A Suitable Boy

  ‘Bibbo!’ said Maan, both delighted by his admittance and hurt by the formal, even lifeless, tone of its announcement. He was so pleased that he wanted to hug her, but by turning half away from him when they walked up the stairs, she made it clear that there was no question of that.

  ‘You keep repeating my name, like that parakeet,’ said Bibbo. ‘All I get for my kindness to people is trouble.’

  ‘But you got a kiss from me last time!’ laughed Maan.

  Bibbo clearly did not want to be reminded of that. She pouted, Maan thought charmingly.

  Saeeda Bai was in a good mood. She, Motu Chand, and an older sarangi player were sitting in her outer chamber, gossiping. Ustad Majeed Khan had recently performed in Banaras, and had been backed up by Ishaq Khan. Ishaq Khan had done well; at all events, he had not shamed his teacher.

  ‘I’m going to Banaras myself,’ announced Maan, who had heard the tail end of the conversation.

  ‘And why must the huntsman take himself away from the tame gazelle that, rejoicing, offers itself to his sight?’ asked Saeeda Bai, twirling her hand and blinding Maan with a sudden flash of gem-reflected light.

  This was an unlikely description of Saeeda Bai, considering how she had avoided him for the last few days. Maan looked at her eyes, but could read nothing there but the most patent sincerity. Instantly he saw that he had misjudged her: she was as delightful as she had always been, and he was an unperceptive dolt.

  Saeeda Bai was exceptionally good to him all evening; it almost appeared as if she were wooing him, not he her. She begged him to forgive her lack of courtesy, as she put it, on the earlier occasion. Many things had conspired to upset her that day. Dagh Sahib should excuse the ignorant saki who had, in her excessive nervousness, poured wine over his innocent hands.

  She sang for him like one inspired. And then she sent the musicians away.

  13.8

  The next morning, Maan got to the station just in time to catch the train to Banaras. He was almost puppy-like with happiness. Even the fact that each puff of steam and each circuit of the wheels was taking him further away from Brahmpur did not diminish his pleasure. He smiled to himself from time to time at the memory of the previous evening, with all its endearments and witticisms, all its suspense and fulfilment.

  When he got to Banaras, Maan discovered that those who owed him money for goods already received were not delighted to see him. They swore that they had no money at present, that they were moving heaven and earth to pay off their debts, of which his was just one, that the market was moving slowly, that by winter—or next spring at the latest—they envisaged no problem of repayment at all.

  Nor did those whose tales of misfortune had led Maan to open his purse now open their purses to him. One young man looked well dressed enough, and appeared to be flourishing. He invited Maan to eat with him in a good restaurant, so that he could explain matters to him at leisure. Maan ended up paying for the meal.

  Another man was distantly related to his fiancée’s family. He was eager to drag Maan off to meet them, but Maan pleaded that he had to return to Brahmpur by the early afternoon train. He explained that his brother, who was ill and in hospital, was due to become a father any day now. The man appeared surprised at Maan’s newfound sense of family obligation, but said nothing further. But Maan, feeling on the defensive, could no longer bring himself to mention the subject of his outstanding loan.

  One debtor implied in a circuitous and inoffensive way that now that Mahesh Kapoor had resigned as Minister of Revenue in the neighbouring state, Maan’s outstanding loan had stopped preying so frequently or pressingly on his mind.

  Maan managed to get back about an eighth of what he had lent, and borrowed about the same amount from various friends and acquaintances. This came to just over two thousand rupees. At first he felt disappointed and disillusioned. But with two thousand rupees in his pocket, and a train ticket back to bliss, he felt that life was pretty good after all.

  13.9

  Tahmina Bai meanwhile visited Saeeda Bai.

  Tahmina Bai’s mother had been the madam of the establishment in Tarbuz ka Bazaar where Saeeda Bai and her mother Mohsina Bai had earlier lived.

  ‘What shall we do? What shall we do?’ cried Tahmina Bai in high excitement. ‘Play chaupar and gossip? Or gossip and play chaupar? Tell your cook to make those delicious kababs, Saeeda. I’ve brought some biryani—I told Bibbo to take it to the kitchen—now tell me, tell me everything. I have so much to tell you—’

  After they had played a few games of chaupar, and exchanged endless gossip, together with some more serious news of the world—such as the effect that the Zamindari Act would have on them, especially on Saeeda Bai, who had a better class of customer; and the education of Tasneem; and the health of Tahmina Bai’s mother; and the rising rents and property values, even in Tarbuz ka Bazaar—they turned to the antics of their various clients.

