'No, of course not, Kuku, I'm working from general principles. Please pass me the butter.'
'You can reach for it yourself,' said Kuku.
'Now, now, Kuku,' murmured Mrs Chatterji.
'I can't,' protested Amit. 'My hand's been crushed.'
Tapan laughed. Kakoli gave him a black look, then began to look glum in preparation for a request.
'I need the car today, Baba,' said Kuku after a few seconds. 'I have to go out. I need it for the whole day.'
'But Baba,' said Tapan, 'I'm spending the day with Pankaj.'
'I really must go to Hamilton's this morning to get the silver inkstand back,' said Mrs Chatterji.
Mr Justice Chatterji raised his eyebrows. 'Amit?' he asked.
'No bid,' said Amit.
Dipankar, who also declined transport, wondered aloud why Kuku was looking so wistful. Kuku frowned.
Amit and Tapan promptly began an antiphonal chant.
'We look before and after, and pine for what is -'
'NOT!'
556'Our sincerest laughter with some pain is -'
TROT!'
'Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest -'
'THOT !' cried Tapan jubilantly, for he hero-worshipped Amit.
'Don't worry, darling,' said Mrs Chatterji comfortingly; 'everything will come out all right in the end.'
'You don't have any idea what I was thinking of,' countered Kakoli.
• 'You mean who,' said Tapan.
'You be quiet, you amoeba,' said Kakoli.
'He seemed a nice enough chap,' ventured Dipankar.
'Oh no, he's just a glamdip,' countered Amit.
'Glamdip ? Glamdip ? Have I missed something ?' asked their father.
Mrs Chatterji looked equally mystified. 'Yes, what is a glamdip, darling ?' she asked Amit.
'A glamorous diplomat,' replied Amit. 'Very vacant, very charming. The kind of person whom Meenakshi used to sigh after. And talking of which, one of them is coming around to visit me this morning. He wants to ask me about culture and literature.'
'Really, Amit ?' asked Mrs Chatterji eagerly. 'Who ?'
'Some South American ambassador - from Peru or Chile or somewhere,' said Amit, 'with an interest in the arts. I got a phone call from Delhi a week or two ago, and we fixed it up. Or was it Bolivia ? He wanted to meet an author on his visit to Calcutta. I doubt he's read anything by me.'
Mrs Chatterji looked flustered. 'But then I must make sure that everything is in order -' she said. 'And you told Biswas Babu you'd see him this morning.'
'So I did, so I did,' agreed Amit. 'And so I will.'
'He is not just a glamdip,' said Kakoli suddenly. 'You've hardly met him.'
'No, he is a good boy for our Kuku,' said Tapan. 'He is so shinsheer.'
This was one of Biswas Babu's adjectives of high praise. Kuku felt that Tapan should have his ears boxed.
557'I like Hans,' said Dipankar. 'He was very polite to the man who told him to drink the juice of bitter gourds. He does have a good heart.'
'O my darling, don't be heartless. Hold my hand. Let us be partless,'
murmured Amit.
'But don't hold it too hard,' laughed Tapan.
'Stop it!' cried Kuku. 'You are all being utterly horrible.'
'He is good wedding bell material for our Kuku,' continued Tapan, tempting retribution.
'Wedding bell ? Or bedding well ?' asked Amit. Tapan grinned delightedly.
'Now, that's enough, Amit,' said Mr Justice Chatterji before his wife could intervene. 'No bloodshed at breakfast. Let's talk about something else.'
'Yes,' agreed Kuku. 'Like the way Amit was mooning over Lata last night.'
'Over Lata ?' said Amit, genuinely astonished.
'Over Lata ?' repeated Kuku, imitating him.
'Really, Kuku, love has destroyed your brain,' said Amit. 'I didn't notice I was spending any time with her at all.'
'No, I'm sure you didn't.'
