She bid me take life easy as the leaves grown on the tree, But I being young and foolish with her did not agree.

I'm sure your charming wife would endorse that. Don't drive yourself so hard - your health depends on it. And your future, I dare say.... In some ways you are your own worst enemy.'

But I am only my metaphorical enemy, thought Pran. And obstinacy on my part has earned me the actual enmity of the formidable Professor Mishra. But was Professor Mishra more dangerous or less dangerous to him - in this matter of the readership, for instance, now that Pran had won his hatred ?

What was Professor Mishra thinking, wondered Pran. He imagined his thoughts went something like this: I should never have got this uppity young lecturer onto the syllabus committee. It's too late, however, to regret all that. But at least his presence here has kept him from working mischief in, say, the admissions committee ; there he could have brought up all kinds of objections to students I wanted to bring in if they weren't selected entirely on the basis of merit. As for the university's selection committee for the readership in English, I must rig this somehow before I allow it to meet -

But Pran got no further clues to the inner working of that mysterious intelligence. For at this point the paths of the two colleagues diverged and, with expressions of great mutual respect, they parted from each other.

791.18

MEENAKSHI, Arun's wife, was feeling utterly bored, so she decided to have her daughter Aparna brought to her. Aparna was looking even more pretty than usual: round and fair and black-haired with gorgeous eyes, as sharp as those of her mother. Meenakshi pressed the electric buzzer twice (the signal for the child's ayah) and looked at the book in her lap. It was Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks, and it was unutterably dull. She didn't know how she was going to get through another five pages of it.

Arun, delighted though he normally was with her, had the irksome habit of throwing an improving book her way now and then, and Meenakshi felt his suggestions were more in the way of subtle commands. 'A wonderful book. ...' Arun would say some evening, laughing, in the company of the oddly flippant crowd they mixed with, a crowd that Meenakshi felt convinced could not possibly be more interested than she was in Buddenbrooks or any other such clotted Germanic construct. '... I have been reading this marvellous book by Mann, and I'm now getting Meenakshi involved in it.'

Some of the others, especially the languid Billy Irani, would look from Arun to Meenakshi in momentary wonderment, and the topic would pass to office matters or the social world or racing or dancing or golf or the Calcutta Club or complaints about 'these bloody politicians' or 'these brainless bureaucrats', and Thomas Mann would be quite forgotten. But Meenakshi would now feel obliged to read enough of the book to convey an acquaintance with its contents, and it seemed to make Arun happy to see her do so.

How wonderful Arun was, thought Meenakshi, and how pleasant it was to live in this nice flat in Sunny Park, not far from her father's house on Ballygunge Circular Road, and why did they have to have all these furious tiffs? Arun was incredibly hotheaded and jealous, and she had only to look languidly at the languid Billy for Arun to start smouldering somewhere deep inside. It might be wonderful to have a smouldering husband in bed later,

80VV.

Meenakshi reflected, but such advantages did not come unadulterated. Sometimes Arun would go offinto a smouldering sulk, and was quite spoilt for love-making. Billy Irani had a girlfriend, Shireen, but that made no difference to Arun, who suspected Meenakshi (quite correctly) of harbouring a casual lust for his friend. Shireen for her part occasionally sighed amidst her cocktails and announced that Billy was incorrigible.

When the ayah arrived in answer to the bell, Meenakshi said, 'Baby lao!' in a kind of pidgin Hindi. The aged ayah, most of whose reactions were slow, turned creakingly to fulfil her mistress's behest.

Aparna was fetched. She had been having her afternoon nap, and yawned as she was brought in to her mother. Her small fists were rubbing her eyes.

'Mummy!' said Aparna in English. 'I'm sleepy, and Miriam woke me up.' Miriam, the ayah, upon hearing her name spoken, although she could understand no English, grinned at the child with toothless goodwill.

'I know, precious baby doll,' said Meenakshi, 'but Mummy had to see you, she was so bored. Come and give - yes - and now on the other side.'

Aparna was wearing a mauve dress of flouncy fluffy stuff and was looking, thought her mother, inexcusably enchanting. Meenakshi's eyes went to her dressing-table mirror and she noticed with a surge of joy what a wonderful mother-and-child pair they made. 'You are looking so lovely,' she informed Aparna, 'that I think I will have a whole line of little girls.... Aparna, and Bibeka, and Charulata, and -'

Here she was cut off by Aparna's glare. 'If another baby comes into this house,' announced Aparna, 'I will throw it straight into the waste-paper basket.'

'Oh,' said Meenakshi, more than a little startled. Aparna, living among so many opinionated personalities, had quite early developed a powerful vocabulary. But three-year-olds were not supposed to express themselves so lucidly, and in conditional sentences at that. Meenakshi looked at Aparna and sighed.

'You are so scrumptious,' she told Aparna. 'Now have

81your milk.' To the ayah she said, 'Dudh lao. Ek dum !' And Miriam creaked off to get a glass of milk for the little girl.