  ‘I’ll be Marh,’ said Saeeda Bai. ‘You be me.’

  ‘No, I’ll be Marh,’ said Tahmina Bai. ‘You be me.’ She was giggling away in high delight. She grabbed a flower vase, threw the flowers on to a table, and pretended to drink from it. Soon she was lurching from side to side and grunting. Then she made a lunge for Saeeda Bai, who whipped the pallu of her sari out of reach, ran, screaming ‘toba! toba!’ to the harmonium, and quickly played a descending scale through two octaves.

  Tahmina Bai’s eyes grew blurred. As the scale descended, so did she. Soon she was snoring on the carpet. After ten seconds, she heaved her body up, cried ‘wah! wah!’ and collapsed again, this time squealing and snorting with laughter. Then she leapt up again, upsetting a bowl of fruit, and flung herself on Saeeda Bai, who started moaning in ecstasy. With one hand Tahmina Bai reached for an apple and bit it. Then, at the moment of orgasm, she cried for whisky. And finally she rolled over, belched, and went off to sleep again.

  They were almost choking with laughter. The parakeet was squawking in alarm.

  ‘Oh, but his son is even better,’ said Tahmina Bai.

  ‘No, no,’ said Saeeda Bai, helpless with laughter. ‘I can’t bear it. Stop, Tahmina, stop, stop—’

  But Tahmina Bai had begun enacting the Rajkumar’s behaviour on the occasion when he had failed to grace her with his poetry.

  Bewildered and protesting, the traumatized Tahmina pulled an imaginary but very drunk friend to his feet. ‘No, no,’ she cried in a terrified voice, ‘no, please, Tahmina Begum—I’ve already, no, no, I’m not in the mood—come, Maan, let’s go.’

  Saeeda Bai said: ‘What? Did you say Maan?’

  Tahmina Bai was having a giggling fit.

  ‘But that’s my Dagh Sahib,’ continued Saeeda Bai, amazed.

  ‘You mean that that was the Minister’s son?’ said Tahmina Bai. ‘The one whom everyone is gossiping about? Balding at the temples.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He couldn’t grace me either.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Saeeda Bai.

  ‘Be careful, Saeeda,’ said Tahmina Bai affectionately. ‘Think of what your mother would say.’

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ said Saeeda Bai. ‘I entertain them; he entertains me. It’s like Miya Mitthu here; I’m not a fool.’

  And she followed it up with quite a good imitation of Maan making desperate love.

  13.10

  The first thing Maan did when he got back to Brahmpur was to phone Prem Nivas to find out about Savita. She had been as good as her word. The baby was still inside her, unexposed as yet to the joys and woes of Brahmpur.

  It was too late for Maan to visit Pran in hospital; humming to himself, he wandered along to Saeeda Bai’s. The watchman looked rather abstracted tonight; he knocked at the door, and held a consultation with Bibbo. Bibbo glanced at Maan, who was standing eagerly at the gate, then turned back to the watchman and shook her head.

  But Maan, who had interpreted the negative signal correctly, had leapt over the fence in a flash, and was at the door before she could close
it.

  ‘What?’ he said, his voice barely controlled. ‘The Begum Sahiba said that she would receive me this evening. What has happened?’

  ‘She is indisposed,’ said Bibbo, with great emphasis on ‘indisposed’. It was clear that Saeeda Bai was nothing of the kind.

  ‘Why are you annoyed with me, Bibbo?’ said Maan, helplessly. ‘What have I done that all of you should treat me this way?’

  ‘Nothing. But the Begum Sahiba is not receiving anyone today.’

  ‘Has she received anyone already?’

  ‘Dagh Sahib—’ said Bibbo, pretending to relent but throwing out a provocative hint instead, ‘Dagh Sahib, someone whom I might call Ghalib Sahib is with her. Even among poets there is an order of precedence. This gentleman is a good friend, and she prefers his company to that of all others.’

  This was too much for Maan. ‘Who is he? Who is he?’ he cried, almost beside himself.

