A Suitable Boy

  He stared unseeingly out from his small office towards the garden of Prem Nivas.

  His wife had his tea sent to him; it went cold.

  She came to ask him if he was all right and brought another cup for him herself. She said: ‘So you have decided to return to the Congress? That’s good.’

  He responded with exasperation: ‘I have decided nothing. What makes you think I have?’

  ‘After Maan and Firoz nearly—’

  ‘Maan and Firoz have nothing to do with it. I have been thinking this matter over for weeks without coming to any conclusion.’ He looked at her in amazement.

  She stirred his tea once more and placed it on the table, which was easier to do these days, since it was not covered with files.

  Mahesh Kapoor sipped it and said nothing.

  After a while he said, ‘Leave me alone. I am not going to discuss this matter with you. Your presence is distracting me. I don’t know where your far-fetched intuitions come from. But they are more inaccurate and suspect than astrology.’

  15.17

  Less than a week after the riots in Brahmpur, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Liaquat Ali Khan, was shot at a public meeting that he was addressing at Rawalpindi. The murderer was done to death on the spot by the crowd.

  At the news of his death, all government flags were lowered to half-mast in Brahmpur. The university court convened a meeting to express its condolences. In a city where the memory of rioting was only a week old, this had something of a sobering effect.

  The Nawab Sahib was back in Brahmpur when he heard the news. He had known Liaquat Ali well, since both Baitar House and Baitar Fort had been meeting places for Muslim League leaders in his father’s time. He looked at some of the old photographs of those conferences and read through some of the old correspondence between his father and Liaquat Ali. He realized—though he did not see what he could do about the fact—that he had begun to live increasingly in the past.

  For the Nawab Sahib Partition had been a multiple tragedy: many of those he knew, both Muslim and Hindu, had been killed or injured or scarred by the terror of those days; he had lost two parts of his country; his family had been broken up by migration; Baitar House had come under attack through manipulations of the evacuee property laws; most of the great estate surrounding Baitar Fort was soon to be wrested from him under zamindari laws that would have been almost impossible to pass in a united India; the language of his ancestors and favourite poets was under siege; and he was conscious that even his patriotism was no longer readily accepted by many of his acquaintances. He thanked God that he still had friends like Mahesh Kapoor who understood him; and he thanked God that his son had friends like Mahesh Kapoor’s son. But he felt beleaguered and beset by what was happening around him; and he reflected that if this was what he felt, it must be infinitely worse for those of his religion less insulated from the hardships of the world than himself.

  I suppose I am getting old, he said to himself and querulousness is a standard symptom of senility. He could not help grieving, though, for the cultivated, level-headed Liaquat Ali, whom he had personally liked. Nor, though he had hated the thought of Pakistan once, could he turn away from it with unconcern now that it actually existed. When the Nawab Sahib thought about Pakistan, it was about West Pakistan. Many of his old friends were there, many of his relatives, many of the places of which he had warm recollections. That Jinnah should have died in the first year of Pakistan’s life, and Liaquat Ali early in its fifth was no happy augury for a country that needed, more than anything else, experience in its leadership and moderation in its polity, and appeared now to be bereft of both.

  The Nawab Sahib, saddened by things and feeling a stranger in the world, phoned Mahesh Kapoor to invite him over for lunch the next day.

  ‘Please persuade Mrs Mahesh Kapoor to come as well. I will get her food from outside, of course.’

  ‘I can’t. The mad woman will be fasting for my health tomorrow. It’s Karva Chauth, and she can’t eat from sunrise till moonrise. Or drink a drop of water. If she does I’ll die.’

  ‘That would be unfortunate, Kapoor Sahib. There has been too much killing and dying of late,’ said the Nawab Sahib. ‘How is Maan, by the way?’ he inquired fondly.

  ‘Much the same. But recently I’ve stopped telling him three times a day to return to Banaras. There’s something to be said for the boy.’

  ‘There’s a great deal to be said for the boy,’ said the Nawab Sahib.

  ‘Oh, it would have been the same the other way around,’ said Mahesh Kapoor. ‘Anyway, I’ve been thinking about my son’s advice regarding constituencies. And your advice, of course, as well.’

  ‘And about parties too, I hope.’

  There was a long silence on the line.

  ‘Yes, well, I’ve decided to rejoin the Congress. You’re the first to know,’ said Mahesh Kapoor.

  The Nawab Sahib sounded pleased.

  ‘Fight from Baitar, Kapoor Sahib,’ he said. ‘Fight from Baitar. You’ll win, Inshallah—and with the help of your friends.’

  ‘Let’s see, let’s see.’

  ‘So you’ll come for lunch tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes, yes. What’s the occasion?’

  ‘No occasion. Just do me the favour of sitting silently through the meal and hearing me complain about how much better things were in the old days.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Give my greetings to Maan’s mother,’ said the Nawab Sahib. He paused. It would have been more proper to say ‘Pran’s mother’ or even ‘Veena’s mother’. He stroked his beard, then continued: ‘But, Kapoor Sahib, is it a sensible idea for her to fast in her present state of health?’

  ‘Sensible!’ was Mahesh Kapoor’s response. ‘Sensible! My dear Nawab Sahib, you are talking a language that is foreign to her.’

  15.18

  This language was also presumably foreign to Mrs Rupa Mehra, who stopped knitting the baby’s booties on the day of Karva Chauth. Indeed, she locked up her knitting needles together with any sewing and darning needles that were lying about the house. Her reason was simple. Savita was fasting until moonrise for her husband’s health and longevity, and touching a needle, even inadvertently, on that day would be disastrous.

  One year an unfortunate young woman, famished during her fast, was persuaded by her anxious brothers that the moon had risen when all they had done was to light a fire behind a tree to simulate the moonglow. She had eaten a little before she had realized the trick, and soon enough the news was brought to her of her husband’s sudden death. He had been pierced through and through by thousands of needles. By performing many austerities and making many offerings to the goddesses, the young widow had finally extracted their promise that if she kept the fast properly the next year her husband would return to life. Each day for the whole year she removed the needles one by one from her husband’s lifeless body. The very last one, however, was removed on the day of Karva Chauth itself by a maidservant just as her master came back to life. Since she was the first woman he saw after opening his eyes, he believed that it was through her pains that he had revived. He had no choice but to discard his wife and marry her. Needles on Karva Chauth were therefore fearfully inauspicious: touch a needle and lose a husband.

  What Savita, fortified in logic by law-books and grounded in reality by her baby, thought of all this was not obvious. But she observed Karva Chauth to the letter, even going to the extent of first viewing the rising moon through a sieve.

  The Sahib and Memsahib of Calcutta, on the other hand, considered Karva Chauth a signal idiocy, and were unmoved by Mrs Rupa Mehra’s frantic implorations that Meenakshi—even if Brahmo by family—should observe it. ‘Really, Arun,’ said Meenakshi. ‘Your mother does go on about things.’

  One by one the Hindu festivals fell, some observed fervently, some lukewarmly, some merely noted, some entirely ignored. On five consecutive days around the end of October came Dhanteras, Hanuman Jayanti, Divali, Annakutam, and Bhai Duj. The
day immediately following was observed most religiously by Pran, who kept his ear to the radio for hours: it was the first day of the first Test match of the cricket season, played in Delhi against a visiting English side.

  A week later the gods at last awoke from their four months’ slumber, having wisely slept through a very boring and slow-scoring draw.

  15.19

  But though India vs England was humdrum in the extreme, the same could not be said for the University vs Old Brahmpurians match held that Sunday at the university cricket ground.

  The university team was not quite as good as it might have been, owing to a couple of injuries. Nor were the Old Brahmpurians a pushover, for their side contained not merely the usual players rustled up from here and there, but also two men who had captained the university in the last ten years or so.

  Among the rustled, however, was Maan. Among the uninjured was Kabir. And Pran was one of the umpires.

  It was a brilliant, clear, crisp, early November day, and the grass was still fresh and green. The mood was festive, and—with exams and other woes a million miles away—the students were out in force. They cheered and booed and stood around the field talking to the outfielders and generally creating as much excitement off the field as on. A few teachers could be seen among them.

  One of these was Dr Durrani; he found cricket curiously fertile. At the moment, unmoved by the fact that his son had just bowled Maan out with a leg-break, he was thinking about the hexadic, octal, decimal and duodecimal systems and attempting to work out their various advantages.

  He turned to a colleague:

  ‘Interesting, er, wouldn’t you say, Patwardhan, that the number six, which, though “perfect”, has a, well, an almost fugitive existence in mathematics—except, er, in geometry, of course, should um, be the—the presiding, one might say, the presiding, um, deity of cricket, wouldn’t you say?’

  Sunil Patwardhan nodded but would not say. His eyes were glued to the pitch. The next player was no sooner in than out; he had been dispatched on Kabir’s next ball: a googly this time. A huge roar of delight rose from the crowd.

  ‘Six balls to an, um, over, don’t you see, Patwardhan, six runs to a boundary, a, a lofted boundary, of course, and, um, six stumps on the, er, field!’

  The incoming player had hardly had time to pad up. The previous batsman was already back in the pavilion by the time he walked out on to the field, flexing his bat impatiently and aggressively. He was one of the two former captains, and he was damned if he was going to provide Kabir with a hat-trick. In he went and fiercely he glared, in a sweep that encompassed not only the tense but appraising bowler, but also his own batting partner, the opposite stumps, the umpire, and a few innocuous mynas.

  Like Arjun aiming his arrow at the eye of the invisible bird, Kabir stared down single-mindedly at the invisible middle stump of his adversary. Straight down the pitch came the ball, but deceptively slowly this time. The batsman tried to play it. He missed; and the dull thump of the ball as it hit his pad was like the sound of muffled doom.

  Eleven voices appealed in triumphant delight, and Pran, smiling, raised his finger in the air.

  He nodded at Kabir, who was grinning broadly and accepting the congratulations of his teammates.

  The cheering of the crowd took more than a minute to die down, and continued sporadically for the rest of Kabir’s over. Sunil executed a few swift steps of joy—a sort of kathak jig. He looked at Dr Durrani to see what effect his son’s triumph had had on him.

  Dr Durrani was frowning in concentration, his eyebrows working up and down.

  ‘Curious, though, isn’t it, um, Patwardhan, that the number, er, six should be, um, embodied in one of the most, er, er, beautiful, er, shapes in all nature: I refer, um, needless to say, to the er, benzene ring with its single and, er, double carbon bonds. But is it, er, truly symmetrical, Patwardhan, or, um, asymmetrical? Or asymmetrically symmetrical, perhaps, like those, er, sub-super-operations of the, er, Pergolesi Lemma . . . not really like the, er, rather unsatisfactory petals of an, um, iris. Curious, wouldn’t you say . . . ?’

  ‘Most curious,’ agreed Sunil.

  Savita was talking to Firoz:

  ‘Of course, it’s different for you, Firoz, I don’t mean because you’re a man as such, but because, well, you don’t have a baby to distract you from your clients. Or perhaps that comes to the same thing. . . . I was talking to Jaya Sood the other day, and she tells me that there are bats—and I don’t mean cricket bats!—in the High Court bathroom. When I told her I couldn’t bear the thought, she said, “Well, if you’re frightened of bats, why are you doing law in the first place?” But, do you know, though I never imagined I would, I actually find law interesting now, really interesting. Not like this awful sleepy game. They haven’t made a run for the last ten minutes. . . . Oh no, I’ve just dropped a stitch, I always feel drowsy in the sun. . . . I simply can’t see what Pran sees in it, or why he insists on ignoring all of us for five days with his ear glued to the radio, or being a referee and standing in the sun the whole day, but do you think my protests have any effect? “Standing in the sun is good for me,” he insists. . . . Or Maan, for that matter. Before lunch he runs from one wicket to the other seven times, and now after lunch he runs along the edge of the field for a few minutes at the most, and that’s that: the whole Sunday’s gone! You’re very sensible to stick to polo, Firoz—at least that’s over in an hour—and you do get some exercise.’

  Firoz was thinking about Maan:

  My dearest, dearest Maan, you’ve saved my life all right and I love you dearly, but if you keep nattering to Lata, your captain will forfeit your own.

  Maan was talking to Lata:

  ‘No, no, it’s all right to talk, no ball ever comes my way. They know what a fantastic player I am, so they’ve put me here on the boundary where I can’t drop any catches or overthrow the ball or anything. And if I go off to sleep, it doesn’t matter. Do you know, I think you’re looking very beautiful today, no, don’t make a face. I’ve always thought so—green suits you, you know. You just merge with the grass like a . . . a nymph! a peri in paradise. . . . No, no, not at all, I think we’re doing tremendously well. All out for 219 isn’t bad, after such a poor beginning, and now we’ve got them at 157 for 7. They’ve got hopeless people at the bottom of their batting order. I don’t think they have a chance. . . . The Old Brahmpurians haven’t won in a decade, so it’ll be a great victory! The only danger is this wretched Durrani fellow, who’s still batting on at . . . what does the scoreboard say? 68. . . . Once we’ve forked him off the pitch we’ll be home and dry. . . .’

  Lata was thinking about Kabir:

  O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou,

  That notwithstanding thy capacity

  Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,

  Of what validity and pitch soe’er

  But falls into abatement and low price. . . .

  A few mynas were sitting on the field, their faces turned towards the batsmen, and the mild, warm sun shone down on her as the sound of bat on ball continued drowsily—interspersed occasionally by a cheer—through the late afternoon. She broke off a blade of grass, and moved it gently up and down her arm.

  Kabir was talking to Pran:

  ‘Thanks; no, the light’s fine, Dr Kapoor . . . oh, thank you—well, it was just a fluke this morning. . . .’

  Pran was thinking about Savita:

  I know our whole Sunday’s gone, darling, but next Sunday I’ll do whatever you want. I promise. If you wish, I’ll hold a huge ball of wool instead, while you knit twenty booties for the baby.

  Kabir had gone in fourth, higher up than usual in the batting order, but had more than justified himself there. He had noticed Lata in the crowd, but this had the effect, oddly enough, of steadying his nerves—or increasing his determination. His score mounted, mainly through boundaries, not a few of which got past Maan, and it now stood in the nineties.

  One by one his partners had
dropped away, however, and the fall of wickets told its own story: 140 for 4, 143 for 5, 154 for 6, 154 for 7, 183 for 8, and now 190 for 9. There were 29 runs to score for a tie, 30 for a win, and his new partner was the exceedingly nervous wicket-keeper! Too bad, thought Kabir. He’s lived so long behind the stumps that he doesn’t know what to do with himself when he’s in front of them. Luckily it’s the beginning of the over. Still, he’ll be out the first ball he faces, poor chap. The whole thing’s impossible, but I wonder if I’ll at least manage to get my century.

  The wicket-keeper, however, played an admirable second fiddle, and Kabir got the strategic singles that enabled him to keep the bowling. When the University stood at 199, with his own score at 98, on the last ball of the last-but-one over—with three minutes to go before end of play—he tried to make his usual single. As he and his partner passed each other, he said: ‘We’ll draw it yet!’

  A cheer had gone up for the anticipated 200 while they were still running. The fielder hurled the ball at Kabir’s wicket. It missed by a hair, but hurtled onwards with such force that poor Maan, who had begun, gallantly, to clap, realized too late what was happening. Too late did he run towards it, too late did he try to hurl himself at it as it sped past his extended length to the boundary.

  A great cheer rose from the university ranks—but whether for Kabir’s fortuitous five off a single ball, or for his century, or for the university’s double-century, or for the fact that with sixteen, rather than twenty, runs to win in the last over, they suddenly felt they still had a chance, no one could say.

  The captain of the Old Brahmpurians, a major from the cantonment, glared at Maan.