For some reason the ayah's slow-moving back irritated Meenakshi and she thought: We really ought to replace the T.C. She's quite needlessly senile. This was her and Arun's private abbreviation for the ayah and Meenakshi laughed with pleasure as she remembered the occasion over the breakfast table when Arun had turned from the Statesman crossword to say, 'Oh, do get the toothless crone out of the room. She quite puts me off my omelette.' Miriam had been the T.C ever since. Living with Arun was full of sudden delightful moments like that, thought Meenakshi. If only it could all be that way.

But the trouble was that she also had to run the house, and she hated it. The elder daughter of Mr Justice Chatterji had always had everything done for her - and she was now discovering how trying it could be to handle things on her own. Managing the staff (ayah, servant-cum-cook, parttime sweeper, part-time gardener; Arun supervised the driver, who was on the company payroll) ; doing the accounts; buying those items that one simply couldn't trust the servant or the ayah to buy; and makingsure that everything fitted within the budget. This last she found especially difficult. She had been brought up in some luxury, and though she had insisted (against her parents' advice) on the romantic adventure of standing after marriage entirely on their own four feet, she had found it impossible to curb her taste for certain items (foreign soap, foreign butter, and so on) that were intrinsic to the fabric of a civilized life. She was very conscious of the fact that Arun helped support everyone in his own family and often commented to him about the fact.

'Well,' Arun had said just recently, 'now that Savita's married, that's one less, you'll agree, darling.'

Meenakshi had sighed, replying in a couplet :

'Marry one - and what's my fate ? Every Mehra on my plate.'

82.Arun had frowned. He had been reminded once again of the fact that Meenakshi's elder brother was a poet. It was from long familiarity - almost obsession - with rhyme that most of the younger Chatterjis had learned to improvise couplets, sometimes of surpassing puerility.

The ayah brought the milk and left. Meenakshi turned her lovely eyes back to Euddenbrooks while Aparna sat on the bed drinking her milk. With a sound of impatience Meenakshi threw Thomas Mann onto the bed and followed him there, closed her eyes and went off to sleep. She was awakened with a shock twenty minutes later by Aparna, who was pinching her breast.

'Don't be horrid, Aparna precious. Mummy's trying to sleep,' said Meenakshi.

'Don't sleep,' said Aparna. 'I want to play.' Unlike other children of her age, Aparna never used her name in the Caesarean third person, though her mother did.

'Darling sweetheart, Mummy is tired, she's been reading a book and she doesn't want to play. Not now, anyway. Later, when Daddy comes home, you can play with him. Or you can play with Uncle Varun when he returns from college. What have you done with your glass ?'

'When will Daddy come home ?'

'I'd say in about an hour,' replied Meenakshi.

'I'd say in about an hour,' said Aparna speculatively, as if she liked the phrase. 'I want a necklace too,'

she added, and tugged at her mother's gold chain.

Meenakshi gave her daughter a hug. 'And you shall have one,' she said, and dismissed the subject.

'Now go to Miriam.'

'No.' ' .

'Then stay here if you want. But do be quiet, darling.'

Aparna was quiet for a while. She looked at Buddenbrooks, at her empty glass, at her sleeping mother, at the quilt, at the mirror, at the ceiling. Then she said, 'Mummy ?' tentatively. There was no response.

'Mummy ?' Aparna attempted a few notches louder.

'Mmm ?'

'MUMMY !' yelled Aparna at the top of her lungs.

83Meenakshi sat bolt upright and shook Aparna. 'Do you want me to spank you ?' she asked.

'No,' replied Aparna definitively.

'Then what is it ? Why are you shouting ? What were you going to say ?'

'Have you had a hard day, darling?' asked Aparna, hoping to arouse a response to her imitative charm.

'Yes,' said Meenakshi shortly. 'Now, darling, pick up that glass and go to Miriam at once.'

'Shall I comb your hair ?'

'No.'

Aparna got down reluctantly from the bed and made her way to the door. She toyed with the idea of saying, Til tell Daddy!' though what she could have complained about was left unformulated. Her mother meanwhile was once again sleeping sweetly, her lips slightly parted, her long black hair spread across the pillow. It was so hot in the afternoon, and everything tilted her towards a long and languorous sleep. Her breasts rose and fell gently, and she dreamed about Arun, who was handsome and dashing and covenanted, and who would be coming home in an hour. And after a while she began to dream about Billy Irani, whom they would be meeting later that evening.

When Arun arrived, he left his briefcase in the drawing room, walked into the bedroom, and closed the door. Seeing Meenakshi asleep, he paced up and down for a while, then took off his coat and tie, and lay down beside her without disturbing her sleep. But after a while his hand moved to her forehead and then down her face to her breasts. Meenakshi opened her eyes and said, 'Oh.' She was momentarily bewildered. After a while she asked, 'What's the time ?'

'Five-thirty. I came home early just as I promised - and I found you asleep.'

'I couldn't sleep earlier, darling. Aparna woke me up every few minutes.'

'What's the programme for the evening?' 'Dinner and dancing with Billy and Shireen.'