'I believe it's made from rice,' said Arun. 'It's a Chinese concoction of some kind.'
'Would Shaw Brothers carry it ?' asked Patricia Cox.
'I rather doubt it. It ought to be available in Chinatown,' said Arun.
In fact Varun and his friends did get it from Chinatown, from a hole-in-the-wall sort of place at eight annas a glass.
'It must be powerful stuff, whatever it is. Smoked hilsa and Shamshu - how marvellous to learn two entirely different things at dinner. One never does, you know,' Patricia confided. 'Usually, I'm bored as a fish.'
Bored as a fish ? thought Arun. But by now Varun had started singing to himself inside his room.
'What a very interesting young man,' continued Patricia Cox. 'And he's your brother, you say. What is he singing ? Why didn't he join us for dinner ? We must have all of you around sometime soon. Mustn't we, darling?' Basil Cox looked very severely doubtful. Patricia Cox decided to take this for assent. 'I haven't had so much fun since I was at RAD A. And you can bring a bottle of Shamshu.'
Heaven forbid, thought Basil Cox.
Heaven forbid, thought Arun.
7.7
THE guests were about to arrive at Mr Justice Chatterji's house in Ballygunge. This was one of the three or four grand parties that he took it upon himself to give at short notice during the course of the year. There was a peculiar mixture of guests for two reasons. First, because of Mr Justice Chatterji himself, whose net of friendship and acquaintance was very varied. (He was an absent-minded
52.2.man, who picked up friends here and there.) Secondly, because any party of this kind was invariably treated by the whole Chatterji family as an opportunity to invite all their own friends as well. Mrs Chatterji invited some of hers, and so did their children; only Tapan, who had returned for his school holidays, was considered too young to tag on his own list of invitees to a party where there would be drinking.
Mr Justice Chatterji was not an orderly man, but he had produced five children in strict alternation of sex: Amit, Meenakshi (who was married to Arun Mehra), Dipankar, Kakoli, and Tapan. None of them worked, but each had an occupation. Amit wrote poetry, Meenakshi played canasta, Dipankar sought the Meaning of Life, Kakoli kept the telephone busy, and Tapan, who was only twelve or thirteen, and by far the youngest, went to the prestigious boarding-school, Jheel.
Amit, the poet, had studied Jurisprudence at Oxford, but having got his degree, had not completed, to his father's exasperation, what should have been easy enough for him to complete: his studies for the Bar at Lincoln's Inn, his father's old Inn. He had eaten most of his dinners and had even passed a paper or two, but had then lost interest in the law. Instead, on the strength of a couple of university prizes for poetry, some short fiction published here and there in literary magazines, and a book of poetry which had won him a prize in England (and therefore adulation in Calcutta) he was sitting pretty in his father's house and doing nothing that counted as real work.
At the moment he was talking to his two sisters and to Lata.
'How many do we expect ?' asked Amit.
'I don't know,' said Kakoli. 'Fifty?'
Amit looked amused. 'Fifty would just about cover half your friends, Kuku. I'd say one hundred and fifty.'
'I can't abide these large parties,' said Meenakshi in high excitement.
'No, nor can I,' said Kakoli, glancing at herself in the tall mirror in the hall.
52.3'I suppose the guest-list consists entirely of those invited by Ma and Tapan and myself,' said Amit, naming the three least sociable members of the family.
'Vereeeee funneeeee,' said (or, rather, sang) Kakoli, whose name implied the songbird that she was.
'You should go up to your room, Amit,' said Meenakshi, 'and settle down on a sofa with Jane Austen. We'll tell you when dinner is served. Or better still, we'll send it up to you. That way you can avoid all your admirers.'
'He's very peculiar,' said Kakoli to Lata. 'Jane Austen is the only woman in his life.'
'But half the bhadralok in Calcutta want him as a match for their daughters,' added Meenakshi. 'They believe he has brains.'
Kakoli recited :
'Amit Chatterji, what a catch ! Is a highly suitable match.'
Meenakshi added :
'Why he has not married yet ? Always playing hard to get.'
KaktAi continued'
'Famous poet, so they say. “Besh” decent in every way.'
She giggled.
Lata said to Amit : 'Why do you let them get away with this ?'
'You mean with their doggerel ?' said Amit.
'I mean with teasing you,' said Lata.
'Oh, I don't mind. It runs off my back like duck's water,' said Amit.
Lata looked surprised, but Kakoli said, 'He's doing a Biswas on you.'
'A Biswas ?'
5M'Biswas Babu, my father's old clerk. He still comes around a couple of times a week to help with this and that, and gives us advice on life. He advised Meenakshi against marrying your brother,' said Kakoli.
In fact the opposition to Meenakshi's sudden affair and marriage had been wider and deeper. Meenakshi's parents had not particularly cared for the fact that she had married outside the community. Arun Mehra was neither a Brahmo, nor of Brahmin stock, nor even a Bengali. He came from a family that was struggling financially. To give the Chatterjis credit, this last fact did not matter very much to them, though they themselves had been more than affluent for generations. They were only (with respect to this objection) concerned that their daughter might not be able to afford the comforts of life that she had grown up with. But again, they had not swamped their married daughter with gifts. Even though Mr Justice Chatterji did not have an instinctive rapport with his son-in-law, he did not think that that would be fair.
'What does Biswas Babu have to do with duck's water ?' asked Lata, who found Meenakshi's family amusing but confusing.
'Oh - that's just one of his expressions. I don't think it's very kind of Amit not to explain family references to outsiders.'
'She's not an outsider,' said Amit. 'Or she shouldn't be. Actually, we are all very fond of Biswas Babu, and he is very fond of us. He was my grandfather's clerk originally.'
