“I too had the same illusion, but when I reached out to grasp it, look—she soared up into the sky. How could I ever reach such heights? I only pray she might descend. These days, she doesn’t even speak to me.”

Saying this, Mehta laughed with a loud, tearful mirth and stood up.

Mirza asked, “When shall we meet again?”

“This time, you’ll have to make the effort. Do visit Khanna!”

“I will.”

Mirza watched Mehta leave through the window. His gait lacked its usual briskness, as if he were weighed down by some deep worry.

:33:

Dr. Mehta, once the examiner, now found himself the examined. Keeping his distance from Malti, he began to fear that he might lose her. For months, Malti had not come to see him, and when, in his disappointment, he went to her house, she was never there. In the days when Rudrapal and Saroj’s romance was unfolding, Malti would come to him almost daily for advice, sometimes even twice a day. But since both had left for England, her visits had ceased. Even at home, she was difficult to find. It seemed as if she was avoiding him, as if she were forcibly turning her mind away from him.

The book he was working on these days refused to progress, as though his concentration had deserted him. He had never been particularly skilled at managing the household. Altogether, he earned more than a thousand rupees a month, yet not a single paisa was ever saved. Beyond his daily bread and lentils, nothing remained in his hands. If there was any extravagance, it was his car, which he drove himself. Some money was spent on books, some on donations, some on supporting poor students, and some on decorating his home, for which he had a kind of love affair. Importing all sorts of plants and herbs from abroad and nurturing them—this was his mental indulgence, or perhaps his intellectual vanity.

But for several months now, even that garden had begun to lose its charm for him, and the state of the house had grown worse. He would eat two flatbreads, yet the expenses would exceed a hundred rupees. He had immovable property, but he had managed to get through the harshest winter with just that. There were always transactions of buying and selling new property. Sometimes, he had to eat lentils without ghee. He could not even remember when he had last sold any property, and how could he ask the cook? How would the cook understand what was happening?

At last, after three disappointments and four months had passed, Malti, seeing his condition, could bear it no longer. She said, “What is this, selling off your property? Aren’t you ashamed to wear such worn-out clothes?”

Though Malti was not his wife, she stood so close to him that she spoke as one would to a dear one.

Mehta replied without embarrassment, “What can I do, Malti? What can you do?”

Malti was surprised.