«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 romantic. Perhaps they would be too exhausted, she thought optimistically.
“What are you thinking of, Lata?”, asked her mother.
“Oh, nothing, Ma”, said Lata automatically.
“You turned up your nose. I saw it.”
Lata blushed.
“I don’t think I ever want to get married,” she said emphatically.
Mrs. Rupa Mehra was too wearied by the wedding, too exhausted by emotion, too cumbered with congratulations, too overwrought, in short, to do anything but stare at Lata for ten seconds.
[…]
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 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 truth over objective.»
A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
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