My Kind of Girl (9 page)

“Believe it or not, it's completely one-sided. There's nothing from my side.”

“Nothing? Rubbish!”

“There you are, you're saying the same thing. I'm sure Mr. and Mrs. Dutta think so too. And as for me, I've exhausted myself trying to explain things to her these past few days. I can't take it anymore.”

“What are you telling her?”

“I've been telling her to be calm, to be composed, to be good, to understand.”

“And what's she saying?”

“She can say nothing – she can only sob. I had no idea anyone could weep as much as she can. She's been transformed from a lively young woman into a corpse. And can you imagine how you feel when you see someone sobbing that way – especially when you know the tears are for you. The more I try to comfort her, the more wretchedly she sobs.”

The sum and substance of everything else Ramen continued to pour out to me, was that he would have given up all contact with the family had it not been for the play. Besides, why should he give it all up?
Did he not have a life of his own – his own happiness, his own peace? Should he stop visiting a place he wanted to visit simply because a young woman had lost her head? How unfair!

I consoled him with the thought that this was the tax he had to pay for his good looks.

Yes, he had realized long ago that his looks were his enemy. Just imagine, there he had been, enjoying his evenings at the rehearsals, and now tears threatened to drown it all. For the Bina I had seen, Ramen said, offered no hint of the kind of girl she really was. Bubbling, lively, pleasant – just the way Lalita's character was at the beginning of
The New Nest
. Mr. Dutta might well have created Lalita in his sister-in-law's mold. Whenever she had come in through the door, the specter of depression had flown out the window. A lovely girl, very nice, and if anyone had asked him, he would have vouched for the fact that anyone who married this sister-in-law of Mr. Dutta's was a fortunate man.

“She has chosen the fortunate one on her own,” I teased him.

Ramen only sighed in response.

If only he hadn't joined the group. Everything was all set for the play, but they hadn't been able to find someone to play Anupam until they fortuitously discovered Ramen. Rehearsals went swimmingly for a month or so. Everyone agreed that the vivacious Bina was the last word where Lalita was concerned. They had known she would do well in the first part, when her character never sits still and comes across as altogether quite light and bubbly, but not even her sister had imagined she would play the sad, romantic scenes toward the end so beautifully.
One day, however, they heard that Bina was very ill and would not be able to rehearse. Ramen was worried, as was everybody else, but they did not let anyone meet her – apparently she had a terrible headache and was lying down in a dark room. The rehearsal didn't go well that evening; Mr. Dutta was distracted, Mrs. Dutta would disappear every now and then, and finally the session broke up early. This was the point at which Mrs. Dutta took Ramen aside and said she had something important to discuss with him.

Ramen was thunderstruck at the news she gave him. Bina, Mrs. Dutta reported, had been looking sullen since the previous afternoon, pacing from room to room, window to window. No rehearsal had been scheduled for that evening, and while Ramen sometimes visited even when there weren't any rehearsals, he hadn't that day. Mrs. Dutta asked once or twice, “What's the matter with you, Bina?” No reply.

When evening fell, the girl asked, “Isn't Ramen coming today?”

“No idea – it's past eight, I doubt he is,” Mrs. Dutta answered.

“Tell him to come – telephone him,” said Bina, at once. Mrs. Dutta looked at her sister in surprise and saw that her eyes were brimming with tears. No sooner did she exclaim, “Bina! What's wrong?” and put her hand on her sister's shoulder, than Bina had put her arms round her and burst into tears, saying, “I want to marry Ramen, I want to marry Ramen!” And so it had continued since then. Bina had given up on everything and retired to her bed. “I'm in a spot,” Mrs. Dutta had concluded.

Ramen had no idea what to say, where to look, where to put his hands in response. He felt terrible and yet, though he felt guilty, was
it his fault? He had never said, done or even thought of anything that could have evoked such strong feelings in Bina. Mrs. Dutta's account was difficult to comprehend.

He had no choice but to believe it when he saw her, however. She was in a wretched state. Ramen sat next to her and asked, “What's the matter, Bina?” and apparently she immediately clutched his hand and started sobbing. She didn't even seem to remember how to properly conduct herself – had she gone mad? Ramen was flabbergasted, but also felt miserable.

The Duttas were incredibly courteous, and left the room. Ramen felt extremely self-conscious, and tried to overcome it with a laugh, saying, “What is it?”

There came a muffled reply. “Hasn't
didi
told you everything?”

“She has.”

“What do you think?”

Ramen explained that they would have a lot of time to talk about this, but that right now she needed to recover so that the play wouldn't have to be abandoned; but his efforts were of no avail.

Now several days had passed, during which Ramen had tried in no small measure to appease the girl, to calm her, to persuade her to recover, with Bina's sister at it as well, round the clock – but no! They continued to flounder. For some reason Bina was certain that her life held no meaning unless she married Ramen, and no one could convince her otherwise. It made no difference to her that Ramen had been married earlier, and she particularly liked the fact that his lifestyle was
a little westernized. Apparently this was the kind of man that was her ideal: tall, fair, someone who would climb the stairs whistling, play tennis, always be dressed in trousers. It seemed she had even told her sister that if the wedding didn't take place in due course, she would move into Ramen's home – he wouldn't be able to throw her out, would he?

Ramen shared his litany of woes with me till two in the morning. Then he said, “What do you think is the way out?”

“Of course,” I said, “there is an easy way out – just marry her.”

“You're asking me to marry her? If that were possible it would have been simple.”

“Why isn't it possible?”

Ramen said, “I'm not exactly a fan of marriage.”

Now it was my turn to persuade him. “Not fond of it? Meaning? You
will
marry, won't you? Surely you won't stay unmarried all your life? And there's nothing standing in your way either, you admitted yourself that you like her, you feel for her . . .”

