A Suitable Boy, Page 91

  Maan was as rapt as if he had been listening to a story by the guppi.

  ‘Was that before the time you ran away to stay with the Bear?’ he prompted.

  ‘Yes,’ said Rasheed, a bit vexed that Maan appeared to know his story so well.

  ‘Anyway, later,’ he continued, ‘I began to understand things. I think it happened at the religious training college I went to. It’s in Banaras, I’m sure you must have heard of it, it’s quite famous, and it has a high academic reputation—though it is a terrible place. Anyway, at first they wouldn’t let me in because of my poor school marks from here; but within a year I had come third in my class of sixty boys. I even left off beating people up! And, because of the conditions we had to live in, I became interested in practical politics, and started organizing the boys to protest against the worst abuses at the college! That’s probably where I got a taste for reform, though I wasn’t a socialist yet. My former associates at school were amazed at me—and probably appalled by the righteous turn I had taken. One of them has become a dacoit. And now when I talk about village improvement and so on, they all think I’m mad. God knows these villages need improvement—and can be improved. But I doubt that God will find time to do it no matter how often people do their namaaz. As for legislation—’ Rasheed got up. ‘Come. It’s getting late, and I have to go for this visit. If I’m not back in Debaria by sunset I’ll have to do my namaaz with the elders of this village—hypocrites to a man.’ Rasheed clearly viewed Sagal as a sink of iniquity.

  ‘All right,’ said Maan, beginning to be curious. ‘I suppose it’s all right for me to tag along.’

  10.14

  When they were not far from the old man’s place, Rasheed told Maan a little about his background:

  ‘He is about sixty years old and comes from a very wealthy family of many brothers. He himself had many children, but they are all dead now except for the two daughters who take care of him alternately. He’s a good man who never did anything wrong in his life—and while his crooked brothers are flourishing with wealth and children, he is in a pitiable condition.’ Rasheed paused, then speculated: ‘Some say a jinn did this to him. Though they are evil themselves, they often seek the company of good people. Anyway—’ Rasheed stopped suddenly. A tall, venerable-looking man passed by him in the narrow lane, and they exchanged greetings, sullen on Rasheed’s side.

  ‘That is one of his brothers,’ he said to Maan a few moments later, ‘one of the brothers who has robbed him of his share of the family’s wealth. He is one of the leaders of the community, and when the Imam of the mosque is absent he often leads the congregation in prayer. Even greeting him makes me uncomfortable.’

  They now entered a courtyard and came across a strange scene.

  Two thin bullocks were tethered to a peg near a feeding trough. A small goat was lying on a charpoy next to a sleeping child, a boy around whose beautiful face a few flies were buzzing. Grass was growing on the wall of the small courtyard; a broom made of twigs was leaning against it in a corner. A pretty eight-year-old girl dressed in red was looking at them. She was holding up the slack wing of a dead crow that stared at them with one opaque grey eye. A bucket, a broken clay drinking pot, a stone board and roller for crushing spices, a few other odds and ends—all these lay scattered around the courtyard as if no one knew what they were for and no one cared.

  On the porch of the ramshackle two-room thatched house was a sagging charpoy, and on this lay an old man. Gaunt-featured, with peppery stubble and sunken eyes, he was lying on his side on a dirty, checked-green covering. His body was entirely emaciated and rib-ridden; his hands were like twisted claws, and his spindly legs too were twisted inwards. He looked as if he was ninety years old and near death. But his voice was clear and, when he saw them approach, he said, since he could see their forms only vaguely:

  ‘Who? Who is that?’

  ‘Rasheed,’ said Rasheed loudly, knowing that the man was hard of hearing.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Rasheed.’

  ‘Oh, when did you come?’

  ‘I’ve just come back from my wife’s village.’ Rasheed did not wish to say that he had been in Debaria for longer but had not visited until now.

  The old man digested this, then said: ‘Who is that with you?’

  ‘This is a Babu from Brahmpur,’ said Rasheed. ‘He comes from a good family.’

  Maan did not know what to think of this succinct biography, but reflected that ‘Babu’ was probably a term of respect in these parts.

  The old man leaned forward slightly, then sank back with a sigh.

  ‘How are things in Brahmpur?’ he asked.

  Rasheed nodded towards Maan.

  ‘Very hot still,’ said Maan, not knowing what was expected of him.

  ‘Just turn towards that wall for a moment,’ said Rasheed to Maan quietly.

  Maan did so without asking why. He turned back, however, before he was told to do so, and caught a brief glimpse of the pretty and fair face of a woman dressed in a yellow sari who hurriedly disappeared behind a square pillar on the porch. In her arms was the child who had been sleeping on the charpoy. Later she joined the conversation from this improvised form of purdah. The little girl in red had dropped her dead crow somewhere and had gone to play with her mother and brother behind the pillar.

  ‘That was his younger daughter,’ said Rasheed to Maan.

  ‘Very pretty,’ said Maan. Rasheed silenced him with a sharp glance.

  ‘Why don’t you sit on the charpoy? Shoo the goat away,’ said the woman hospitably.

  ‘All right,’ said Rasheed.

  From where they were now sitting it was more difficult for Maan to avoid casting a furtive look at her every so often. He did so whenever he was sure Rasheed was not looking. Poor Maan, he had been deprived so long of female company that he felt his heart leap and thud every time he caught the slightest glimpse of her face.

  ‘How is he?’ Rasheed asked the woman.

  ‘You can see. The worst is to come. The doctors refuse to treat him. My husband says we should make him comfortable, try to give him what he asks for, that’s the extent of it.’ She had a happy voice and a lively manner of speech.

  They discussed him for a while as if he weren’t present.

  Then the old man suddenly roused himself to speak. ‘Babu!’ he said in a loud voice.

  Rasheed nodded at Maan again.

  ‘Yes?’ said Maan, probably too softly for the man to hear.

  ‘What can I tell you, Babu—I’ve been ill for twenty-two years—and bedridden for twelve. I am so crippled I can’t even sit up. I wish God would take me. I had six children and six daughters too’—Maan was struck by his manner of describing his twelve children—‘and only two are left. My wife died three years ago. Never get ill, Babu. It is the worst fate. I eat here, I sleep here, I wash here, I talk here, I pray here, I weep here, I shit and piss here. Why did God do this to me?’

  Maan looked at Rasheed. He looked stricken.

  ‘Rasheed!’ cried the old man.

  ‘Yes, Phupha-jaan.’

  ‘Her mother’—the old man indicated his daughter with his head—‘took care of your father when he was ill. Now he doesn’t even visit. It’s since your stepmother came. Previously, every time I went past their house—ah, twelve years ago—they insisted that I had to have tea. They visited when I fell ill. Now only you do. I hear Vilayat Sahib was here too. He didn’t visit.’

  ‘Vilayat Sahib never visits anyone, Phupha-jaan.’

  ‘What’s that you say?’

  ‘Vilayat Sahib never visits anyone.’

  ‘Yes. But your father? Don’t take it badly. I’m not criticizing.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Rasheed. ‘I know. It’s not right. I don’t say it’s right.’ He shook his head slowly and looked down. Then he went on: ‘I don’t take it badly. It’s best to say what one thinks. I’m sorry that this is so. But I must listen to it. It’s only right.’

  ‘You must visit
again before you go back. . . . How do you manage in Brahmpur?’

  ‘I manage very well,’ said Rasheed, reassuringly if not accurately. ‘I give tuitions, and that covers things comfortably. I am in good shape. I’ve brought a small gift for you—some sweets.’

  ‘Sweets?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll give them to her.’

  To the woman Rasheed said: ‘They are easy to digest, but don’t give him more than one or two at a time.’ To the old man he said: ‘I must go now, Phupha-jaan.’

  ‘You are a good man.’

  ‘It’s easy to earn that title in Sagal,’ said Rasheed.

  The old man chuckled a little. ‘Yes,’ he said, finally.

  Rasheed got up to go, and Maan followed.

  The old man’s daughter, with a tender formality in her voice, said: ‘What you have done restores our faith in people.’

  But as they left the courtyard, Maan heard Rasheed say to himself:

  ‘And what the good people have done to you makes me doubt my faith in God.’

  10.15

  On the way out of the village of Sagal, they passed a small open area in front of the mosque. Here, standing and talking, was a group of about ten village elders, most of them bearded, including the man who had passed them outside the old man’s house. Rasheed recognized two more of the invalid’s brothers among the group, but could not see their expressions in the late twilight. They appeared, however, to be looking at him, and their stance was hostile. As he drew nearer, he saw that their expression was no less so. For a few seconds they looked him up and down. Maan, still in his white shirt and trousers, also came under their scrutiny.

  ‘So you’ve come,’ said one in a slightly mocking tone.

  ‘Yes,’ said Rasheed, without any warmth, and not even using the customary title of the man who spoke.

  ‘You’ve taken your time.’

  ‘Well,’ said Rasheed, ‘some things take time.’

  ‘So you sat talking and exchanging the time of day until it became too late to say the namaaz,’ said another, the man who had passed by him a little while ago.

  This was indeed true; so involved had Rasheed been that he had not even noticed the evening call to prayer.

  ‘Yes,’ he responded angrily. ‘That’s precisely right.’

  He was enraged that he was being baited in this open gathering, not out of any attempt to improve his attendance at prayer but out of sheer mockery and ill will. They’re jealous, he thought, because I’m young and have made progress. And they’re threatened by my beliefs—they’ve decided that I’m a communist. And what they hate most of all is my association with that man whose life makes their own a source of shame.

  A tall, thickset man glowered at Rasheed. ‘And who is this?’ he asked, indicating Maan. ‘Are you not going to do us the favour of an introduction? Then we will be able to judge what company the Maulana Sahib keeps and benefit from it too.’ The orange kurta that Maan had been wearing when he first arrived had given rise to the rumour that he was a Hindu holy man.

  ‘I don’t think that is necessary,’ said Rasheed. ‘He is my friend, that is all. Like should be introduced to like.’

  Maan ventured to come forward to stand with Rasheed, but Rasheed with a gesture kept him out of the main line of fire.

  ‘Do you propose to attend the dawn prayer at the mosque at Debaria tomorrow, Maulana Sahib? We understand that you are a late riser and it may involve some sacrifice,’ said the thickset man to Rasheed.

  ‘I will attend what prayers I choose to,’ said Rasheed hotly.

  ‘So, Maulana Sahib, this is your style,’ said someone else.

  ‘Look—’ said Rasheed, almost beside himself with anger, ‘if any of you want to talk about my style, come any time to my house and we’ll talk about it, and we’ll see whose style bests the other’s. As for whose life is more decent and whose religious beliefs are deeper—society knows and can say. Why society? Even children know about the disreputable lives of many of the punctually pious.’ He gestured towards the semicircle of bearded figures. ‘If there was any justice, even the courts would ensure—’

  ‘It is not for society or children or courts, but for Him to say,’ cried one old man, shaking his finger in Rasheed’s face.

  ‘Well, that’s a matter for opinion and argument,’ retorted Rasheed.

  ‘Iblis knew how to argue before his fall!’

  ‘So did the good angels,’ said Rasheed furiously. ‘So do others.’

  ‘Are you calling yourself an angel, Maulana Sahib?’ sneered the man.

  ‘Are you calling me Iblis?’ cried Rasheed.

  He suddenly realized that matters had gone far enough, had in fact gone too far. These were his elders, however insulting, reactionary, hypocritical, jealous. He also thought of Maan and how bad a scene like this would look to him—how unfavourable an impression it would convey of his religion.

  Once again a pulsing pressure had begun building inside his head. He moved forward—his path had in effect been blocked—and a couple of men moved aside.

  ‘It has become late,’ said Rasheed. ‘Excuse me. We must go. So, we’ll meet again—and then we’ll see.’ He moved through the broken arc, and Maan followed.

  ‘Perhaps you should say “khuda haafiz”,’ said a final sarcastic voice.

  ‘Yes, khuda haafiz, God protect you too,’ said Rasheed angrily, walking on without turning back.

  10.16

  Though Debaria and Sagal were separate villages about a mile apart geographically, they could have been a single village for the purposes of rumour. For whatever was said in one was repeated in the other. Whether it was someone from Sagal coming to Debaria to bring some grain to be parched, or someone from Debaria dropping by at the post office at Sagal or the schoolchildren going to study in the common madrasa, or someone visiting someone in the other village or happening to meet him in an adjoining field, the two villages were so indissolubly interlinked through networks of friendship and enmity, ancient ancestry and recent marriage, information and disinformation as to form one single intersecting web of gossip.

  Sagal had almost no upper-caste Hindus. Debaria had a few brahmin families, and they too formed a part of this web, for their relations with the better Muslim families like Rasheed’s were good, and they would drop by sometimes at each other’s houses. They took pride in the fact that feuds within each of the two communities dominated any friction between the communities. This was not the case in some of the surrounding villages, especially where there were memories of violence against Muslims at the time of Partition.

  The Football, as one of the brahmin landowners was popularly called, was in fact just on his way to pay a morning visit to Rasheed’s father.

  Maan was sitting on a charpoy outside the house, playing with Meher. Moazzam was hanging around; he was delighted with Meher, and from time to time passed his hand wonderingly over her head. Mr Biscuit hovered around hungrily.

  Rasheed and his father were sitting on another charpoy, talking. A report of Rasheed’s altercation with the elders of Sagal had reached his father.

  ‘So you don’t think namaaz is important?’ he observed.

  ‘It is, it is,’ replied Rasheed. ‘What can I say? I haven’t observed it strictly these last few days—I’ve had unavoidable responsibilities and duties. And you can’t roll out a prayer mat on a bus. Part of it is my own laziness. But if someone had wanted to correct me and explain things to me with sympathy, he would have taken me aside—or spoken to you, Abba—not damaged my honour in a full and open gathering.’ He paused, then added with fervour: ‘And I believe one’s life is more important than any namaaz.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ said his father sharply. He noticed Kachheru passing by. ‘Ei, Kachheru, go to the bania’s shop and get me some supari—I’ve run out of it for my paan. Yes, yes—I want the usual amount. . . . Ah, the Football is waddling along to pay us a visit; he’s probably come because of your Hindu friend. Yes, people’s lives are
important, but that is no excuse—anyway, no excuse for speaking in that way to the big people of a village. Have you considered my honour when you behave like that? Or your own position in the village?’

  Rasheed’s eye followed Kachheru for a while. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘please forgive me—the mistake is all mine.’

  But ignoring his insincere apology, his father was now greeting his guest with a broad smile, his red mouth wide open: ‘Welcome, welcome, Tiwariji.’

  ‘Hello, hello,’ said the Football. ‘What were father and son discussing so heatedly?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said both father and son simultaneously.

  ‘Oh, well. Two or three of us have been thinking of visiting you for some time now, but what with the harvest and so on we couldn’t find the time. And then we heard that your guest had gone away for a few days, so we decided to wait till his return.’

  ‘So you’ve really come to see Kapoor Sahib, not us,’ said his host.

  The Football shook his head vehemently: ‘What are you saying, what are you saying, Khan Sahib? Our friendship goes back for decades. And one gets so little chance to talk to Rasheed either, now that he is improving his mind in Brahmpur most of the year.’

  ‘Anyway,’ continued Rasheed’s father rather mischievously, ‘why don’t you have a cup of tea now that you’ve made such an effort to come. I’ll summon Rasheed’s friend, and we will talk. Who else is coming, by the way? Rasheed, ask for tea for all of us.’

  The Football became agitated. ‘No, no—’ he said, gesticulating as if he were brushing away a swarm of wasps, ‘no tea, no tea.’

  ‘But we will all be having it together, Tiwariji, it is not poisoned. Even Kapoor Sahib will join us.’

  ‘He drinks tea with all of you?’ said Tiwari.

  ‘Indeed. He eats with us too.’

  The Football was silent while he, so to speak, digested this. After a while he said: