Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

‘All the big people of Bombay, all the businessmen and ballishtahs stood up in court, turned to stone with the shock of his request. The girl’s family started to scream. “Never!” they screamed—“Our daughter will never speak to him.” The judge said: “I have said she can — and she must.” So she went into the courtroom, and everyone was hissing: “Behayaa — besharam — how shameless can you get in the very face of your own death.” But he only held the bars and laughed. It said in the papers also: He laughed.’

The guppi drained his glass of sherbet and held it out to be refilled. Resurrecting the past accurately was a thirsty job. The children stared impatiently as his Adam’s apple moved up and down gulp after gulp. With a sigh he continued:

‘The young man held the bars of his cage and looked deeply into Vimla’s eyes. By God, it was as if he wanted to drink her soul out of her body. But she looked at him with contempt, holding her head up proudly, her once-beautiful cheek scarred and defiled. Finally he found his voice, and said: “I only want to say two things to you. First, no one will marry you now except an old and poor man. . you have been marked as the one bitten by the Pathan. Second”—and here the young man’s voice broke and the tears started streaming down his face—“second, by God I didn’t know what happened to me when I did that to you. I lost my senses when I saw you, I never knew what I was doing — forgive me, forgive me! I have had hundreds of offers of marriage. I have refused them all — the most beautiful women. Till I saw you I never knew I had a companion of the soul.

‘“I will treat your scar as a mark of beauty and bathe it with my tears and shower kisses on it. I am London-returned and I have thirty-five thousand people in factories working for me and crores of rupees in wealth and I want to give it all to you. God is a witness between us — I never knew what I was doing — but now I am willing to die.”

‘Hearing this, the girl, who a minute ago could have killed him with her own hands, began to gasp as if she was ill with love, and threw herself towards the judge, begging him to spare the man, saying: “Spare him, spare him — I knew him for a long time, I begged him to bite me—” But the judge had given his sentence and said: “Impossible. Do not lie, or I will put you away.” Then in despair she took a knife out of her bag and put it to her throat and said to the whole court — the High Court judge and all the high ballishtahs and sollishtahs and all—“If he is killed, I die. I will write here that I committed suicide because of the sentence you passed.”

‘So they had to undo the sentence — what could they do? Then she begged that the marriage should take place at the boy’s place. The girl was a Punjabi, and there was such enmity towards the Pathan and his family that her parents would have killed her as well as the boy for revenge.’

The guppi paused.

‘This is true love,’ he said, deeply moved by his narration, and leaned back on the charpoy, spent.

Maan, despite himself, was enthralled. Rasheed looked at him, then at the enraptured children, and closed his eyes in mild contempt for all that had gone on. His large, taciturn Mamu, who hardly appeared to have been listening, patted his friend on the back and said:

‘Now Radio Jhutistan takes leave of its listeners.’ Then he switched off an imaginary knob near the guppi’s ear and clapped his hand over his mouth.

Maan and Rasheed were walking through the village. It was not very different in appearance from a thousand other villages in Rudhia District: mud walls within which people lived (often together with their cattle), thatched roofs, narrow lanes with no windows facing on to them (the conservative heritage of centuries of conquest and brigandage), the very occasional whitewashed one-storey brick house belonging to a ‘big person’ in the village. Cows and dogs meandered down the lanes, neem trees raised their heads from inner courtyards or near a village well, the low minarets of a small white mosque stood near the centre of the village close to the five brahmin houses and the bania’s shop. Only two families had their own hand-pump: Rasheed’s and one other. The rest of the population — about four hundred families in all — obtained their water from one of three wells: the Muslim well, which stood in an open space near a neem tree, the caste-Hindu well, which stood in an open space near a pipal tree, and the outcaste or untouchable well, which stood at the very edge of the village among a dense cluster of mud huts, not far from a tanning pit.

They had almost reached their destination, the grain-parcher’s house, when they met Rasheed’s younger uncle, who was about to set out for Salimpur. Maan got a better look at him by daylight than he had the previous night. He was a young man of medium height and fairly good looks: dark skin, even features, slightly curly black hair, a moustache. He evidently took care of himself. There was a bit of a swagger to his gait. Though younger than Rasheed, he was very conscious of the fact that he was the uncle and Rasheed the nephew.

‘What are you doing walking around in the heat of the afternoon?’ he said to Rasheed. ‘And why are you dragging your friend around with you? It’s hot. He should be resting.’

‘He wanted to come,’ said Rasheed. ‘But what are you doing here yourself?’

‘I’m off to Salimpur. There’s a dinner there. I thought I’d go early and sort some things out at the Congress Party office there.’

This young man was very energetic and ambitious and had his finger in several pies, including local politics. It was because of these qualities of self-interested leadership that he was called Netaji by most people. Eventually his family had taken to calling him Netaji as well. He didn’t like it.

Rasheed was careful not to do so. ‘I don’t see your motorcycle anywhere,’ he said.

‘It won’t start,’ said Netaji plaintively. His second-hand Harley Davidson (war stock originally sold off by the army, it had passed through several hands already) was the pride of his heart.

‘That’s a pity. So why don’t you get your rickshaw to take you there?’

‘I’ve hired it out for the day. Really, this motorcycle is more trouble than it’s worth. Since I’ve got it I’ve spent more time worrying about it than using it. The village boys, and especially that bastard Moazzam, are always doing things to it. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve put water in the fuel tank.’

Like a genie conjured up by his name, Moazzam appeared out of nowhere. He was a boy of about twelve or so, quite strong and compact, and one of the chief troublemakers of the village. He had a very friendly face with hair that bristled up like a porcupine’s. Sometimes his face would become dark with some unexpressed thought. He seemed to be beyond anyone’s control, especially his parents’. People put him down as eccentric, and hoped that he would sort himself out in a few years. Whereas no one liked Mr Biscuit, Moazzam had his admirers.

‘You bastard!’ said Netaji as soon as he saw Moazzam. ‘What have you done to my motorcycle?’

Moazzam, taken aback by this sudden attack, retreated into a dark expression. Maan looked at him with interest, and Moazzam appeared to wink at him in a fleeting expression of conspiracy.

‘Can’t you hear me?’ said Netaji, advancing towards him.

Moazzam said, in a surly tone: ‘I can hear you. I’ve done nothing to your motorcycle. Why should I care about your wretched motorcycle?’

‘I saw you hanging around it this morning with two of your friends.’

‘So?’

‘Don’t ever go near it again. Understand? If I ever see you near it again, I’ll run you over.’