Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

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 attached 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.

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.

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: