A Suitable Boy

  Now, please, Lata, don’t let this open up all the old wounds. Just treat it as confirmation of the course of action you’ve chosen. I’m sure we women make things far worse for ourselves by dwelling endlessly on matters that are best pushed aside. This is my professional opinion too. Some moderate mooning is OK, but please, no perennial pining! He isn’t worth it, Lata, and this proves it. If I were you, I would just crush him with the flat of my spoon into mashed potatoes and forget him entirely.

  Now for other news.

  What with elections coming up, everything is bubbling and swirling around here, and the Socialist Party is mapping out policies and strategies and quackeries and sorceries with the best of them. I attend all the meetings, and canvass and campaign, but I am rather disillusioned. Everyone is involved in pushing himself forward, spouting slogans, making promises, and not bothering about how these promises are to be paid for, let alone implemented. Even sensible people seem to have gone off their heads. One fellow here used to talk a good deal of sense before, but he froths so much and makes such ‘big-big eyes’ that I’m sure he is quite certifiable now.

  And yes, women have been rediscovered: one pleasant side-effect of election fever. ‘The time has come when Woman must be restored to the status she occupied in ancient India: we must combine the best of the past and the present, of the West and the East. . . .’ Here, however, is our ancient lawbook, the Manusmriti. Take a deep breath:

  ‘Day and night, women must be kept in dependence by the males of their families. In childhood, a woman must be subject to her father, in youth to her husband and in old age to her son; a woman must never be independent because she is innately as impure as falsehood. . . . The Lord created woman as one who is full of sensuality, wrath, dishonesty, malice and bad conduct.’ (And, sadly, now, the vote.)

  I don’t suppose anything is going to bring you back here before the term begins, but I miss you a lot even though, as I said, things are so busy that I find it hard to think even half a thought through.

  Love to you, and also to Ma, Pran, Savita and the baby—but you don’t have to give them my love if you’re afraid they’ll start asking you all about my letter. Well, you can give Uma my love anyway.

  Malati

  P.S. Amongst the inmates of Paradise women will form the minority, and amongst the inmates of Hell a majority. I thought I’d be even-handed, and give you a quotation from the Hadith as well. ‘Hit or myth’: that, in a nutshell, is the attitude to women in every religion.

  P.P.S. Since I’m in the mood for quotations, here is something from a short story in a women’s magazine, which describes the symptoms I want you to avoid: ‘She became an invalid, a moth-eaten flower. . . . A cloud of despair was roosting on her pale moon of a face. . . . A red and violent anger bubbled out of her. It emanated from the headache hatching in her heart. . . . Like a humbled monarch, bowing its head, the car cringed away, the swirling dust in its wake portraying her emotions.’

  P.P.P.S. If you decide to sing him out of your system, I would recommend that you avoid your favourite ‘serious’ raags like Shri, Lalit, Todi, Marwa, etc., and sing something more melodious like Behag or Kamod or Kedar.

  P.P.P.P.S. That’s all, dearest Lata. Sleep well.

  16.25

  Lata did not sleep well. She lay awake for hours, racked with jealousy so intense it almost forced the breath out of her and misery so complete she could not believe it was she who was feeling it. There was no privacy in the house—there was no privacy anywhere—where she could go and be by herself for a week and wash away the image of Kabir that she had, despite herself, stored away with the most treasured of her memories. Malati had said nothing about who this woman was, what she looked like, what they had said, who had seen them. Had they met by chance just as she herself had met him? Was he taking her for dawn jaunts to the Barsaat Mahal? Had he kissed her? No, he couldn’t have, he couldn’t have kissed her, the thought was unbearable.

  Thoughts of what Malati had told her in their discussions about sex came back to torment her.

  It was past midnight, but it was impossible to sleep. Quietly, so as not to disturb her mother or the rest of the household, she entered the small garden. There she sat on the bench where in the summer she had sat among the spider lilies and had read his letter. After an hour she found herself shivering from the cold, but she hardly cared.

  How could he?—she thought, though she was forced to admit to herself that she had given him precious little encouragement or comfort. And now it was too late. She felt weak and exhausted, and finally went back and lay down on her bed. She slept, but her dreams were not calm. She imagined Kabir was holding her in his arms, was kissing her passionately, was making love to her, and that she was in ecstasy. But suddenly this disturbing ecstasy gave way to terror. For his face was now the deranged face of Mr Sahgal, and he was whispering, almost to himself, as he panted above her: ‘You are a good girl, a very good girl. I am so proud of you.’

  Part Seventeen

  17.1

  That Savita had been in Calcutta at all to advise Lata and counter Arun on the question of marriage was something that had not come about automatically. It had been the subject of a family dispute.

  In the middle of December Pran had told Savita one morning in bed: ‘I think, darling, that we should stay in Brahmpur. Baoji is far too busy with electioneering these days, and he needs all the help he can get.’

  Uma was sleeping in her cot. This gave Pran another idea.

  ‘Besides,’ he continued, ‘is it wise for the baby to go travelling just yet?’

  Savita was still sleepy. She just about made sense of what Pran was saying. She thought a little about the repercussions of his suggestion, and said: ‘Let’s talk about this later.’

  Pran, by now quite used to the way she phrased her disagreements, was quiet. After a while Mateen brought in the tea. Savita said: ‘And perhaps you think you shouldn’t be travelling at this time either?’

  ‘No, perhaps not,’ said Pran, pleased that things were going his way. ‘And besides, Ammaji is not too well. I’m worried about her. I know you are too, darling.’

  Savita nodded. But she felt that Pran had recovered quite rapidly, and was now well enough to travel. Moreover, he needed the holiday and change of scene badly. He should not, she felt, be imposed upon by his demanding father. The baby would be well taken care of in Calcutta. As for Savita’s mother-in-law, she was, it was true, not very well, but was nevertheless taking part in election work among the women with the same robustness that had marked her relief work some years previously with the refugees from Punjab.

  ‘So what do you say?’ said Pran. ‘It’s only once in five years, these elections, and I know that Baoji wants me to help him.’

  ‘How about Maan?’

  ‘Well, of course, he’ll help.’

  ‘And Veena?’

  ‘You know what her mother-in-law would say.’

  They both sipped their tea. The Brahmpur Chronicle lay unopened on the bed.

  ‘But how can you help?’ asked Savita. ‘I’m not going to have you travelling in jeeps and trains to Baitar and Salimpur and other barbaric places, getting all that dust and smoke into your lungs. You’d be asking for a relapse.’

  Pran reflected that he probably couldn’t visit his father’s constituency, but that he could still be of some use to him. He said to Savita: ‘I can stay in Brahmpur, darling, and handle things at this end. Besides, I’m a little worried about what Mishra will be doing to spoil my chances here. The selection committee is meeting in a month.’

  It was evident that Pran was not keen to go to Calcutta. But he had put forward so many reasons that Savita could not tell whether it was his father or his mother or his baby or himself that he was most concerned about.

  ‘How about me?’ said Savita.

  ‘You, darling?’ Pran sounded surprised.

  ‘Well, how do you think I will feel if Lata gets engaged to a man whom I haven’t even seen?’
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br />   Pran paused before replying: ‘Well, you got engaged to a man whom Lata hadn’t seen.’

  ‘That was quite different,’ said Savita, neatly distinguishing the cases. ‘Lata isn’t my elder sister. I have a responsibility towards her. Arun and Varun aren’t the best of advisers.’

  Pran thought for a while, then said: ‘Well, darling, why don’t you go? I’ll miss you, of course, but it will only be for a fortnight or so.’

  Savita looked at Pran. He did not seem very perturbed at the thought of their separation. She got a little annoyed. ‘If I go, the baby goes,’ she said. ‘And if the baby and I go, you go. And have you forgotten about the Test match?’

  So the three of them went to Calcutta with Lata and Mrs Rupa Mehra.

