A Suitable Boy

  ‘That, Minister Sahib, is Waris,’ said the munshi, who succeeded in conveying by his tone of voice how very little he thought of that bumpkin.

  Mahesh Kapoor paid the bumpkin no further attention.

  ‘When is lunch?’ he asked, looking at his watch.

  ‘In an hour, Minister Sahib,’ said the munshi. ‘In an hour. And I will personally send someone up to inform you when it is time. Or perhaps you would care to walk around the grounds? The Nawab Sahib said that you wish to be disturbed as little as possible these next few days—that you wish to think in quiet surroundings. But the garden is very fresh and green in this season—perhaps a little overgrown, that’s all—but nowadays, with the new financial stringency—as Huzoor is aware, this is not the most auspicious of times for estates such as ours—but we will make every effort, every effort to ensure that your stay is a happy one, a restful one, Minister Sahib. As Huzoor has no doubt been informed already, Ustad Majeed Khan will be arriving here later this afternoon by train, and will be singing for Huzoor’s pleasure both today and tomorrow. The Nawab Sahib was most insistent that you were to be allowed time to yourself for rest and thought, rest and thought.’

  Since his effusive prattle had elicited no response, the munshi continued:

  ‘The Nawab Sahib himself is a great believer in rest and thought, Minister Sahib. He spends most of his time in the library when he is here. But if I might suggest to you one or two of the sights of the town that Huzoor would find interesting: the Lal Kothi and, of course, the Hospital, which was founded and expanded by former Nawabs, but which we continue to contribute to, for the betterment of the people. I have already arranged a tour—’

  ‘Later,’ said Mahesh Kapoor. He turned his back on the munshi and looked out of the window. The three horsemen appeared sporadically along a forest trail, then grew increasingly difficult to follow.

  It was good, thought Mahesh Kapoor, to be here at the estate of his old friend, away from Prem Nivas and the bustle of the house, away from the mild pestering of his wife, the constant incursions of his relatives from Rudhia, the management of the Rudhia farm, away—most of all—from the confused politics of Brahmpur and Delhi. For he was, most atypically, sick of politics for the moment. No doubt he would be able to follow events via the radio or day-old editions of the newspapers, but he would be spared the direct personal turmoil of contact with fellow-politicians and bewildered or importunate constituents. He had no work in the Secretariat any more; he had taken leave from the Legislative Assembly for a few days; and he was not even attending meetings of his new party, one of which was to be held in Madras next week. He was no longer certain that he really belonged in that party even if he still, nominally, belonged to it. In the wake of Nehru’s famous victory over the Tandonites in Delhi, Mahesh Kapoor felt the need to reassess his attitude towards the Congress. Like many other secessionists, he was disappointed that Nehru had not split the party and joined him. On the other hand, the Congress no longer appeared to be such a hostile place for those of his views. He was especially interested in seeing what the mercurial Rafi Ahmad Kidwai would do if Nehru asked the seceders to return.

  So far, however, Kidwai had acted his usual elusive self, keeping his options open with a series of contradictory statements. He had announced from Bombay that he was delighted by Nehru’s victory, but that he saw little prospect of his own return to the Congress fold. ‘Realizing now that their election prospects were not bright they have deserted Mr Tandon and sponsored Pandit Nehru’s candidature. This is pure opportunism. The future of the country is dark if such opportunism is tolerated,’ he said. However, the wily Mr Kidwai added that if certain ‘undesirable elements’ who were still entrenched in the executives of states such as Uttar Pradesh, Purva Pradesh, Madhya Bharat, and Punjab were to be removed by Pandit Nehru, ‘then everything would be all right’. As if to make matters murkier, he mentioned that the KMPP was thinking of an electoral alliance with the Socialist Party, and that then ‘the chances of the party succeeding in most of the states are very bright’. (The Socialist Party, for its part, showed no enthusiasm to ally itself with anyone.) A couple of days later Kidwai suggested a purge of ‘corrupt elements’ in the Congress as a condition for winding up his own party and rejoining the Congress. Kripalani, however, who was the other half of the K-K combine, insisted that there was no question of his deserting the KMPP and rejoining the Congress, no matter what its internal rearrangements.