'She's just a nice girl, that's all,' said Amit. 'If Meenakshi hadn't been so busy gossiping and Arun making contacts I wouldn't have assumed any responsibility for her at all.'
'So we needn't invite her over unnecessarily while she's in Calcutta,' murmured Kuku.
Mrs Chatterji said nothing, but had begun to look anxious.
Til invite whoever I like over,' said Amit. 'You, Kuku, invited fifty-odd people to the party last night.'
'Fifty odd people,' Tapan couldn't resist saying.
Kuku turned on him severely.
'Little boys shouldn't interrupt adult conversations,' she said.
Tapan, from the safety of the other side of the table, made a face at her. Once Kuku had actually got so incensed
558she had chased him around the table, but usually she was sluggish till noon.
'Yes,' Amit frowned. 'Some of them were very odd, Kuku. Who is that fellow Krishnan? Dark chap, south Indian, I imagine. He was glaring at you and your Second Secretary very resentfully.'
'Oh, he's just a friend,' said Kuku, spreading her butter with more than usual concentration. 'I suppose he's annoyed with me.'
Amit could not resist delivering a Kakoli-couplet :
'What is Krishnan in the end ? Just a mushroom, just a friend.'
Tapan continued :
'Always eating dosa-iddly, Drinking beer and going piddly !'
'Tapan!' gasped his mother.
Amit, Meenakshi and Kuku, it appeared, had completely corrupted her baby with their stupid rhyming.
Mr Justice Chatterji put down his toast. 'That's enough from you, Tapan,' he said.
'But Baba, I was only joking,' protested Tapan, thinking it unfair that he should have been singled out. Just because I'm the youngest, he thought. And it was a pretty good couplet too.
'A joke's a joke, but enough's enough,' said his father. 'And you too, Amit. You'd have a better claim to criticizing others if you did something useful yourself.'
'Yes, that's right,' added Kuku happily, seeing the tables turning. 'Do some serious work, Amit Da. Act like a useful member of society before you criticize others.'
'What's wrong with writing poems and novels?' asked Amit. 'Or has passion made you illiterate as well ?'
'It's all right as an amusement, Amit,' said Mr Justice Chatterji. 'But it's not a living. And what's wrong with the law?'
559'“Well, it's like going back to school,' said Amit.
'I don't quite see how you come to that conclusion,' said his father dryly.
'Well,' said Amit, 'you have to be properly dressed that's like school uniform. And instead of saying “Sir” you say “My Lord” - which is just as bad - until you're raised to the bench and people say it to you instead. And you get holidays, and you get good chits and bad chits just like Tapan does: I mean judgments in your favour and against you.'
'Well,' said Mr Justice Chatterji, not entirely pleased by the analogy, 'it was good enough for your grandfather and for me.'
'But Amit has a special gift,' broke in Mrs Chatterji. 'Aren't you proud of him ?'
'He can practise his special gifts in his spare time,' said her husband.
'Is that what they said to Rabindranath Tagore?' asked Amit.
'I'm sure you'll admit there's a difference between you and Tagore,' said his father, looking at his eldest son in surprise.
'I'll admit there's a difference, Baba,' said Amit. 'But what's the relevance of the difference to the point I'm making?'
But at the mention of Tagore, Mrs Chatterji had entered a mode of righteous reverence.
'Amit, Amit,' she cried, 'how can you think of Gurudeb like that ?'
'Mago, I didn't say -' began Amit.
Mrs Chatterji broke in. 'Amit, Robi Babu is like a saint. We in Bengal owe everything to him. When I was in Shantiniketan, I remember he once said to me -'
But now Kakoli joined forces with Amit.
'Please, Mago, really - we've heard enough about Shantiniketan and how idyllic it is. I know that if I had to live there I'd commit suicide every day.'
'His voice is like a cry in the wilderness,' continued her mother, hardly hearing her.
560'I'd hardly say so, Ma,' said Amit. 'We idolize him more than the English do Shakespeare.'
