A Suitable Boy

  Mrs Mahesh Kapoor said nothing further. She would not change; he would not change; he knew that she would not change; she knew that he would not change; and each knew that the other knew this.

  She took some fruit with her to the hospital, and he took some files with him to the court. Before departing to visit Bhaskar, she told a servant to prepare and pack some parathas for her husband so that he would have something to eat on the journey to Patna later in the day.

  11.30

  It was a hot morning, and a scorching wind blew along the exposed corridors of the Brahmpur High Court. By nine thirty, Courtroom Number One was packed solid. Inside the courtroom the physical atmosphere, though stuffy, was not unbearable. The long mats of khas recently suspended over a couple of the windows had been freshly sprinkled with water, converting the hot wind of June into a cooler breeze inside.

  As for the emotional atmosphere, it was surcharged with suspense, excitement, and anxiety. Of those who had argued the case, only the local lawyers were present, but it seemed that the Brahmpur Bar, whether connected with the case or not, had decided en masse to attend this historic occasion. The press reporters too were present in force, and were already scribbling away. Swivelling and craning their necks in turn, they tried to catch sight of each famous litigant, each Raja or Nawab or great zamindar, whose fate hung in the balance. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the balance had already tilted, but the curtain that hid the scales was still in place. A few minutes more, and it would be drawn aside.

  Mahesh Kapoor entered, talking to the Advocate-General of Purva Pradesh. The reporter for the Brahmpur Chronicle could hear only a couple of sentences as they squeezed past him up the side-aisle. ‘A trinity is sufficient to run the universe,’ said the Advocate-General, his perennial smile a little broader than usual, ‘but this case, it appears, needs two extra heads.’

  Mahesh Kapoor said: ‘There’s that bastard Marh and his pederastic son—I’m surprised they have the brazenness to come to this court again. At least they look worried.’ Then he shook his head, looking equally worried at the thought of an unfavourable outcome.

  The court clock struck ten. The pageant of ushers began. The judges followed in sequence. They looked neither at the government lawyers nor at the advocates for the applicants. It was impossible to make out from their expressions what the judgement might be. The Chief Justice looked to left and right, and the chairs were moved forward. The Court Reader called out the numbers of the several conjoined writ petitions listed ‘for pronouncement of judgment’. The Chief Justice looked down at the thick wad of typed pages in front of him, and riffled through them absently. Every eye in court rested on him. He removed the lace doily from the glass in front of him, and took a sip of water.

  He turned to the last page of the seventy-five-page judgement, leaned his head to one side, and began reading the operative part of the judgement. He read for less than half a minute, clearly and quickly:

  ‘The Purva Pradesh Zamindari Abolition and Land Reform Act does not contravene any provision of the Constitution and is not invalid. The main application, together with the connected applications, are dismissed. It is our view that parties should bear their own costs, and we order accordingly.’

  He signed the judgement and handed it to the judge on his right, the senior puisne judge, who signed and handed it across the Chief Justice to the next-most-senior judge; thus the document ricocheted from side to side until it was handed down to the Court Reader, who stamped it with the seal of the court bearing the legend: ‘High Court of Judicature, Brahmpur’. Then the judges rose, for that was the only item of business for which the full bench of five had been constituted. The chair shuffle was reversed, and the judges disappeared behind the dull scarlet curtain to the right, followed by the glittering ushers.

  As was the custom of the Brahmpur High Court, all four puisne judges accompanied the Chief Justice to his chambers; then they walked to the chambers of the next-most-senior judge and so on in order. Finally, Mr Justice Maheshwari walked back to his chambers alone. Having thrashed the issues out for weeks in person and on paper no one had been in the mood for further conversation; the black-gowned procession had been almost funereal. As for Mr Justice Maheshwari, he was still puzzled about the document to which he had just affixed his signature, but he was a little closer to understanding Sita’s position in the Ramayana.

  To say that there was pandemonium in court would be an understatement. As soon as the last judge disappeared from view litigants and lawyers, press and public alike, began cheering and screaming, embracing each other or weeping. Firoz and his father hardly had the chance to look at each other when each was surrounded by a mixed group of lawyers and landlords and journalists—and all coherent speech became impossible. Firoz looked grim.

