'Yes, Sahib. I'll make another glass.'
'Leave it. No. Yes - make another glass.'
'With salt, Sahib.' Mansoor ventured to smile. He had quite a nice smile.
'What are you laughing at like a donkey ?' asked Dr Seth. 'With salt, of course.'
'Yes, Sahib.'
'And, idiot -'
'Yes, Sahib?'
'With pepper too.'
'Yes, Sahib.'
Dr Kishen Chand Seth veered around towards his daughter. She wilted before him.
'What kind of daughter do I have ?' he asked rhetorically. Rupa Mehra waited for the answer, and it was not long in coming. 'Ungrateful!' Her father bit into an arrowroot biscuit for emphasis. 'Soggy !' he added in disgust.
Mrs Rupa Mehra knew better than to protest.
Dr Kishen Chand Seth went on :
'You have been back from Calcutta for a week and you haven't visited me once. Is it me you hate so much or your stepmother ?'
47Since her stepmother, Parvati, was considerably younger j than herself, Mrs Rupa Mehra found it very difficult to , think of her other than as her father's nurse and, later, mistress. Though fastidious, Mrs Rupa Mehra did not entirely resent Parvati. Her father had been lonely for three decades after her mother had died. Parvati was good to him and (she supposed) good for him. Anyway, thought Mrs Rupa Mehra, this is the way things happen in the « world. It is best to be on good terms with everyone.
'But I only arrived here yesterday,' she said. She had told him so a minute ago, but he evidently did not believe '
her.
'Hunh!' said Dr Seth dismissively.
'By the Brahmpur Mail.'
'You wrote in your letter that you would be coming last
week.'
'But I couldn't get reservations, Baoji, so I decided to stay in Calcutta another week.' This was true, but the pleasure of spending time with her three-year-old granddaughter Aparna had also been a factor in her delay.
'Have you heard of telegrams ?'
'I thought of sending you one, Baoji, but I didn't think it was so important. Then, the expense….'
'Ever since you became a Mehra you have become completely evasive.'
This was an unkind cut, and could not fail to wound. Mrs Rupa Mehra bowed her head.
'Here. Have a biscuit,' said her father in a conciliatory
manner.
Mrs Rupa Mehra shook her head.
'Eat, fool!' said her father with rough affection. 'Or are you still keeping those brainless fasts that are so bad for
your health ?'
'It is Ekadashi today.' Mrs Rupa Mehra fasted on the eleventh day of each lunar fortnight in memory of her
husband.
'I don't care if it's ten Ekadashis,' said her father with some heat. 'Ever since you came under the influence of the Mehras you have become as religious as your ill-fated
48mother. There have been too many mismatched marriages in this family.'
The combination of these two sentences, loosely coupled in several possible wounding interpretations, was too much for Mrs Rupa Mehra. Her nose began to redden. Her husband's family was no more religious than it was evasive. Raghubir's brothers and sisters had taken her to their heart in a manner both affecting and comforting to a sixteenyear-old bride, and still, eight years after her husband's death, she visited as many of them as possible in the course of what her children called her Annual Trans-India RailPilgrimage. If she was growing to be 'as religious as her mother' (which she was not - at least not yet), the operative influence was probably the obvious one: that of her mother, who had died in the post-First-World-War influenza epidemic, when Rupa was very young. A faded image now came before her eyes: the soft spirit of Dr Kishen Chand Seth's first wife could not have been more distant from his own freethinking, allopathic soul. His comment about mismatched marriages injured the memory of two loved ghosts, and was possibly even intended as an insult to the asthmatic Pran.
'Oh don't be so sensitive!' said Dr Kishen Chand Seth brutally. Most women, he had decided, spent two-thirds of their time weeping and whimpering. What good did they think it did ? As an afterthought he added, 'You should get Lata married off soon.'
Mrs Rupa Mehra's head jerked up. 'Oh? Do you think so?' she said. Her father seemed even more full of surprises than usual.
'Yes. She must be nearly twenty. Far too late. Parvati got married when she was in her thirties, and see what she got. A suitable boy must be found for Lata.'
'Yes, yes, 1 was just thinking the same,' said Mrs Rupa Mehra. 'But I don't know what Lata will say.'
Dr Kishen Chand Seth frowned at this irrelevance.
'And where will 1 find a suitable boy?' she continued 'We were lucky with Savita.'
'Lucky - nothing! 1 made the introduction. Is she preg
I
49nant? No one tells me anything,' said Dr Kishen Chand Seth. 1
'Yes, Baoji.' •
Dr Seth paused to interpret the yes. Then he said: 'It's | about time. I hope I get a great-grandson this time.' He f paused again. 'How is she ?' A
'Well, a bit of morning sickness,' began Mrs Rupa I Mehra. »
'No, idiot, I mean my great-granddaughter, Arun's , child,' said Dr Kishen Chand Seth impatiently. !
'Oh, Aparna ? She's very sweet. She's grown very at- '\ tached to me,' said Mrs Rupa Mehra happily. 'Arun and ? Meenakshi send their love.' j
This seemed to satisfy Dr Seth for the moment, and he ! bit his arrowroot biscuit carefully. 'Soft,' he complained. 1 'Soft.' •
Things had to be just so for her father, Mrs Rupa Mehra knew. When she was a child she had not been allowed to drink water with her meals. Each morsel had to be chewed twenty-four times to aid digestion. For a man so particular about, indeed so fond of, his food, it was sad to see him reduced to biscuits and boiled eggs.
'I'll see what I can do for Lata,' her father went on. 'There's a young radiologist at the Prince of Wales. I can't remember his, name. If we had thought about it earlier and used our imaginations we could have captured Fran's younger brother and had a double wedding. But now they say he's got engaged to that Banaras girl. Perhaps that is just as well,' he added, remembering that he was supposed to be feuding with the Minister.
'But you can't go now, Baoji. Everyone will be back soon,' protested Mrs Rupa Mehra.
'Can't? Can't? Where is everyone when I want them?' retorted Dr Kishen Chand Seth. He clicked his tongue impatiently. 'Don't forget your stepmother's birthday next week,' he added as he walked to the door.
Mrs Rupa Mehra looked wistfully and worriedly from the doorway at her father's back. On the way to his car he paused by a bed of red and yellow cannas in Fran's front
5°garden, and she noticed him get more and more agitated. Bureaucratic flowers (among which he also classified marigolds, bougainvillaea and petunias) infuriated him. He had banned them at the Prince of Wales Medical College as long as he had wielded supreme power there; now they were making a comeback. With one swipe of his Kashmiri walking-stick he lopped off the head of a yellow canna. As his daughter tremblingly watched, he got into his ancient grey Buick. This noble machine, a Raja among the rabble of Austins and Morrises that plied the Indian roads, was still slightly dented from the time when, ten years ago, Arun (on a visit during his vacation from St George's) had taken it for a catastrophic joyride. Arun was the only one in the family who could defy his grandfather and get away with it, indeed was loved the more for it. As Dr Kishen Chand Seth drove off, he told himself that this had been a satisfying visit. It had given him something to think about, something to plan.
Mrs Rupa Mehra took a few moments to recover from her father's bracing company. Suddenly realizing how hungry she was, she began to think of her sunset meal. She could not break her fast with grain, so young Mansoor was dispatched to the market to buy some raw bananas to make into cutlets. As he went through the kitchen to get the bicycle key and the shopping bag, he passed by the counter, and noticed the rejected glass of nimbu pani: cool, sour, inviting.
He swiftly gulped it down.
1.14
EVERYONE who knew Mrs Rupa Mehra knew how much she loved roses and, particularly, pictures of roses, and therefore most of the birthday cards she received featured roses of various colours and sizes, and various degrees of copiousness and blatancy. This afternoon, sitting with her reading-glasses on at the desk in the room she shared with Lata, she was going through old cards for a practicalpurpose, although the project threatened to overwhelm her with its resonances of ancient sentiment. Red roses, yellow roses, even a blue rose here and there combined themselves with ribbons, pictures of kittens and one of a guilty-looking puppy. Apples and grapes and roses in a basket ; sheep in a field with a foreground of roses ; roses in a misty pewter mug with a bowl of strawberries resting nearby; violetflushed roses graced with unrose-like, unserrated leaves and mild, even inviting, green thorns : birthday cards from family, friends and assorted well-wishers all over India, and even some from abroad - everything reminded her of everything, as her elder son was apt to remark.
Mrs Rupa Mehra glanced in a cursory manner over her piles of old New Year cards before returning to the birthday roses. She took out a small pair of scissors from the recesses of her great black handbag, and tried to decide which card she would have to sacrifice. It was very rarely that Mrs Rupa Mehra bought a card for anyone, no matter how close or dear the person was. The habit of necessary thrift had sunk deep into her mind, but eight years of the deprivation of small luxuries could not reduce for her the sanctity of the birthday greeting. She could not afford cards, so she made them. In fact she enjoyed the creative challenge of making them. Scraps of cardboard, shreds of ribbon, lengths of coloured paper, little silver stars and adhesive golden numerals lay in a variegated trove at the bottom of the largest of her three suitcases, and these were now pressed into service. The scissors poised, descended. Three silver stars were parted from their fellows and pasted (with the help of borrowed glue - this was the only constituent Mrs Rupa Mehra did not, for fear of leakage, carry with her) onto three corners of the front of the folded blank white piece of cardboard. The fourth corner, the northwest corner, could contain two golden numerals indicating the age of the recipient.
But now Mrs Rupa Mehra paused - for surely the age of the recipient would be an ambivalent detail in the present case. Her stepmother, as she could never cease to remember, was fully ten years younger than she was, and the
5iaccusing '35', even - or perhaps especially - in gold, could be seen - would be seen - as implying an unacceptable disparity, possibly even an unacceptable motivation. The golden numerals were put aside, and a fourth silver star joined its fellows in a pattern of innocuous symmetry.
Postponing the decision of illustration, Mrs Rupa Mehra now looked for assistance in building up a rhyming text for her card. The rose-and-pewter card contained the following lines :
May the gladness you have scattered
Along life's shining way And the little deeds of kindness
That are yours from day to day And the happiness you've showered
On others all life through Return to swell your blessings
In this birthday hour for you.
This would not do for Parvati, Mrs Rupa Mehra decided. She turned to the card illustrated with grapes and apples.
'Tis a day for hugs and kisses,
For cakes and candles too, A day for all who love you
To renew their love anew, A day for sveet reflection
Along life's shining way, And a day for all to tell you :
Have the wonderfullest day.
This showed promise but there was something wrong with the fourth line, Mrs Rupa Mehra instinctively felt. Also, she would have to alter 'hugs and kisses' to 'special greetings' ; Parvati might very well deserve hugs and kisses but Mrs Rupa Mehra was incapable of giving them to her.
Who had sent her this card ? Queenie and Pussy Kapadia, two unmarried sisters in their forties whom she had not met for years. Unmarried ! The very word was like a knell.
53Mrs Rupa Mehra paused in her thoughts for a moment, and moved resolutely on.
The puppy yapped an unrhymed and therefore unusable text - a mere 'Happy Birthday and Many Happy Returns'
- but the sheep bleated in rhymes identical to, but sentiment marginally distinct from, the others:
It's not a standard greeting
For just one joyful day But a wish that's meant to cover
Life's bright and shining way To wish you all the special things