A Suitable Boy

  ‘Yes, Papa.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘No.’

  After a pause she said:

  ‘Do you want to talk to Veena? She and her mother-in-law are frantic with worry. Veena’s husband is not even in town.’

  ‘No. No.’ L.N. Agarwal, after fearing he had lost his child, could not bear to face someone else in the same anguish.

  ‘Papa—’

  ‘All right. Give me a minute or two.’

  In the end he went over to Mahesh Kapoor’s daughter, and said what words of comfort and practicality he could. If Bhaskar had not been found so far at the police station the chances were good, etc. . . . But even as he spoke he heard how hollow his words must sound to the mother and the grandmother. He told them that he would go around to the first-aid centres and phone up Bhaskar’s grandfather at Prem Nivas if there was any news, either good or bad; they too should phone in periodically to check.

  But at none of the first-aid centres was there any sign of the little frog, and as hour followed hour, Veena and old Mrs Tandon, and soon Mr and Mrs Mahesh Kapoor, and Pran and Savita, and of course Priya and Ram Vilas Goyal (who even began to feel themselves responsible for what had happened), sank into a deeper and deeper sense of hopelessness and desperation.

  11.23

  Mahesh Kapoor, while sympathizing with Priya and reassuring her that she should not be so foolish as to hold herself responsible for what was beyond anyone’s control, did not tell her where he placed the responsibility: squarely on her father’s shoulders. He was the Home Minister. It had been his duty to ensure that the arrangements were not susceptible to this horrendous eventuality. At least once before, in the firing at Chowk, L.N. Agarwal had shown either lack of personal foresight or unwise confidence in delegating authority to others who lacked it. Mahesh Kapoor, although he usually had very little time for his family, loved his only grandchild greatly, and was distressed beyond measure for his wife and his daughter.

  Everyone stayed over at Prem Nivas that night. Kedarnath could not be contacted; he was out of town. Trunk calls were difficult to make, and he was not in Kanpur, where they had thought he might be on business. Maan, who was so fond of Bhaskar, was in Debaria still. Veena and old Mrs Tandon first went home in the flickering hope that Bhaskar might have gone back there. But no one in their neighbourhood had seen Bhaskar. They themselves had no telephone, and to spend the night alone at home would be unbearable. Their rooftop neighbour of the red sari reassured them that she would get in touch with the Minister Sahib’s house if they had any news. And so they made their way back to Prem Nivas, Veena in her heart bitterly upbraiding Kedarnath for being, as he so often was, out of Brahmpur.

  Like my father when I was born, she thought.

  By then Pran and Savita were at Prem Nivas as well. Pran knew he would have to be with his parents and sister, but he was afraid of distressing his wife unduly in her present condition. If her mother or sister had returned from their travels, he would have felt no qualms about leaving her in their care and staying over at Prem Nivas himself. But Mrs Rupa Mehra’s last letter had been from Delhi, and she was at this moment either in Kanpur or in Lucknow, far from where she could be of use.

  That night the family discussed what could be done. No one could sleep. Mrs Mahesh Kapoor prayed. There was very little that had not already been attempted. All the hospitals of Brahmpur had been searched for Bhaskar, following the conjecture that he had been injured and taken there directly by some helpful person. So had all the police stations—but to no avail.

  They were all certain that Bhaskar, intelligent and (usually) self-possessed as he was, would have either gone back home or contacted his grandparents if he had been able to. Had his body been misidentified and taken away for cremation by others? Had he been kidnapped in the confusion? As all the plausible possibilities disappeared one by one in the face of the facts, unlikely imaginings took on a credibility of their own.

  No one could sleep that night. As disturbing as their own grief and anxiety was the sound of revelry that echoed through the darkness. For it was the month of Ramazan, the Muslim month of fasting. Because of the purely lunar Muslim calendar, the month of Ramazan had staggered its way back to summer over the last few years. The days were long and hot, and the deprivation great—since strict Muslims were enjoined even from drinking water during the daylight hours. After sunset, the relief therefore was the greater—and the nights were given over to feasting and celebration.

  The Nawab Sahib, strict observant though he himself was, had, upon hearing of the calamity at the Pul Mela, forbidden any celebration in his own household. He was even more distressed when he heard that his friend’s grandson could not be traced. But such fellow-feeling was not general, or at least not universal, and the sound of Muslim celebration in a town where the news of the disaster had spread like fire, and must be known to everyone, was embittering even to a man like Mahesh Kapoor.

  The phone rang from time to time, exciting their hope and fear. But they were messages of sympathy—or intimations from one official source or another that nothing had come up—or else calls that had nothing to do with Bhaskar at all.

  11.24

  The afternoon before, on the instructions of the Home Minister, a number of cars had been requisitioned in order to ferry the wounded to hospital. One of these cars was the Buick of Dr Kishen Chand Seth.

  Dr Seth had decided to see a movie that afternoon, and his car was parked outside a cinema hall, the Rialto. When he emerged, sobbing with sentiment, supported by his hardboiled young wife Parvati, he found two policemen leaning on his car.

  Dr Kishen Chand Seth immediately flew into a rage. He raised his cane threateningly, and if Parvati had not restrained him, he would certainly have used it. The policemen, who knew Dr Seth’s reputation, were very apologetic.

  ‘We have orders to requisition this car, Sir,’ they said.

  ‘You—what?’ spluttered Dr Seth. ‘Get out, get out, get out of my sight before I—’ He was at a loss for words. Nothing seemed severe enough retribution for their gall.

  ‘Because of the Pul Mela—’

  ‘All superstition, all superstition!’ said Dr Kishen Chand Seth. ‘Let me go at once.’ He took out his key.

  The Sub-Inspector apologetically took it from his hand in an unexpected and skilful movement. Dr Kishen Chand Seth almost had a heart attack.

  ‘You—you dare—’ he gasped. ‘Teutonic frightfulness—’ he added in English. This was worse than bayoneting babies.

  ‘Sir, there has been a disaster at the Pul Mela, and we—’

  ‘What nonsense! Had there been any such thing, I would certainly have heard of it. I am a doctor—a radiologist. You can’t requisition a doctor’s car. Let me see your written orders.’

  ‘—we have orders to requisition any vehicle within a mile of the pipal tree.’

  ‘I am just here to see a film, this car is not actually here,’ said Dr Kishen Chand Seth, pointing to his Buick. ‘Give me my keys back.’ He reached out for them.

  ‘Kishy, don’t shout, darling,’ said Parvati. ‘Perhaps there really has been some disaster. We’ve been seeing a film for the last three hours.’

  ‘I assure you, Sir, there has been,’ said the policeman. ‘There have been a great many deaths and injuries. I am requisitioning this car on the express instructions of the Home Minister of Purva Pradesh. Only cars of active—non-retired—doctors are exempt. We will take good care of it.’

  This last remark was just a soothing formula. Dr Kishen Chand Seth realized immediately that his car would be virtually disabled through misuse and overuse. If what this idiot was saying was true, there would be sand in the engine and blood on the calfskin upholstery by the time he got it back. But had there really been such a disaster? Or was this just another example of post-Independence rot? People were shockingly high-handed these days.

  ‘You!’ he shouted at a passer-by.

  Taken aback, not accustomed to being addressed
in this manner, the man, a respectable clerk in a government department, stopped in his tracks and turned a face of polite, perplexed inquiry towards Dr Kishen Chand Seth.

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes, you. Has there been a disaster at the Pul Mela? Hundreds dead?’ The last query was pronounced with scornful disbelief.

  ‘Yes, Sahib, there has been,’ said the man. ‘I heard the rumour, then heard it on the radio. It is certainly true. Even the official estimate is in the hundreds.’

  ‘All right—take it,’ said Dr Kishen Chand Seth. ‘But mind—no blood on the seats—no blood on the seats. I won’t have it. Do you hear me?’

  ‘Yes, Sir. Rest assured that we will return it to you within a week. Your address, Sir?’

  ‘Everyone knows my address,’ said Dr Kishen Chand Seth airily. And he stepped out on to the street, waving his cane. He was going to requisition a taxi—or some other car—to take him home.

