‘But then,’ Sathyam continued in the same vein, ‘Raja Rao would have made a better husband for Roopa. Oh, how she admires him? He’s nothing short of an idol for her, is he not? And it’s quite possible that she’s enamored of him. But how can I fault her, even if she were in love with him? Isn’t he a better man than me in every way? After all, it’s all so apparent. But would her infatuation push her into a liaison with him? Oh, no. After all that, how unfair of me to even to entertain such a thought? Why, didn’t she shun Prasad, that too when she was indifferent to me? By that, hadn’t she showed her character, once and for all? But now, she says that she loves me even! And don’t I know that she’s not making it up. Maybe, she fantasizes about Raja Rao. Well, that’s a different matter altogether.’
When he reached their place, Sathyam lost no time in placing the necklace on Saroja’s person.
‘I envy my daughter’s luck,’ said Sandhya, thrilled at his gesture, ‘Oh, how nice it is that she has an uncle who treats her like his daughter.’
‘I’ve always thought,’ said Sathyam, feeling pleased, ‘that we’re all but one family.’
As Roopa began to dress Saroja in a plain cotton frock, Sathyam said it may not be right for the big occasion.
‘Children are better off in cottons than in those suffocating synthetics,’ she said. ‘But, parents pay through their noses for the kids-wear, just to exhibit.’
‘All that is fine for a drawing-room discussion,’ said Sathyam. ‘But the world sizes you up by the way you dress.’
‘Dress might enhance looks,’ said Roopa ‘but it’s the poise that pleases.’
‘Left to you, it looks like you would make a sanyasin out of Saroja,’ said Sathyam unable to reconcile to her philosophy of life. ‘Anyway, won’t I show Saroja the other side of the coin?’
‘You are welcome to do that,’ said Raja Rao who joined them by then. ‘But personally I like to be guided by the twin quotes that Dr. Ramachandra Rao, our family physician, religiously copies in his new diary without fail. Somehow that slipped from my mind when we were on the subject at the Eagle Bar that day. Let me quote them to you, one is - In bringing up children, parents should remember that not wealth, but education conduces most to their happiness. And the other is - The best inheritance that a father can provide to his son is an education that will fit him to take an honorable place among cultured men.’