‘Er — yes? Yes?’
‘About yesterday evening.’
‘Yesterday evening?’ Varun dragged himself back to the two-legged world. ‘What happened?’
‘Our sister got married.’
‘Ah. Oh. Yes, yes, I know. Savita,’ he added, hoping to imply alertness by specificity.
‘Well,’ said Lata, ‘don’t let yourself be bullied by Arun Bhai. Just don’t.’ She stopped smiling, and looked at him as a shadow crossed his face. ‘I really hate it, Varun Bhai, I really hate seeing him bully you. I don’t mean that you should cheek him or answer back or anything, just that you shouldn’t let it hurt you the way that — well, that I can see it does.’
‘No, no—’ he said, uncertainly.
‘Just because he’s a few years older doesn’t make him your father and teacher and sergeant major all rolled into one.’
Varun nodded unhappily. He was too well aware that while he lived in his elder brother’s house he was subject to his elder brother’s will.
‘Anyway, I think you should be more confident,’ continued Lata. ‘Arun Bhai tries to crush everyone around him like a steamroller, and it’s up to us to remove our egos from his path. I have a hard enough time, and I’m not even in Calcutta. I just thought I’d say so now, because at the house I’ll hardly get the chance to talk to you alone. And tomorrow you’ll be gone.’
Lata spoke from experience, as Varun well knew. Arun, when angry, hardly cared what he said. When Lata had taken it into her head to become a nun — a foolish, adolescent notion, but her own — Arun, exasperated with the lack of success of his bludgeoning attempts at dissuasion, had said: ‘All right, go ahead, become a nun, ruin your life, no one would have married you anyway, you look just like the Bible — flat in front and flat at the back.’ Lata thanked God that she wasn’t studying at Calcutta University; for most of the year at least, she was outside the range of Arun’s blunderbuss. Even though those words were no longer true, the memory of them still stung.
‘I wish you were in Calcutta,’ said Varun.
‘Surely you must have some friends—’ said Lata.
‘Well, in the evening Arun Bhai and Meenakshi Bhabhi are often out and I have to mind Aparna,’ said Varun, smiling weakly. ‘Not that I mind,’ he added.
‘Varun, this won’t do,’ said Lata. She placed her hand firmly on his slouching shoulder and said: ‘I want you to go out with your friends — with people you really like and who like you — for at least two evenings a week. Pretend you have to attend a coaching session or something.’ Lata didn’t care for deception, and she didn’t know whether Varun would be any good at it, but she didn’t want things to continue as they were. She was worried about Varun. He had looked even more jittery at the wedding than when she had seen him a few months previously.
A train hooted suddenly from alarmingly close, and the tonga horse shied.
‘How amazing,’ said Varun to himself, all thoughts of everything else obliterated.
He patted the horse when they got back into the tonga.
‘How far is the station from here?’ he asked the tonga-wallah.
‘Oh, it’s just over there,’ said the tonga-wallah, indicating vaguely the built-up area beyond the well-laid-out gardens of the racecourse. ‘Not far from the zoo.’
I wonder if it gives the local horses an advantage, Varun said to himself. Would the others tend to bolt? What difference would it make to the odds?
1.11
When they got to the zoo, Bhaskar and Aparna joined forces and asked to ride on the children’s railway, which, Bhaskar noted, also went around anticlockwise. Lata and Malati wanted a walk after the tonga ride, but they were overruled. All five of them sat in a small, post-box-red compartment, squashed together and facing each other this time, while the little green steam engine puffed along on its one-foot-wide track. Varun sat opposite Malati, their knees almost touching. Malati enjoyed the fun of this, but Varun was so disconcerted that he looked desperately around at the giraffes, and even stared attentively at the crowds of schoolchildren, some of whom were licking huge bobbins of pink spun candy. Aparna’s eyes began to shine with anticipation.
Since Bhaskar was nine, and Aparna a third of his age, they did not have much to say to each other. They attached themselves to their most-favoured adults. Aparna, brought up by her socialite parents with alternating indulgence and irritation, found Lata reassuringly certain in her affection. In Lata’s company she behaved in a less brat-like manner. Bhaskar and Varun got on famously once Bhaskar succeeded in getting him to concentrate. They discussed mathematics, with special reference to racing odds.
They saw the elephant, the camel, the emu, the common bat, the brown pelican, the red fox, and all the big cats. They even saw a smaller one, the black-spotted leopard-cat, as he paced frenziedly across the floor of his cage.
But the best stop of all was the reptile house. Both children were eager to see the snake pit, which was full of fairly sluggish pythons, and the glass cases with their deadly vipers and kraits and cobras. And also, of course, the cold, corrugated crocodiles on to whose backs some schoolchildren and visiting villagers were throwing coins — while others, as the white, serrated mouths opened lazily far below, leaned over the railings and pointed and squealed and shuddered. Luckily Varun had a taste for the sinister, and took the kids inside. Lata and Malati refused to go in.
‘I see enough horrifying things as a medical student,’ said Malati.
‘I wish you wouldn’t tease Varun,’ said Lata after a while.
‘Oh, I wasn’t teasing him,’ said Malati. ‘Just listening to him attentively. It’s good for him.’ She laughed.
‘Mm — you make him nervous.’
‘You’re very protective of your elder brother.’
‘He’s not — oh, I see — yes, my younger elder brother. Well, since I don’t have a younger brother, I suppose I’ve given him the part. But seriously, Malati, I am worried about him. And so is my mother. We don’t know what he’s going to do when he graduates in a few months. He hasn’t shown much aptitude for anything. And Arun bullies him fearfully. I wish some nice girl would take him in charge.’
‘And I’m not the one? I must say, he has a certain feeble charm. Heh, heh!’ Malati imitated Varun’s laugh.
‘Don’t be facetious, Malati. I don’t know about Varun, but my mother would have a fit,’ said Lata.
This was certainly true. Even though it was an impossible proposition geographically, the very thought of it would have given Mrs Rupa Mehra nightmares. Malati Trivedi, apart from being one of a small handful of girls among the almost five hundred boys at the Prince of Wales Medical College, was notorious for her outspoken views, her participation in the activities of the Socialist Party, and her love affairs — though not with any of those five hundred boys, whom, by and large, she treated with contempt.
‘Your mother likes me, I can tell,’ said Malati.
‘That’s beside the point,’ said Lata. ‘And actually, I’m quite amazed that she does. She usually judges things by influences. I would have thought you’re a bad influence on me.’
But this was not entirely true, even from Mrs Rupa Mehra’s viewpoint. Malati had certainly given Lata more confidence than she had had when she had emerged wet-feathered from St Sophia’s. And Malati had succeeded in getting Lata to enjoy Indian classical music, which (unlike ghazals) Mrs Rupa Mehra approved of. That they should have become room-mates at all was because the government medical college (usually referred to by its royal title) had no provision for housing its small contingent of women and had persuaded the university to accommodate them in its hostels.