13

A Reverie at a Book-Reading

 

Sometimes when you meet a person, you can end up seeing them not as they are but through the prism of memories. In such instances, the past overwhelms the present. It’s a strange but wonderful experience. Time somersaults backwards, reality converges with history, and myth and legend with truth.

As I watched Vikram Seth read extracts of his new novel, I found myself transported thirty two years back in time. We were both at The Doon School. Vikram was in A-form and in his penultimate year. I was in D-form and it was my second term. We were preparing for the school debating competition. Vikram was Debating Captain at Jaipur House. I was the youngest, most inexperienced, member of his team.

“Can’t you speak with authority but without shouting?”

Vikram was sitting cross-legged on his chair. He resembled a petite Buddha with sculpted feet and a small round head. His hair kept falling across his forehead. As a result, even when he sounded angry, he never looked it.

I wasn’t sure what he meant. At eleven, the difference between authority and a loud voice is not obvious. I cleared my throat, stood up straight and started again.

Vikram closed his eyes. He often does when he is concentrating.

But to speak to a man sitting cross-legged on a chair with his eyes shut can be disconcerting. Try hard as I did to control my voice, it started to wander.

“You’re singing or at least you’re sounding very sing-song.” Vikram’s eyes were now open and staring ferociously. “Remember you won’t win any extra points by trying to seduce the judges with your voice. Speak normally, clearly, fluently and you’ll carry conviction.”

Neither then nor now do I know what he meant. ‘Speak like you normally do’ is an injunction that baffles me. If I don’t speak like myself, whom do I speak like? Yet when I woke from my reverie it was to find, three decades later, that Vikram was doing exactly that. Of course, he wasn’t cross-legged. But the small round head, now slightly balding, was talking clearly, fluently and the audience was transfixed with conviction.

“What an amazing speaker.” whispered Shobha Deepak Singh in my ear. She was sitting beside me on the second row of the Habitat Centre auditorium.Aveek Sircar,Vikram’s publisher, was beside her. Earlier, with his help, Shobha had got Vikram to autograph her copy of his book.

“He’s just being himself.” Aveek added by way of explanation.

I turned to watch Vikram on the stage but before long, my mind started wandering again and I soon found myself tumbling back into the past. This time we were in the Rose Bowl rehearsing for the School’s annual play. It was Rattigan’s Winslow Boy. I was the brutish lawyer. Vikram was directing. The year was 1971. It was his year off between A levels and Oxbridge. It was my last year in School.

Vikram had just explained how he wanted a particular scene done. It was partly description and partly enactment. Despite his lack of height, he’s a talented actor. Then, with short quick steps and his head inclined downwards, he walked towards the audience stands to sit down and watch. He crossed his legs, cupped his chin in the palm of one hand and rested his elbow on his raised knee. His other hand held on to his foot.

“Right. Lets see how you do it.”

I started. It was the scene where the lawyer cross-examines the young boy.Vikram wanted me to pretend to be angry. Yet the anger also had to sound genuine otherwise the cross examination would not work. Only after it was over would the truth emerge.

“Not bad. Not bad at all.” Vikram pronounced. He was not given to praise easily and I swelled with pride.

Later, rehearsal over, as we walked back, the April night alight with stars but the air hot and heavy, he came back to the subject.

“The funny thing about anger is that it’s not the shouting that communicates it. It comes from deeper inside. It’s like love and hate. You have to feel it to sense it.”And then after a pause, he added,“I suppose all emotions are the same.”

I returned to the present to find Vikram reading a delicately written extract from his book. Helen is tipsy but excited. Her words are tumbling out. Michael, though detached, is not indifferent. His wit is a foil to her emotion. Their feelings emerge, they grow, they suffuse the context but rarely are they stated.

I have to read this book, I said to myself. I bought it a couple of weeks ago. I like to buy new ones as soon as they are out. It’s a sort of one-upmanship I play with myself. But I can be very lazy about reading them. And Salman Rushdie’s new novel put me off Indian authors.

A week, later I’ve finished the book but the story, its characters and their world is still with me. Like memories of Doon School, it will merge into a consciousness that will always be there. Vikram, the stories about him and now his book will fuse into one. I would not want it otherwise.

If you haven’t, I recommend you read An Equal Music.