  Their departure from Brahmpur was delayed for a couple of days by Dr Kishen Chand Seth falling ill. And their return to Brahmpur was brought forward by a couple of days because of sudden and devastating events. But these events were entirely unforeseeable, and arose neither out of electioneering nor out of anyone’s illness nor out of Professor Mishra’s manipulations. The events involved Maan; and as a result of them the family was never the same again.

  17.2

  In the first week of December, Maan was still in Brahmpur. He had no plans whatsoever to go back to Banaras. As far as he was concerned, the entire city—ghats, temples, shop, fiancée, debtors, creditors and all—could have sunk into the Ganga and not a ripple would have been felt downstream. He wandered about Brahmpur quite happily, taking the occasional stroll through the old town to the Barsaat Mahal, passing through Tarbuz ka Bazaar on the way. He met the Rajkumar’s university friends for an evening or two of poker. The Rajkumar himself, after his expulsion, had disappeared from Brahmpur for a while and returned to Marh.

  Maan appeared erratically at meals at Prem Nivas and Baitar House, and his cheerful presence acted as a tonic on his mother. He visited Veena, Kedarnath and Bhaskar. He spent a little time with Firoz, though not as much as he would have liked: Firoz, after his work in the zamindari case, had had a fair amount of success obtaining briefs. Maan also discussed campaign strategy with his father and with the Nawab Sahib, who had pledged Mahesh Kapoor his support in his candidacy. And he visited Saeeda Bai whenever he could.

  In between ghazals one evening Maan said to her:

  ‘I must meet Abdur Rasheed one of these days, Saeeda. But I understand he doesn’t come here any more.’

  Saeeda Bai looked at Maan thoughtfully, her head slightly to one side. ‘He has gone mad,’ she stated simply. ‘I can’t have him here.’

  Maan laughed and waited for her to elaborate. She did not.

  ‘What do you mean, mad?’ he said at last. ‘You told me before that you thought he had an interest in Tasneem, but—surely—’

  Saeeda Bai rather dreamily played an ornament on the harmonium, then said:

  ‘He has been sending strange letters to Tasneem, Dagh Sahib, which naturally I don’t allow the girl to read. They are offensive.’

  Maan could not believe that Rasheed, whom he knew to be an upright man, particularly where it came to women or his sense of duty, could possibly have written letters of an offensive nature to Tasneem. Saeeda Bai, one of whose traits was the habitual exaggeration of nuance, was, to his mind, being over-protective of her sister. He did not say so, however.

  ‘Why do you want to see him anyway?’ asked Saeeda Bai.

  ‘I promised his family I would,’ said Maan. ‘And I also want to talk to him about the elections. My father will be fighting from the constituency that includes his village.’

  Now Saeeda Bai became cross. ‘Has this entire city lost its senses?’ she exclaimed. ‘Elections! Elections! Is there nothing else in the world other than paper and boxes?’

  Indeed, Brahmpur was talking of very little else. Campaigning had begun; most candidates, after filing their nomination papers, had remained in their constituencies and begun canvassing immediately. Mahesh Kapoor had decided to wait a few weeks in Brahmpur. Since he was Revenue Minister again, he had some work to do.

  Maan, by way of apology, said: ‘Saeeda, you know I have to help my father with these elections. My elder brother is not well and, besides, he has his teaching. And I know the constituency. But my exile will be short this time.’

  Saeeda Bai clapped her hands and called for Bibbo.

  Bibbo came running.

  ‘Bibbo, are we on the voting list for Pasand Bagh?’ she demanded.

  Bibbo did not know, but she thought they were not. ‘Should I try to find out?’ she asked.

  ‘No. It is not necessary.’

  ‘Whatever you say, Begum Sahiba.’

  ‘Where were you this afternoon? I was looking for you everywhere.’

  ‘I had gone out, Begum Sahiba, to buy some matches.’

  ‘Does it take an hour to buy matches?’

  Saeeda Bai was becoming determinedly annoyed.

  Bibbo was silent. She could not very well tell Saeeda Bai, who had been in such a flap about Rasheed, that she had surreptitiously been carrying letters to and fro between Firoz and Tasneem.

