'Well,' Arun had said just recently, 'now that Savita's married, that's one less, you'll agree, darling.' Meenakshi had sighed, replying in a couplet :
'Marry one - and what's my fate ? Every Mehra on my plate.'
82.Arun had frowned. He had been reminded once again of the fact that Meenakshi's elder brother was a poet. It was from long familiarity - almost obsession - with rhyme that most of the younger Chatterjis had learned to improvise couplets, sometimes of surpassing puerility.
The ayah brought the milk and left. Meenakshi turned her lovely eyes back to Euddenbrooks while Aparna sat on the bed drinking her milk. With a sound of impatience Meenakshi threw Thomas Mann onto the bed and followed him there, closed her eyes and went off to sleep. She was awakened with a shock twenty minutes later by Aparna, who was pinching her breast.
'Don't be horrid, Aparna precious. Mummy's trying to sleep,' said Meenakshi.
'Don't sleep,' said Aparna. 'I want to play.' Unlike other children of her age, Aparna never used her name in the Caesarean third person, though her mother did.
'Darling sweetheart, Mummy is tired, she's been reading a book and she doesn't want to play. Not now, anyway. Later, when Daddy comes home, you can play with him. Or you can play with Uncle Varun when he returns from college. What have you done with your glass ?'
'When will Daddy come home ?'
'I'd say in about an hour,' replied Meenakshi.
'I'd say in about an hour,' said Aparna speculatively, as if she liked the phrase. 'I want a necklace too,' she added, and tugged at her mother's gold chain.
Meenakshi gave her daughter a hug. 'And you shall have one,' she said, and dismissed the subject. 'Now go to Miriam.'
'No.' ' .
'Then stay here if you want. But do be quiet, darling.'
Aparna was quiet for a while. She looked at Buddenbrooks, at her empty glass, at her sleeping mother, at the quilt, at the mirror, at the ceiling. Then she said, 'Mummy ?' tentatively. There was no response.
'Mummy ?' Aparna attempted a few notches louder.
'Mmm ?'
'MUMMY !' yelled Aparna at the top of her lungs.
83Meenakshi sat bolt upright and shook Aparna. 'Do you want me to spank you ?' she asked.
'No,' replied Aparna definitively.
'Then what is it ? Why are you shouting ? What were you going to say ?'
'Have you had a hard day, darling?' asked Aparna, hoping to arouse a response to her imitative charm.
'Yes,' said Meenakshi shortly. 'Now, darling, pick up that glass and go to Miriam at once.'
'Shall I comb your hair ?'
'No.'
Aparna got down reluctantly from the bed and made her way to the door. She toyed with the idea of saying, Til tell Daddy!' though what she could have complained about was left unformulated. Her mother meanwhile was once again sleeping sweetly, her lips slightly parted, her long black hair spread across the pillow. It was so hot in the afternoon, and everything tilted her towards a long and languorous sleep. Her breasts rose and fell gently, and she dreamed about Arun, who was handsome and dashing and covenanted, and who would be coming home in an hour. And after a while she began to dream about Billy Irani, whom they would be meeting later that evening.
When Arun arrived, he left his briefcase in the drawing room, walked into the bedroom, and closed the door. Seeing Meenakshi asleep, he paced up and down for a while, then took off his coat and tie, and lay down beside her without disturbing her sleep. But after a while his hand moved to her forehead and then down her face to her breasts. Meenakshi opened her eyes and said, 'Oh.' She was momentarily bewildered. After a while she asked, 'What's the time ?'
'Five-thirty. I came home early just as I promised - and I found you asleep.'
'I couldn't sleep earlier, darling. Aparna woke me up every few minutes.'
'What's the programme for the evening?' 'Dinner and dancing with Billy and Shireen.'
84'Oh yes, of course.' After a pause Arun continued: 'To tell you the truth, darling, I'm rather tired. I wonder whether we shouldn't simply call it off tonight ?'
'Oh, you'll revive quickly enough after you've had a drink,' said Meenakshi brightly. 'And a glance or two from Shireen,' she added.
'I suppose you're right, dear.' Arun reached out for her. He had had a little trouble with his back a month ago, but had quite recovered.
'Naughty boy,' said Meenakshi, and pushed his hand away. After a while she added, 'The T.C has been cheating us on the Ostermilk.'
'Ah ? Has she ?' said Arun indifferently, then swerved off to a subject that interested him - 'I discovered today that we were being overcharged sixty thousand on the new paper project by one of our local businessmen. We've asked him to revise his estimates, of course, but it does
rather shock one No sense of business ethics - or
personal ethics either. He was in the office the other day, and he assured me that he was making us a special offer because of what he called our long-standing relationship. Now I find, after talking to Jock Mackay, that that's the line he took with them as well - but charged them sixty thousand less than us.'
'What will you do ?' Meenakshi asked dutifully. She had switched off a few sentences ago.
Arun talked on for five minutes or so, while Meenakshi's mind wandered. When he stopped and looked at her questioningly, she said, yawning a little from residual sleepiness :
'How has your boss reacted to all this ?'
'Difficult to say. With Basil Cox it's difficult to say anything, even when he's delighted. In this case I think he's as annoyed by the possible delay as pleased by the definite saving.' Arun unburdened himself for another five minutes while Meenakshi began to buff her nails.
The bedroom door had been bolted against interruption, but when Aparna saw her father's briefcase she knew that he had returned and insisted upon being admitted. Arun
85opened the door and gave her a hug, and for the next hour or so they did a jigsaw featuring a giraffe, which Aparna had seen in a toyshop a week after being taken to the Brahmpur Zoo. They had done the jigsaw several times before, but Aparna had not yet tired of it. Nor had Arun. He adored his daughter and occasionally felt it was a pity that he and Meenakshi went out almost every evening. But one simply couldn't let one's life come to a standstill because one had a child. What, after all, were ayahs for? What, for that matter, were younger brothers for ?
'Mummy has promised me a necklace,' said Aparna.
'Has she, darling?' said Arun. 'How does she imagine she's going to buy it ? We can't afford it at the moment.'
Aparna looked so disappointed at this latest intelligence that Arun and Meenakshi turned to each other with transferred adoration.
'But she will,' said Aparna, quietly and determinedly. 'Now I want to do a jigsaw.'
'But we've just done one,“ protested Arun.
'I want to do another.'
'You handle her, Meenakshi,' said Arun.
'You handle her, darling,' said Meenakshi. 'I must get ready. And please clear the bedroom floor.'
So for a while Arun and Aparna, banished to the drawing room this time, lay on the carpet putting together a jigsaw of the Victoria Memorial while Meenakshi bathed and dressed and perfumed and ornamented herself.
Varun returned from college, slid past Arun into his tiny box of a room, and sat down with his books. But he seemed nervous, and could not settle down to studying. When Arun went to get ready, Aparna was transferred to him; and the rest of Varun's evening was spent at home trying to keep her amused.
The long-necked Meenakshi turned numerous heads when their party of four entered Firpos for dinner. Arun told Shireen she was looking gorgeous and Billy looked with soulful languor at Meenakshi and said that she looked divine, and things went wonderfully well and were followed
86by some pleasantly titillating dancing at the 300 Club. Meenakshi and Arun were not really able to afford all this - Billy Irani had independent means - but it seemed intolerable that they, for whom this kind of life was so obviously intended, should be deprived of it by a mere lack of funds. Meenakshi could not help noticing, through dinner and beyond, the lovely little gold danglers that Shireen was wearing, and that hung so becomingly from her little velvety ears.
It was a warm evening. In the car on the way back home Arun said to Meenakshi, 'Give me your hand, darling,' and Meenakshi, placing one red nail-polished fingertip on the back of his hand, said, 'Here!' Arun thought that this was delightfully elegant and flirtatious. But Meenakshi had her mind on something else.
Later, when Arun had gone to bed, Meenakshi unlocked her jewellery case (the Chatterjis did not believe in giving their daughter great quantities of jewellery but she had been given quite enough for her likely requirements) and took out the two gold medals so precious to Mrs Rupa Mehra's heart. She had given these to Meenakshi at the time of her wedding as a gift to the bride of her elder son. This she felt was the appropriate thing to do; she had nothing else to give, and she felt that her husband would have approved. On the back of the medals was engraved: 'Thomasson Engineering College Roorkee. Raghubir Mehra. Civil Engg. First. 1916' and 'Physics. First. 1916' respectively. Two lions crouched sternly on pedestals on each medal. Meenakshi looked at the medals, then balanced them in her hands, then held the cool and precious discs to her cheeks. She wondered how much they weighed. She thought of the gold chain she had promised Aparna and the gold drops she had virtually promised herself. She had examined them quite carefully as they hung from Shireen's little ears. The danglers were shaped like tiny pears.
When Arun rather impatiently called her to bed, she murmured, 'Just coming.' But it was a minute or two before she joined him. 'What are you thinking of, darling ?' he asked her. 'You look dangerously preoccupied.' But
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Saeeda Bai's accompanists were a study in contrast. Both were about twenty-five, and both were devoted and skilled musicians. Both were fond of each other, and deeply attached - by economics and affection - to Saeeda Bai. But beyond that the resemblance ended. Ishaq Khan, who bowed his sarangi with such ease and harmoniousness, almost self-effacement, was a slightly sardonic bachelor. Motu Chand, so nicknamed because of his plumpness, was a contented man, already a father of four. He looked a bit like a bulldog with his large eyes and snuffling mouth, and was benignly torpid, except when frenziedly drumming his tabla.
They were discussing Ustad Majeed Khan, one of the most famous classical singers of India, a notoriously aloof man who lived in the old city, not far from where Saeeda Bai had grown up.
'But what I don't understand, Saeeda Begum,' said Motu Chand, leaning awkwardly backwards because of his paunch, 'is why he should be so critical of us small people. There he sits with his head above the clouds, like Lord Shiva on Kailash. Why should he open his third eye to burn us up ?'
'There is no accounting for the moods of the great,' said Ishaq Khan. He touched his sarangi with his left hand and went on, 'Now look at this sarangi - it's a noble instrument - yet the noble Majeed Khan hates it. He never allows it to accompany him.'
Saeeda Bai nodded; Motu Chand made reassuring sounds. 'It is the loveliest of all instruments,' he said.
'You kafir,' said Ishaq Khan, smiling twistedly at his friend. 'How can you pretend to like this instrument? What is it made of?'
'Well, wood of course,' said Motu Chand, now leaning forward with an effort.
'Look at the little wrestler,' laughed Saeeda Bai. 'We must feed him some laddus.' She called out for her maid, and sent her to get some sweets.
Ishaq continued to wind the coils of his argument around the struggling Motu Chand.
145'Wood !' he cried. 'And what else ?'
'Oh, well, you know, Khan Sahib - strings and so on,' said Motu Chand, defeated as to Ishaq's intention.
'And what are these strings made of?' continued Ishaq Khan relentlessly.