  The Raja of Marh, like everyone else, had risen when the judges rose. But aren’t they going to read the judgement? he thought. Have they postponed it? He could not grasp that so much significance could be contained in so few words. But the joy on the government side and the despair and consternation on his own brought home to him the full import of the baleful mantra. His legs gave way; he pitched forward on to the row of chairs in front of him and collapsed on the ground; and darkness came over his eyes.

  11.31

  Two days later, the Advocate-General of Purva Pradesh, Mr Shastri, carefully perused the full text of the judgement which had been brought out by the High Court printing press. He was pleased that it was unanimous. It was tightly written and clear, and would, he believed, withstand the inevitable appeal to the Supreme Court, especially now that the additional, recently erected wall of the First Amendment stood around it.

  The contentions based on delegation of legislation, lack of public purpose and so on, had been dealt with and dismissed.

  On the basic question—the one that could easily have gone either way in Mr Shastri’s view—the judges had decided thus:

  The ‘rehabilitation grant’ and ‘compensation’ both together formed the true recompense, the ‘actual compensation’ for the land taken over. This, according to the judges, put both items beyond constitutional challenge on the grounds either of inadequacy or of discrimination. Had the government’s carefully planned contention that the two items were different been upheld, the rehabilitation grant would not have enjoyed the protection afforded under the Constitution to ‘compensation’, and would therefore have been struck down under its provision for the ‘equal protection of the laws’.

  As the Advocate-General saw it, the judges had given a violent blow to the government—and thereby moved it out of the path of an unseen but swiftly approaching train. He smiled to himself at the strangeness of it all.

  As for the special cases—the Hindu charitable trusts, the waqfs, the crown grantees, the erstwhile rulers and so on—none of their contentions had been upheld. Shastri had only one mild regret, and that had nothing to do with the judgement itself. It was that his rival, G.N. Bannerji, had not been in court to hear the judgement.

  But G.N. Bannerji was away in Calcutta, arguing another vastly lucrative if less momentous case, and Mr Shastri reflected that he had probably merely shrugged and poured himself another Scotch when he had heard by telephone or telegram about the result of this one.

  11.32

  In previous Pul Melas, although the crowds began to thin out after Jeth Purnima, large numbers of pilgrims still remained eleven days later to bathe on the night of Ekadashi, or even fourteen days later at the next ‘dark’ moon or amavas, which was sacred to Lord Jagannath. Not so this time. The tragedy, apart from the dread it had aroused among the pious, had resulted in a compete dislocation of regular administration on the sands. The health staff, overburdened by the emergency, was forced to neglect its regular tasks. Hygiene suffered, and there were epidemics of gastro-enteritis and diarrhoea, especially on the northern bank. The food-stalls were dismantled in an attempt to discourage the pilgrims from remaining, but those who remained had to eat,
and soon profiteering became rife: a seer of puris cost five rupees, a seer of boiled potatoes cost three rupees, and the price of paan trebled.

  But soon the pilgrims did disperse entirely. The army engineers removed the electricity poles and the steel plates off the roads, and dismantled the pontoon bridges. River traffic began to move downstream.

  In time the Ganga rose with the monsoon rains and covered the sands.

  Ramjap Baba remained on his platform, surrounded now on all sides by the Ganga, and continued to recite unceasingly the eternal name of God.

  Part Twelve

  12.1

  Mrs Rupa Mehra and Lata returned from Lucknow to Brahmpur about a week before the Monsoon Term of the university began. Pran was at the station to meet them. It was late at night, and though it was not cold, Pran was coughing.

  Mrs Rupa Mehra scolded him for coming.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Ma,’ said Pran. ‘Do you think I’d have sent Mansoor instead?’

  ‘How is Savita?’ asked Mrs Rupa Mehra, just as Lata was about to ask the same question.

  ‘Very well,’ said Pran. ‘But she’s getting bigger by the minute—’

  ‘No complications at all?’