  Bibbo could simply have told Maan that it was Mr Bilgrami, Saeeda Bai’s old admirer whom she found boring but soothing, but she was excited to have evoked such a dramatic response. Besides, she was angry with Maan and felt like giving him a spoonful or two of jealousy as punishment for her own misfortunes. Saeeda Bai had slapped Bibbo very hard several times after the kiss on the staircase, and had threatened to turn her out of the house for her shamelessness. In Bibbo’s recollection it was Maan who had initiated the kiss that had got her into all this trouble.

  ‘I can’t tell you who he is,’ she said, raising her eyebrows slightly. ‘Your poetic intuition should tell you.’

  Maan grabbed Bibbo by the shoulders and began to shake her. But before he could get her to speak and before the watchman could come to her rescue, she had escaped from his grip and slammed the door in his face.

  ‘Come now, Kapoor Sahib—’ said the watchman calmly.

  ‘Who is he?’ said Maan.

  The watchman slowly shook his head. ‘I have no memory for faces,’ he said. ‘If someone asked me if you had visited this house, I would not remember.’

  Stunned by the brazen manner in which the appointment had been broken, and burning with jealousy, Maan somehow made his way back to Baitar House.

  Sitting on top of the great stone gate at the entrance to the drive was a monkey. Why it was awake so late was a mystery. It snarled at him as he approached. Maan glared at it.

  The monkey leapt down from the gate and rushed at Maan. If Maan had not been away in Banaras over the previous two days, he would have read in the Brahmpur Chronicle of a vicious monkey that was loose in the Pasand Bagh area. This monkey had apparently lost her mind when some schoolchildren had stoned her baby to death. She had since been charging at and biting and generally terrifying the local residents. She had attacked seven people so far, usually biting off chunks of flesh from their legs, and Maan was to be the eighth.

  She charged at him with fearless malignity. Even though he did not turn and flee, she did not slacken her pace, and when she was close enough, she made a final lunge at his leg. But she had not accounted for Maan’s anger. Maan had his cane ready and gave her a blow that stopped her dead.

  Into that blow went all his bodily strength and all the power of his jealousy and rage. He raised his stick again, but the monkey was lying on the road, not moving, either stunned or dead.

  Maan leaned against the gate for a minute, trembling with anger and nervous shock. Then, feeling suddenly sick at himself, he walked slowly towards the house. Firoz was not in, nor Zainab’s husband, and the Nawab Sahib had retired already. But Imtiaz was up reading.

  ‘My dear fellow, you’ve had a shock. Is everything all right—at the hospital, I mean?’

  ‘I’ve just killed a monkey, I think. It charged at me. It was sitting on the gate. I need a whisky.’

  ‘Ah, you’re a hero,’ said Imtiaz, relieved. ‘It’s a good thing you had that stick on you. I was worried it might be Pran or Savita. The police have been trying to catch her all day. She’s bitten quite a few people already. Ice and water? Well, perhaps not such a hero if you’ve killed her. I’d better get her moved from near the house, or we’ll have a religious disturbance on our hands. But did you do anything to upset her?’

  ‘Upset her?’ said Maan.

  ‘Yes, you know, did you wave your stick at her or something? Throw a stone perhaps?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Maan with great vehemence. ‘She just took one look at me and charged. And I’d done nothing to upset her. Nothing. Nothing at all.’

  13.11

  Everyone had told Savita that the baby would be a boy; her way of walking, the size of the bulge, and other infallible indications all pointed to a boy.

  ‘Think nice thoughts, read poems,’ Mrs Rupa Mehra was continually exhorting her, and this Savita tried to do. She also read a book called Learning the Law. Mrs Rupa Mehra advised Savita to listen to music, but this, since she was not particularly musical, she did not do.

  The baby kicked from time to time. But sometimes it seemed to sleep for days on end. Lately it had been very quiet.

  Mrs Rupa Mehra, while telling Savita to think restful thoughts, often shared her own birth experiences and those of other mothers with her. Some stories were charming, some not. ‘You were overdue, you know,’ she told Savita fondly. ‘And my mother-in-law insisted that I must try her own method of inducing labour. I had to drink a whole glass of castor oil. It’s a laxative, you know, and it was supposed to begin my birth pangs. It tasted horrible, but I felt it was my duty, so I had to drink it; it was lying on the sideboard. It was winter, I remember, bitterly cold, the middle of December—’

  ‘It couldn’t have been December, Ma, my birthday’s in November.’

  Mrs Rupa Mehra frowned at this interruption of her reverie, but she quickly saw that the logic of it was irrefutable, and continued calmly:

  ‘November, yes, winter, and I saw it lying on the sideboard, and I drank it in a sudden gulp on the way to lunch. I remember we had parathas for lunch, and so on. I normally didn’t eat much, but that day I stuffed myself. But it had no effect. Then came dinner. Then your Daddy came with a pot full of my favourite sweet, rasagullas. I had one, and then I had a second, and the second one was just going down, when it suddenly felt like it had turned into a fist in my stomach! The birth pangs had begun, and I had to run.’

  Savita said, ‘Ma, I think—’

  But Mrs Rupa Mehra continued: ‘Our Indian remedies are the best. Now they say that in this season I should eat lots of jamuns, because they are good for diabetes.’

  ‘Ma, I think I’d better finish this chapter,’ said Savita.

  ‘Arun was the most painful,’ continued Mrs Rupa Mehra. ‘You must be prepared, darling; with the first child the pain is so terrible that you want to die, and if I hadn’t thought of your Daddy I would have surely died.’

  ‘Ma—’

  ‘Savita, darling, when I’m talking to you you shouldn’t be reading that book. Reading about law is not very restful.’

  ‘Ma, let’s talk about something else.’

  ‘I am trying to prepare you, darling. Otherwise what is a mother for? I had no mother living to prepare me, and my mother-in-law was not sympathetic. Afterwards she wanted me to be in confinement for more than a month, but my father said this was all superstition and put his foot down, being a doctor himself.’

  ‘Is it really that painful?’ said Savita, quite frightened now.

  ‘Yes. Truly unbearable,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, ignoring all her own admonitions about not scaring or upsetting Savita. ‘Worse than any pain I have ever had in my life, especially with Arun. But when the baby is born, it is such a joy to behold—if everything is all right, that is. But with some babies, it is very sad, like Kamini Bua’s first child—still, such things happen,’ ended Mrs Rupa Mehra philosophically.

  ‘Ma, why don’t you read me a poem?’ said Savita, trying to get her mother off this latest subject. But when Mrs Rupa Mehra turned to one of her favourites, ‘The Blind Boy’ by Colley Cib
ber, Savita regretted her suggestion.

  The tears already starting to her eyes, Mrs Rupa Mehra began to read in a tremulous voice:

  ‘Oh say, what is that thing called Light,

  That I must ne’er enjoy?

  What are the blessings of the sight?

  Oh, tell your poor blind boy!’

  ‘Ma,’ said Savita, ‘Daddy was very good to you, wasn’t he? Very tender—very loving—’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Mrs Rupa Mehra, the tears flowing copiously now, ‘he was a husband in a million. Now Pran’s father would always disappear when Pran’s mother gave birth. He couldn’t stand childbirth—so when the baby was young and noisy and messy he would try to be away as much as he could. If he had been there, maybe Pran would not have half-drowned in that soapy tub as a baby, and then all this asthma would not have happened—and his heart would have been undamaged.’ Mrs Rupa Mehra lowered her voice at the word ‘heart’.

  ‘Ma, I’m feeling tired. I think I’ll turn in,’ said Savita. She insisted on sleeping alone in her bedroom, though Mrs Rupa Mehra had offered to sleep with her in case her labour pains started and she would be too helpless to move or get help.

  One night at about nine o’clock, while she was reading in bed, Savita suddenly felt a severe pain, and called out aloud. Mrs Rupa Mehra, her ears preternaturally sensitive to Savita’s voice these days, came rushing into the room. She had taken out her false teeth already and only had her bra and petticoat on. She asked Savita what the matter was, and whether the pains had begun.

  Savita nodded, gripping her stomach, and said she thought so. Mrs Rupa Mehra promptly shook Lata awake, put on a housecoat, roused the servants, put in her false teeth, and telephoned Prem Nivas for the car to be sent. She could not get through to the obstetrician at his home number. She phoned Baitar House.

  Imtiaz answered the phone. ‘How often are the contractions taking place?’ he asked. ‘Who is your obstetrician? Butalia? Good. Have you called him yet? Oh, I see. Leave it to me; he may be at the hospital with another delivery. I’ll make sure that they have a private room ready, and are prepared for everything.’