“Why shouldn't I feel for her – I'm human too.”

“But then what's standing in the way of your marrying her?”

“Something
is
standing in the way,” Ramen now made another confession. “I've promised Ruth that if I do get married again, it will be to her.”

“Who on earth is Ruth?”

“Ruth is the girl in my shop . . .”

“Again, Ramen!”

“Can't you understand, she has no one of her own . . . And the way she's pursuing me – I'm very unlikely to get married again, but if I ever . . .”

I said angrily, “So an Anglo-Indian's ploys matter more to you than a Bengali girl's tears?”

“Say what you will. I'm off to bed.”

Ramen yanked his jacket off and threw it on the floor, rolled his trousers up to the knees, and stretched himself out on the couch.

Enraged as I was, I said nothing more.

Sleep eluded me that night. I could see Bina's woebegone expression, puffy eyes, unkempt hair. I felt pain, and yet it wasn't quite pain, it was an unfamiliar pleasure. I imagined I was pacifying Bina, consoling her. She refused to listen, but I kept talking; once, she smiled, said something, and then I suddenly realized that Ramen and the girl who was so besotted by him were no more in my thoughts; I had forgotten about her. Embarrassing myself, I decided straightaway that getting involved in others' affairs was not wise. It didn't make any sense to visit the Duttas anymore, it was best to mind my own business.

But Ramen wouldn't let me be, he forced me to go along with him the next day. As I had said earlier, I enjoyed the atmosphere there. And in a few days I became addicted in any case; I stopped being a footnote to Ramen and started frequenting the place on my own. In that time Bina had finally got hold of herself, her face had acquired color and a smile, she spoke beyond the dialogue she had begun delivering again with such talent. With her recovery the pace of rehearsals rose; the intense level of socializing that went on before, after, and during the
rehearsals was something I witnessed only that one time, in my entire life.

In the first week of March, a couple of months after the first time I had been to Mr. Dutta's house, in winter – possibly in January –
The New Nest
was staged. There were four performances. I was present on all four nights, sometimes observing audience reactions in the theater, sometimes helping to arrange the actors' costumes before the enactment began, backstage. I wasn't spared the driving around to perform various chores, nor was I deprived of the honorable responsibility of dropping three members of the huge cast home after the performance.

The production came to an end, but the aftermath lasted another whole month. First at Mr. Dutta's place, then at a restaurant, then at his friends' country home, and finally again at Mr. Dutta's – feast after feast, celebration after celebration. Although I had not contributed much, having spent most of my time watching, I was invited to every celebration; the Duttas were flawless hosts. By now, I'd had the opportunity to get to know several members of the troupe quite well, I no longer felt like a fish out of water among them. Although I was only a doctor, and far from well-versed in literary and related matters, several members of this glittering group had accepted me warmly. Of all of them, it was Bina I knew the least; we hadn't gotten beyond the tight confines of a formal relationship. I'd observed in her something of an antipathy for me. Maybe she didn't care for the way I looked, or perhaps she was aware that Ramen had told me everything about her – whatever the reason, she seemed to avoid my company. I did
not mind this, for it was hard for me to fathom how to talk to, how to conduct myself with, a love-struck, love-singed young woman. This distance was far better.

In April, the Duttas went off to Kalimpong. I paid a visit the day they were leaving, and no one else was present except them, for a change. After some casual conversation, Mrs. Dutta announced, “Some news for you, your patient has recovered completely.”

Wonderful news, I thought to myself, but why tell me? My relationship with them was ending.

As though she had read my mind, Mrs. Dutta said quietly, “You know the whole story, after all, so I thought I'd let you know.”

After a pause, I responded, “I do feel Ramen didn't do the right thing, in refusing to marry her.”

“He has given his word to someone else, there's no changing that.”

“Given his word? Rubbish. In truth, he doesn't want to get married.”

“Well, you can't force a person to go against his will either. I explained to Bina, ‘You can't have him, then why behave this way? Don't you have any self-respect? It's always the man who begs and pleads with the woman, and you, being the woman . . .'”

Mr. Dutta quipped, “Everything has been turned upside down these days, it's the women who do the pursuing and the men who do the running now. Poor Ramen. He wasn't in a position to be envied.”

Mrs. Dutta said, “Well, it was Ramen who managed to get things under control. I have to commend him, considering how taken she
was, there would have been no escape for her had he been even remotely wicked.”

After heaping some more praises on Ramen, Mrs. Dutta said, “Now Bina says fine, let Ramen not marry her, but she's not going to marry anyone else either, not in her entire life. But we're going to be planning for her marriage soon. For now we're leaving her with my elder sister – you've met her, she was in charge of women's costumes for the play, and my mother's going to be visiting next month. She too will be relieved once the last of the brood is married off. Will you keep your eye open for a suitable boy?”

I nodded in consent, but her words seemed heartless. Bina had barely survived a major crisis – and to talk of marriage again so soon afterward! Maybe what she had said was not entirely true, surely she wouldn't stay unmarried all her life, but it couldn't be easy for her to forget Ramen so easily. Not everyone could brush things away as easily as Ramen could!

Mrs. Dutta said, “My sister's house is on Southern Avenue, it would be lovely if you could visit them sometimes! They'd be delighted. And Bina's health, too – I'd really like it if she could live according to a doctor's regime for some time . . .”

“Certainly,” I said. “I'll do my best.”

And thus began my visits to Southern Avenue. One or two people from the cast of
The New Nest
used to visit too, but most did not – the Duttas' home had been the destination of their pilgrimage; as soon as the Duttas left, the gathering broke up. And even if one ran into the others now and then, there was neither hide nor hair of Ramen – he
seemed to have been waiting for just such an opportunity; when the Duttas disappeared, so did he.