A Suitable Boy

  That he had not attended Mrs Mahesh Kapoor’s chautha made him feel ashamed. Firoz had had an infection at the time and had been in serious danger—but now the Nawab Sahib asked himself whether his son had been in such immediate hazard that he could not have spared half an hour and braved the glances of the world to at least show his face at the service? Poor woman, she had surely died fearing that neither her son nor his might live until the summer, and knowing that Maan at least could not even come to her deathbed. How painful such knowledge must have been; and how little her goodness and generosity had deserved it.

  Sometimes he sat in his library and went to sleep from tiredness. Ghulam Rusool would wake him up for lunch or dinner whenever it was necessary to do so. It was becoming warm as well. The coppersmith had begun to sound its short continual call from a fig tree outside. Here in the library, lost in religion or philosophy or the speculations of astronomy, even worlds might seem small, not to speak of personal estates and ambitions, griefs and guilt. Or, lost in his projected edition of Mast’s poems, he might have forgotten the uproar of the world around. But the Nawab Sahib discovered that he could read nothing with any concentration. He found himself staring at a page, wondering where he had been for the last hour.

  One morning he read in the Brahmpur Chronicle about Abida Khan’s derisive ad hominem remarks in the House, and how Mahesh Kapoor had not stood up to say a word by way of defence or explanation. He was seized with pain on his friend’s behalf. He rang up his sister-in-law.

  ‘Abida, what was the necessity for saying these things I’ve been reading about?’

  Abida laughed. Her brother-in-law was weak and over-scrupulous, and would never make much of a fighter. ‘Why, it was my last chance to attack that man face to face,’ she said. ‘If it wasn’t for him, do you think your inheritance and that of your sons would be in such danger? And why talk of inheritance, how about your son’s life?’

  ‘Abida, there is a limit to things.’

  ‘Well, when I reach it, I will stop. And if I don’t, I will fall over the edge. That is my concern.’

  ‘Abida, have pity—’

  ‘Pity? What pity did that man’s son have on Firoz? Or on that helpless woman—’ Abida suddenly stopped. Perhaps she felt that she had reached the limit. There was a long pause. Finally she broke it by saying: ‘All right, I will accept your advice on this. But I hope that that butcher rots in jail.’ She thought of the Nawab Sahib’s wife, the only light of her years in the zenana, and she added: ‘For many years to come.’

  The Nawab Sahib knew that Maan had come to visit Firoz twice at Baitar House before he had again been committed to jail. Murtaza Ali had told him so, and had also told him that Firoz had asked him to come. Now the Nawab Sahib asked himself the question: if Firoz had chosen to forgive his friend, what was the law that it should insist on destroying his life?

  That night he was dining alone with Firoz. This was usually very painful: they tried to talk to each other without really speaking of anything. But tonight he turned to his son and said: ‘Firoz, what is the evidence against that boy?’

  ‘Evidence, Abba?’

  ‘I mean, from the point of view of the court.’

  ‘He has confessed to the police.’

  ‘Has he confessed before a magistrate?’

  Firoz was a little surprised that this legalistic thought should have come to his father rather than to him. ‘You’re right, Abba,’ he said. ‘But there’s all the other evidence—his flight, his identification, all our statements—mine, and those of the others who were there.’ He looked at his father carefully, thinking how hard it must be for him to approach even indirectly the subject of his injury or the other matter behind it. He said after a while: ‘When I made my statement, I was very ill; my mind could have been confused, of course. Perhaps it’s still confused—I should have thought of all this, not you.’

  Neither said anything for a minute. Then Firoz went on: ‘If I fell on the knife—stumbled, say—and it was in his hand, he might, since he was drunk, have thought that he had done it—and so might—so might—’

  ‘The others.’

  ‘Yes—the others. That would explain their statements—and his disappearance,’ continued Firoz, as if the entire scene was passing once again before his eyes, very clearly, very slowly. But a few seconds of the scene that had been clear before had now begun to blur.

  ‘Enough has happened in Prem Nivas already,’ said his father. ‘And the same set of facts is open to many interpretations.’

