'I'm enjoying it here,' Varun ventured, seeing Lata look hurt. He knew that she liked Brahmpur, though it was clearly no metropolis.
'You be quiet,' snapped Arun brutally. His judgment was being challenged by his subordinate, and he would have none of it.
Varun struggled with himself; he glared, then looked down.
'Don't talk about what you don't understand,' added Arun, putting the boot in.
Varun glowered silently.
'Did you hear me ?'
'Yes,' said Varun.
'Yes, what ?'
'Yes, Arun Bhai,' muttered Varun.
This pulverization was standard fare for Varun, and Lata was not surprised by the exchange. But she felt very bad for him, and indignant with Arun. She could not understand either the pleasure or the purpose of it. She decided she would speak to Varun as soon after the wed- j ding as possible to try to help him withstand - at least !
I
internally - such assaults upon his spirit. Even if I'm not very good at withstanding them myself, Lata thought.
'Well, Arun Bhai,' she said innocently, 'I suppose it's too late. We're all one big happy family now, and we'll have to put up with each other as well as we can.'
The phrase, however, was not innocent. 'One big happy family' was an ironically used Chatterji phrase. Meenakshi Mehra had been a Chatterji before she and Arun had met at a cocktail party, fallen in torrid, rapturous and elegant love, and got married within a month, to the shock of both families. Whether or not Mr Justice Chatterji of the Calcutta High Court and his wife were happy to welcome the non-Bengali Arun as the first appendage to their ring of five children (plus Cuddles the dog), and whether or not Mrs Rupa Mehra had been delighted at the thought of her first-born, the apple of her eye, marrying outside the khatri caste (and to a spoilt supersophisticate like Meenakshi at that), Arun certainly valued the Chatterji connection greatly. The Chatterjis had wealth and position and a grand Calcutta house where they threw enormous (but tasteful) parties. And even if the big happy family, especially Meenakshi's brothers and sisters, sometimes bothered him with their endless, unchokable wit and improvised rhyming couplets, he accepted it precisely because it appeared to him to be undeniably urbane. It was a far cry from this provincial capital, this Kapoor crowd and these garish light-in-the-hedge celebrations - with pomegranate juice in lieu of alcohol !
'What precisely do you mean by that ?' demanded Arun of Lata. 'Do you think that if Daddy had been alive we would have married into this sort of a family ?'
Arun hardly seemed to care that they might be overheard. Lata flushed. But the brutal j jint was well made. Had Raghubir Mehra not died in his forties but continued his meteoric rise in the Railway Service, he would - when the British left Indian government service in droves in 1947 - certainly have become a member of the Railway Board. His excellence and experience might even have made him the Chairman. The family would not have had to struggle,I
as it had had to for years and was still forced to, on Mrs Rupa Mehra's depleted savings, the kindness of friends and, lately, her elder son's salary. She would not hjve haJ to sell most of her jewellery and even their small house in Darjeeling to give her children the schooling which she felt that, above everything else, they must have. Beneath her pervasive sentimentality - and her attachment to the seem-, ingly secure physical objects that reminded her of her beloved husband - lay a sense of sacrifice and a sense or* values that determinedly melted them down into the insecure, intangible benefits of an excellent English-medium; boarding-school education. And so Arun and Varun had' continued to go to St George's School, and Savita and Lata had not been withdrawn from St Sophia's Convent.
The Kapoors might be all very well for Brahmpur society, thought Arun, but if Daddy had been alive, a constellation of brilliant matches would have been strewn at the feet of the Mehras. At least he, for one, had overcome their circumstances and done well in the way of in-laws. What possible comparison could there be between Pran's brother, that ogling fellow whom Lata had just been talking to - who ran, of all things, a cloth shop in Banaras, from what Arun had heard - and, say, Meenakshi's elder brother, who had been to Oxford, was studying law at Lincoln's Inn, and was, in addition, a published poet ? I
Arun's speculations were brought down to earth by his ' daughter, who threatened to scream if she didn't get her ice-cream. She knew from experience that screaming (or L even the threat of it) worked wonders with her parents, f And, after all, they sometimes screamed at each other, and often at the servants. ,
Lata looked guilty. 'It's my fault, darling,' she said to i Aparna. 'Let's go at once before we get caught up in something else. But you mustn't cry or yell, promise me that. It won't work with me.' Aparna, who knew it wouldn't, was silent. But just at that moment the bridegroom emerged from one side of the house, dressed all in white, his dark, rather |
nervous face veiled with hanging strings of white flowers; everyone crowded forward towards the door from which the bride would emerge; and Aparna, lifted into her Lata Bua's arms, was forced to defer once again both treat and threat.
1.5
IT was a little untraditional, Lata couldn't help thinking, that Pran hadn't ridden up to the gate on a white horse with a little nephew sitting in front of him and with the groom's party in tow to claim his bride; but then Prem Nivas was the groom's house after all. And no doubt if he had followed the convention, Arun would have found further cause for mockery. As it was, Lata found it difficult to imagine the lecturer on Elizabethan Drama under that veil of tuberoses. He was now placing a garland of dark red, heavily fragrant roses around her sister Savita's neck and Savita was doing the same to him. She looked lovely in her red-and-gold wedding sari, and quite subdued; Lata thought she might even have been crying. Her head was covered, and she looked down at the ground as her mother had doubtless instructed her to do. It was not proper, even when she was putting the garland round his neck, that she should look full in the face of the man with whom she was to live her life.
The welcoming ceremony completed, bride and groom moved together to the middle of the garden, where a small platform, decorated with more white flowers and open to the auspicious stars, had been erected. Here the priests, one from each family, and Mrs Rupa Mehra and the parents of the groom sat around the small fire that would be the witness of their vows.
Mrs Rupa Mehra's brother, whom the family very rarely met, had earlier in the day taken charge of he bangle ceremony. Arun was annoyed that he had not been allowed to take charge of anything. He had suggested to his mother after the crisis brought on by his grandfather's inexplicableIt.
But it was too late for th °VC j weddmg to Calcuttavo'ces rose to the skies and Quite drowned out the irrelevant it- at' and she would not hear ochant of the ceremonies.
Now that the exchange f t** Lata, however, stood close by and watched with an
Paid no great attention to f. ands was °ver, the crowoattentive mixture of fascination and dismay. The two bare-
would go on for the better C aCf wedding rites. Thes chested priests, one very fat and one fairly thin, both
milled and chattered round h” 1 ^ ^°Ur Wm*e the guest! apparently immune to the cold, were locked in mildly
laughed; they shook hand C fwjïso^^rem Nivas. Thei insistent competition as to who knew a more elaborate
heads ; they coalesced into 1 “I °r tnem to their fore- ^orm °^ the seryice- So, while the stars stayed their courses
women there; they warmed' ^ S' the men herertitt m order to keeP the auspicious time in abeyance, the
“lied clay stoves placed str * em!, es at the charcoal- Sanskrit wound interminably on. Even the groom's parents
while their frosted, gossip-lad ^'h* around the garden were asked ^ the fat Priest to rePeat something after him.
they admired the multicol ^n br£ath rose into the air' Mahesh Kapoor's eyebrows were quivering; he was about
Photographer as he murmured” s7 A ' ^ Smiled for *« l° W°W hi§ rathef sh°rt fuse“
they breathed deeply the see f fl P ase! in English; Lata tried to imagine what Savita was thinking. How
cooked spices; they exchanged °h' L Wers and Perfume and cou^ sne nave agreed to get married without knowing this
tics and scandal under the h' £ i $ ^ deatns and poli- man? Kind-hearted and accommodating though she was,
at the back of the garden b”g ^coloured cloth canopy she did have views of her own. Lata loved her deeply and
rood had been laid out; the^* ,wmc^ 'ong tables of admired her generous, even temper; the evenness was
chairs with their plates full *A** ,own exhaustedly on certainly a contrast to her own erratic swings of mood.
Servants, some in white liv ^ tU in inexhaustibly. Savita was free from any vanity about her fresh and lovely
around fruit juice and tea a “dT' ff “^ '” knaki' Bought looks ; but didn't she rebel against the fact that Pran would
who were standing in the H ^ snacks to those fail the most lenient test of glamour ? Did Savita really
Jaddus, gulab-jamuns, barfis and , Samosas kachauris, accept that Mother knew best ? It was difficult to speak to
consumed and replenished al ° ga?a,f and ice-cream were Savita, or sometimes even to guess what she was thinking.
°f vegetables. Friends who h°H PU“S and Slx kinds Since Lata had Sone to college, it was Malati rather than
months fell upon each Qther na^ n°t met each other for her sister who had become her confidante. And Malati, she
met only at weddings and fu ™ l C”es' relatives who knew' would never have agreed to be married off in this
exchanged the latest news nf£-j embraced tearfully and summary manner by all the mothers in the world
Lata'« “rougiit •««»•”» ^m «'“
“•-”nv i.v-wi,i a&amoi u«, i^».i. mat i i^ii wuuiu who were standing in the A sn^ks to those fail the most lenient test of glamour ? Did Savita really laddus. p-nl'ik ; , _ garden: samosac !,„„! • ir he was returning her affectionate look. It was too much.
Lata forgot that she had been defending Pran to Mala( just a short while ago, and began to discover things t( irritate herself with.
'Prem Nivas' for a start: the abode of love. An idioti^ name, thought Lata crossly, for this house of arrange! marriages. And a needlessly grandiloquent one: as if i were the centre of the universe and felt obliged to make i philosophical statement about it. And the scene, looked a. objectively, was absurd : seven living people, none of then stupid, sitting around a fire intoning a dead language thai only three of them understood. And yet, Lata thought, ha mind wandering from one thing to another, perhaps this little fire was indeed the centre of the universe. For here il burned, in the middle of this fragrant garden, itself in the heart of Pasand Bagh, the pleasantest locality of Brahmpur, which was the capital of the state of Purva Pradesh, which lay in the centre of the Gangetic plains, which was itself the heartland of India … and so on through the galaxies to the outer limits of perception and knowledge. The thought did not seem in. the kast trite to Lata; it VitVpêà rier control her irritation at, indeed resentment of, Pran. |
'Speak up ! Speak up ! If your mother had mumbled like you, we would never have got married.'
Mahesh Kapoor had turned impatiently towards his dumpy little wife, who became even more tongue-tied as a result.
Pran turned and smiled encouragingly at his mother, and quickly rose again in Lata's estimation.
Mahesh Kapoor frowned, but held his peace for a few minutes, after which he burst out, this time to the family priest :
'Is this mumbo-jumbo going to go on for ever ?' j
The priest said something soothing in Sanskrit, as if [
»
blessing Mahesh Kapoor, who felt obliged to lapse into an irked silence. He was irritated for several reasons, one of which was the distinct and unwelcome sight of his arch political rival, the Home Minister, deep in conversation with the large and venerable Chief Minister S.S. Sharma. What could they be plotting? he thought. My stupid wife insisted on inviting Agarwal because our daughters are friends, even though she knew it would sour things for me. And now the Chief Minister is talking to him as if no one else exists. And in my garden !
His other major irritation was directed at Mrs Rupa Mehra. Mahesh Kapoor, once he had taken over the arrangements, had set his heart on inviting a beautiful and renowned singer of ghazals to perform at Prem Nivas, as was the tradition whenever anyone in his family got married. But Mrs Rupa Mehra, though she was not even paying for the wedding, had put her foot down. She could not have 'that sort of person' singing love-lyrics at the wedding of her daughter. 'That sort of person' meant both a Muslim and a courtesan.
Mahesh Kapoor muffed his responses, and the priest repeated them gently.