'And with good reason,' said Mrs Chatterji. 'His songs come to our lips - his poems come to our hearts -'
'Actually,' said Kakoli, 'Abol Tabol is the only good book in the whole of Bengali literature.
The Griffonling from birth 'V^ Is indisposed to mirth.
To laugh or grin he counts a sin And shudders, “Not on earth.”
Oh, yes, and I like The Sketches of Hutom the Owl. And when I take up literature, I shall write my own: The Sketches of Cuddles the Dog.'
'Kuku, you are a really shameless girl,' cried Mrs Chatterji, incensed. 'Please stop her from saying these things.'
'It's just an opinion, dear,' said Mr Justice Chatterji, 'I can't stop her from holding opinions.'
'But about Gurudeb, whose songs she sings - about Robi Babu -'
Kakoli, who had been force-fed, almost from birth, with Rabindrasangeet, now warbled out to the tune of a truncated 'Shonkochero bihvalata nijere apoman' :
'Robi Babu, R. Tagore, O, he's such a bore! Robi Babu, R. Tagore, O, he's such a bore !
O, he's su-uch a bore.
Such a, such a bore.
Such a, such a bore,
O, he's such a, O, he's such a, O, he's such a bore. Robi Babu, R. Tagore, O, he's such a bore!'
'Stop ! Stop it at once ! Kakoli, do you hear me ?' cried Mrs Chatterji, appalled. 'Stop it! How dare you! You stupid, shameless, shallow girl.'
'Really, Ma,' continued Kakoli, 'reading him is like trying to swim breaststroke through treacle. You should
561hear lia Chattopadhyay on your Robi Babu. Flowers and moonlight and nuptial beds….'
'Ma,' said Dipankar, 'why do you let them get to you ? You should take the best in the words and mould them to your own spirit. That way, you can attain stillness.'
Mrs Chatterji was unsoothed. Stillness was very far from her.
'May I get up ? I've finished my breakfast,' said Tapan.
'Of course, Tapan,' said his father, Til see about the car.'
'lia Chattopadhyay is a very ignorant girl, I've always thought so,' burst out Mrs Chatterji. 'As for her books - I think that the more people write, the less they think. And she was dressed in a completely crushed sari last night.'
'She's hardly a girl any more, dear,' said her husband. 'She's quite an elderly woman - must be at least fifty-five.'
Mrs Chatterji glanced with annoyance at her husband. Fifty-five was hardly elderly.
'And one should heed her opinions,' added Amit. 'She's quite hard-headed. She was advising Dipankar yesterday that there was no future in economics. She appeared to know.'
'She always appears to know,' said Mrs Chatterji. 'Anyway, she's from your father's side of the family,' she added irrelevantly. 'And if she doesn't appreciate Gurudeb sine must \\ave a heart oî stone.'
'You can't blame her,' said Amit. 'After a life so full of tragedy anyone would become hard.'
'What tragedy ?' asked Mrs Chatterji.
'Well, when she was four,' said Amit, 'her mother slapped her - it was quite traumatic - and then things went on in that vein. When she was twelve she came second in an exam. … It hardens you.'
'Where did you get such mad children ?' Mrs Chatterji asked her husband.
'I don't know,' he replied.
'If you had spent more time with them instead of going to the club every day, they wouldn't have turned out this way,' said Mrs Chatterji in a rare rebuke; but she was overwrought.
56zThe phone rang.
'Ten to one it's for Kuku,' said Amit.
'It's not.'
'I suppose you can tell from the kind of ring, hunh, Kuku?'
'It's for Kuku,' cried Tapan from the door.
'Oh. Who's it from ?' asked Kuku, and poked her tongue out at Amit.
'Krishnan.'
'Tell him I can't come to the phone. I'll call back later,' said Kuku.
'Shall I tell him you're having a bath ? Or sleeping ? Or out in the car ? Or all three ?' Tapan grinned.
