A Suitable Boy Read Free Page B

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 And so Arun and Varun had' continued to go to St George's School, and Savita and Lata had not been withdrawn from St Sophia's Convent.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