  This last remark conjured up different thoughts for each of them.

  ‘Yes, Abba,’ said Firoz quietly and gratefully, and with something of a renewal in his heart of his old respect.

  18.29

  Maan’s trial came up in a fortnight before the District and Sessions Judge. Both the Nawab Sahib and Mahesh Kapoor were present in the small courtroom. Firoz was one of the first witnesses. The prosecution lawyer, leading him with quiet confidence through the phrases of the statement he had given to the police, was startled when Firoz said:

  ‘And then I stumbled and fell on to the knife.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ said the lawyer. ‘What was that you said?’

  ‘I said, I stumbled, and fell on to the knife that he was holding in his hand.’

  The government advocate was utterly taken aback. Try as he might, he could not shake Firoz’s evidence. He complained to the court that the witness had turned hostile to the state and requested permission to cross-examine him. He put it to Firoz that his evidence was inconsistent with his statement to the police. Firoz replied that he had been ill at the time of his statement, and that his memory had been blurred. It was only after his recovery that it had sharpened and clarified. The prosecutor reminded Firoz that he himself was a lawyer and that he was on oath. Firoz, who was still looking pale, replied with a smile that he was well aware of it, but that even lawyers did not have perfect memories. He had relived the scene many times and he was certain now that he had stumbled against something—he thought it might have been a bolster—and had fallen on to the knife that Maan had just wrested from Saeeda Bai. ‘He just stood there. I think he thought he had done it,’ added Firoz helpfully, though he was fully aware of the limitations of evidence based on hearsay or the interpretation of the mental state of others.

  Maan sat in the dock, staring at his friend, hardly comprehending at first what was happening. A look of disturbed amazement spread slowly across his face.

  Saeeda Bai was examined next. She stood in the witness box, her face unseen behind the burqa she was wearing, and spoke in a low voice. She was happy to accept the contention of the defence lawyer that what she had seen was consistent with this interpretation of events. So was Bibbo. The other evidence—Firoz’s blood on the shawl, Maan’s identification by the railway clerk, the memory of the watchman, and so on—threw no light on the question of what had happened during those two or three vital, almost fatal, seconds. And if Maan had not even stabbed Firoz, if Firoz had simply fallen on the knife held in his hand, the very question of his intention to inflict ‘such bodily injury as was sufficient in the ordinary course of nature to cause death’ was irrelevant.

  The judge saw no reason why a man who had been so badly injured would go out of his way to protect someone who had deliberately inflicted such an injury on him. There was no evidence of collusion among the witnesses, no attempt by the defence to suborn anyone. He was led to the inescapable conclusion that Maan was not guilty.

  He acquitted Maan of both charges and ordered him released immediately.

  Mahesh Kapoor embraced his son. He too was dumbfounded. He turned towards the courtroom, which was now in uproar, and saw the Nawab Sahib talking to Firoz. Their eyes met for an instant. Mahesh Kapoor’s were full of perplexity and gratitude.

  The Nawab Sahib shook his head slightly, as if to disown responsibility, and turned again to talk to his son.

  18.30

  Pran had not been correct in imagin
ing that his father would become superstitious. Mahesh Kapoor did, however, take an unsteady step towards countenancing superstition. In late March, a few days before Ramnavami, he acquiesced in Veena’s and old Mrs Tandon’s request to hold a reading of the Ramcharitmanas at Prem Nivas for the family and a few friends.

  Why he agreed was unclear even to himself. His wife had asked for the reading the previous year and he associated the request with her. She had even asked for a section of the Ramcharitmanas—the section involving Hanuman in Lanka—to be read to her on her deathbed. Perhaps Mahesh Kapoor felt sorry that he had refused her in the past—or perhaps he was simply too exhausted to refuse anyone anything any longer. Or perhaps—though it is unlikely that he would ever have accepted such a reason—perhaps he wished to give thanks to something beneficent and mysterious outside himself that had kept his son safe when he had seemed logically to be doomed and had restored his hope of friendship with the Nawab Sahib when it had appeared to be beyond repair.

  Old Mrs Tandon was the only one of the group of three samdhins who attended. Mrs Rupa Mehra was in Calcutta, frantically making wedding purchases. And Mrs Mahesh Kapoor’s small brass bell no longer rang in the tiny alcove where she used to perform her puja.

  One morning, while the recitation was going on, a white owl walked into the room where the listeners were sitting. It stayed for a few minutes, then slowly walked out again. Everyone was alarmed by the presence of this inauspicious bird in the daytime, and took it as a bad sign. But Veena disagreed. She said that the white owl, being the vehicle of Lakshmi, was a symbol of good luck in Bengal. It might well be an emissary sent from the other world to bring them good fortune and to take back good news.

  18.31

  When Maan was in jail, his mind had often turned to Rasheed’s tormented madness and delusion. They were both outcastes, even if his own delusion had been temporary. The difference between them, Maan had felt, was that he, despite his physical incarceration, had at least preserved the love of his family.

  He had asked Pran to send Rasheed some money, not out of a sense of expiation, but because he thought it might be practically useful. He remembered how gaunt and wasted he had looked that day in Curzon Park, and wondered if what his uncle managed to send him together with what Rasheed himself was earning sufficed for rent and food. Maan feared that sooner or later the tuitions too were bound to stop.

  When he was out on bail, he did not visit, but sent some more money, again anonymously, by mail. He felt that for him, a man with a violent crime hanging over his head, to visit Rasheed in person might lead to unforeseeable constructions and consequences. In any case, it would not help Rasheed’s balance of mind.

  When Maan was found innocent and finally set free, his thoughts turned once more to his old teacher and erstwhile friend. But again he was not certain if seeing him was a good idea, so he wrote a letter first. He received no reply.

  When a second letter was neither replied to nor returned, Maan decided that at least he had not met with a refusal. He went to Rasheed’s address, but Rasheed was not there any longer. He spoke to the landlord and his wife, and told them he was a friend. He sensed that they were not very pleased. He asked them what Rasheed’s new address was, and they told him they did not know. When he said that he had written two letters to Rasheed recently and asked them where they were, the man looked at his wife, appeared to come to a decision, fetched them from inside and gave both of them to Maan. They were unopened.

  Maan had no idea whether Rasheed had got the money he had sent. He asked the landlord when exactly it was that Rasheed had left, and whether any earlier letters had been received. They replied that he had left some time ago, but he could not get them to be more specific than that. They appeared to be annoyed, but whether at Rasheed or at him, he did not know.

  Maan, worried, now asked Pran to trace Rasheed through either the History Department or the Registrar’s Office. Neither knew his whereabouts. A clerk in the Registrar’s Office mentioned that Rasheed had withdrawn from the university; he had said that he refused to attend lectures when he was needed to campaign for the sake of the country.

  Maan next wrote in his rather blunt Urdu script to Baba and Rasheed’s father, asking for news and for Rasheed’s latest address. Perhaps, Maan suggested, the Bear might know where he was. He got a short and not unsympathetic reply. Baba said that everyone at Debaria was very pleased with his acquittal and sent their respects to his father as well. In addition, the Bear and the guppi had both requested him to send Maan their regards. The guppi had been so impressed by reports of the dramatic scene in court that he was thinking of retiring from his life’s vocation in Maan’s favour.

  As for news of Rasheed, they had none, nor did they have any address. The last they had seen of him was during the campaign, when he had antagonized people still further and harmed his own party with his wild accusations and insults. His wife had been very upset, and now that he had disappeared she was distraught. Meher was fine, except—and here Baba grew a little indignant—her maternal grandfather was trying to claim that she should come and live with her mother and baby sister in his village.

  If Maan had any news of Rasheed, Baba said, he should inform them as soon as he could. They would be very grateful. For the moment, sadly, even the Bear had none.

  18.32

  Saeeda Bai had left the court after her brief appearance, but she knew within half an hour of the verdict that Maan was safe. She gave thanks to God for preserving him. That he was lost to her she had the wisdom or experience to realize, but that his youth would not be spent in imprisonment and misery was a stifling weight off her heart. She saw Maan with all his faults, but could not cut him off from her love.

