Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

Rasheed’s Mamu merely mopped his brow and gasped gamely in the heat. Maan leaned forward, amazed by these unlikely adventures.

Rasheed returned, bearing glasses of sherbet. He told them that his father was sleeping. The Bear nodded benevolently.

The talkative one was asking Maan about his love life, and Maan was attempting weakly to fend off the questions.

‘People’s love lives are not very interesting,’ said Maan, sounding unconvincing even to himself.

‘How can you say that?’ said the guppi. ‘Every man’s love life is interesting. If he doesn’t have one, that’s interesting. If he has one, that’s interesting. And if he has two, that’s twice as interesting.’ He laughed delightedly at his sally. Rasheed looked abashed. Baba had gone inside his house already.

Encouraged by the fact that he had not been immediately stifled, as he often was in his own village, the guppi went on:

‘But what would you know of love — of true love? You young men have not seen much. You may think that because you live in Brahmpur you have seen the world — or more of the world than we poor yokels see. But some of us yokels have also seen the world — and not just the world of Brahmpur, but of Bombay.’

He paused, impressed by his own words, especially the entrancing word ‘Bombay’, and looked at his audience with pleasure. Several children had appeared in the last couple of minutes, drawn by the guppi’s magic. Whenever the guppi appeared they could be sure of a good story, and probably one that their parents would not want them to hear — involving ghosts or deadly violence or passionate love.

A goat too had appeared, and was standing at the upper end of a cart, trying to graze on the leaves of a branch just overhead. With its crafty yellow eyes it stared at the leaves and strained its neck upwards.

‘When I was in Bombay,’ the round and reverberant guppi went on, ‘long before my fate changed and I had to return to this blessed countryside, I worked in a big shop, a very famous shop run by a mullah, and we would sell carpets to big people, all the very big people of Bombay. They would have so much money, they would take it in wads out of their bags and throw it down on the counter.’

His eyes lit up as if at the memory. The children sat enthralled — or most of them anyway. Mr Biscuit, the seven-year-old horror, was occupied with the goat. Whenever it got near its goal, the leafy branch, Mr Biscuit would tilt the cart downwards, and the poor goat would now try to clamber up to the other end. So far it had not succeeded in eating a single leaf.

‘It’s a love story, I’m warning you in advance, so if you don’t want to listen to it, you can tell me to stop now,’ said the guppi in a formulary way. ‘Because once I’ve begun, I can’t stop it any more than one can stop the act of love itself.’

Rasheed would have got up and left if he hadn’t been so conscious of his duty as a host. But Maan wanted to stay and hear the story.

‘Go on, go on,’ he said.

Rasheed looked at Maan, as if to say: This man needs no encouragement. If you show any interest at all he’ll go on twice as long.

Aloud he said to the guppi: ‘Of course, this is an eyewitness account as usual.’

The guppi shot him a glance, at first suspicious, then placatory. He had just been about to say that he had seen the events he was about to recount with his very own eyes.

‘I saw these events with my very own eyes,’ he said.

The goat started bleating piteously. The guppi shouted at the distracting Mr Biscuit: ‘Sit down, or I’ll feed you to that goat, your eyes first.’

Mr Biscuit, horrified by such a graphic description of his fate, thought that the guppi must mean business, and sat down on the ground like any ordinary child.

The guppi went on: ‘So we’d sell carpets to all the big people, and there were such beautiful women who would come to our shop that our eyes would water with emotion. The mullah in particular had a weakness for beauty, and whenever he saw a beautiful woman walking past our shop or about to enter it he would say: “Oh God! Why have you made such angels? Farishtas have come to earth to haunt us mortals.” We would all start laughing. He would get very cross and scold us: “When you’re tired of saying Bismillah on your knees you should praise the angels of God.”’

The guppi paused for effect.

‘Well, one day — this happened before my very eyes — a beautiful woman called Vimla tried to start her car, which was parked near our shop. It wouldn’t start, so she got out. She started walking towards our shop. She was beautiful, so beautiful — that we were all entranced. One of us said: “The ground is shaking.” The mullah said: “She is so beautiful that if she looks at you, boils will break out all over your body.” But then — suddenly—’

The guppi’s voice started trembling with the recollection.

‘Suddenly — from the other direction — and on the other side of the street — came a young Pathan, so tall and handsome that the mullah started praising God as excitedly as before: “As the Moon leaves the skies, the Sun approaches,” and so on.

‘They approached each other. Then the young Pathan boy crossed the road towards her — saying, “Please, please—” in an importunate voice and holding out a card that he had whipped out of his pocket. He showed it to her three times. She was reluctant to read it, but finally she took it and bent her head to read it. No sooner had she done this than the young Pathan embraced her like a bear and bit her cheek so hard that the blood streamed down. She screamed!’

The guppi covered his face with his hands to ward off the awful image. Then he rallied and continued:

‘The mullah cried, “Quick, quick, lie down, no one has seen anything — no one must get mixed up in this.” But a man who was in his underwear on the roof of a nearby hotel saw it and cried, “Toba, toba!” He didn’t come down to help but he called the police. Within minutes the streets were sealed off, and there was no way out, no escape at all. Five jeeps rushed towards the Pathan from all directions. The Superintendent of Police was merciless and the policemen used all the force they could, but the Pathan was clinging to the girl so tightly that they could not separate his arms, which were locked around her waist. He had shouldered aside three men before they finally succeeded in knocking him out with the butt of a pistol and separating his hands with a crowbar.’

The guppi paused for further effect before continuing. His audience was spellbound.

‘The whole of Bombay was outraged at this gunda-gardi, this hooliganism, and a case was quickly registered against him. Everyone said: “Be strict — or all the girls in Bombay will have their cheeks bitten, and then what will happen?” There was a huge court case. He was put in a cage in court. He rattled the bars with such fury that the courtroom shook. But he was found guilty, and a death sentence was passed. Then the judge said: “Do you want to see anyone before you are hanging breathlessly from the gallows? Do you want one last glimpse of your mother?” The boy said: “No — I’ve seen enough of her. I’ve been fed by her breasts and have urinated in her arms when I was a baby — why should I want to see her again?” Everyone was shocked. “Anyone else?” said the judge.

‘“Yes,” said the doomed man. “Yes. One person, and one person alone: that person, a single sight of whom made me give up all hope of life on earth and made me willing to die — that person who has given me a taste of the world to come, for she has sent me to paradise. I have two things to say to her. She can stand outside the bars, I inside — I will not even touch her—”