  ‘She’s fine. She’s waiting for you at home.’

  ‘She should be asleep.’

  ‘Well, that’s what I told her. But she obviously cares more for her mother and sister than for her husband. She thought you might need a bite to eat when you got home. How was your trip? I hope there was someone to help you at Lucknow Station.’

  Lata and her mother exchanged a quick glance.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra in a definitive manner. ‘The very nice young man I wrote to you about from Delhi.’

  ‘The shoemaker Haresh Khanna.’

  ‘You shouldn’t call him a shoemaker, Pran,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘He will probably turn out to be my second son-in-law, God willing.’

  Now it was Pran’s turn to give Lata a quick glance. Lata was shaking her head gently from side to side. Pran did not know if she was disavowing the opinion or the certainty of it.

  ‘Lata encouraged him to write to her. That can only mean one thing,’ continued Mrs Rupa Mehra.

  ‘On the contrary, Ma,’ said Lata, who could hold back no longer. ‘It can mean one of several things.’ She did not add that she had not encouraged Haresh to write, merely consented to his doing so.

  ‘Well, I agree, he’s a good fellow,’ said Pran. ‘Here’s the tonga.’ And he got busy telling the coolies how to arrange the luggage.

  Lata didn’t quite catch Pran’s remark, or she would have responded very much as her mother did, which was with great surprise.

  ‘A good fellow? How do you know he is a good fellow?’ asked Mrs Rupa Mehra, frowning.

  ‘No mystery,’ said Pran, enjoying Mrs Rupa Mehra’s perplexity. ‘I just happen to have met him, that’s all.’

  ‘You mean you know Haresh?’ said his mother-in-law.

  Pran was coughing and nodding simultaneously. Now both Mrs Rupa Mehra and Lata were looking at him in astonishment.

  After his voice returned he said, ‘Yes, yes, I know your cobbler.’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t call him that,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra in exasperation. ‘He has a degree from England. And I wish you would take care of your health. How can you take care of Savita if you don’t?’

  ‘I like him well enough,’ said Pran. ‘But I can’t help thinking of him as a cobbler. When he came to Sunil Patwardhan’s party he brought along a pair of brogues he’d made just that morning. Or that he wanted made. Or something like that—’ he ended.

  ‘What are you talking about, Pran?’ cried Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘I wish you wouldn’t speak in riddles. How can you bring along something that you want made? Who is this Sunil Patwardhan, and what brogues are these? And’—she added with a particular air of grievance—‘why didn’t I know about all this?’

  That Mrs Rupa Mehra, whose special business it was to know everyone else’s, should not have known that Haresh had met Pran, in all likelihood before she had, irked her greatly.

  ‘Now don’t be annoyed with me, Ma, it’s not my fault that I didn’t tell you. I think things were a bit fraught here at home at the time—or perhaps it just slipped my mind. He was here on business a few months ago, and stayed with a colleague and I happened to meet him. A short man, well-dressed, straightforward, and quite definite in his opinions. Haresh Khanna, yes. I particularly remembered his name because I thought he might be a suitable prospect for Lata.’

  ‘You remember thinking—’ began Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘And you did nothing about it?’ Here was unbelievable dereliction of duty. Her sons were thoroughly irresponsible in this regard, but she had not believed it of her son-in-law.

  ‘Well—’ Pran paused for a while, considering his words, then said:

  ‘Now I don’t know how much or how little you know about him, Ma, and it’s been a little while since the party, and I can’t say that it all comes back to me exactly as I heard it, but it is my understanding from Sunil Patwardhan that there was some girl in his life, some Sikh girl, who—’

  ‘Yes, yes, we know,’ Mrs Rupa Mehra cut him off. ‘We know perfectly well. But that will not stand in our way.’ Mrs Rupa Mehra made it clear by her tone that an armoured corps of Sikh damsels could not come between her and her target.

  Pran continued: ‘Sunil had some perfectly idiotic couplet about him and this girl. I can’t recall it right now. At any rate he gave me to understand that our cobbler was spoken for.’

  Mrs Rupa Mehra let the appellation pass. ‘Who is this Sunil?’ she demanded.

  ‘Don’t you know him, Ma?’ said Pran. ‘Well, I suppose we haven’t had him over when you’ve been here. Savita and I like him a lot. He’s very lively, very good at imitations. He’d enjoy meeting you, and I think you’d enjoy meeting him. After a few minutes you’ll imagine you’re speaking to yourself.’

  ‘But what does he do?’ asked Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘What is his work?’

  ‘Oh, sorry, Ma, I see what you mean. He’s a lecturer in the Mathematics Department. He works in some of the same areas as Dr Durrani.’

  Lata turned her head at the name. A look of tenderness and unhappiness passed over her face. She knew how difficult it would be to avoid Kabir on the campus, and she was uncertain now about whether she wanted to—or would be able to force herself to—avoid him. But after her long silence, what would his feelings towards her be? She feared that she had hurt him, as he had her, and neither thought gave her anything but pain.

  ‘Now you must tell me all the other news about Brahmpur,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra quickly. ‘Tell me about this terrible thing we’ve all been hearing about—at the Pul Mela. This stampede. No one we know was injured, I hope.’

  ‘Well, Ma,’ said Pran thoughtfully, unwilling to mention anything about Bhaskar tonight, ‘let’s talk about the news tomorrow morning. There’s lots to tell—the Pul Mela disaster, the zamindari verdict, its effect on my father—oh yes, and on your father’s car, the Buick’—here he began coughing—‘and, of course, my asthma’s been cured by Ramjap Baba, except that the news doesn’t seem to have reached my lungs yet. You’re both tired, and I admit I feel a bit exhausted myself. Here we are. Ah, darling’—for Savita had come up to the gate—‘you really are foolish.’ He kissed her forehead.

  Savita and Lata kissed. Mrs Rupa Mehra hugged her elder daughter tearfully for a minute, then said: ‘My father’s car?—’

  It was, however, not the time for talk. The tonga was unloaded, hot soup offered and declined, goodnights exchanged. Mrs Rupa Mehra yawned, got ready for bed, removed her false teeth, gave Lata a kiss, said a prayer, and went off to sleep.

  Lata stayed awake longer, but—unlike in the tonga—she was thinking of neither Kabir nor Haresh. Even her mother’s quiet and regular breathing failed to reassure her. The moment she lay down she remembered where she had spent the previous night. She thought at first that she would not be able to clo
se her eyes. She kept imagining the sound of footsteps outside the door, and her imagination recreated for her the chimes of the grandfather clock that stood at the end of that long corridor, near Pushkar’s and Kiran’s rooms.

  ‘I thought you were an intelligent girl,’ the odious, disappointed, forgiving voice was saying.

  But in a while her eyes closed of their own accord, and her mind yielded to a blessed exhaustion.

  12.2

  Mrs Rupa Mehra and her two daughters had just finished breakfast and had so far had no time to talk about anything of significance when two visitors from Prem Nivas arrived: Mrs Mahesh Kapoor and Veena.

  Mrs Rupa Mehra’s face lit up at the thought of their kindness and consideration. ‘Come in, come in, come in,’ she said in Hindi. ‘I was just thinking about you, and here you are. You must have breakfast,’ she continued, taking over her daughter’s house in a manner that was impossible for her in Calcutta under the eye of the gorgon. ‘No? Well, tea at least. How is everyone at Prem Nivas? And in Misri Mandi? Why has Kedarnath not come—or his mother? And where is Bhaskar? School hasn’t begun yet—or has it? I suppose he is out flying kites with his friends and has forgotten all about his Rupa Nani. Minister Sahib of course is busy, I can imagine, so I don’t blame him for not visiting us, but Kedarnath should certainly have come. He doesn’t do much in the morning. But tell me all the news. Pran promised to, but far from being able to talk to him, I haven’t even seen him this morning. He’s gone to attend a meeting of some committee. You should tell him, Savita, not to overexert. And’—turning to Pran’s mother—‘you should also advise him not to be so active. Your words will carry a lot of weight. A mother’s words always do.’