A Suitable Boy, Page 45

  ‘How did your arm feel when you made that last shot?’ he asked.

  ‘It got quite a jolt,’ said Maan. ‘How long do you want me to go on?’

  ‘Oh, till I feel you’ve had enough,’ said Firoz. ‘It’s quite encouraging—you are making all the standard beginner’s mistakes. What you just did was to top the ball. Don’t do that—aim at a point at the bottom of the ball, and it’ll rise very nicely. If you aim at the top, all the strength of the impact will be absorbed by the ground. The ball won’t go far and, besides, you’ll find as you did just now that your arm gets a sharp little shock.’

  ‘I say, Firoz,’ said Maan, ‘how did you and Imtiaz learn Urdu? Wasn’t it very difficult? I’m finding it impossible—all those dots and squiggles.’

  ‘We had an old maulvi who came to the house especially to teach us,’ said Firoz. ‘My mother was very keen that we learn Persian and Arabic as well, but Zainab was the only one who got very far with those.’

  ‘How is Zainab?’ asked Maan. He reflected that though he had been a favourite of hers in childhood, he had not seen her for many years now—ever since she had disappeared into the world of purdah. She was six years older than him and he had adored her. In fact she had once saved his life in a swimming accident when he was six. I doubt I’ll ever see her again, he thought to himself. How awful—and how strange.

  ‘Don’t use force, use strength—’ said Firoz. ‘Or hasn’t your instructress taught you that?’

  Maan aimed a gentle swipe at Firoz with his stick.

  By now there were only about ten minutes of daylight left, and Firoz could see that Maan was not happy sitting on a merely wooden horse. ‘Well, one last shot,’ he said.

  Maan pointed at the ball, made a light half-swing, and with one smooth, full, circular motion of his arm and wrist, hit the ball squarely in the centre. Pokk! The ball made a wonderful wooden sound, and flew up in a fine low parabola, passing over the net at the top of the pit.

  Both Firoz and Maan were astonished.

  ‘Good shot!’ said Maan, very pleased with himself.

  ‘Yes,’ said Firoz. ‘Good shot. Beginner’s luck. Tomorrow we’ll see if you can do that consistently. But now I’m going to get you to ride a real polo pony for a few minutes, and see if you can control the reins with the left hand alone.’

  ‘Perhaps tomorrow,’ said Maan. His shoulders were stiff and his back felt twisted, and he had had more than enough of polo. ‘How about a ride instead?’

  ‘I can see that, like your Urdu teacher, I’ll have to teach you discipline before I teach you your subject,’ said Firoz. ‘Riding with one hand isn’t hard at all. It’s no more difficult than learning riding in the first place—or learning your alif-be-pe-te. If you try it now, you’ll be in a better position tomorrow.’

  ‘But I’m not very keen to try it today,’ protested Maan. ‘It’s dark anyway, and I won’t enjoy myself. Oh, all right, whatever you say, Firoz. You’re the boss.’

  He dismounted and put his arm around his friend’s shoulder, and they walked towards the stables.

  ‘The trouble with my Urdu teacher,’ continued Maan, apropos of nothing immediate, ‘is that he only wants to teach me the finer points of calligraphy and pronunciation, and I only want to learn how to read love poetry.’

  ‘That’s the trouble with the teacher, is it?’ asked Firoz, holding his friend’s polo stick to prevent retaliation. He was feeling cheerful again. Maan’s company almost invariably did that to him.

  ‘Well, don’t you think I should have a say in the matter?’ asked Maan.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Firoz. ‘If I thought you knew what was good for you.’

  6.10

  After he got home, Firoz decided to have a word with his father. He was far less annoyed than he had been immediately after his exchange with Murtaza Ali, but just as puzzled as before. He had a suspicion that his father’s private secretary was misinterpreting, or at least exaggerating, his father’s words. What could his father have meant by issuing such a curious instruction? Did it apply to Imtiaz as well? If so, why was his father being so protective of them? What did he think his sons would be likely to go and do? Perhaps, Firoz felt, he should reassure him.