  Kidwai was something of a river dolphin. He enjoyed swimming in silty water and outwitting the crocodiles around him.

  Meanwhile, all the other parties were commenting, with various degrees of heat, upon Nehru’s reassertion of his power within the Congress. Of the socialist leaders, one denounced the combination of the Congress Presidency with the Prime Ministership as a sign of totalitarianism; one said that this was not a worrying possibility, as Nehru did not have the makings of a dictator; and one simply pointed out that, as a tactical move, the Congress had improved its chances in the General Elections.

  On the right, the President of the Hindu Mahasabha inveighed against what he called ‘the proclamation of dictatorship’. He added: ‘Although this dictatorship has raised Pandit Nehru to the highest pinnacle of glory, it has also got within itself the germs of his fall.’

  Mahesh Kapoor attempted to dismiss this confusion of opinion and information from his mind and tried to come to grips with three straightforward questions. Since he was feeling sick of politics, should he simply leave politics and retire? If not, which party was the best place for him—or should he fight as an Independent? And if he decided to remain and fight the next election, what was the best place for him to fight from? He walked up to the roof, where an owl, ensconced in a tower, was startled by his approach; he walked down to the rose garden, where the flowerless bushes edged the fresh green lawn; and he wandered through some of the rooms of the Fort, including the huge Imambara downstairs. Sharma’s words to him in another garden came back to haunt his mind. But by the time the anxious munshi had found him and announced that the Nawab Sahib was awaiting him at lunch, he was no nearer a solution.

  14.17

  The Nawab Sahib had been sitting for the last hour in the huge, vaulted, dust-pervaded library with its green glass skylight, working on his edition of the poems of Mast, some of the documents and manuscripts for which were held here at the Fort. He was deeply saddened by the deterioration of this magnificent room and the poor condition of its holdings. He planned to move all the Mast materials to his library in Brahmpur at the end of this visit, together with some of the other more precious contents of the Baitar Fort library. Given his reduced means, the library at the Fort was becoming impossible for him to maintain—and the dust and confusion and infestation of silverfish grew worse month by month.

  This was somewhat on his mind when he greeted his friend in the great, gloomy dining hall decorated with dark portraits of Queen Victoria, King Edward VII and the Nawab Sahib’s own ancestors.

  ‘I’ll take you to the library after lunch,’ said the Nawab Sahib.

  ‘Good,’ said Mahesh Kapoor. ‘But the last time I entered a library of yours I recall that it resulted in the destruction of one of your books.’

  ‘Well,’ said the Nawab Sahib thoughtfully, ‘I don’t know which is worse: the cerebral seizures of the Raja of Marh or the cancer of the silverfish.’

  ‘You should keep your books in better order,’ said Mahesh Kapoor. ‘It’s one of the finest private libraries in the country. It would be a tragedy if the books were to be damaged.’

  ‘I suppose you might say it is a national treasure,’ said the Nawab Sahib with a faint smile.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mahesh Kapoor.

  ‘But I doubt that the national purse would open itself to help maintain it.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And, thanks to plunderers like you, I certainly can’t any longer.’

  Mahesh Kapoor laughed. ‘I was wondering what you were aiming at. Anyway,
even if you lose your case in the Supreme Court you’ll still be a few thousand times richer than me. And I work for my living, unlike you—you’re just decorative.’

  The Nawab Sahib helped himself to some biryani. ‘You’re a useless person,’ he countered. ‘What does a politician do, in fact, except make trouble for others?’

  ‘Or counter the troubles that other people make,’ said Mahesh Kapoor.

  Neither he nor the Nawab Sahib needed to mention what he was referring to. Mahesh Kapoor had succeeded, while he was still with the Congress, in getting the Minister for Rehabilitation to bend the ear of the Prime Minister to get the government to grant the Nawab Sahib and Begum Abida Khan certificates entitling them to the permanent retention of their property in Brahmpur. This had been necessary in order to counter an order by the Custodian-General of Evacuee Property issued on the grounds that Begum Abida Khan’s husband was a permanent evacuee. Their case was only one of several where similar action had needed to be taken at the governmental level.

  ‘Well,’ continued the ex-Minister of Revenue, ‘where will you cut back when half your rents disappear? I really do hope that your library won’t suffer.’

  The Nawab Sahib frowned. ‘Kapoor Sahib,’ he said, ‘I am less concerned about my own house than those who depend on me. The people of Baitar expect me to put on a proper show for our festivals, especially for Moharram. I will have to keep that up in some fashion. I have certain other expenses—the hospital and so on, the monuments, the stables, musicians like Ustad Majeed Khan who expect to be retained by me a couple of times a year, poets who depend on me, various endowments, pensions; God—and my munshi—knows what else. At least my sons don’t make vast demands on me; they’re educated, they have their own professions, they aren’t wastrels, like the sons of others in my position—’

  He stopped suddenly, thinking of Maan and Saeeda Bai.

  ‘But tell me,’ he continued after the briefest of pauses, ‘what, for your part, are you going to do?’

  ‘Me?’ said Mahesh Kapoor.

  ‘Why don’t you run for the elections from here?’

  ‘After what I’ve done to you—you want me to run from here?’

  ‘No, really, Kapoor Sahib, you should.’

  ‘That’s what my grandson says.’

  ‘Veena’s boy?’

  ‘Yes. He’s worked out that this constituency is the most favourable for me—among the rural ones.’

  The Nawab Sahib smiled at his friend and looked towards the portrait of his great-grandfather. Mahesh Kapoor’s remark had made him think of his own grandsons, Hassan and Abbas—who had been named after the brothers of Hussain, the martyr of the festival of Moharram. He thought for a while of Zainab too, and the unhappiness of her marriage. And, fleetingly and regretfully, of his own wife, who lay buried in the cemetery just outside the Fort.

  ‘But why do you think it is such a good idea?’ Mahesh Kapoor was asking.

  A servant offered the Nawab Sahib some fruit—including sharifas, whose short season had just begun—but the Nawab Sahib refused them. Then he changed his mind, felt three or four sharifas and selected one. He broke the knobbly fruit in half and scooped out the delicious white pulp with a spoon, placing the black seeds (which he transferred from his mouth to the spoon) on the side of his plate. For a minute or two he said nothing. Mahesh Kapoor helped himself to a sharifa as well.

  ‘It is like this, Kapoor Sahib,’ said the Nawab Sahib, thoughtfully, putting together the two equal scooped-out halves of his sharifa and then separating them. ‘If you look at the population in this constituency, it is about evenly divided between Muslims and Hindus. This is just the kind of place where Hindu communalist parties can whip people into an anti-Muslim panic. They have already begun to do so. And every day there are fresh reasons for Hindus and Muslims to learn to hate each other. If it isn’t some idiocy in Pakistan—some threat to Kashmir, some plot, real or imagined, to divert the waters of the Sutlej or to capture Sheikh Abdullah or to impose a tax on Hindus—it is one of our own home-grown brilliances like the dispute over that mosque in Ayodhya which has suddenly flared up again recently after lying quiet for decades—or our own Brahmpur version, which is different—but not so vastly different. Bakr-Id is coming up in a few days; someone is certain to kill a cow somewhere instead of a goat, and there’ll be fresh trouble. And, worst of all, Moharram and Dussehra will coincide this year.’

  Mahesh Kapoor nodded, and the Nawab Sahib continued. ‘I know that this house was one of the strongholds of the Muslim League. I have never held with my father’s or my brother’s views on the subject, but people do not discriminate in these matters. To men like Agarwal the very name of Baitar is like a red rag—or perhaps a green one—to a bull. Next week he will try to force his Hindi bill through the Legislative Assembly, and Urdu, my language, the language of Mast, the language of most of the Muslims of this province, will be made more useless than ever. Who can protect us and our culture? Only people like you, who know us as we are, who have friends among us, who do not prejudge us because you can judge us from experience.’

  Mahesh Kapoor did not say anything, but he was moved by the trust reposed in him by the Nawab Sahib.

  The Nawab Sahib frowned, divided his black sharifa pips into two separate piles with his spoon, and went on. ‘Perhaps it is worse in this part of the country than elsewhere. This was the heartland of the struggle for Pakistan, this is where much of the bitterness was created, but those of us who have not been able to or have chosen not to leave our homeland are now a smaller minority in a predominantly Hindu territory. No matter what troubles rage around us, I will probably manage to keep my head above water; so will Firoz and Imtiaz and Zainab—those who have means always manage somehow. But most of the ordinary people I talk to are downcast and fearful; they feel beleaguered. They mistrust the majority, and they feel mistrusted by them. I wish you would fight from here, Kapoor Sahib. Quite apart from my support, I hear that your son has made himself popular in the Salimpur area.’ The Nawab Sahib allowed himself a smile. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Why don’t you stand for election yourself?’ asked Mahesh Kapoor. ‘Quite frankly, I would rather stand, if I have to, from my old urban constituency of Misri Mandi, redrawn though it has been—or, if it has to be a rural one, from Rudhia West, where my farm is located. Salimpur-cum-Baitar is too unfamiliar. I have no personal standing here—and no personal scores to settle.’ Mahesh Kapoor thought for a moment of Jha, then continued: ‘It’s you who should stand. You would win hands down.’

  The Nawab Sahib nodded. ‘I have thought about it,’ he said slowly. ‘But I am not a politician. I have my work—if nothing else, my literary work. I would not enjoy sitting in the Legislative Assembly. I have been there and I have heard the proceedings and, well, I am not suited for that kind of life. And I’m not sure I would win hands down. For a start, the Hindu vote would be a problem for me. And, most importantly, I just couldn’t go around Baitar and the villages asking people for votes—at least I could not do that for myself. I would not be able to bring myself to do that.’

  He looked up again, rather wearily, at the sword-bearing portrait on the wall before continuing: ‘But I am keen that a decent, a suitable man wins from here. Apart from the Hindu Mahasabha and that lot, there is someone here whom I have been good to and who hates me as a result. He plans to try to get the local Congress ticket, and if he becomes the local MLA, he can do me all kinds of harm. I have already decided to nominate a candidate of my own who will fight as an Independent in case this man does get the Congress nomination. But if you stand—whether from this KMPP or from the Congress, or as an Independent—I will make sure that you get my support. And that of my candidate.’

  ‘He must be a very compliant candidate,’ said Mahesh Kapoor, smiling. ‘Or a self-abnegating one. A rare thing in politics.’

  ‘You met him briefly when we got down from the jeep,’ said the Nawab Sahib. ‘It’s that fellow Waris.’

 
; ‘Waris!’ Mahesh Kapoor laughed out loud. ‘That servant of yours, that groom or whatever, the unshaven chap who went off hunting with Firoz and my son?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the Nawab Sahib.

  ‘What kind of MLA do you think he would make?’

  ‘Better than the one he’d displace.’

  ‘You mean, better a fool than a knave.’

  ‘Better a yokel, certainly.’

  ‘You’re not serious about Waris.’

  ‘Don’t underestimate him,’ said the Nawab Sahib. ‘He may be a bit crude, but he’s capable and he’s tough. He sees things in black and white, which is a great help when you’re electioneering. He would enjoy campaigning, whether for himself or for you. He’s popular around these parts. Women think he’s dashing. He’s absolutely loyal to me and the family, especially to Firoz. He would do anything for us. I really mean that—he keeps threatening to shoot people who have done us harm.’ Mahesh Kapoor looked a little alarmed. ‘Incidentally, he likes Maan; he took him around the estate when he was here. And the only reason he’s unshaven is because he doesn’t shave from the sighting of the new moon till Bakr-Id, ten days later. Not that he’s all that religious,’ added the Nawab Sahib, with a mixture of disapproval and indulgence. ‘But if he doesn’t have to shave for one reason or another, he feels that he may as well take advantage of the dispensation.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Mahesh Kapoor.

  ‘Think about it.’

  ‘I will. I will think about it. But where I stand from is only one of three questions in my mind.’

  ‘What are the other two?’

  ‘Well—which party?’

  ‘Congress,’ said the Nawab Sahib, naming without hesitation the party which had done so much to dispossess him.

  ‘Do you think so?’ said Mahesh Kapoor. ‘Do you think so?’

  The Nawab Sahib nodded, looked at the debris on his plate, then rose. ‘And your third question?’

  ‘Whether I should continue in politics at all.’