The Householder by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Page B

three times a week, and sometimes four.’
    Romesh Seigal was very much like Prem’s students—healthy, cheerful, wearing good clothes and an expensive wristwatch. So Prem found himself addressing him in the same way as he addressed his students; he said ‘And your studies?’ in a somewhat stern voice.
    â€˜I am not too fond of studies,’ Romesh said frankly.
    â€˜You must study hard,’ Prem said, ‘and pass in your examinations. Then perhaps you will be able to secure a good position with the Government and your parents will be pleased.’
    â€˜I find studies very boring,’ Romesh said, ‘I like only pictures very much.’
    â€˜What will you learn from going to pictures? This is only amusement for an idle hour. While you are a student, you must learn and strive to pass in your examinations and not think of amusement at all.’
    â€˜Quite right,’ said Mr. Seigal, emerging from the next room. Prem got up and greeted him with hands deferentially joined. Though it was past six o’clock in the evening, Mr. Seigal seemed to have only just got up from his afternoon sleep. His hair and his shirt were rumpled and wet with perspiration, and he was yawning so widely that tears came into his eyes.
    â€˜This is what I am always telling him,’ said Mr. Seigal when he had finished yawning.
    â€˜We were having a little chat,’ said Prem, feeling rather sheepish.
    â€˜Please take trouble with him,’ said Mr. Seigal. ‘You are a teacher, a lecturer in a college, he can learn only what is good from you.’
    Though at any other time Prem might have felt flattered by these observations, now he found them rather awkward. He wanted Mr. Seigal to look on him as another son, as helpless and dependent as his own son Romesh, and here he was being set up as a mentor to that son. He shuffled his feet and smiled deprecatingly. He wanted to look young and foolish, yet somehow, after what Mr. Seigal had said, he could not help feeling elderly and responsible; and so when he spoke he spoke in that role, as one weighed down by years and responsibilities.’ It is our duty,’ he said,’ to guide young men and set them on the right path in Life.’
    Mr. Seigal grunted as he picked up a newspaper, yawned some more and rubbed his hand over his hair. Romesh had gone back to reading his film magazine, humming a melancholy love song as he did so.
    â€˜In our ancient writings it is written,’ Prem continued, ‘that there are four stages to a man’s life. When he is young, he is a student, learning from his father and his teachers——’
    â€˜Has the tea been brought?’ Mr. Seigal inquired of Romesh.
    â€˜After that comes the life of the householder,’ Prem said. ‘In this stage a man must raise a family and see to their needs …’ He thought of Indu and the coming baby and felt instantly depressed. At this point he would like to have joined his hands in supplication and asked for a reduction in rent. But he felt shy, especially before Romesh whom he was to serve as a good example, so he continued: ‘The third stage is when a man retires from his duties as a householder and spends his time in contemplation.’
    â€˜They have made vegetables samusas with our tea,’ Romesh told his father.
    â€˜Thus it may be clearly seen,’ Prem concluded miserably, skipping the fourth stage, of which he was not quite sure, ‘that each stage of life has its own duties and obligations.’ Oppressed by a sense of failure, he took his leave rather quickly. Upstairs Indu was sitting knitting pink bootees. He said to her at once, ‘There are some things in which a wife can be very helpful to her husband.’ Indu moved her lips silently, counting her stitches; she seemed in deep concentration. ‘A wife must share her husband’s burden!’ Prem suddenly shouted.
    Indu quickly wound up her knitting