A Suitable Boy, Page 38

  The Nawab Sahib read the sentence several times. He had once hired a Latin tutor but had not got very far. Now he attempted to fit the resonant phrases of the English to what must have been the still more resonant phrases of the original. He sat in a reverie for a good ten minutes meditating on the content and manner of the sentence, and would have continued to do so had he not felt a tug at the leg of his pyjamas.

  5.11

  It was his younger grandson, Abbas, who was tugging at him with both hands. The Nawab Sahib had not seen him come in, and looked at him with pleased surprise. A little behind Abbas stood his six-year-old brother Hassan. And behind Hassan stood the old servant, Ghulam Rusool.

  The servant announced that lunch was waiting for the Nawab Sahib and his daughter in the small room adjoining the zenana quarters. He also apologized for allowing Hassan and Abbas into the library when the Nawab Sahib was reading. ‘But Sahib, they insisted, and would not listen to reason.’

  The Nawab Sahib nodded his approval and turned happily from Macaulay and Cicero to Hassan and Abbas.

  ‘Are we eating on the floor or at the table today, Nana-jaan?’ asked Hassan.

  ‘It’s just us—so we’ll eat inside—on the rug,’ replied his grandfather.

  ‘Oh, good,’ said Hassan, who got nervous when his feet were not on the ground.

  ‘What’s in that room, Nana-jaan?’ asked three-year-old Abbas as they walked down a corridor past a room with a huge brass lock.

  ‘Mongooses, of course,’ said his elder brother knowledgeably.

  ‘No, I mean inside the room,’ Abbas insisted.

  ‘I think we store some carpets in there,’ said the Nawab Sahib. Turning to Ghulam Rusool, he asked: ‘What do we store in there?’

  ‘Sahib, they say it has been two years since that room was locked. It is all on a list with Murtaza Ali. I will ask him and inform you.’

  ‘Oh no, that’s not necessary,’ said the Nawab Sahib stroking his beard and trying to recall—for, to his surprise, it had slipped his mind—who used to use that particular room. ‘As long as it’s on a list,’ he said.

  ‘Tell us a ghost story, Nana-jaan,’ said Hassan, tugging at his grandfather’s right hand.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Abbas, who readily agreed with most of his elder brother’s suggestions, even when he did not understand what was being suggested. ‘Tell us a ghost story.’

  ‘No, no,’ said the Nawab Sahib. ‘All the ghost stories I know are very frightening and if I tell you one you’ll be so frightened you won’t be able to eat your lunch.’

  ‘We won’t be frightened,’ said Hassan.

  ‘Not frightened,’ said Abbas.

  They reached the small room where lunch was awaiting them. The Nawab Sahib smiled to see his daughter, and washed his and his grandsons’ hands in a small washbasin with cool water from a nearby jug, and sat them down, each in front of a small thali into which food had already been served.

  ‘Do you know what your two sons are demanding of me?’ asked the Nawab Sahib.

  Zainab turned to her children and scolded them.

  ‘I told you not to disturb your Nana-jaan in the library, but the moment my back is turned you do what you like. Now what have you been asking for?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Hassan, rather sullenly.

  ‘Nothing,’ repeated Abbas, sweetly.

  Zainab looked at her father with affection and thought of the days when she used to cling on to his hands and make her own importunate demands, often using his indulgence to get around her mother’s firmness. He was sitting on the rug in front of his silver thali with the same erect bearing that she remembered from her earliest childhood, but the thinness of the flesh on his cheekbones and the small square moth-holes on his immaculately starched kurta filled her with a sudden tenderness. It had been ten years since her mother had died—her own children only knew of her through photographs and stories—and those ten years of widowerhood had aged her father as twenty years would have done in the ordinary course of time.

  ‘What are they asking for, Abba-jaan?’ said Zainab with a smile.

  ‘They want a ghost story,’ said the Nawab Sahib. ‘Just like you used to.’