  Saeeda Bai now turned briskly to Maan: ‘Why are you lingering here?’ she asked him. ‘There are no votes to be had in this house.’

  ‘Saeeda Begum—’ protested Maan.

  Saeeda Bai said sharply to Bibbo: ‘What are you gawking at? Didn’t you hear me tell you to go?’

  Bibbo grinned and left. Suddenly Saeeda Bai got up and went into her room. She returned with three of the letters Rasheed had mailed Tasneem.

  ‘His address is on these,’ she said to Maan as she threw them on to the low table. Maan noted the address down in his unformed Urdu script, noticing, however, that Rasheed’s writing was very much worse than he remembered it.

  ‘There is something wrong with his head. You will find him a liability in your electoral endeavours,’ said Saeeda Bai.

  The rest of the evening was not a success. Public life had entered the boudoir, and together with it all Saeeda Bai’s fears for Tasneem.

  After a while she reverted to a kind of dreaminess again.

  ‘When do you leave?’ she asked Maan indifferently.

  ‘In three days, Inshallah,’ replied Maan as cheerfully as he could.

  ‘Inshallah,’ repeated the parakeet, responding to a phrase he recognized. Maan turned towards it and frowned. He was in no mood for the half-witted bird. A weight had descended on him; Saeeda Bai, it appeared, did not care whether he stayed or left.

  ‘I am tired,’ said Saeeda Bai.

  ‘May I visit you on the eve of my departure?’

  ‘No longer did I desire to wander in the garden,’ murmured Saeeda Bai to herself, quoting Ghalib.

  She was referring to Maan and to the fickleness of men in general, but Maan thought she was referring to herself.

  17.3

  Maan visited Rasheed’s room the next day. It was located in a seedy and crowded part of the old city with narrow, unrepaired lanes and the stench of poor drainage. Rasheed was living alone. He could not afford to keep his family with him in Brahmpur. He cooked for himself whenever he could, he gave his tuitions, he studied, he was involved in some work for the Socialist Party, and he was trying to write a pamphlet—half popular, half scholarly—on the sanction for and meaning of secularism in Islam. He had run his life for months on willpower rather than on a combination of food and affection. When he saw Maan at his door Rasheed looked astonished and worried. Maan noticed with a shock that even more of his hair had gone white. His face was gaunt, but his eyes still held a sort of fire.

  ‘Let us go for a walk,’ Rasheed suggested. ‘I have a tuition in an hour. There are too many flies here. Curzon Park is on the way. We can sit there and talk.’

  In the mild December sunshine they sat in the park under a large, small-leafed ficus. Every time someone passed them, Rasheed would lower his voice. He looked extremely tired, but talked almost without stopping. Early on in the conversation it became apparent to Maan t
hat Rasheed was not going to help his father in any sense. He was going to support the Socialist Party in the Salimpur-cum-Baitar constituency and he was, he said, going to campaign tirelessly for them and against the Congress throughout the university vacation. He talked endlessly about feudalism and superstition and the oppressive structure of society and especially the Nawab Sahib of Baitar’s role in the system. He said that the leaders of the Congress Party—and presumably Mahesh Kapoor—were hand in glove with the large landlords, which was why landlords would be compensated for the lands that were to be taken over by the state. ‘But the people will not be duped,’ he said. ‘They understand things only too well.’

  So far Rasheed had spoken with great, perhaps slightly exaggerated, conviction, maybe even with excessive animus against the great landowner of the district, who he knew was Maan’s friend; but there was nothing particularly odd about his manner of speaking or the logic of it. The word ‘duped’, however, acted as a kind of fault or fracture in his speech. He suddenly turned to Maan and said pointedly:

  ‘Of course, people who are duped are wiser than you think.’

  ‘Of course,’ Maan agreed amiably, though he was rather disappointed. Rasheed, he thought, would have been very helpful to his father in the area around Debaria, and probably even in Salimpur town. If it had not been for Rasheed, he himself would not have known anything about the place.