  Perhaps this was the first time in her life that Saeeda Bai herself had loved unrequitedly. Again and again she saw Maan as she had first seen him: the eager Dagh Sahib of that first evening at Prem Nivas, full of liveliness and charm and energy and affection.

  Sometimes her mind turned to the Nawab Sahib—and to her mother—and to her own younger self, a mother at fifteen. ‘Do not let the bee enter the garden’—she murmured the famous line—‘that the moth may not be unjustly killed.’ And yet the strange and tenuous links of causation could act beneficently as well. For out of the shame and violation of her youth her beloved Tasneem had been born.

  Bibbo rebuked Saeeda Bai for spending so much time these days looking into space. ‘At least sing something!’ she said. ‘Even the parakeet’s becoming dumb by example.’

  ‘Do be quiet, Bibbo!’ said Saeeda Bai impatiently. And Bibbo, glad to have elicited for once at least some reaction from her mistress, kept up the attack.

  ‘Give thanks for Bilgrami Sahib,’ said Bibbo. ‘Without him where would all of us be?’

  Saeeda Bai clicked her tongue and made a gesture of dismissal.

  ‘Give thanks also to your mightiest admirer, who has spared us his attentions of late,’ continued Bibbo.

  Saeeda Bai glared. The Raja of Marh had been apparently dormant only because he had been busy with his plans to consecrate his temple with the installation of the ancient Shiva-linga.

  ‘Poor Miya Mitthu,’ murmured Bibbo sadly. ‘He will forget how to squawk, “Whisky!”’

  One day, to stop Bibbo’s inane prattling, which was more painful than she intended, Saeeda Bai told her to fetch her harmonium, and let her fingers move up and down the mother-of-pearl keys. But she could not control her thoughts any more than she could in her bedroom, where the framed picture from Maan’s book looked down at her from the wall. She called for that book now, and placed it on the harmonium, turning its pages one by one, pausing less at the poems than at the illustrations. She came across the picture of the grief-stricken woman in the cemetery.

  I have not visited my mother’s grave now for a month, she thought. In my new idiocy as a rejected lover I am neglecting my duties as a daughter. But the more she tried to avoid thinking of herself and the hopelessness of her love for Maan, the m
ore it oppressed her.

  And what of Tasneem? she thought. It was worse for her, Saeeda Bai reflected, than for herself. Poor girl, she had become more silent than that godforsaken parakeet. Ishaq, Rasheed, Firoz—three men had come into her life, each more impossible than the last, and in each case she had let her affection grow in silence, and had suffered their sudden absence in silence. She had seen Firoz wounded, her sister almost strangled; she had probably heard, though her strange silence gave no indication of it, of the rumours surrounding herself. What did she think of men now? Or of Saeeda Bai herself if she believed what she heard?

  What can I do to help her? thought Saeeda Bai. But there was nothing to be done. To talk to Tasneem about anything that mattered was not within the bounds of possibility.

  Though it was evening, and the first few stars had begun to appear in the sky, Saeeda Bai began to hum to herself the lines of Minai’s poem announcing the arrival of dawn. It reminded her of the garden in Prem Nivas that carefree evening, and all the grief and pain that had intervened. Tears were in her voice, but not in her eyes. Bibbo came and listened, and Tasneem too walked quietly up from her room to hear what had become so rare. She herself knew the poem by heart, but, entranced by her sister’s voice, she did not even murmur the words under her breath:

  The meeting has dispersed; the moths

  Bid farewell to the candle-light.

  Departure’s hour is on the sky.

  Only a few stars mark the night.

  What has remained will not remain:

  They too will quickly disappear.

  This is the world’s way, although we,

  Lost to the world, lie sleeping here.

  18.33

  Rasheed walked along the parapet of the Barsaat Mahal, his thoughts blurred with hunger and confusion.

  Darkness, and the river, and the cool marble wall.