  ‘But I never asked for a ghost story at lunch,’ said Zainab.

  To her children she said, ‘No ghost stories. Abbas, stop playing with your food. If you’re very good maybe you’ll get a story at night before you go to sleep.’

  ‘No, now! Now—’ said Hassan.

  ‘Hassan,’ said his mother warningly.

  ‘Now! Now!’ Hassan began crying and shouting.

  The Nawab Sahib was quite distressed at his grandchildren’s insubordination towards their mother, and told them not to speak in this way. Good children, he made it clear, didn’t.

  ‘I hope they listen to their father at least,’ he said in mild rebuke.

  To his horror he saw a tear roll down his daughter’s cheek. He put his arm around her shoulder, and said, ‘Is everything all right? Is everything all right there?’

  It was the instinctive thing to say, but he realized as soon as he had said it that he should perhaps have waited until his grandchildren had finished their lunch and he was left alone with his daughter. He had heard indirectly that all was not well with his daughter’s marriage.

  ‘Yes, Abba-jaan. It’s just that I think I’m a little tired.’

  He kept his arm around her till her tears had ceased. The children looked bewildered. However, some of their favourite food had been prepared and they soon forgot about their mother’s tears. Indeed, she too became involved in feeding them, especially the younger one, who was having trouble tearing the naan. Even the Nawab Sahib, looking at the picture the three of them made together, felt a little rush of painful happiness. Zainab was small, like her mother had been, and many of the gestures of affection or reproof that she made reminded him of those that his wife used to make when trying to get Firoz and Imtiaz to eat their food.

  As if in response to his thoughts, Firoz now entered the room. Zainab and the children were delighted to see him.

  ‘Firoz Mamu, Firoz Mamu!’ said the children. ‘Why didn’t you have lunch with us?’

  Firoz looked impatient and troubled. He placed his hand on Hassan’s head.

  ‘Abba-jaan, your munshi has arrived from Baitar. He wants to talk to you,’ he said.

  ‘Oh,’ said the Nawab Sahib, not happy about this demand on his time when he would rather have been talking to his daughter.

  ‘He wants you to come to the estate today. There is some crisis or other brewing.’

  ‘What manner of crisis?’ asked the Nawab Sahib. He did not relish the thought of a three-hour drive in a jeep in the April sun.

  ‘You’d better speak to him,’ said Firoz. ‘You know how I feel about your munshi. If you think that I should come with you to Baitar, or go instead of you, that’s all right. I don’t have anything on this afternoon. Oh yes, I do have a meeting with a client, but his case isn’t due to come up for a while, so I can postpone it.’

  The Nawab Sahib got up with a sigh and washed his hands.

  When he got to the anteroom where the munshi was waiting, he asked him brusquely what the matter was. Apparently, there were two problems, both brewing simultaneously. The main one was the perennial difficulty of realizing land-rent from the peasants. The Nawab Sahib did not like the strong-arm methods that the munshi was inclined to employ: the use of local toughs to deal with defaulters. As a result, collections had diminished, and the munshi now felt that the Nawab Sahib’s personal presence at Baitar Fort for a day or two and a private talk with a couple of local politicians would help matters considerably. Normally, the sly munshi would have been unwilling to involve his master in the stewardship of his own estate, but this was an exception. He had even brought along a small local landlord to confirm that matters were troubled and required the Nawab Sahib’s presence in the area immediately, not only on his own behalf but also because it would help the other landlords. />
  After a brief discussion (the other problem involved trouble at the local madrasa or school), the Nawab Sahib said: ‘I have some things to do this afternoon. But I’ll talk matters over with my son. Please wait here.’

  Firoz said that on the whole he felt his father should go, if only to make sure that the munshi was not robbing him blind. He would come along as well and look at the accounts. They might well have to spend a night or two in Baitar, and he did not want his father to be by himself. As for Zainab, whom the Nawab Sahib was reluctant to leave ‘alone in the house’ as he put it, she was matter-of-fact about his departure, though sorry to see him go.