  When he did not find his father in his room, he assumed that he had gone into the zenana to talk to Zainab, and decided not to follow him. It was just as well that he did not do so, because the Nawab Sahib was talking to her about a matter so personal that the presence of anyone else, even a beloved brother, would have put an abrupt end to the conversation.

  Zainab, who had shown such courage when Baitar House was under siege by the police, was now sitting near her father and sobbing quietly with misery. The Nawab Sahib had his arm around her and there was an expression of great bitterness on his face.

  ‘Yes,’ he was saying softly, ‘I have heard rumours that he goes out. But one should not take everything everyone says as true.’

  Zainab said nothing for a while, then, covering her face with her hands, she said: ‘Abba-jaan, I know it is true.’

  The Nawab Sahib stroked her hair gently, thinking back to the days when Zainab was four years old and would come and sit on his lap whenever something troubled her. It was unbearably bitter to him that his son-in-law had, by his infidelities, injured her so deeply. He looked back at his own marriage, at the practical and gentle woman whom for many years he had hardly known, and who, late in their marriage and long after the birth of their three children, had entirely won his heart. All he said to Zainab was:

  ‘Be patient like your mother. He will come around one day.’

  Zainab did not look up, but she wondered that her father had invoked her mother’s memory. After a while, her father added, almost as if he were speaking to himself:

  ‘I came to realize her worth very late in life. God rest her soul.’

  For many years now, the Nawab Sahib had visited his wife’s grave as often as possible to read the fatiha over it. And indeed the old Begum Sahiba had been a most remarkable woman. She had put up with what she knew of the Nawab’s own unsettled youth, had run much of the estate efficiently from behind the walls of her seclusion, had endured his later phases of piety (not as excessive, fortunately, as that of his younger brother), and had brought up her children and helped bring up her nephews and nieces with discipline and culture. Her influence on the zenana had been both diffuse and powerful. She had read; and, despite that, she had thought.

  In fact, it was probably the books that she lent her sister-in-law Abida that had first planted a few scattered seeds of rebellion in that restless, chafing heart. Though Zainab’s mother had no thoughts of leaving the zenana herself, it was only her presence that had made it bearable for Abida. When she died, Abida compelled her husband—and his elder brother the Nawab Sahib—by reason, cajolery, and threats of suicide (which she fully intended to carry out, and which they could see she did) to let her escape from what had become to her an intolerable bondage. Abida, the firebrand of the legislature, had little respect for the Nawab Sahib, whom she saw as weak and feckless, and who (again, as she saw it) had killed all desire in his wife ever to emerge from purdah. But she had great affection for his children: for Zainab, because her temperament was like her mother’s; for Imtiaz, because his laughter and many of his expressions resembled hers; and for Firoz, whose long head and clear and handsome looks bore the imprint of his mother’s face.

  Hassan and Abbas were now brought in by the maidservant and Zainab kissed them a tearful goodnight.

  Hassan, looking slightly sullen, said to his mother: ‘Who’s been making you cry, Ammi-jaan?’

  His mother, smiling, hugged him to her and said, ‘No one, sweetheart. No one.’

  Hassan then demanded from his grandfather the ghost story that he had promised to tell them some nights earlier. The Nawab Sahib complied. As he was narrating his exciting and fairly bloodthirsty tale to the evident delight of the two boys, even the three-year-old, he reflected over the many ghost stories attach
ed to this very house that he had been told in childhood by his own servants and family. The house and all its memories had been threatened with dissolution just a few nights ago. No one had been able to prevent the attack and it was a mere matter of grace or chance or fate that it had been saved. We are each of us alone, thought the Nawab Sahib; blessedly, we rarely realize this.

  His old friend Mahesh Kapoor came to his mind and it struck him that in times of trouble it sometimes happened that even those who wanted to help were unable to. They might be tied down themselves for one reason or another; or else circumstances of expediency or some greater need could have kept them less involuntarily away.

  6.11

  Mahesh Kapoor too had been thinking of his old friend, and with a sense of guilt. He had not received the emergency message from Baitar House on the night that L.N. Agarwal had sent the police to take possession of it. The peon whom Mrs Mahesh Kapoor had sent to find him had not been able to do so.

  Unlike rural land (now threatened by the prospect of the abolition of zamindari), urban land and buildings were under no threat of appropriation at all—except if they fell into the hands of the Custodian of Evacuee Property. Mahesh Kapoor had not thought it at all likely that Baitar House, one of the great houses of Brahmpur—indeed, one of the landmarks of the city—could be at risk. The Nawab Sahib continued to live there, his sister-in-law Begum Abida Khan was a powerful voice in the Assembly, and the grounds and gardens in the front of the house were well taken care of, even if many—or most—of the rooms inside were now empty and unused. He regretted that he had been too preoccupied to advise his friend to provide each room with at least the semblance of occupancy. And he felt very bad that he had not been able to intercede with the Chief Minister in order to help on the night of the crisis.

  As it had turned out, Zainab’s intercession had achieved all that Mahesh Kapoor could have hoped to. S.S. Sharma’s heart had been touched, and his indignation against the Home Minister had been unfeigned.

  The letter that Zainab had written to him had mentioned a circumstance that the Nawab Sahib had told her about some years previously; it had stuck in her memory. S.S. Sharma—the ex-Premier of the Protected Provinces (as the Chief Minister of Purva Pradesh was called before Independence)—had been held virtually incommunicado in a British prison during the Quit India Movement of 1942, and could do as little for his family as they could for him. At this time the Nawab Sahib’s father had come to know that Sharma’s wife was ill and had come to her help. It was a simple matter of a doctor, medicines and a visit or two, but in those days not many, whether they believed in British rule or not, wished to be seen associating with the families of subversives. Sharma had in fact been Premier when the P.P. Land Tenancy Act of 1938 had been passed—an act that the Nawab Sahib’s father had considered, correctly, to be the thin end of the wedge of more far-reaching land reform. Nonetheless, simple humanity and even a sense of admiration for his enemy had inspired this crucial assistance. Sharma had been deeply grateful for the kindness that his family had received in their hour of need, and when Hassan, the six-year-old great-grandchild of the man who had helped him then, had come to him with a letter requesting his help and protection, he had been very moved.

  Mahesh Kapoor knew nothing of these circumstances, for neither party had wanted them known, and he had been astonished to hear of the Chief Minister’s swift and unambiguous response. It made him feel even more strongly how ineffectual he himself had been. And when, after the passage of the Zamindari Bill in the Assembly, he had caught the Nawab Sahib’s eye, something had held him back from going up to his friend—in order to commiserate, explain and apologize. Was it shame about his inaction—or simply the obvious immediate discomfort at the fact that the bill that he had just successfully steered through the House would, though there was no animus in it, injure the Nawab Sahib’s interests as surely as the police action of the Home Minister?

  Now still more time had passed, and the matter continued to prey on his mind. I must visit Baitar House this evening, said Mahesh Kapoor to himself. I cannot keep putting it off.

  6.12

  But meanwhile, this morning, there was work that needed to be done. A large number of people both from his constituency in Old Brahmpur and from elsewhere had gathered on the verandahs of Prem Nivas. Some of them were even milling around in the courtyard and wandering out into the garden. Mahesh Kapoor’s personal secretary and personal assistants were doing what they could to control the crowd and regulate the flow of visitors into the small office that the Minister of Revenue maintained at home.

  Mahesh Kapoor sat at a table in the corner of the office. The two narrow benches that ran along the walls were occupied by a variety of people: farmers, traders, minor politicians, suppliants of one kind or another. An old man, a teacher, sat on the chair that faced Mahesh Kapoor across the table. He was younger, but looked older than the Minister. He had been worn out by a lifetime of care. He was an old freedom fighter, who had spent many years in jail under the British, and had seen his family reduced to poverty. He had obtained a B.A. in 1921, and with a qualification like that in those days he might well have gone on to retire at the very highest levels of Government. But in the later twenties he had left everything to follow Gandhiji, and this idealistic impulse had cost him dearly. When he was in jail, his wife, with no one to support her, had died of tuberculosis, and his children, reduced to eating other people’s scraps, had suffered nearly fatal starvation. With the coming of Independence he had hoped that his sacrifice would result in an order of things closer to the ideals he had fought for, but he had been bitterly disappointed. He saw the corruption that had begun to eat into the rationing system and the system of government contracts with a rapacity that surpassed anything he had known under the British. The police too had become more overt in their extortions. What was worse was that the local politicians, the members of the local Congress Committees, were often hand in glove with the corrupt petty officials. But when the old man had gone to the Chief Minister, S.S. Sharma, on behalf of the people of his neighbourhood, to ask him to take action against specific politicians, that great figure had merely smiled tiredly and said to him:

  ‘Masterji, your work, that of the teacher, is a sacred occupation. Politics is like the coal trade. How can you blame people if their hands and faces become a little black?’

  The old man was now talking to Mahesh Kapoor, trying to persuade him that the Congress Party had become as shamefully vested in its interests and as shamefully oppressive in its rule as the British had ever been.

  ‘What you, of all people, are doing in this party, Kapoor Sahib, I don’t know,’ he said in Hindi that had more of an Allahabad than a Brahmpur accent. ‘You should have left it long ago.’

  The old man knew that everyone in the room could hear what he was saying but he did not care. Mahesh Kapoor looked at him directly and said:

  ‘Masterji, the times of Gandhiji have gone. I have seen him at his zenith, and I have seen him lose his hold so completely that he was not able to prevent the Partition of this country. He, however, was wise enough to see that his power and his inspiration were not absolute. He once said that it was not he but the situation that held the magic.’

  The old man said nothing for a few seconds. Then, his mouth working slightly at the edges, he said: ‘Minister Sahib, what are you saying to me?’

  The change in his mode of address was not lost on Mahesh Kapoor, and he felt slightly ashamed at his own evasion. ‘Masterji,’ he went on, ‘I may have suffered in the old days, but I have not suffered as you have. It is not that I am not disenchanted with what I see around me. I just fear that I will be of less use outside the party than in it.’

  The old man, half to himself, said: ‘Gandhiji was right when he foresaw what would happen if the Congress Party continued after Independence as the party of Government. That is why he said that it should be disbanded and its members should dedicate themselves to social work.’

  Mahes
h Kapoor did not mince his words in response. He simply said: ‘If all of us had done that, there would have been anarchy in the country. It was the duty of those of us who had had some experience in the provincial governments in the late thirties to at least keep the administration going. You are right when you describe what is going on all around us. But if people like you, Masterji, and I were to wash our hands of this coal trade, you can imagine what kind of people would take over. Previously politics was not profitable. You languished in jail, your children starved. Now politics is profitable, and naturally the kind of people who are interested in making money are keen to join the game. If we move out, they move in. It is as simple as that. Look at all these people milling around,’ he went on in a voice that did not carry beyond the old man’s ears, embracing in a broad gesture of his hands the room, the verandahs and the lawn, ‘I can’t tell you how many of them are begging me to get them Congress Party tickets for the coming elections. And I know as well as you do that in the times of the British, they would have run a hundred miles before accepting such a mark of favour!’

  ‘I was not suggesting that you move out of politics, Kapoor Sahib,’ said the old man; ‘just that you help to form another party. Everyone knows that Pandit Nehru often feels that Congress is not the right place for him. Everyone knows how unhappy he is about Tandonji becoming the Congress President through questionable means. Everyone knows that Panditji has almost lost his grip on his own party. Everyone knows that he respects you, and I believe that it is your duty to go to Delhi and help persuade him to leave. With Pandit Nehru and the less self-satisfied parts of Congress splitting off, the new party they form will have a good chance of winning the next elections. I believe that; indeed, if I did not believe that I would be in despair.’