians had to alight from a carriage and salaam every passing Englishman. Being a proud man, Bauji stopped going out at all. But once he had to meet his Muslim friend, Mian Afzal Hussain, the Principal of the Agricultural College at the station. As their tonga was passing the barracks, which you see in the back, they were stopped by two English tommies. They were asked to get off and made to walk. And they were abused and called “dirty niggers” by the soldiers. Bauji ignored them, but when the soldier struck his coachman with a whip, Bauji shouted back “Soldier, the DC’s order does not permit you to strike anyone. Your countrymen have established a rule of law which protects this coachman as much as it protects you.”

‘“Don’t you know, black man, I am a cousin to King George V,” the soldier had jeered.

‘After dropping his friend, Bauji went to the DC’s office and lodged an official complaint. A few weeks later he stood up in the District Magistrate’s court and gave evidence. The verdict of the DM went against the soldier. That the punishment, a small fine, was meagre compared to his own deep feeling of humiliation did not matter (as it seemed to, to some of his friends). It vindicated Bauji’s faith in the English Raj: an Englishman had arrested one of his own, and had punished him.’

‘But why the sadness, Arjun?’ asked Priti.

After a pause he replied, ‘Because, I suppose, he was aware that despite everything, we were still a subject race.’

‘And how did the picture come to be taken?’ she asked.

‘A few months later,’ Arjun said, ‘when things were back to normal, some friends of Bauji persuaded him to return to the scene of the incident, and they had a picture taken.’

‘That’s you, isn’t it, in this picture? said Priti, turning to another photograph.

‘Yes, it’s family picture taken in the garden of our house in Simla.’

‘Of course it’s Simla! I can almost smell the air and the pine trees in the back.’ And she took a deep breath. ‘Look at you in the corner in your shabby school shirt and your small boy’s brown eyes, shiny kneecaps, and your queer smile with dimples. That’s your mother, of course. And your father, looking stern. I don’t remember his being stern. But who’s that dandy fellow in the corner?’

‘That’s Big Uncle. In fact he once came to your house.’

‘Looks like he has to go to the lavatory, the way he has crossed his legs.’

Arjun laughed.

‘What does he have in his pockets?’

‘Sweets. He always carried sweets which he distributed to children on the road. He was funny and all the children loved him. He almost didn’t make it in time for the picture because he had gone to the Upper Mall for a haircut. He wanted to look his best. You remember that saloon near the post office. It was the most expensive barber in Simla—I forget the name. Big Uncle used to go into raptures as he described the barber’s technique, “It’s a whole art, you know—all a question of the angle of the razor,” he used to say seriously. After the haircut he would always get a head massage, which he called “electric friction”. When the ritual was over, he would examine his reflection in the mirror with self-satisfaction. “Yes” he would say in a clipped way giving a short authoritative nod, “it’ll do”.’

She laughed. ‘And who took this picture?’

‘Karan,’ he replied.

At first Priti enjoyed managing the house. When they had first met at Bombay Gym, she was cynical and disillusioned with nothing more to learn and nothing new to feel. She had merely wanted peace and quiet in her life. Arjun had entered at the right moment, and had created a stir in her, and brought her that quiet stability. She too believed that finally this was happiness. But after some time she slowly tired of the domestic routine and longed for something new. She began to wonder whether this peaceful stable life was the happiness that she had always wanted.

Before the wedding, she had fully thought herself in love. But now she started to question the nature of love between a man and a woman and wondered if there was something higher and more permanent. Not that she cared for Arjun any less; she was merely groping for a new kind of excitement.

Although he was sensitive, Arjun could not have easily guessed what was going on in her mind. As their domestic intimacy grew familiar and into a pattern, she began to observe their life with a kind of detachment, to hold herself more aloof from the routine and to contemplate the meaning of ‘family life’. Sometimes Arjun came home late from work, at eight or even nine o’clock. He would be hungry, and as soon as he had showered and changed, they would sit down to eat. Wanting io ease his mind from the day’s activities, he would eat silently and in comfort. She would want him to talk about the business world and the excitement of the day, but he found it an effort. Thus they would exchange few words, mostly small talk, and being tired he would go off to bed and immediately fall asleep. His earlier ardour tended to fade and their sexual life threatened to lapse into a routine; his embraces began to lack freshness and vigour.

And yet, occasionally, it seemed to her that this was the finest time of her life. To savour it fully, she felt that their circumstances could perhaps have been different. But what they ought to have been she was not sure. She would have liked to talk to someone about her feelings. But none of her friends, like Neena and Rao Sahib’s family, or admirers like Nawab Sahib or Arjun’s few bachelor friends seemed appropriate. How could she describe an intangible feeling of discontent that changed from day to day? To the outside world, she appeared to be infinitely blessed, having married a ‘rich catch’.

Arjun had learnt to be thrifty from his mother, but Priti found some of his habits downright stingy. This sometimes created a problem between them. But it assumed serious proportions when Tara came to visit them. She found Priti ‘spoiled and prodigal’. Priti complained that her mother-in-law was prejudiced against her. Tara, who had carefully budgeted her own household expenses all her life and managed to run her house on Seva Ram’s modest salary, was appalled that Priti did not care about the butter, the sugar, and the gas that was used up in a month. She neatly stacked the sheets and towels in the bathroom closet and taught Priti to lock the pantry when she went out. Priti accepted her advice quietly because she did not think it worth arguing over; besides she was basically more detached about her possessions. All day long Tara went around the house worrying about which shopkeeper was cheating them, and she found Priti’s cavalier manner irritating. To this was added the humiliation of seeing her son dote so completely on her daughter-in-law that he seemed to forget his own mother. She sometimes felt left out. Tara couldn’t help but envy Priti because she couldn’t remember having experienced this constant and demonstrative devotion from her own husband. In Arjun’s love for Priti she saw a defection from her own love, as if Priti was encroaching on something that was hers. In such moments she observed Arjun’s happiness in gloomy silence. Once she even reminded Arjun that it was unbecoming for a man to give into every whim of his wife. She recalled her own past, and she counselled him that ‘manly men kept their wives in place’ from the beginning and made it known who had the upper hand in a house; it was not proper in a man to worship his wife.

Arjun was caught in a novel dilemma, and did not know what to say. He respected his mother but he utterly adored Priti. He felt Tara had good judgement and Priti could benefit from it, yet he could not bring himself to openly criticize his wife. Arjun gently tried to pass on some of Tara’s suggestions, but Priti responded in such a remote and abstracted manner, that Arjun was soon silenced.

All the time deep inside her, Priti waited for something to happen. She was quite clear in her mind that it was not another man that she desired. But what was it that she wanted? She did not know. Every morning she would wake up and hope to find it there. She looked out of the window, listened to every new sound, but nothing would happen. At sunset, she would grow sad and wait for the next day.