Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

Nor cause you seizure or distress

But win your trust through gentleness.

He looked at her while her lovely, liquid eyes moved from right to left, noticing with a kind of painful pleasure the flush that came to her face as they rested on the final couplet.

When Tasneem entered her sister’s bedroom, she found her sitting in front of the mirror applying kajal to her eyelids.

Most people have an expression that they reserve exclusively for looking at themselves in the mirror. Some pout, others arch their eyebrows, still others look superciliously down their noses at themselves. Saeeda Bai had a whole range of mirror faces. Just as her comments to her parakeet ran the gamut of emotions from passion to annoyance, so too did these expressions. When Tasneem entered, she was moving her head slowly from side to side with a dreamy air. It would have been difficult to guess that her thick black hair had just revealed a single white one, and that she was looking around for others.

A silver paan container was resting among the vials and phials on her dressing table and Saeeda Bai was eating a couple of paans laced with the fragrant, semi-solid tobacco known as kimam. When Tasneem appeared in the mirror and their eyes met, the first thought that struck Saeeda Bai was that she, Saeeda, was getting old and that in five years she would be forty. Her expression changed to one of melancholy, and she turned back to her own face in the mirror, looking at herself in the iris, first of one eye, then of the other. Then, recalling the guest whom she had invited to the house in the evening, she smiled at herself in affectionate welcome.

‘What’s the matter, Tasneem, tell me,’ she said — somewhat indistinctly, because of the paan.

‘Apa,’ said Tasneem nervously, ‘it’s about Ishaq.’

‘Has he been teasing you?’ said Saeeda Bai a little sharply, misinterpreting Tasneem’s nervousness. ‘I’ll speak to him. Send him here.’

‘No, no, Apa, it’s this,’ said Tasneem, and handed her sister Ishaq’s poem.

After reading it through Saeeda Bai set it down, and started toying with the only lipstick on the dressing table. She never used lipstick, as her lips had a natural redness which was enhanced by paan, but it had been given to her a long time ago by the guest who would be coming this evening, and to whom she was, in a mild sort of way, sentimentally attached.

‘What do you think, Apa?’ said Tasneem. ‘Say something.’

‘It’s well expressed and badly written,’ said Saeeda Bai, ‘but what does it mean? He’s not going on about his hands, is he?’

‘They are giving him a lot of pain,’ said Tasneem, ‘and he’s afraid that if he speaks to you, you’ll ask him to leave.’

Saeeda Bai, remembering with a smile how she had got Maan to leave, was silent. She was about to apply a drop of perfume to her wrist when Bibbo came in with a great bustle.

‘Oh-hoh, what is it now?’ said Saeeda Bai. ‘Go out, you wretched girl, can’t I have a moment of peace? Have you fed the parakeet?’

‘Yes, Begum Sahiba,’ said Bibbo impertinently. ‘But what shall I tell the cook to feed you and your guest this evening?’

Saeeda Bai addressed Bibbo’s reflection in the mirror sternly:

‘Wretched girl, you will never amount to anything — even after having stayed here so long you have not acquired the slightest sense of etiquette or discrimination.’

Bibbo looked unconvincingly penitent. Saeeda Bai went on: ‘Find out what is growing in the kitchen garden and come back after five minutes.’

When Bibbo had disappeared, Saeeda Bai said to Tasneem:

‘So he’s sent you to speak to me, has he?’

‘No,’ said Tasneem. ‘I came myself. I thought he needed help.’

‘You’re sure he hasn’t been misbehaving?’

Tasneem shook her head.

‘Maybe he can write a ghazal or two for me to sing,’ said Saeeda Bai after a pause. ‘I’ll have to put him to some sort of work. Provisionally, at least.’ She applied a drop of perfume. ‘I suppose his hand works well enough to allow him to write?’

‘Yes,’ said Tasneem happily.

‘Then let’s leave it at that,’ said Saeeda Bai.

But in her mind she was thinking about a permanent replacement. She knew she couldn’t support Ishaq endlessly — or till some indefinite time when his hands decided to behave.

‘Thank you, Apa,’ said Tasneem, smiling.

‘Don’t thank me,’ said Saeeda Bai crossly. ‘I am used to taking all the world’s troubles on to my own head. Now I’ll have to find a sarangi player till your Ishaq Bhai is capable of wrestling with his sarangi again, and I also have to find someone to teach you Arabic—’

‘Oh, no, no,’ said Tasneem quickly, ‘you needn’t do that.’

‘I needn’t do that?’ said Saeeda Bai, turning around to face not Tasneem’s image but Tasneem herself. ‘I thought you enjoyed your Arabic lessons.’

Bibbo had bounced back into the room again. Saeeda Bai looked at her impatiently and cried, ‘Yes, yes, Bibbo? What is it? I told you to come back after five minutes.’

‘But I’ve found out what’s ripe in the back garden,’ said Bibbo enthusiastically.

‘All right, all right,’ said Saeeda Bai, defeated. ‘What is there apart from ladies’ fingers? Has the karela begun?’

‘Yes, Begum Sahiba, and there is even a pumpkin.’

‘Well, then, tell the cook to make kababs as usual — shami kababs — and some vegetable of her choice — and let her make mutton with karela as well.’

Tasneem made a slight grimace, which was not lost on Saeeda Bai.

‘If you find the karela too bitter, you don’t have to eat it,’ she said in an impatient voice. ‘No one is forcing you. I work my heart out to keep you in comfort, and you don’t appreciate it. And oh yes,’ she said, turning to Bibbo again, ‘let’s have some phirni afterwards.’

‘But there’s so little sugar left from our ration,’ cried Bibbo.

‘Get it on the black market,’ said Saeeda Bai. ‘Bilgrami Sahib is very fond of phirni.’

Then she dismissed both Tasneem and Bibbo, and continued with her toilette in peace.

The guest whom she was expecting that evening was an old friend. He was a doctor, a general practitioner about ten years older than her, good-looking and cultivated. He was unmarried, and had proposed to her a number of times. Though at one stage he had been a client, he was now a friend. She felt no passion for him, but was grateful that he was always there when she needed him. She had not seen him for about three months now, and that was why she had invited him over this evening. He was bound to propose to her again, and this would cheer her up. Her refusal, being equally inevitable, would not upset him unduly.

She looked around the room, and her eyes fell on the framed picture of the woman looking out through an archway into a mysterious garden.

By now, she thought, Dagh Sahib will have reached his destination. I did not really want to send him off, but I did. He did not really want to go, but he did. Well, it is all for the best.

Dagh Sahib, however, would not have agreed with this assessment.

Ishaq Khan waited for Ustad Majeed Khan not far from his house. When he came out, carrying a small string bag in his hand, walking gravely along, Ishaq followed him at a distance. He turned towards Tarbuz ka Bazaar, past the road leading to the mosque, then into the comparatively open area of the local vegetable market. He moved from stall to stall to see if there was something that interested him. It was good to see tomatoes still plentiful and at a tolerable price so late in the season. Besides, they made the market look more cheerful. It was a pity that the season for spinach was almost over; it was one of his favourite vegetables. And carrots, cauliflowers, cabbages, all were virtually gone till next winter. Even those few that were available were dry, dingy, and dear, and had none of the flavour of their peak.