even at the cost of appearing rude. 'Where's Bhaskar ?' she asked her husband.

'I don't know. I think I saw him near the food, the little frog,' said Kedarnath.

'I wish you wouldn't call him that,' said Veena. 'He is your son. It's not auspicious '

'It's not my name for him, it's Maan's,' said Kedarnath with a smile. He enjoyed being mildly henpecked. 'But I'll call him whatever you want me to.'

Veena led her mother-in-law away. And to distract the old lady she did in fact get involved in looking for her son. Finally they found Bhaskar. He was not eating anything but simply standing under the great multicoloured cloth canopy that covered the food tables, gazing upwards with pleased and abstract wonderment at the elaborate geometrical patterns - red rhombuses, green trapeziums, yellow squares and blue triangles - from which it had been stitched together.

1.9

THE crowds had thinned; the guests, some chewing paan, were departing at the gate; a heap of gifts had grown by the side of the bench where Pran and Savita had been sitting. Finally only they and a few members of the family were left - and the yawning servants who would put away the more valuable furniture for the night, or pack the gifts in a trunk under the watchful eye of Mrs Rupa Mehra.

The bride and groom were lost in their thoughts. They avoided looking at each other now. They would spend the night in a carefully prepared room in Prem Nivas, and leave for a week's honeymoon in Simla tomorrow.

Lata tried to imagine the nuptial room. Presumably it would be fragrant with tuberoses; that, at least, was Malati's confident opinion. I'll always associate tuberoses with Pran, Lata thought. It was not at all pleasant to follow her imagination further. That Savita would be sleeping with Pran tonight did not bear thinking of. It did!

not strike her as being at all romande. Perhaps they woul/ be too exhausted, she thought optimistically.

'What are you thinking of, Lata ?' asked her motlter; i

'Oh, nothing, Ma, ' said Lata automatically. * f

'You turned up your nose. I saw it.' Lata blushed.

'I don't think I ever want to get married,' she sai( emphatically.

Mrs Rupa Mehra was too wearied by the wedding, -to* ;t

exhausted by emotion, too softened by Sanskrit, too cum

bered with congratulations, too overwrought, in short, to do anything but stare at Lata for ten seconds. What on

earth had got into the girl ? What was good enough for her

mother and her mother's mother and her mother's mother's;

mother should be good enough for her. Lata, though, had*

always been a difficult one, with a strange will of her own!

quiet but unpredictable - like that time in St Sophia's!

when she had wanted to become a nun! But Mrs Rupaf

Mehra too had a will, and she was determined to have her

own way, even if she was under no illusions as to Lata's j

pliability. I

And yet, Lata was named after that most pliable thing, a I vine, which was trained to cling : first to her family, then f to her husband. Indeed, when she was a baby, Lata's fingers had had a strong and coiling grasp which even now f came back with a sweet vividness to her mother. Suddenly Mrs Rupa Mehra burst out with the inspired remark :

'Lata, you are a vine, you must cling to your husband !'

It was not a success.

'Cling?' said Lata. 'Cling?' The word was pronounced with such quiet scorn that her mother could not help bursting into tears. How terrible it was to have an ungrateful daughter. And how unpredictable a baby could be.

Now that the tears were running down her cheeks, Mrs Rupa Mehra transferred them fluidly from one daughter to the other. She clasped Savita to her bosom and wept loudly. 'You must write to me, Savita darling,' she said. 'You must write to me every day from Simla. Pran, you are

P

30

like my own son now, you must be responsible and see to it. Soon I will be all alone in Calcutta - all alone.'

This was of course quite untrue. Arun and Varun and Meenakshi and Aparna would all be crowded together with her in Arun's little flat in Sunny Park. But Mrs Rupa Mehra was one who believed with unformulated but absolute conviction in the paramountcy of subjective over objective truth.

1.10 THE tonga clip-clopped along the road, and the tongawallah sang out :

'A heart was shattered into bits - and one fell here, and one fell there '

Varun started to hum along, then sang louder, then suddenly stopped.

'Oh, don't stop,' said Malati, nudging Lata gently. 'You have a nice voice. Like a bulbul.'

'In a china-china-shop,' she whispered to Lata.

'Heh, heh, heh.' Varun's laugh was nervous. Realizing that it sounded weak, he tried to make it slightly sinister. But it didn't work. He felt miserable. And Malati, with her green eyes and sarcasm - for it had to be sarcasm - wasn't helping.

The tonga was quite crowded: Varun was sitting with young Bhaskar in the front, next to the tonga- wallah; and back-to-back with them sat Lata and Malati - both dressed in salwaar-kameez - and Aparna in her ice-creamstained sweater and a frock. It was a sunny winter morning.

The white-turbaned old tonga-wallah enjoyed driving furiously through this part of town with its broad, relatively uncrowded streets - unlike the cramped madness of Old Brahmpur. He started talking to his horse, urging her on.

Malati now began to sing the words of the popular film song herself. She hadn't meant to discourage Varun. It waspleasant to think of shattered hearts on a cloudlesj

morning. j

Varun didn't join in. But after a while he took h me id

his hands and said, turning around : I

'You have a - a wonderful voice. ' I

It was true. Malati loved music, and studied classical

singing under Ustad Majeed Khan, one of the finest singeri

in north India. She had even got Lata interested in Indian!