  ‘But Abba-jaan, you’ll be back tomorrow or the day after and I’m here for another week. Anyway, isn’t Imtiaz due to return tomorrow? And please don’t worry about me, I’ve lived in this house most of my life.’ She smiled. ‘Just because I’m now a married woman doesn’t mean that I am less capable of taking care of myself. I’ll spend my time gossiping in the zenana, and I’ll even take over your duty of telling the children a ghost story.’

  Though somewhat apprehensive—about what exactly he would not have been able to say—the Nawab Sahib acquiesced in what was obviously sound advice and, taking affectionate leave of his daughter and only forbearing from kissing his grandchildren because they were having an afternoon nap, left Brahmpur for Baitar within the hour.

  5.12

  Evening came. Baitar House wore a deserted look. Half the house was unoccupied anyway, and servants no longer moved through the rooms at dusk, lighting candles or lamps or turning on electric lights. On this particular evening even the rooms of the Nawab Sahib and his sons and the occasionally occupied guest room were unlit, and from the road it would almost have seemed that no one lived there any longer. The only activity, conversation, bustle, movement took place in the zenana quarters, which did not face the road.

  It was not yet dark. The children were asleep. It had been less difficult than Zainab had thought to distract them from the fact that their grandfather was not there to tell them the promised ghost story. Both of them were tired out from their previous day’s journey to Brahmpur, although they had insisted the previous night on remaining awake till ten.

  Zainab would have liked to settle down with a book, but decided to spend the evening talking to her aunt and great-aunts. These women, whom she had known from childhood, had spent their entire lives since the age of fifteen in purdah—either in their father’s or in their husband’s house. So had Zainab, although she considered herself, by virtue of her education, to have a wider sense of the world. The constraints of the zenana, the women’s world that had driven Abida Khan almost crazy—the narrow circle of conversation, the religiosity, the halter on boldness or unorthodoxy of any kind—were seen by these women in an entirely different light. Their world was not busy with great concerns of state, but was essentially a human one. Food, festivals, family relations, objects of use and beauty, these—mainly for good but sometimes for ill—formed the basis, though not the entirety, of their interests. It was not as if they were ignorant of the great world outside. It was rather that the world was seen more heavily filtered through the interests of family and friends than it would be for a sojourner with more direct experience. The clues they received were more indirect, needing more sensitive interpretation; and so were those they gave out. For Zainab—who saw elegance, subtlety, etiquette and family culture as qualities to be prized in their own right—the world of the zenana was a complete world, even if a constrained one. She did not believe that because her aunts had met no men other than those of the family since they were young, and had been to very few rooms other than their own, they were as a result lacking in perspicacity about the world or understanding of human nature. She liked them, she enjoyed talking to them, and she knew what enjoyment they obtained from her occasional visits. But she was reluctant to sit and gossip with them on this particular visit to her father’s house only because they would almost certainly touch upon matters that would hurt her. Any mention of her husband would remind her once again of the infidelities that she had only recently come to know of, and that caused her such startling anguish. She would have to pretend to her aunts that all was well with her, and even indulge in light banter about the intimacies of her family life.

  They had been sitting and talking for only a few minutes when two panic-stricken young maidservants rushed into the room and, without making even the usual salutation, gasped out:

  ‘The police—the police are here.’

  They then burst into tears and became so incoherent that it was impossible to get any sense out of them.

  Zainab managed to calm one of them down a little, and asked her what the police were doing.

  ‘They have come to take over the house,’ said the girl with a fresh bout of sobbing.

  Everyone looked aghast at the wretched girl, who was wiping her eyes with her sleeve.

  ‘Hai, hai!’ cried an aunt in pitiable distress, and began weeping. ‘What will we do? There is no one in the house.’

  Zainab, though shocked at the sudden turn of events, thought of what her mother would have done if there had been no one—that is, no men—in the house.

  After she had partially recovered from the shock, she shot a few quick questions at the maidservant:

  ‘Where are they—the police? Are they actually in the house? What are the servants doing? And where is Murtaza Ali? Why do they want to take over the house? Munni, sit up and don’t sob. I can’t make any sense out of what you are saying.’ She shook and consoled the girl alternately.

  All that Zainab could ascertain was that young Murtaza Ali, her father’s personal secretary, was standing at the far end of the lawn in front of Baitar House desperately trying to dissuade the police from carrying out their orders. The maidservant was particularly terrified because the group of policemen was headed by a Sikh officer.

  ‘Munni, listen,’ said Zainab. ‘I want to talk to Murtaza.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Now go and tell Ghulam Rusool or some other manservant to tell Murtaza Ali that I want to talk to him immediately.’

  Her aunts stared at her, appalled.

  ‘And, yes, take this note to Rusool to give to the Inspector or whoever it is who is in charge of the police. Make sure that it gets to him.’

  Zainab wrote a short note in English as follows:

  Dear Inspector Sahib,

  My father, the Nawab of Baitar, is not at home, and since no legitimate action should be taken without intimating him first, I must ask you not to proceed further in this matter. I would like to speak to Mr Murtaza Ali, my father’s personal secretary, immediately, and request you to make him available. I would also ask you to note that this is the hour of evening prayer, and that any incursion into our ancestral house at a time when the occupants are at prayer will be deeply injurious to all people of good faith.

  Sincerely,

  Zainab Khan

  Munni took the note and left the room, still snivelling but no longer panic-stricken. Zainab avoided her aunts’ glances, and told the other girl, who had calmed down a little as well, to make sure that Hassan and Abbas had not been woken up by the commotion.

  5.13

  When the Deputy Superintendent of Police who was in charge of the contingent that had come to take over Baitar House read the note, he flushed red, shrugged his shoulders, had a few words with the Nawab Sahib’s private secretary, and—quickly glancing at his watch—said:

  ‘All right, then, half an hour.’

  His duty was clear and there was no getting around it, but he believed in firmness rather than brutality, and half an hour’s delay was acceptable.

  Zainab had got the two young maidservants to open the doorway that led from the zenana to the mardana, and to stretch a sheet across it. Then, despite the unbelieving ‘toba’s’ and other pious exclamations of her aunts, she told Munni to tell a manservant to tell Murtaza Ali to stand on the other side of it. The young man, crimso
n-faced with embarrassment and shame, stood close by the door which he had never imagined he would ever even approach in his lifetime.

  ‘Murtaza Sahib, I must apologize for your embarrassment—and my own,’ said Zainab softly in elegant and unornate Urdu. ‘I know you are a modest man and I understand your qualms. Please forgive me. I too feel I have been driven to this recourse. But this is an emergency, and I know that it will not be taken amiss.’

  She unconsciously used the first person plural rather than the singular that she was used to. Both were colloquially acceptable, but since the plural was invariant with respect to gender, it defused to some small extent the tension across the geographical line that lay between the mardana and zenana quarters, the breach of which had so shocked her aunts. Besides, there was implicit in the plural a mild sense of command, and this helped set a tone that enabled the exchange not merely of embarrassment—which was unavoidable—but of information as well.

  In equally cultured but slightly ornate Urdu young Murtaza Ali replied: ‘There is nothing to forgive, believe me, Begum Sahiba. I am only sorry that I was fated to be the messenger of such news.’

  ‘Then let me ask you to tell me as briefly as you can what has happened. What are the police doing here in my father’s house? And is it true that they wish to take over this house? On what grounds?’

  ‘Begum Sahiba, I don’t know where to begin. They are here, and they intend to take over this house as soon as they can. They were going to enter immediately but the DSP read your note and granted us half an hour’s grace. He has an order from the Custodian of Evacuee Property and the Home Minister to take possession of all parts of the house that are not inhabited, in view of the fact that most of the former residents have now established residence in Pakistan.’