  11.25

  L.N. Agarwal was not popular with the students of Brahmpur. He was disliked both for his authoritarian ways and for his manipulativeness on the Executive Council of Brahmpur University. And the pronouncements of most of the political parties on the university campus were virulently anti-Agarwal in tone.

  The Home Minister knew this, and his request for student volunteers to help with the aftermath of the disaster was therefore phrased as a request from the Chief Minister. Most of the students were not in Brahmpur, since it was the vacation. But many of those who were there responded. They would almost certainly have responded even if the request had been signed by the Home Minister.

  Kabir, being the son of a faculty member, and therefore living close to the university, was one of the first to hear of the appeal. He and his younger brother Hashim went to the central control room that had been set up in the Fort. The sun was about to set over the city of tents. Apart from the lights and cooking fires there were a number of larger fires here and there, where bodies were being cremated. The loudspeakers continued their endless litany of names, and would continue to do so throughout the night.

  They were allocated to different first-aid centres. The other volunteers were exhausted, and glad to be relieved. They could get some food and a couple of hours’ sleep before they were called back to duty again.

  Despite everyone’s efforts—the lists, the centres, the stations, the control room—there was more confusion than order. No one knew what to do with the lost women—mostly aged and infirm, penniless and hungry—until the Congress women’s committee, impatient with the indecisiveness of the authorities, took them in hand. Few knew where to take the lost or dead or injured in general, few knew where to find them. Unhappy people ran from one end of the hot sands to the other only to be told that the meeting place for pilgrims of their particular state was somewhere else. Injured or dead children were sometimes taken to the compound for lost children, sometimes to the first-aid centres, sometimes to the police enclosure. The instructions on the loudspeaker appeared to change with the person who was temporarily manning it.

  After a long night of assisting at the first-aid centre, Kabir was staring blankly ahead of him when he saw Bhaskar being brought in.

  He was carried in very tenderly by a fat, melancholy, middle-aged man. Bhaskar appeared to be asleep. Kabir frowned when he saw him and immediately got up. He recognized the boy as his father’s mathematical companion.

  ‘I found him on the sand just after the stampede,’ explained the man, setting the boy down on the ground where there was a little space. ‘He was lying not far from the ramp, so he’s lucky not to have got crushed. I took him to our camp, thinking he would wake up soon enough and I could take him home. I’m fond of children, you know. My wife and I don’t have any. . . .’ He drifted off, then returned to the subject at hand. ‘Anyway, he woke up once, but didn’t respond to any of my questions. He doesn’t even know his name. And then he went off to sleep again, and hasn’t woken up since. I haven’t been able to feed him anything. I’ve shaken him, but he doesn’t react. He hasn’t drunk anything either, you know. But, through the grace of my guru, his pulse is still beating.’

  ‘It’s good you brought him here,’ said Kabir. ‘I think I can trace his parents.’

  ‘Well, you know, I was going to take him to a hospital, but then I happened to be paying attention to that horrible loudspeaker for a minute or two—and it said that those lost children who had been taken under protection by individuals should be kept in the Mela area, otherwise tracing them would be impossible. And so I brought him here.’

  ‘Good. Good,’ sighed Kabir.

  ‘Now if there is anything I can do—I am afraid I will be leaving tomorrow morning.’ The man passed his hand over Bhaskar’s forehead. ‘He doesn’t have any identification on him so I don’t really see how you’ll trace him. But stranger things have happened in my life. You are looking for a person, not even knowing who they are, and then you suddenly find them. Well, good-bye.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Kabir, yawning. ‘You have done a great deal. Well, yes, you can do one thing more. Would you take this note to an address in the university area?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  It had struck Kabir that he might not be able to get through to his father by phone, and that a note to him would be useful. He wrote a few lines—his handwriting was something of a scrawl because of his tiredness—folded it in four, wrote the address on top, and handed it over to the fat man.

  ‘The sooner the better,’ he said.

  The man nodded and left, humming mournfully to himself.

  After he had done his rounds, Kabir picked up the telephone and asked the operator for Dr Durrani’s number. The lines were congested, and he was asked to try a little later. Ten minutes later he got through, and his father happened to be at home. Kabir informed him of the situation and asked him to ignore the note he would be getting.

  ‘I know he’s your friend, the mini-Gauss, and that his name’s Bhaskar. But where does he live?’

  His father was at his absent-minded worst.

  ‘Oh, hmm, er—’ began Dr Durrani. ‘It’s very, er, difficult to say. Now what is his last, er, name?’

  ‘I thought that you might know,’ said Kabir. He could imagine his father scrunching up his eyes in concentration.

  ‘Now, er, I’m not exactly sure, you see, er, he comes and goes, various people, well, leave him here, and then we talk, and then, er, they come and pick him up. He was here last week—’

  ‘I know—’

  ‘And we were discussing Fermat’s conjecture about—’

  ‘Father—’

  ‘Oh, yes, and an, er, interesting variant of the Pergolesi Lemma. Something along the, er, lines of what my young colleague, er, I have an idea—why don’t we, er, er, ask him?’

  ‘Ask whom?’

  ‘Yes, Sunil Patwardhan, er, wouldn’t he know about the boy? It was his party, I believe. Poor Bhaskar. His, er, parents must be perplexed.’

  Whatever this meant, Kabir realized that he would probably get more sense out of this new lead than out of his father. He got in touch with Sunil Patwardhan, who recalled that Bhaskar was Kedarnath Tandon’s son and Mahesh Kapoor’s grandson. Kabir phoned up Prem Nivas.

  Mahesh Kapoor picked up the phone at the second ring.

  ‘Ji?’

  ‘May I speak to the Minister Sahib?’ said Kabir in Hindi.

  ‘You are speaking to him.’

  ‘Minister Sahib, I am speaking from the first-aid centre just below the eastern end of the Fort.’

  ‘Yes.’ The voice was like a taut spring.

  ‘We have your grandson, Bhaskar, here—’

  ‘Alive?’

  ‘Yes. We have just—’

  ‘Then bring him to Prem Nivas immediately. What are you waiting for?’ Mahesh Kapoor’s voice cut in.

  ‘Minister Sahib, I apologize, but I am on duty here. You will have to come down yourself.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course, of course—’

  �
�And I should mention—’

  ‘Yes, yes, go on, go on—’

  ‘It may not be advisable to move him at present. Well, I shall expect you soon.’

  ‘Good. What is your name?’

  ‘Kabir Durrani.’

  ‘Durrani?’ Mahesh Kapoor’s voice expressed surprise before he told himself that disaster knows no religion. ‘Like the mathematician?’

  ‘Yes. I am his elder son.’

  ‘I apologize for my sharpness. We have all been very tense. I will come down immediately. How is he? Why can’t he be moved?’

  ‘I think it is best if you see for yourself,’ said Kabir. Then, realizing how terrifying these words might sound, he added: ‘He does not appear to have any external injury.’

  ‘The eastern end?’

  ‘The eastern end.’

  Mahesh Kapoor put down the phone and turned to the family, which had been following every word at his end.

  In fifteen minutes Veena had Bhaskar in her arms again. She held him so tight that they seemed to be a single being. The boy was still unconscious, although his face was calm. She touched her forehead to his and whispered his name again and again.

  When her father introduced the tired young man at the first-aid centre as Dr Durrani’s son, she stretched her hands towards his head and blessed him.

  11.26

  Dipankar, who had been thinking of death and almost nothing but death since the meaningless disaster of the stampede, said: ‘Does it matter, Baba?’

  ‘Yes.’ The kind face looked down at the two rosaries, and the small eyes blinked, as if in amusement.

  Dipankar had bought these rosaries, one for himself and one—for some reason that he could not explain even to himself—for Amit. He had asked Sanaki Baba to bless them before he left the Mela.

  Sanaki Baba had taken them in his cupped hands, and had said: ‘What form, what power are you most attracted to? Rama? or Krishna? or Shiva? or Shakti? or Om itself?’