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A Suitable Boy, Page 70

Vikram Seth


  ‘Not before a month is over,’ countered Mahesh Kapoor. He was relieved that Maan, despite his chafing, was not going to defy him by remaining in Brahmpur, but annoyed that he himself would have to ‘deal with Banaras’ in both senses: with the parents of Maan’s fiancée, and with Maan’s assistant in the cloth business who—and he thanked heaven for medium-sized mercies—was tolerably competent. He had enough on his plate, and Maan was a drain on his time and patience.

  The platform was as crowded as ever with passengers and their friends and families and servants, hawkers, railway staff, coolies, vagrants and beggars. Babies wailed and whistles blew. Stray dogs slunk about with punished eyes, monkeys bared aggressive teeth. There was a pervasive railway platform stench. It was a hot day, and the fans were not working in the bogeys. The train sat at the narrow-gauge platform for half an hour after it was due to depart. Maan was stifled by the heat in the second-class compartment, but did not complain. He kept looking up glumly towards his luggage: a deep-blue leather suitcase and several smaller bags.

  Rasheed, who, Maan decided, looked rather wolf-like in feature, had loped off to talk to some boys in another carriage. They were students at the Brahmpur madrasa who were going back to their districts for a few days.

  Maan began to feel very sleepy. The fans were still not working, and the train showed no sign of starting. He touched the upper part of his ear, where he had placed a small piece of cotton wool containing a drop of Saeeda Bai’s rose perfume, and passed his hand slowly across his face. It was wet with perspiration.

  To minimize the uncomfortable sensation of sweat trickling down his face, Maan tried to remain as still as he could. The man opposite him was fanning himself with a Hindi newspaper.

  The train at last began to move. It passed through the city for a while, then moved into the open countryside. Villages and fields went by, some parched and dusty and fallow, others yellow with wheat or green with other crops. The fans began to whirr and everyone looked relieved.

  In some of the fields along the railway track, the wheat harvest was going on. In others it had just taken place, and the dry stubble was glinting in the sun.

  Every fifteen minutes or so the train stopped at a small railway station, sometimes in the middle of nowhere, sometimes in a village. Very occasionally it would halt in a small town, the headquarters of a subdivision of the district they were travelling through. A mosque or a temple, a few neem or pipal or banyan trees, a boy driving goats along a dusty dirt track, the sudden turquoise flash of a kingfisher—Maan vaguely registered these. After a while he closed his eyes again, and was overwhelmed by his feeling of separation from the one person whose company he desired. He wanted to see nothing and hear nothing, just to recall the sights and sounds of the house in Pasand Bagh: the delicious perfumes of Saeeda Bai’s room, the evening cool, the sound of her voice, the pressure of her hand on his. He began to think even of her parakeet and her watchman with affection.

  But even when he closed his eyes to cut out the dry brightness of the afternoon light and the monotonous fields stretching out to the huge visible quadrant of the dusty sky, the sounds of the train bore in on him with amplified volume. The jolting and clicking of the train as it rocked sideways and slightly upwards, the sound of it going over a small bridge or the whooshing of a train rushing past in the opposite direction, the sound of a woman coughing or the crying of a child, even the dropping of a coin or the rustle of a newspaper, all took on an unbearable intensity. He rested his head on his hands, and stayed still.

  ‘Are you all right? Are you feeling all right?’ It was Rasheed who was speaking to him.

  Maan nodded, and opened his eyes.

  He looked at his fellow-passengers, then again at Rasheed. He decided that Rasheed looked too gaunt for someone who was only his own age. He also had a few white hairs.

  Well, thought Maan, if I can begin to go bald at twenty-five, why shouldn’t he begin to go white?

  After a while he asked: ‘How’s the water at your place?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s fine, isn’t it?’ said Maan anxiously. He was beginning to wonder what life would be like in the village.

  ‘Oh yes, we pump it up by hand.’

  ‘Don’t you have any electricity?’

  Rasheed smiled a little sardonically and shook his head.

  Maan was silent. The serious practical implications of his exile were beginning to seep in.

  They had stopped just beyond a small station. The train tanks were being filled with water from above, and, as the engine steamed out, the sound of water dropping on the roof of the compartment reminded Maan of rain. There would be weeks of unbearable heat until the monsoons.

  ‘Flies!’

  It was the man sitting next to Rasheed who had spoken. He looked like a dried-out farmer, about forty years of age. He was rolling some tobacco in his palm with the thumb of his other hand. He rubbed it, then tamped it down, threw off the excess, examined the residue with care, selected out the impurities, took a pinch, licked the inside of his lower lip, and spat out a bit sideways on to the floor.

  ‘Do you speak English?’ he said after a while in the local dialect of Hindi. He had noticed Maan’s luggage tag.

  ‘Yes,’ said Maan.

  ‘Without English you can’t do anything,’ said the farmer sagely.

  Maan wondered what possible use English could be to the farmer.

  ‘What use is English?’ said Maan.

  ‘People love English!’ said the farmer, with a strange sort of deep-voiced giggle. ‘If you talk in English, you are a king. The more people you can mystify, the more people will respect you.’ He turned back to his tobacco.

  Maan felt a sudden urge to explain himself. As he tried to think of what he should say, he heard the droning of flies getting louder and louder around him. It was too hot to think, and he felt overcome with sleepiness. His head sank on his chest. In a minute he was asleep.

  8.2

  ‘Rudhia Junction. It’s Rudhia Junction.’ Maan woke up to see several passengers getting their luggage out of the train, and several others clambering in. Rudhia, the district town, was the largest town in the district, but not a railway junction in the sense that Brahmpur was, and certainly not in the sense of a great junction like Mughalsarai. Two narrow-gauge lines intersected at Rudhia, that was all. But those who lived there thought that it was the most important centre in Purva Pradesh next to Brahmpur, and the words Rudhia Jn on the signs and on the six white-tiled spittoons at the station added to the dignity of the town as much as did the District Court, the Collectorate and other administrative offices, and the steam power house, which was run on coal.

  The train stopped at Rudhia a full three minutes before panting on through the afternoon. A sign in front of the stationmaster’s office announced: Our Goal: Security, Safety and Punctuality. In fact, the train was already an hour and a half late. This was nothing unusual, and most of the passengers, if inconvenienced, did not make things worse by distressing themselves. One and a half hours was nothing.

  The train turned a bend, and smoke began to enter the compartment in great gusts. The farmer started struggling with the windows, and Maan and Rasheed gave him a hand.

  A large, red-leafed tree in a field caught Maan’s attention. ‘What’s that tree?’ he asked, pointing out of the window. ‘It looks a bit like a mango with its red leaves, but it isn’t a mango.’

  ‘That’s a mahua,’ said the farmer, before Rasheed could reply. He looked amused, as if he’d had to explain what a cat was.

  ‘Very handsome tree,’ said Maan.

  ‘Oh yes. Useful too,’ said the farmer.

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘It gets you drunk,’ said the farmer with a brown-toothed smile.

  ‘Really?’ said Maan, interested. ‘Is it the sap?’

  But the farmer, delighted with his ignorance, started giggling in his strange, deep way, and volunteered nothing else beyond the word: ‘Sap!


  Rasheed leaned forward towards Maan intently and, tapping the steel trunk that rested between them, said:

  ‘It’s the flowers. They are very light and fragrant. They would have fallen about a month ago. If you dry them, they last for a year. Ferment them, and they’ll give you a liquor.’ He sounded slightly disapproving.

  ‘Oh yes?’ said Maan, livening up.

  But Rasheed continued: ‘Cook them, and they’ll act as a vegetable. Boil them with milk, and they’ll make the milk red and the person who drinks it strong. Mix them with the flour you use to make your rotis with in winter, and you won’t feel the cold.’

  Maan was impressed.

  ‘Feed them to your cattle,’ added the farmer. ‘It’ll double their energy.’

  Maan looked towards Rasheed for verification, not trusting anything that the mocking farmer said.

  ‘Yes, that’s true,’ said Rasheed.

  ‘What a wonderful tree!’ said Maan, delighted. He suddenly became less torpid, and began asking lots of questions. The countryside, which so far had looked entirely monotonous to him, became interesting.

  They had just crossed a broad, brown river and entered a jungle. Maan immediately wanted to know if there was any game to be had there, and was pleased to hear that there was fox, jackal, nilgai, wild boar and even the occasional bear. And in the ravines and rocky outcrops not far from here there were wolves, who were sometimes a menace to the local population.

  ‘Actually,’ said Rasheed, ‘this jungle is part of the Baitar Estate.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Maan, delighted. Although he and Pran had been friends with Firoz and Imtiaz from childhood, they had only known them in Brahmpur, and had never visited Baitar Fort or the estate.

  ‘But this is wonderful!’ said Maan. ‘I know the family well. We must go hunting together.’

  Rasheed smiled rather ruefully and said nothing. Perhaps, thought Maan, he was thinking that at this rate he would learn very little Urdu during his stay in the village. But what does that matter? he felt like saying. Instead he said:

  ‘They must have horses at the fort.’

  ‘They do,’ said the farmer, with sudden enthusiasm and new respect. ‘Many horses. A whole stable. And two jeeps also. And for Moharram they have a tremendous procession and lots of ceremonies. You really know the Nawab Sahib?’

  ‘Well, it’s his sons I know,’ said Maan.

  Rasheed, who was rather tired with the farmer, said quietly: ‘This is Mahesh Kapoor’s son.’

  The farmer’s mouth dropped open. This statement was so improbable as to be almost certainly true. But what was he—the son of the great Minister—doing, travelling for all the world like an ordinary citizen in a second-class carriage, and wearing a crumpled kurta-pyjama?

  ‘And I have been joking with you,’ he said, shocked by his own temerity.

  Maan, whose discomfort he had enjoyed, now enjoyed his discomfort.

  ‘I won’t tell my father,’ he said.

  ‘He’ll take my land away if he hears of it,’ said the farmer—who either believed in the exaggerated powers of the Minister of Revenue, or else thought it politic to exaggerate his fear.

  ‘He’ll do nothing of the kind,’ said Maan. Thinking of his father he felt a sudden spasm of outrage.

  ‘When zamindari is abolished, all these lands will be taken by him,’ said the farmer. ‘Even the Nawab Sahib’s estates. What can a small landowner like me do?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Maan. ‘Don’t tell me your name. Then you’ll be safe.’

  The farmer seemed amused by this idea, and repeated it to himself a couple of times.

  Suddenly the train started jolting, as if the brake had been applied, and in a short while came to a halt in open countryside.

  ‘This always happens,’ said Rasheed with a flicker of irritation.

  ‘What does?’ said Maan.

  ‘These schoolboys pulling the chain and stopping the train when it gets close to their village. It’s just the boys of this particular locality. By the time the guards get to their carriage, they’ve disappeared into the sugarcane fields.’

  ‘Can’t they do something about it?’ said Maan.

  ‘There’s no way of controlling them. Either they should simply halt the train here and admit defeat. Or else they should catch one of them somehow, and make an example of him.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Oh, beat him up soundly,’ said Rasheed calmly. ‘And lock him up for a few days.’

  ‘But that’s very harsh,’ said Maan, trying to imagine what it would be like to be locked up for a few days in a cell.

  ‘It’s quite effective. We were equally unruly at that age,’ continued Rasheed with a brief smile. ‘My father beat me up regularly. Once my grandfather—whom you will meet—beat my brother to within an inch of his life—and that was a turning point in his life. He became a wrestler!’

  ‘Your grandfather beat him, not your father?’ said Maan.

  ‘My grandfather. He was the one we were most terrified of,’ said Rasheed.

  ‘Still?’

  ‘Less so now. He’s over seventy. But well into his sixties he was the terror of ten villages. Haven’t I mentioned him to you before?’

  ‘You mean he terrorized them?’ said Maan, trying to picture this strange patriarch.

  ‘I mean, they all respected him, and came to him to solve their disputes. He’s a landowner, a medium-sized landowner, so he has some standing in our community. He is a religious and just man, so people look up to him. And he himself was a wrestler in his youth, so they’re afraid of his arm. He used it to beat up any ruffian he could lay his hands on.’

  ‘I suppose I shouldn’t gamble or drink while I’m in your village,’ said Maan cheerfully.

  Rasheed looked very serious. ‘No, really, Kapoor Sahib,’ he said, quite formally, Maan thought. ‘You are my guest, and my family does not know you are coming. For the month you are with me, your behaviour will reflect on me.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ Maan said impulsively, ‘I won’t do anything that will cause you any trouble. I promise.’

  Rasheed looked relieved, and Maan realized the rashness of his promise. He had never so far in his life succeeded in behaving himself for a whole month.

  8.3

  At the small subdivisional town of Salimpur, they dismounted, loaded their bags on the flimsy back of a cycle rickshaw, and got unbalancedly on.

  The rickshaw jolted and swerved along the pitted road that led from Salimpur to Rasheed’s native village of Debaria. It was evening, and everywhere birds were chattering in the trees. The neem trees rustled in the warm evening breeze. Underneath a small stand of straight, broad-leafed teak trees a donkey, two of its legs tied together, was hobbling painfully forward. On every culvert sat a crowd of children, who shouted at the rickshaw as it went along. There was very little traffic other than the many bullock-carts making their way village-wards from the harvest or a few boys driving cattle down the road.

  Since Maan had changed into an orange kurta before getting off the train—the one he had been wearing earlier was drenched with sweat—he presented a colourful spectacle, even in the waning light. As for Rasheed, several people on foot or on bullock-carts greeted him along the way.

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Very well. And you? Everything all right?’

  ‘Everything all right.’

  ‘How is the harvest?’

  ‘Well—not too good. Back from Brahmpur?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How long will you be staying?’

  ‘A month.’

  Throughout the conversation, they would stare not at Rasheed but at Maan, looking him up and down.

  The sunset was pink, smoky, and still. The fields stretched out to the dark horizon on either side. There was not a cloud in the sky. Maan began to think once again of Saeeda Bai, and he felt in his bones that it would be impossible for him to live for a whole month without her.

 
What was he doing anyway in this doltish place so far away from all civilization—among suspicious peasants, illiterate and unelectrified, who knew nothing better than to stare at strangers?

  There was a sudden lurch, and Maan, Rasheed, and their luggage were nearly pitched out of the rickshaw.

  ‘What did you do that for?’ said Rasheed sharply to the rickshaw-wallah.

  ‘Aré, bhai, there was a hole in the road. I’m not a panther that I can see in the dark,’ said the rickshaw-wallah abruptly.

  After a while they turned off the road on to an even more inadequate mud track that led to the village, a mile away. This track would clearly become impassable in the rainy season, and the village would virtually be cut off from the world. At the moment it was all the rickshaw-wallah could do to keep his balance. After a while he gave up and asked his passengers to get off.

  ‘I should charge you three rupees for this, not two,’ he said.

  ‘One rupee eight annas,’ was Rasheed’s quiet reply. ‘Now get on with it.’

  It was completely dark by the time they got to Rasheed’s house—or, as he usually called it, his father’s house. It appeared to be a moderately large single-storey building made of whitewashed brick. A kerosene lamp was burning on the roof. Rasheed’s father was up on the roof, and called out when he heard the sound of the rickshaw—which was bumping along the village lane, guided by the light of Maan’s torch.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘It’s Rasheed, Abba-jaan.’

  ‘Good. We were expecting you.’

  ‘Is everything well here?’

  ‘As well as can be. The harvest is not much good. I’m coming down. Is that someone with you?’

  It struck Maan that the voice from the roof sounded like that of a toothless man, more like the voice that he imagined Rasheed’s grandfather, not his father, would have.

  By the time he came downstairs the man had two kerosene lamps in his hands and a couple of paans in his mouth. He greeted his son with very mild affection. Then the three of them sat on a charpoy out in front of the house under a great neem tree.