A Suitable Boy, Page 42

After a while they got up and went to the AIR staff canteen. Ishaq Khan’s friends, like his brother-in-law, were staff artists, with fixed hours and assured salaries. Ishaq Khan, who had only accompanied other musicians a few times on the air, fell into the category of ‘casual artist’.

  The small canteen was crowded with musicians, writers of programmes, administrators, and waiters. A couple of peons lounged against the wall. The entire scene was messy, noisy and cosy. The canteen was famous for its strong tea and delicious samosas. A board facing the entrance proclaimed that no credit would be given; but as the musicians were perennially short of cash, it always was.

  Every table except one was crowded. Ustad Majeed Khan sat alone at the head of the table by the far wall, musing and stirring his tea. Perhaps out of deference to him, because he was considered something better than even an A-grade artist, no one presumed to sit near him. For all the apparent camaraderie and democracy of the canteen, there were distinctions. B-grade artists for instance would not normally sit with those of superior classifications such as B-plus or A—unless, of course, they happened to be their disciples—and would usually defer to them even in speech.

  Ishaq Khan looked around the room and, seeing five empty chairs ranged down the oblong length of Ustad Majeed Khan’s table, moved towards it. His two friends followed a little hesitantly.

  As they approached, a few people from another table got up, perhaps because they were performing next on the air. But Ishaq Khan chose to ignore this, and walked up to Ustad Majeed Khan’s table. ‘May we?’ he asked politely. As the great musician was lost in some other world, Ishaq and his friends sat down at the three chairs at the opposite end. There were still two empty chairs, one on either side of Majeed Khan. He did not seem to register the presence of the new arrivals, and was now drinking his tea with both hands on the cup, though the weather was warm.

  Ishaq sat at the other end facing Majeed Khan, and looked at that noble and arrogant face, softened as it appeared to be by some transient memory or thought rather than by the permanent impress of late middle age.

  So profound had the effect of his brief performance of Raag Todi been on Ishaq that he wanted desperately to convey his appreciation. Ustad Majeed Khan was not a tall man, but seated either on the stage in his long black achkan—so tightly buttoned at the neck that one would have thought it would constrict his voice—or even at a table drinking tea, he conveyed, through his upright, rigid stance, a commanding presence; indeed, even an illusion of height. At the moment he seemed almost unapproachable.

  If only he would say something to me, thought Ishaq, I would tell him what I felt about his performance. He must know we are sitting here. And he used to know my father. There were many things that the younger man did not like about the elder, but the music he and his friends had just listened to placed them in their trivial perspective.

  They ordered their tea. The service in the canteen, despite the fact that it was part of a government organization, was prompt. The three friends began to talk among themselves. Ustad Majeed Khan continued to sip his tea in silence and abstraction.

  Ishaq was quite popular in spite of his slightly sarcastic nature, and had a number of good friends. He was always willing to take the errands and burdens of others upon himself. After his father’s death he and his sister had had to support their three young brothers. This was one reason why it was important that his sister’s family move from Lucknow to Brahmpur.

  One of Ishaq’s two friends, a tabla player, now made the suggestion that Ishaq’s brother-in-law change places with another sarangi player, Rafiq, who was keen to move to Lucknow.

  ‘But Rafiq is a B-plus artist. What’s your brother-in-law’s grade?’ asked Ishaq’s other friend.

  ‘B.’

  ‘The Station Director won’t want to lose a B-plus for a B. Still, you can try.’

  Ishaq picked up his cup, wincing slightly as he did so, and sipped his tea.

  ‘Unless he can upgrade himself,’ continued his friend. ‘I agree, it’s a silly system, to grade someone in Delhi on the basis of a single tape of a performance, but that’s the system we have.’

  ‘Well,’ said Ishaq, remembering his father who, in the last years of his life, had made it to A, ‘it’s not a bad system. It’s impartial—and ensures a certain level of competence.’

  ‘Competence!’ It was Ustad Majeed Khan speaking. The three friends looked at him in amazement. The word was spoken with a contempt that seemed to come from the deepest level of his being. ‘Mere pleasing competence is not worth having.’

  Ishaq looked at Ustad Majeed Khan, deeply disquieted. The memory of his father made him bold enough to speak.

  ‘Khan Sahib, for someone like you, competence is not even a question. But for the rest of us. . . .’ His voice trailed off.

  Ustad Majeed Khan, displeased at being even mildly contradicted, sat tight-lipped and silent. He seemed to be collecting his thoughts. After a while he spoke.

  ‘You should not have a problem,’ he said. ‘For a sarangi-wallah no great musicianship is required. You don’t need to be a master of a style. Whatever style the soloist has, you simply follow it. In musical terms it’s actually a distraction.’ He continued in an indifferent voice: ‘If you want my help I’ll speak to the Station Director. He knows I’m impartial—I don’t need or use sarangi-wallahs. Rafiq or your sister’s husband—it hardly matters who is where.’

  Ishaq’s face had gone white. Without thinking of what he was doing or where he was, he looked straight at Majeed Khan and said in a bitter and cutting voice:

  ‘I have no objection to being called a mere sarangi-wallah rather than a sarangiya by a great man. I consider myself blessed that he has deigned to notice me. But these are matters about which Khan Sahib has personal knowledge. Perhaps he can elaborate on the uselessness of the instrument.’

  It was no secret that Ustad Majeed Khan himself came from a family of hereditary sarangi players. His artistic strivings as a vocalist were bound up painfully with another endeavour: the attempt to dissociate himself from the demeaning sarangi tradition and its historical connection with courtesans and prostitutes—and to associate himself and his son and daughter with the so-called ‘kalawant’ families of higher-caste musicians.

  But the taint of the sarangi was too strong, and no kalawant family wanted to marry into Majeed Khan’s. This was one of the searing disappointments of his life. Another was that his music would end with himself, for he had never found a disciple whom he considered worthy of his art. His own son had the voice and musicianship of a frog. As for his daughter, she was musical all right, but the last thing that Ustad Majeed Khan wanted for her was that she should develop her voice and become a singer.

  Ustad Majeed Khan cleared his throat but said nothing.

  The thought of the great artist’s treason, the contempt with which Majeed Khan, despite his own undoubted gifts, had treated the tradition that had given him birth continued to enrage Ishaq.

  ‘Why does Khan Sahib not favour us with a response?’ he went on, oblivious to his friends’ attempts to restrain him. ‘There are subjects, no matter how distanced he is today, on which Khan Sahib can illuminate our understanding. Who else has the background? We have heard of Khan Sahib’s illustrious father and grandfather.’

  ‘Ishaq, I knew your father, and I knew your grandfather. They were men who understood the meaning of respect and discrimination.’

  ‘They looked at the worn grooves on their fingernails without feeling dishonoured,’ retorted Ishaq.

  The people at the neighbouring tables had stopped talking, and were listening to the exchange between the younger and the older man. That Ishaq, baited himself, was now doing the baiting, attempting to hurt and humiliate Ustad Majeed Khan, was painful and obvious. The scene was horrible, but everyone seemed to be frozen into immobility.

  Ustad Majeed Khan said slowly and passionlessly: ‘But they, believe me, would have felt dishonoured if they had been alive to see their so
n flirting with the sister of an employer, whose body his bow helps sell.’

  He looked at his watch and got up. He had another performance in ten minutes. Almost to himself and with the utmost simplicity and sincerity, he said, ‘Music is not a cheap spectacle—not the entertainment of the brothel. It is like prayer.’

  Before Ishaq could respond he had started walking towards the door. Ishaq got up and almost lunged towards him. He was gripped by an uncontrollable spasm of pain and fury, and his two friends had to force him bodily down into his chair. Other people joined in, for Ishaq was well liked, and had to be prevented from doing further damage.

  ‘Ishaq Bhai, enough’s been said.’

  ‘Listen, Ishaq, one must swallow it—whatever our elders say, however bitter.’

  ‘Don’t ruin yourself. Think of your brothers. If he talks to the Director Sahib. . . .’

  ‘Ishaq Bhai, how many times have I told you to guard your tongue!’

  ‘Listen, you must apologize to him immediately.’

  But Ishaq was almost incoherent:

  ‘Never—never—I’ll never apologize—on my father’s grave—to that—to think, that such a man who insults the memory of his elders and mine—everyone creeps on all fours before him—yes, Khan Sahib, you can have a twenty-five-minute slot—yes, yes, Khan Sahib, you decide which raag you will sing—O God! If Miya Tansen were alive he would have cried to hear him sing his raag today—that God should have given him this gift—’

  ‘Enough, enough, Ishaq. . . .’ said an old sitar player. Ishaq turned towards him with tears of hurt and anger:

  ‘Would you marry your son to his daughter? Or your daughter to his son? Who is he that God is in his pocket?—he talks like a mullah about prayer and devotion—this man who spent half his youth in Tarbuz ka Bazaar—’

  People began to turn away in pity and discomfort from Ishaq. Several of Ishaq’s well-wishers left the canteen to try and pacify the insulted maestro, who was about to agitate the airwaves in his own great agitation.

  ‘Khan Sahib, the boy didn’t know what he was saying.’

  Ustad Majeed Khan, who was almost at the door of the studio, said nothing.

  ‘Khan Sahib, elders have always treated their youngers like children, with tolerance. You must not take what he said seriously. None of it is true.’

  Ustad Majeed Khan looked at the interceder and said: ‘If a dog pisses on my achkan, do I become a tree?’

  The sitar player shook his head and said, ‘I know it was the worst time he could have chosen—when you were about to perform, Ustad Sahib. . . .’

  But Ustad Majeed Khan went on to sing a Hindol of calm and surpassing beauty.

  6.3

  It had been some days since Saeeda Bai had saved Maan from suicide, as he put it. Of course it was extremely unlikely—and his friend Firoz had told him so when he had complained to him of his lovelorn miseries—that that happy-go-lucky young man would have made any attempt even to cut himself while shaving in order to prove his passion for her. But Maan knew that Saeeda Bai, though hard-headed, was—at least to him—tender-hearted; and although he knew she did not believe that he was in any danger from himself if she refused to make love to him, he also knew that she would take it as more than a merely flattering figure of speech. Everything is in the saying, and Maan, while saying that he could not go on in this harsh world without her, had been as soulful as it was possible for him to be. For a while all his past loves vanished from his heart. The dozen or more ‘girls of good family’ from Brahmpur whom he had been in love with and who in general had loved him in return, ceased to exist. Saeeda Bai—for that moment at least—became everything for him.

  And after they had made love, she became more than everything for him. Like that other source of domestic strife, Saeeda Bai too made hungry where most she satisfied. Part of it was simply the delicious skill with which she made love. But even more than that it was her nakhra, the art of pretended hurt or disaffection that she had learned from her mother and other courtesans in the early days in Tarbuz ka Bazaar. Saeeda Bai practised this with such curious restraint that it became infinitely more believable. One tear, one remark that implied—perhaps, only perhaps implied—that something he had said or done had caused her injury—and Maan’s heart would go out to her. No matter what the cost to himself, he would protect her from the cruel, censorious world. For minutes at a time he would lean over her shoulder and kiss her neck, glancing every few moments at her face in the hope of seeing her mood lift. And when it did, and he saw that same bright, sad smile that had so captivated him when she sang at Holi at Prem Nivas, he would be seized by a frenzy of sexual desire. Saeeda Bai seemed to know this, and graced him with a smile only when she herself was in the mood to satisfy him.

  She had framed one of the paintings from the album of Ghalib’s poems that Maan had given her. Although she had, as far as was possible, repaired the page that the Raja of Marh had ripped out of the volume, she had not dared to display that particular illustration for fear of exciting his further fury. What she had framed was ‘A Persian Idyll’, which showed a young woman dressed in pale orange, sitting near an arched doorway on a very pale orange rug, holding in her slender fingers a musical instrument resembling a sitar, and looking out of the archway into a mysterious garden. The woman’s features were sharp and delicate, unlike Saeeda Bai’s very attractive but unclassical, perhaps not even beautiful, face. And the instrument that the woman was holding—unlike Saeeda Bai’s strong and responsive harmonium—was so finely tapered in the stylized illustration that it would have been entirely impossible to play it.

  Maan did not care that the book might be considered damaged by having the painting thus plundered from its pages. He could not have been happier at this sign of Saeeda Bai’s attachment to his gift. He lay in her bedroom and stared at the painting and was filled with a happiness as mysterious as the garden through the archway. Whether glowing with the immediate memory of her embraces or chewing contentedly at the delicate coconut-flavoured paan that she had just offered to him at the end of a small ornamented silver pin, it seemed to him that he himself had been led by her and her music and her affection into a paradisal garden, most insubstantial and yet most real.

  ‘How unimaginable it is,’ said Maan out loud rather dreamily, ‘that our parents also must have—just like us—’

  This remark struck Saeeda Bai as being in somewhat poor taste. She did not at all wish her imagination to be transported to the domestic love-making of Mahesh Kapoor—or anyone else for that matter. She did not know who her own father was: her mother, Mohsina Bai, had claimed not to know. Besides, domesticity and its standard concerns were not objects of fond contemplation for her. She had been accused by Brahmpur gossip of destroying several settled marriages by casting her lurid nets around hapless men. She said a little sharply to Maan:

  ‘It is good to live in a household like I do where one does not have to imagine such things.’

  Maan looked a little chastened. Saeeda Bai, who was quite fond of him by now and knew that he usually blurted out the first thing that came into his head, tried to cheer him up by saying:

  ‘But Dagh Sahib looks distressed. Would he have been happier to have been immaculately conceived?’

  ‘I think so,’ said Maan. ‘I sometimes think I would be happier without a father.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Saeeda Bai, who had clearly not been expecting this.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Maan. ‘I often feel that whatever I do my father looks upon with contempt. When I opened the cloth business in Banaras, Baoji told me it would be a complete failure. Now that I have made a go of it, he is taking the line that I should sit there every day of every month of every year of my life. Why should I?’

  Saeeda Bai did not say anything.

  ‘And why should I marry?’ continued Maan, spreading his arms wide on the bed and touching Saeeda Bai’s cheek with his left hand. ‘Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?’

  ‘Because your father can get me
to sing at your wedding,’ said Saeeda Bai with a smile. ‘And at the birth of your children. And at their mundan ceremony. And at their marriages, of course.’ She was silent for a few seconds. ‘But I won’t be alive to do that,’ she went on. ‘In fact I sometimes wonder what you see in an old woman like me.’

  Maan became very indignant. He raised his voice and said, ‘Why do you say things like that? Do you do it just to get me annoyed? No one ever meant much to me until I met you. That girl in Banaras whom I met twice under heavy escort is less than nothing to me—and everyone thinks I must marry her just because my father and mother say so.’

  Saeeda Bai turned towards him and buried her face in his arm. ‘But you must get married,’ she said. ‘You cannot cause your parents so much pain.’

  ‘I don’t find her at all attractive,’ said Maan angrily.

  ‘That will merely take time,’ advised Saeeda Bai.

  ‘And I won’t be able to visit you after I’m married,’ said Maan.

  ‘Oh?’ said Saeeda Bai in such a way that the question, rather than leading to a reply, implied the closure of the conversation.

  6.4

  After a while they got up and moved to the other room. Saeeda Bai called for the parakeet, of whom she had become fond. Ishaq Khan brought in the cage, and a discussion ensued about when he would learn to speak. Saeeda Bai seemed to think that a couple of months would be sufficient, but Ishaq was doubtful. ‘My grandfather had a parakeet who didn’t speak for a whole year—and then wouldn’t stop talking for the rest of his life,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve never heard anything like that,’ said Saeeda Bai dismissively. ‘Anyway, why are you holding that cage in such a funny way?’

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing really,’ said Ishaq, setting the cage down on a table and rubbing his right wrist. ‘Just a pain in my wrist.’

  In fact it was very painful and had become worse during the previous few weeks.

  ‘You seem to play well enough,’ said Saeeda Bai, not very sympathetically.