'But he won't be Amit's - to his heart-deep regret,' said Meenakshi. 'In fact, Biswas Babu is even more upset than our father that Amit has deserted the Bar.'
'I can still practise if I choose to,' said Amit. 'A university degree is enough in Calcutta.'
'Ah, but you won't be admitted to the Bar Library.'
'Who cares ?' said Amit. 'Actually, I'd be happy editing a small journal and writing a few good poems and a novel or two and passing gently into senility and posterity. May I offer you a drink ? A sherry ?'
Til have a sherry,' said Kakoli.
52-5'Not you, Kuku, you can help yourself. I was offering Lata a drink.'
'Ouch,' said Kakoli. She looked at Lata's pale blue cotton sari with its fine chikan embroidery, and said: 'Do you know, Lata - pink is what would really suit you.'
Lata said : 'I'd better not have anything as dangerous as a sherry. Could I have some - oh, why not? A small sherry, please.'
Amit went to the bar with a smile and said: 'Do you think I might have two glasses of sherry ?'
'Dry, medium or sweet, Sir?' asked Tapan.
Tapan was the baby of the family, whom everyone loved and fussed over, and who was even allowed an occasional sip of sherry himself. This evening he was helping at the bar.
'One sweet and one dry, please,' said Amit. 'Where's Dipankar?' he asked Tapan.
'I think he's in his room, Amit Da,' said Tapan. 'Shall I call him down ?'
'No, no, you help with the bar,' said Amit, patting his brother on the shoulder. 'You're doing a fine job. I'll just see what he's up to.'
Dipankar, their middle brother, was a dreamer. He had studied economics, but spent most of his time reading about the poet and patriot Sri Aurobindo, whose flaccid mystical verse he was (to Amit's disgust) at present deeply engrossed in. Dipankar was indecisive by nature. Amit knew that it would be best simply to bring him downstairs himself. Left to his own devices, Dipankar treated every decision like a spiritual crisis. Whether to have one spoon of sugar in his tea or two, whether to come down now or fifteen minutes later, whether to enjoy the good life of Ballygunge or to take up Sri Aurobindo's path of renunciation, all these decisions caused him endless agony. A succession of strong women passed through his life and made most of his decisions for him, before they became impatient with his vacillation ('Is she really the one for me ?') and moved on. His views moulded themselves to theirs while they lasted, then began to float freely again.
5z6Dipankar was fond of making remarks such as, 'It is all the Void,' at breakfast, thus casting a mystical aura over the scrambled eggs.
Amit went up to Dipankar's room, and found him sitting on a prayer-mat at the harmonium, untunefully singing a song by Rabindranath Tagore.
'You had better come down soon,' Amit said in Bengali. 'The guests have begun to arrive.'
'Just coming, just coming,' said Dipankar. Til just finish this song, and then I'll… I'll come down. I will.'
'I'll wait,' said Amit.
'You can go down, Dada. Don't trouble yourself. Please.'
'It's no trouble,' said Amit. After Dipankar had finished his song, unembarrassed by its tunelessness - for all pitches, no doubt, stood equal before the Void - Amit escorted him down the teak-balustraded marble stairs.
7.8
'WHERE'S Cuddles?' asked Amit when they were halfway down.
'Oh,' said Dipankar vaguely, 'I don't know.'
'He might bite someone.'
'Yes,' agreed Dipankar, not greatly troubled by the thought.
Cuddles was not a hospitable dog. He had been with the Chatterji family for more than ten years, during which time he had bitten Biswas Babu, several schoolchildren (friends who had come to play), a number of lawyers (who had visited Mr Justice Chatterji's chambers for conferences during his years as a barrister), a middle-level executive, a doctor on a house call, and the standard mixture of postmen and electricians.
Cuddles' most recent victim had been the man who had come to the door to take the decennial census.
The only creature Cuddles treated with respect was Mr
527Justice Chatterji's father's cat Pillow, who lived in the next house, and who was so fierce that he was taken for walks on a leash.
'You should have tied him up,' said Amit.
Dipankar frowned. His thoughts were with Sri Aurobindo. 'I think I have,' he said.
'We'd better make sure,' said Amit. 'Just in case.'
It was good that they did. Cuddles rarely growled to identify his position, and Dipankar could not remember where - if at all - he had put him. He might still be ranging the garden in order to savage any guests who wandered onto the verandah.
They found Cuddles in the bedroom which had been set aside for people to leave their bags and other apparatus in. He was crouched quietly near a bedside table, watching them with shiny little black eyes. He was a small black dog, with some white on his chest and on his paws. When they had bought him the Chatterjis had been told he was an Apso, but he had turned out to be a mutt with a large proportion of Tibetan terrier.
In order to avoid trouble at the party, he had been fastened by a leash to a bedpost. Dipankar could not recall having done this, so it might have been someone else. He and Amit approached Cuddles. Cuddles normally loved tVie îarriiVy, but today Vie was jittery.
Cuddles surveyed them closely without growling, and when he judged that the moment was ripe, he flew intently and viciously through the air towards them until the sudden restraint of the leash jerked him back. He strained against it, but could not get into biting range. All the Chatterjis knew how to step back rapidly when instinct told them Cuddles was on the attack. But perhaps the guests would not react so swiftly.
'I think we should move him out of this room,' said Amit. Strictly speaking, Cuddles was Dipankar's dog, and thus his responsibility, but he now in effect belonged to all of them - or, rather, was, accepted as one of them, like the sixth point of a regular hexagon.
'He seems quite happy here,' said Dipankar. 'He's a
5z8living being too. Naturally he gets nervous with all this coming and going in the house.'
'Take it from me,' said Amit, 'he's going to bite someone.'
'Hmm. … Should I put a notice on the door : Beware of Dog?' asked Dipankar.
'No. I think you should get him out of here. Lock him up in your room.'