Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

Moazzam gave a short laugh.

Netaji wanted to slap Moazzam, but thought better of it. ‘Let’s leave the swine,’ he said dismissively to the others. ‘By rights he should have his brain shown to a doctor, but his father is too much of a miser to do so. I must be on my way.’

Moazzam now performed a little dance of rage, and cried to Netaji: ‘Swine! Swine yourself! You are the swine. And the miser. You lend money on interest, and you buy rickshaws and won’t let anyone use them for free. Look at our great leader, the Netaji of the village! I don’t have time for you. Migrate to Salimpur with your motorcycle, I don’t care.’

When Netaji, muttering black threats under his breath, had left, Moazzam decided to attach himself to Rasheed and Maan. . Now he asked to see Maan’s watch.

Maan promptly took it off, and showed it to Moazzam, who, after examining it, put it in his pocket. Rasheed said quite sharply to Moazzam:

‘Give the watch to me. Is this the way to behave with guests?’

Moazzam looked puzzled at first, then disgorged the watch. He handed it to Rasheed, who gave it back to Maan.

‘Thank you, I’m very grateful,’ said Maan to Moazzam.

‘Don’t be polite to him,’ said Rasheed to Maan, as if Moazzam wasn’t present, ‘or he’ll take advantage of you. Keep your things close by if he’s around. He’s well known for making things disappear by sleight of hand.’

‘All right,’ said Maan, smiling.

‘He’s not bad at heart,’ Rasheed went on.

‘Not bad at heart,’ repeated Moazzam absently. His attention, though, was elsewhere. An old man with a stick was walking down the narrow lane towards him. There was an amulet around his wrinkled neck which attracted Moazzam’s attention. As they passed each other, he reached out for it.

‘Give it to me,’ he said.

The old man leaned on his stick and said in a slow and exhausted voice: ‘Young man, I have no strength.’

This appeared to please Moazzam, who promptly released the amulet.

A girl of about ten was walking towards them with a goat. Moazzam, who was in an acquisitive mood, made as if to grab for the rope, and said: ‘Give it to me!’ in the voice of a fierce dacoit.

The girl began to cry.

Rasheed said to Moazzam: ‘Do you want to feel the back of this hand? Is this the impression you want to give outsiders?’

Moazzam turned suddenly to Maan and said: ‘I’ll get you married off. Do you want a Hindu or a Muslim bride?’

‘Both,’ said Maan with a straight face.

Moazzam took this seriously at first. ‘How can you have both?’ he said. Then it dawned on him that Maan might be making fun of him, and a hurt look came over his face.

But his high spirits reasserted themselves when a couple of village dogs, seeing Maan, started barking loudly.

Moazzam also started barking with delight — at the dogs. They got more and more agitated and barked louder and louder as he passed.

By now the three were in a small open space in the middle of the village, and they could see a group of about ten people gathered around the grain-parcher’s house. Most of them were getting wheat parched, but one or two had brought some rice or gram along.

Maan said to Moazzam: ‘Do you want some parched maize?’

Moazzam looked at him in astonishment, then nodded vigorously.

Maan patted his head. His bristly black hair was springy, like the pile of a carpet.

‘Good!’ he said.

Rasheed introduced Maan to the men at the grain-parcher’s. They looked at him suspiciously but were not overtly unfriendly. Most were from this village, one or two from the neighbouring village of Sagal, just beyond the school. After Maan joined them, they confined their conversation mainly to instructions to the parcher-woman. Soon it was Rasheed’s turn.

The old parcher-woman divided the maize Rasheed gave her into five equal portions, put one aside for herself as payment, and proceeded to parch the remainder. She heated the grain and a quantity of sand separately — the grain gently, the sand fiercely. Then she poured the sand into the shallow pan containing the warm grain, and stirred it for a couple of minutes. Moazzam looked at the process intently, though he must have seen it a hundred times before.

‘Do you want it roasted or popped?’ she asked.

‘Just roasted,’ said Rasheed.

Finally the woman sieved out the sand and returned the parched grain. Moazzam took more than the others, but less than he wanted to.

He ate some on the spot, and stuffed a few handfuls into the deep pockets of his kurta. Then he disappeared as suddenly as he had appeared.

It was late, and they had reached the far end of the village. Clouds were gathering, and the red sky appeared to be on fire. The evening call to prayer had come faintly to their ears, but Rasheed had decided to complete his round of the village rather than interrupt it with a visit to the mosque.

The inflamed sky loured over the thatched huts, the fields, the spreading green mango and dry, brown-leaved shisham trees in the wasteland to the north of the village. One of the two threshing-grounds of the village was located here, and the tired bullocks were still at work on the spring harvest. Round and round they went on the threshing-floor, round and round. They would continue to do so till late at night.

A light evening breeze blew gently from the north towards the cramped huts of the various untouchables — the washermen, the chamars and the sweepers — that lay on the far outskirts of the village — a breeze that would be stifled by the mud walls and constricted lanes of the village and die before it reached its heart. A few ragged children with brown, sun-bleached, filthy, matted hair played in the dust outside their houses — one dragged a piece of blackened wood, another played with a chipped marble. They were hungry, and they looked thin and ill.

Rasheed visited a few chamar households. One family had continued in its ancestral profession of skinning dead animals and preparing the hides for sale. Most, however, were agricultural labourers, one or two with a bit of land of their own as well. In one house Maan recognized the man with the deeply furrowed face who had pumped water for him with so much willingness while he was having a bath. ‘He has worked for our family since he was ten years old,’ said Rasheed. ‘His name is Kachheru.’

The old man and his wife lived by themselves in a single thatched room which they shared at night with their cow and a large number of insects.

Despite Rasheed’s politeness, they treated him with extreme, even fearful, deference. It was only when he agreed to have a cup of tea with them in their hut — agreeing thus on Maan’s behalf as well — that they seemed to be a little more at ease.

‘What happened to Dharampal’s son — your nephew?’ asked Rasheed.

‘He died a month ago,’ said Kachheru shortly.

‘All those doctors?’

‘No use, except to eat money. Now my brother’s in debt with the bania — and my sister-in-law, well, you wouldn’t recognize her any more. She’s just gone to her father’s village. She’ll stay there for a month or so — until the rains begin.’

‘Why didn’t he come to us if he needed money?’ said Rasheed, distressed.

‘You should ask your father that,’ said Kachheru. ‘He went to him, I believe, a couple of times. But after that your father became annoyed and told him not to fling good money after bad. But he helped with the funeral.’

‘I see. I see. What can one do? God disposes—’ Rasheed mumbled a few consolatory words.

After they left, Maan could see that Rasheed was very upset. Neither said anything for a while. Then Rasheed said: