Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

At noon he was saying: ‘Damodarji, that’s a very handsome ring you have on your finger. How much is it worth? Twelve hundred rupees? No, no, I’m pleased to see you, but as you can see’—he pointed to the papers piled on his desk with one hand and gestured towards the crowds with the other—‘I have much less time to talk to my old friends than I would wish. . ’

At one o’clock he was saying: ‘Are you telling me that the lathi charge was necessary? Have you seen how these people live? And you have the gall to tell me that there should be some threat of further punitive action? Go and talk to the Home Minister, you’ll find a more sympathetic audience. I am sorry — you can see how many people are waiting—’

At two o’clock he was saying: ‘I suppose I have a little influence. I’ll see what I can do. Tell the boy to come around to see me next week. Obviously, a lot will depend upon his exam results. No, no, don’t thank me — and certainly don’t thank me in advance.’

At three o’clock he was saying quietly: ‘Look, Agarwal has about a hundred MLAs in his hand. I have about eighty. The rest are uncommitted, and will go wherever they sense victory. But I’m not going to think of mounting a challenge to Sharmaji. It’s only if Panditji calls him to join the Central Cabinet in Delhi that the question of the leadership will come up. Still, I agree that there’s no harm in keeping the issue alive — one has to remain in the public eye.’

At a quarter past three, Mrs Mahesh Kapoor came in, reproved the PAs gently, and pleaded with her husband to come and have lunch and lie down for a while. She herself was clearly still suffering from the residual neem blossoms, and her allergy was causing her to gasp a little. Mahesh Kapoor did not snap at her as he often did. He acquiesced and retired. People drifted away reluctantly and very gradually, and after a while Prem Nivas once more reverted from a political stage, clinic, and fairground to a private home.

After Mahesh Kapoor had eaten, he lay down for a short nap, and Mrs Mahesh Kapoor finally ate lunch herself.

After lunch, Mahesh Kapoor asked his wife to read him some passages from the Proceedings of the P.P. Legislative Council that dealt with the debate on the Zamindari Bill when it had first gone to the Upper House from the Assembly. Since it was about to go there again with its new encrustation of amendments, he wanted to regain his sense of the possible obstacles it might face in that chamber.

Mahesh Kapoor himself found it very difficult to read the Purva Pradesh legislative debates of the last few years. Some members took peculiar pride these days in couching their speeches in a heavily Sanskritized Hindi which no one in his right mind could understand. That, however, was not the main problem. The real difficulty was that Mahesh Kapoor was not very familiar with the Hindi — or Devanagari — script. He had been brought up at a time when boys were taught to read and write the Urdu — or Arabic — script. In the 1930s the Proceedings of the Protected Provinces Legislative Assembly were printed speech by speech in English, Urdu, and Hindi — depending on the language that the speaker wrote or spoke. His own speeches were printed in Urdu, for instance, and so were the speeches of a good many others. The English speeches he could of course read without difficulty. But he tended to skip the Hindi ones, as they made him struggle. Now, after Independence, the Proceedings were printed entirely in the official language of the state, which was Hindi; Urdu speeches too were printed in the Hindi script, and English could only be spoken — and that too extremely rarely — with the express permission of the Speaker of the House. This was why Mahesh Kapoor often asked his wife to read the debates out to him. She had been taught — like many women at the time — to read and write under the influence of the Hindu revivalist organization, the Arya Samaj, and the script that she had been taught was, naturally enough, the script of the ancient Sanskrit texts — and the modern Hindi language.

Perhaps there was also an element of vanity or prudence in having his wife, rather than his personal assistants, read him these debates. The Minister did not wish the world at large to know that he could not read Hindi. As it happened, his PAs knew that he could not, but they were fairly discreet, and the word did not get around.

Mrs Mahesh Kapoor read in a rather monotonous voice, a bit as if she were chanting the scriptures. The pallu of her sari covered her head and a part of her face, and she did not look directly at her husband. Her breath was a little short these days, so she had to pause from time to time, and Mahesh Kapoor would become quite impatient. ‘Yes, yes, go on, go on!’ he would say whenever there was a longish pause, and she, patient woman that she was, would do so without complaint.

From time to time — usually between one debate and another, or as she reached for a different volume — she would mention something entirely outside the political sphere that had been on her mind. Since her husband was always busy, this was one of the few opportunities she got to talk to him. One such matter was that Mahesh Kapoor had not met his old friend and bridge partner Dr Kishen Chand Seth for some time.

‘Yes, yes, I know,’ said her husband impatiently. ‘Go on, go on, yes, from page 303.’ Mrs Mahesh Kapoor, having tested the water and found it too warm, was quiet for a while.

At the second opening she saw, she mentioned that she would like to have the Ramcharitmanas recited in the house some day soon. It would be good for the house and family in general: for Pran’s job and health, for Maan, for Veena and Kedarnath and Bhaskar, for Savita’s forthcoming baby. The ideal time, the nine nights leading up to and including the birthday of Rama, had gone by, and both her samdhins had been disappointed that she had not been able to persuade her husband to allow the recitation. At that time she could understand that he had been preoccupied with a number of things, but surely now—

She was interrupted abruptly. Mahesh Kapoor, pointing his finger at the volume of debates, exclaimed: ‘Oh, fortunate one—’ (fortunate to have married him, that is) ‘—first recite the scriptures that I’ve asked you to recite.’

‘But you promised that—’

‘Enough of this. You three mothers-in-law can plot as much as you like, but I can’t allow it in Prem Nivas. I have a secular image — and in a town like this where everyone is beating the drum of religion, I am not going to join in with the shehnai. Anyway, I don’t believe in this chanting and hypocrisy — and all this fasting by saffron-clad heroes who want to ban cow slaughter and revive the Somnath Temple and the Shiva Temple and God knows what else.’

‘The President of India himself will be going to Somnath to help inaugurate the new temple there—’

‘Let the President of India do what he likes,’ said Mahesh Kapoor sharply. ‘Rajendra Babu does not have to win an election or face the Assembly. I do.’

Mrs Mahesh Kapoor waited for the next hiatus in the debates before venturing: ‘I know that the nine nights of Ramnavami have gone, but the nine nights of Dussehra are still to come. If you think that in October—’

In her eagerness to convince her husband, she had begun to gasp a little.

‘Calm down, calm down,’ said Mahesh Kapoor, relenting slightly. ‘We’ll see all about that in due course.’

Even if the door was not exactly ajar, it had not been slammed shut, reflected Mrs Mahesh Kapoor. She retired from this subject with a sense that something, however slight, had been gained. She believed — though she would not have voiced the belief — that her husband was quite wrong-headed in divesting himself of the religious rites and ceremonies that gave meaning to life and donning the drab robes of his new religion of secularism.