Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

‘Yes. Wonderful,’ said Maan. ‘Where is the bathroom?’

In due course, after Maan had washed, shaved, and rested, the young manservant, Waris, who had been assigned to him, showed him around the Fort. This young fellow was an enormous contrast to the old servitor who had seen to Maan’s needs in Baitar House in Brahmpur — and certainly to the munshi.

He was in his late twenties, tough, robust, handsome, very hospitable (as a servant trusted by his master has the self-confidence to be), and utterly loyal to the Nawab Sahib and his children, especially to Firoz. He pointed out a fading black-and-white photograph in a small silver frame on a side-table in Firoz’s room. This showed the Nawab Sahib posing with his wife (not in purdah for the photograph, clearly), Zainab, Imtiaz and Firoz. Firoz and Imtiaz looked about five years old; Firoz was staring very intently at the camera with his head tilted sideways at an angle of forty-five degrees.

It was odd, thought Maan, that the very first time he was visiting the Fort, it was not Firoz but someone else who was taking him around.

The Fort seemed endless. The overwhelming impression was that of grandeur, the secondary impression that of neglect. They climbed level upon level by flights of steep stairs until they came to the roof with its ramparts and crenellations and its four square towers, each with an empty flagpost on top. It was almost dark. The countryside spread quietly around the Fort in all directions, and the fog of smoke from household fires cast a vagueness over the town of Baitar. Maan wanted to climb one of the towers, but Waris didn’t have the keys. He mentioned that an owl lived in the closest tower and had been flying about hooting loudly for the last two nights — and had even made a foray in daylight, sweeping around towards the old zenana sections.

‘I’ll shoot the haramzada tonight if you want,’ volunteered Waris generously. ‘I don’t want it to disturb your sleep.’

‘Oh, no, no, that’s not necessary,’ said Maan. ‘I sleep through anything.’

‘That’s the library below,’ said Waris, pointing downwards through some thick, greenish glass. ‘One of the best private libraries, they say, in India. It’s two storeys high, and the daylight pours down through this glass. No one’s in the Fort now, so we haven’t lit it up. But whenever the Nawab Sahib comes here he spends most of his time in the library. He leaves all his estate work to that bastard of a munshi. Now be careful there — that’s slippery; it’s a depression where the rainwater runs off.’

Maan soon discovered that Waris used the word haramzada — bastard — fairly freely. In fact he used foul language in the friendliest way even when talking to the Nawab’s sons. This was part of an easy rusticity which he curbed only when speaking to the Nawab Sahib himself. In his presence, awed, he spoke as little as possible, and kept severe control of his tongue when he did.

Waris usually felt either an instinctive wariness or an instinctive ease when he met new people, and he spoke and behaved with them accordingly. With Maan he felt no need for self-censorship.

‘What’s wrong with the munshi?’ asked Maan, interested that Waris too did not like him.

‘He’s a thief,’ said Waris bluntly. He could not bear the thought that the munshi was absorbing any of the Nawab Sahib’s rightful revenues, and it was notorious that he did so all the time, undervaluing produce that he sold, overvaluing purchases that he made, claiming expenses where no work was done, and recording remissions in rent from the peasant tenants where no remissions were made.

‘Besides that,’ continued Waris, ‘he oppresses the people. And besides that, he is a kayasth!’

‘What’s wrong with being a kayasth?’ asked Maan. The kayasths, though Hindus, had been scribes and secretaries to the Muslim courts for centuries, and often wrote better Persian and Urdu than the Muslims themselves.

‘Oh,’ said Waris, suddenly recalling that Maan was a Hindu himself. ‘I’m not against Hindus like you. It’s only the kayasths. The munshi’s father was the munshi here in the Nawab Sahib’s father’s time; and he tried to rob the old man blind; except that the old man was not blind.’

‘But the present Nawab Sahib?’ said Maan.

‘He’s too good at heart, too charitable, too religious. He never gets really angry with us — and with us the little anger he displays is enough. But when he rebukes the munshi, the munshi grovels for a few minutes and then carries on just as before.’

‘How about you? Are you very religious?’ said Maan.

‘No,’ said Waris, surprised. ‘Politics is more my line. I keep things in order around these parts. I have a gun — and a gun licence, too. There is a man in this town — a base, pathetic man who was educated by the Nawab Sahib and has eaten his salt — who makes all kinds of trouble for the Nawab Sahib and the Nawabzadas — starting false cases, attempting to prove that the Fort is evacuee property, that the Nawab Sahib is a Pakistani — if this swine becomes MLA here we’ll be in trouble. And he is a Congress-wallah and has made it known that he is in the running for the Congress ticket to contest from this constituency. I wish the Nawab Sahib would himself stand as an Independent candidate — or let me stand for him! I’d wipe the ground clean with that bastard.’

Maan was delighted with Waris’s sense of loyalty; he clearly felt that the honour and prosperity of the house of Baitar rested entirely on his shoulders.

Maan now descended to the dining room for dinner. What struck him there was not so much the rich carpet or long teak table or carved sideboard, but the oil portraits hanging on the walls: for there were four, two on each of the longer walls.

One was of the Nawab Sahib’s dashing great-grandfather, complete with horse, sword and green plume, who had died fighting against the British at Salimpur. The other portrait on the same wall was of his son, who had been permitted his inheritance by the British and who had gone in for more scholarly and philanthropic pursuits. He was not on horseback, merely standing, though in full nawabi regalia. There was a sense of calm, even of withdrawal, in his eyes — as opposed to the attractive arrogance in his father’s. On the opposite wall, the elder facing the elder and the younger the younger, hung portraits of Queen Victoria and King Edward VII. Victoria, seated, stared out of the painting with an air of glum plumpness that was emphasized by the tiny round crown on her head. She was wearing a long, dark-blue gown and a cloak trimmed in ermine, and carrying a small sceptre. Her portly, rakish son stood crown-less but not sceptre-less against a dark background; he had on a red tunic with a dark-grey sash, an ermine cloak and velvet gown, and he bristled with braid and tassels. He had a great deal more cheerfulness in his expression but none of his mother’s assurance. Maan looked at each of the portraits in turn between courses during his over-spiced and solitary meal.

Later he returned to his room. For some reason the taps and flushes in his bathroom did not work, but there were buckets and brass pots of water sufficient for his needs. After a few days of going out into the fields, or the fairly rudimentary facilities of the SDO’s bungalow, the marble-tiled bathroom of Firoz’s room, even if he had to pour his own water, was for Maan an extreme luxury. Apart from a tub and shower and two sinks, there was a dusty-seated European-style toilet and an Indian one as well. The former was inscribed in a kind of quatrain as follows:

J B Norton & Sons Ld

Sanitary Engineers

Old Court House Corner

Calcutta

The latter said, more simply: