Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

‘There’s something out of tune with my Veena today,’ said Kedarnath, smiling a bit sadly.

Veena was not mollified.

‘You never tell me anything,’ she burst out, ‘and then I find you with your head in your hands, and your eyes closed for minutes on end. What am I to think? And you are always away. Sometimes when you’re away I cry to myself all night long; it would have been better to have a drunkard as a husband, as long as he slept here every night.’

‘Now calm down. Where are these jewels?’

‘Priya has them. She said she’d get me an estimate.’

‘They haven’t yet been sold then?’

‘No.’

‘Go and get them back.’

‘No.’

‘Go and get them back, Veena. How can you gamble with your mother’s navratan?’

‘How can you play chaupar with Bhaskar’s future?’

Kedarnath closed his eyes for a few seconds.

‘You understand nothing about business,’ he said.

‘I understand enough to know that you can’t keep “over-extending” yourself.’

‘Over-extension is just over-extension. All great fortunes are based on debt.’

‘Well we, I know, will never be greatly fortunate again,’ burst out Veena passionately. ‘This isn’t Lahore. Why can’t we guard what little we have?’

Kedarnath was silent for a while. Then he said:

‘Get the jewellery back. It’s all right, it really is. Haresh’s arrangement with the brogues is about to come through any day, and our long-term problems will be solved.’

Veena looked at her husband very dubiously.

‘Everything good is always about to happen, and everything bad always happens.’

‘Now that’s not true. At least in the short term something good has happened to me. The shops in Bombay have paid up at last. I promise you that that is true. I know I’m a bad liar, so I don’t even attempt it. Now get the navratan back.’

‘Show me the money first!’

Kedarnath burst out laughing. Veena burst into tears.

‘Where’s Bhaskar?’ he asked, after she had sobbed for a bit and subsided into silence.

‘At Dr Durrani’s.’

‘Good. I hope he stays there a couple of hours more. Let’s play a game of chaupar, you and I.’

Veena dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief.

‘It’s too hot on the roof. Your mother won’t want her beloved son to turn black as ink.’

‘Well, we’ll play in this room, then,’ said Kedarnath with decision.

Veena got the jewellery back late that afternoon. Priya was not able to give her an estimate; with the witch hanging around the gossipy jeweller every minute of his previous visit, she had decided to subjugate urgency to discretion.

Veena looked at the navratan, gazing reminiscently at each stone in turn.

Early the same evening, Kedarnath went over with it to his father-in-law, and asked him to keep it in his custody at Prem Nivas.

‘What on earth for?’ asked Mahesh Kapoor. ‘Why are you bothering me with these trinkets?’

‘Baoji, it belongs to Veena, and I want to make sure she keeps it. If it’s in my house, she might suddenly be struck with noble fancies and pawn it.’

‘Pawn it?’

‘Pawn it or sell it.’

‘What madness. What’s been going on? Have all my children taken leave of their senses?’

After a brief account of the navratan incident, Mahesh Kapoor said:

‘And how is your business now that the strike is finally over?’

‘I can’t say it’s going well — but it hasn’t collapsed yet.’

‘Kedarnath, run my farm instead.’

‘No, but thank you, Baoji. I should be getting back now. The market must have opened already.’ A further thought struck him. ‘And besides, Baoji, who would mind your constituency if I decided to leave Misri Mandi?’

‘True. All right. Fine. It’s good that you have to go back because I have to deal with these files before tomorrow morning,’ said Mahesh Kapoor inhospitably. ‘I’ll be working all night. Put it down here somewhere.’

‘What — on the files, Baoji?’ There was nowhere else on the table to place the navratan.

‘Where else then — around my neck? Yes, yes, on that pink one: “Orders of the State Government on the Assessment Proposals”. Don’t look so anxious, Kedarnath, it won’t disappear again. I’ll see that Veena’s mother puts the stupid thing away somewhere.’

Later that night in the house where the Rajkumar and his friends lived, Maan lost more than two hundred rupees gambling on flush. He usually held on to his cards far too long before packing them in or asking for a show. The predictability of his optimism was fatal to his chances. Besides, he was entirely un-poker-faced, and his fellow-players had a shrewd idea of how good his cards were from the instant he picked them up. He lost ten rupees or more on hand after hand — and when he held three kings, all he won was four rupees.

The more he drank, the more he lost, and vice versa.

Every time he got a queen — or begum — in his hand, he thought with a pang of the Begum Sahiba whom he was allowed to see so rarely these days. He could sense that even when he was with her, despite their mutual excitement and affection, she was finding him less amusing as he became more intense.

After he had got completely cleaned out, he muttered in a slurred voice that he had to be off.

‘Spend the night here if you wish — go home in the morning,’ suggested the Rajkumar.

‘No, no—’ said Maan, and left.

He wandered over to Saeeda Bai’s, reciting some poetry on the way and singing from time to time.

It was past midnight. The watchman, seeing the state he was in, asked him to go home. Maan started singing, appealing over his head to Saeeda Bai:

‘It’s just a heart, not brick and stone, why should it then not fill with pain?

Yes, I will weep a thousand times, why should you torture me in vain?’

‘Kapoor Sahib, you will wake up everyone on the street,’ said the watchman matter-of-factly. He bore Maan no grudge for the scuffle they had had the other night.

Bibbo came out and chided Maan gently. ‘Kindly go home, Dagh Sahib. This is a respectable house. Begum Sahiba asked who was singing, and when I told her, she was most annoyed. I believe she is fond of you, Dagh Sahib, but she will not see you tonight, and she has asked me to tell you that she will never see you in this state. Please forgive my impertinence, I am only repeating her words.’

‘It’s just a heart, not brick and stone,’ sang Maan.

‘Come, Sahib,’ said the watchman calmly and led Maan gently but firmly down the street in the direction of Prem Nivas.

‘Here, this is for you — you’re a good man—’ said Maan, reaching into his kurta pockets. He turned them inside out, but there was no money in them.

‘Take my tip on account,’ he suggested.

‘Yes, Sahib,’ said the watchman, and turned back to the rose-coloured house.

Drunk, broke, and far from happy, Maan tottered back to Prem Nivas. To his surprise and rather unfocused distress, his mother was waiting up for him again. When she saw him, tears rolled down her cheeks. She was already overwrought because of the business with the navratan.

‘Maan, my dear son, what has come over you? What has she done to my boy? Do you know what people are saying about you? Even the Banaras people know by now.’

‘What Banaras people?’ Maan inquired, his curiosity aroused.

‘What Banaras people, he asks,’ said Mrs Mahesh Kapoor, and began to cry even more intensely. There was a strong smell of whisky on her son’s breath.

Maan put his arm protectively around her shoulder, and told her to go to sleep. She told him to go up to his room by the garden stairs to avoid disturbing his father, who was working late in his office.