Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

‘What about Kachheru?’ said his father, displaying an anger that he hoped would seal the lid on this uncomfortable subject. ‘He will get whatever field I desire to give him. Make an exception for one chamar, and I’ll have twenty rebellions. The family is agreed on this.’

‘But his trees—?’

‘ His trees?’ said Rasheed’s father dangerously. ‘The trouble is these communist ideas you drink like mother’s milk at the university. Let him take one under each arm and clear off if he wants to.’

A sort of sickness gripped Rasheed’s heart as he looked at his father. He said softly that he was not feeling well, and asked to be excused. At first his father looked at him intently, then suddenly said, ‘Go. And find out what’s happening about the tea. Ah, here comes your Mamu.’ His brother-in-law’s large stubble-bearded face had appeared at the top of the stairs.

‘I was telling Rasheed what I thought about his grand idiocies,’ said Rasheed’s father with a laugh just before Rasheed walked downstairs and out of sight.

‘Oh, yes?’ said the Bear mildly. He thought highly of his nephew and did not care for his brother-in-law’s attitude towards him.

The Bear knew that Rasheed liked him too, and sometimes wondered at it. After all, he was not an educated man. But what Rasheed admired about him was that he was a man who had attained tolerance and calm without losing his zest. Nor could he ever forget that at his uncle’s home he had found a refuge when he had fled from his own.

The Bear’s main concern about Rasheed was that he was not looking well. He was too thin, too dark, and too gaunt; and more white had appeared in his hair than should by rights appear in the hair of any young man.

‘Rasheed is good,’ he said.

He received a grunt in response to this absolute statement.

‘The only problem with Rasheed,’ added the Bear, ‘is that he worries too much about everyone, including you.’

‘Oh?’ said Rasheed’s father, parting his lips and opening his red mouth.

‘Not only you, of course,’ continued his brother-in-law calmly and with great and expansive definitiveness. ‘About his wife. About his children. About the village. About the country. About true religion and false religion. Also about other matters: some important, some less so. Like how one should behave towards one’s fellow-man. Like how the world can be fed. Like where the mud goes when you hammer a peg into the ground. And of course the greatest question of all. . ’ The Bear paused and belched.

‘What is that?’ his brother-in-law could not resist asking.

‘Why a goat eats green and shits black,’ said the Bear.

His father’s words burning in his ears, Rasheed walked downstairs. He forgot to inquire about the tea. He did not at first know what he should think, let alone do. He felt, above all, ashamed. Kachheru, whom he had known since he was a child, who had carried him on his back, who had stood patiently by the hand-pump while he bathed, who had served the family trustingly and unflaggingly for so many years, ploughing and weeding and fetching and carrying: it was unimaginable that his father should so indifferently have suggested shifting him about from field to field in his old age. He was no longer young; he had aged in their service. A man of settled habits, he had become deeply attached to the small plot that he had tilled for fifteen years. He had made improvements to the field, connecting it by a series of small channels to a larger ditch; he had maintained the raised paths that bordered it; he had planted the mulberry trees for shade and occasional fruit. Strictly speaking, these too may have been the landlord’s under the old dispensation, but to speak strictly here was to speak inhumanly. And under the new dispensation that was doubtless soon to come, Kachheru had rights which could not be denied. Everyone knew that he was the tiller of that field. Under the impending zamindari legislation five years of continuous tenancy was enough to establish his right to the land.

That night Rasheed could hardly sleep. He did not want to talk to anyone, not even to Maan. During the night prayer — which he did not avoid — he mouthed the words through habit but his heart remained grounded. When he lay down he felt a painful pressure in his head. After a few hours of restlessness he got up at last and walked through the lanes towards the wastelands at the far northern end of the village. Everything was still. The bullocks had ceased their work on the threshing-ground. The dogs were unperturbed by his presence. The night was starlit and warm. In their cramped thatched huts the poorest of the village slept. They cannot do it, said Rasheed to himself. They cannot do it.

To make sure of this, however, he went the next morning after breakfast to visit the village patwari, the petty government functionary who acted as record-keeper and accountant of the village and who each year painstakingly updated the land records, noting down in detail the ownership and use of every plot. Rasheed estimated that a good third of the land in the village was let out by the landlords; in his own family’s case, almost two-thirds of it was. He was confident that in the patwari’s thick, cloth-bound ledgers would lie irrefutable proof of Kachheru’s continuous tenancy.

The lean old patwari greeted Rasheed politely, with a tired smile. He had heard of Rasheed’s social rounds of the village, and felt pleased to have merited a separate visit. Shading his eyes against the sun with his hand, he asked him how his studies were going and how long he planned to stay in the village. And he offered Rasheed some sherbet. It was some time before the patwari realized that the visit was not entirely social, but this did not displease him. His government salary was low, and it was widely accepted that he needed to augment it informally. He expected that Rasheed wished to see how his family’s holdings stood. He had no doubt been sent by his grandfather to check the status of their lands. And he was going to be pleased by what he saw.

The patwari went inside to bring out three ledgers, a few field-books, and two large cloth maps, about three feet by five, which covered all the land in the village. He lovingly unrolled one of them upon the wooden seating platform in his small courtyard. He stroked a corner of it gently with the side of his hand. He also fetched his spectacles, which he now placed carefully on his nose.

‘Well, Khan Sahib,’ he said to Rasheed, ‘in a year or two these books, which I have tended as carefully as a garden, will pass into other hands. If the government has its way it will rotate us from village to village every three years. Our lives will not be worth living. And how can some outsider understand the life of the village, its history, the reality of things? Just settling down will take him at least three years.’

Rasheed made sympathetic sounds. He had put down his glass of sherbet and was trying to locate Kachheru’s field on the map, which was of fine silk, slightly yellowed.

‘And the people of this village have always been very good to this sinful man,’ continued the patwari, with a slightly more energetic laugh. ‘Ghee, grain, milk, wood. . even a few rupees now and then — the Khan Sahib’s family has been particularly munificent. . What are you looking for?’

‘Our chamar Kachheru’s field.’

The patwari’s finger went unerringly to the spot, and came to rest in the air half an inch above it.

‘But don’t worry, Khan Sahib, it has all been taken care of,’ he said.

Rasheed looked at him questioningly.

The patwari was a little surprised that his competence or industry was being called into doubt. He wordlessly rolled up the silken map and unfurled the map of cruder cloth. This, his working map, which he took with him on his recording rounds, was slightly mud-stained, and displayed a denser patchwork of fields, covered with names and numbers and notations of various kinds in black and in red, all in Urdu. For a while he gazed at it, then went to the ledgers and the cracked and battered field-books, opened a few of them to the appropriate pages, consulted them alternately a few times, and with a serious and slightly injured look, nodded at Rasheed. ‘See for yourself,’ he said.