by a grandmother. A visiting Indian musician—always a maestro of the first rank—would entertain after dinner; but for those who had business with each other there were brandy and cigars in the study and doors that could be closed. Sumitra herself closed them, smiling for a moment as she did so with perfect understanding and a promise of privacy for whatever matters of high state had to be discussed.
Now in charge of foreign affairs, the Minister frequently traveled abroad, stopping off in New York whenever he could. She looked forward to his visits. He consulted her about policy and discussed the personalities of the world and national leaders they both had to deal with. She continued to monitor his personal habits, and here too he followed her advice—for instance, he left off using a certain pungent body oil prescribed as beneficial to the flow of blood to the brain and other important organs.
Monica quarreled with her about the Minister, as she quarreled with her on all subjects. Monica traveled between her mother in New York and her father in New Delhi, and it would be difficult to say in which place she was more unhappy. She was undergoing treatment with a New York analyst and was learning far more about herself and her relationship with her mother than was good for either of them. She also learned not to suppress her natural feelings, and whenever the Minister visited, she made no secret of her contempt for him. But even though she tossed her head and flung out of the room without returning his courteous greeting, he smiled tolerantly and reassured Sumitra that the girl was young, a child only. Nevertheless, it was he who suggested matrimony in place of psychiatry (he had just married off his own sixteen-year-old daughter, with two thousand guests consuming five hundred pounds of clarified butter). And it was he who found Monica’s bridegroom: on his return to New Delhi, he made discreet inquiries in his own Ministry, and after personally interviewing several likely candidates, he finally selected Under-Secretary Malhotra. However, Monica always denied that her marriage had been arranged. She claimed she had met Malhotra at a diplomatic party, and had been fool enough to be taken in by him. “It was because I was so unhappy,” she explained to her daughter Kuku. “Because of Mummy and what she had done to me.”
During her years at the UN, Sumitra’s husband Harry also sometimes came to stay with her. Unlike the Minister, he fitted well into her diplomatic salon. Harry had elegant manners and conversed easily in English and with charm. Unfortunately he also got drunk very quickly—and now it only took a drink or two to get him into that state. He was never rowdy or ill-behaved but continued to stand holding his glass with a smile frozen on his face. If anyone spoke to him, he tried sincerely to respond, but so unsuccessfully that people tended to back away and he was left standing by himself, still smiling and still on his feet, though by now supporting one shoulder against a wall. He was very apologetic about his condition, and readily agreed to enter a clinic in Virginia that Sumitra had arranged for him. But he returned after less than a week—“Leave it,” was all he said in answer to Sumitra’s reproaches. That same night he was for the first time noisily drunk and she had to make signs to the servants, while her guests pretended not to notice him being hustled away, loudly declaiming poetry as he went.
Nevertheless, she liked having him there, at least during the few hours of the day when he was sober. He was the one person with whom she could be as she had been. They spoke of old friends—about these also as they had been and not as they were now: some of them were bureaucrats or judges, some were alcoholics like Harry, some dead like Too. They both spoke of Too with loving nostalgia, and it didn’t matter that she was nostalgic for the moonlit nights in the ruined pleasure palace and Harry for the poetry and vodka and chit-chat in his New Delhi garden. It all appeared as remote now as those scenes of royal indulgence depicted in the miniature paintings that hung on Sumitra’s walls. These pictures were just beginning to be recognized at their true value, and she had been among the first to acquire, for a few rupees, a collection that was later auctioned at Christie’s. Harry himself seemed to belong in those paintings, to be one of the long dead princes, from Kulu or Kashmir, shown reclining among little golden drinking vessels and flowers that scintillated like the jewels in their turbans.
Harry’s last visit to New York—he died shortly after his return to India—coincided with one of the Minister’s foreign tours. Both of them were present at a cocktail party given by Sumitra in honor of the Minister, preceding a dinner at the Iraqi embassy, also in his honor. Sumitra had been nervous all day, for Harry was very irritated by the presence of the Milkman (as he still called him), who was living in the house with them. “Well, what should I do?” Sumitra defended herself. “It’s not my house, it’s an official residence belonging to the government of India.”
“Oh yes,” sneered Harry, “he is the government of India. He’s certainly got his dirty hands in the treasury up to the elbows.” He was referring to a major financial scandal that again involved the Minister: this was nothing unusual—rumor as pungent as his body oil clung to him throughout his career.
Sumitra did not try to argue with Harry. Like Too before him, he would never understand. He had no conception of the shifts and makeshifts necessary to hold on to a position of power, and that what appeared to him as bribery and corruption was nothing but a judicious balancing of funds to keep the machinery of government oiled and functioning.
That evening, though performing with her usual accomplishment the role of diplomatic hostess, she glanced more often than ever toward Harry in his corner. It was also second nature for her to keep an eye on the Minister; but this was really no longer necessary, for by now his very defects had turned into assets. His English had remained rudimentary, but that only made people listen to him more attentively, as if fearful of missing something important he was saying. And there was a sort of power in his earthiness—the smell of cow dung still seemed to cling to him, if no longer physically—a suggestion of roots and soil that was exciting to Sumitra’s cosmopolitan guests. Elegant women clustered around him and he made no secret of his liking for them, though of course in a very respectful way. He knew perfectly where to draw the line, and also where it was permissible to go beyond it—there were rumors about him in this area as well, and whenever he arrived in some backwater of his electoral district, the local bosses knew what sort of girls to bring for him from the bazaar.
Now, at Sumitra’s cocktail party, he was playful with a kind of crude gallantry that charmed his listeners. Although at home he was a strong advocate of the national program of total prohibition, here he indulged his liking for strong liquor, at the same time retaining the full use of his perfectly honed faculties. His eyes darted around as swiftly as his mind to pinpoint those guests who were the most important to him on his present visit. At that particular party it was the head of an international monetary fund, and he had already taken care to establish a friendly rapport with him prior to their official meeting scheduled for the following day. Now he felt at liberty to relax and to amuse his sophisticated audience with his own brand of rustic humor. Stretching out his hand to a servant for another glass, he burst into a snatch of song—a simple folk melody that suited his remarkably pleasant singing voice. There was applause and delighted laughter, so that Sumitra—now herself occupied in exerting her charm on the head of the monetary fund—glanced over to the little circle of which he was the admired centre. She smiled to see this strong and wily politician, who held power over millions of souls and vast stretches of land, turn back into the lusty village youth he had once been. He sang of the dust swirled up at dusk by the homecoming cows, and the jingle of the ornaments adorning the village bride. He also shared his taste for Bombay talkies and switched from folk song to popular film song—the rose and the nightingale at their last gasp but now shrill and sweet enough to delight his sturdy peasant soul. “When you dip in the lake, O bathing Beauty, beware of driving us mad!” he sang and even broke into a little shuffle of a dance. Although squat as a toad in his politician’s homespun garb, he transformed himself into a screen heroine with a wet garment clinging to her body, combing the long tresses that cascaded down to her hips.
Along with everyone else, Sumitra was so intent on this performance that for a moment she relaxed her vigilance over
