Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

Norton’s Patent

‘The Hindu’

Combined Closet

Calcutta

Maan, as he used the latter, wondered whether anyone before him in this erstwhile stronghold of the Muslim League had meditated on this subversive inscription, rebelling perhaps at the thought that this item of their common cultural heritage should have been so arbitrarily ascribed by the British to those of the other and rival religion.

The next morning Maan met the munshi as he was bicycling in; they exchanged a few words. The munshi was eager to know if everything had been to Maan’s satisfaction: the food, the room, the behaviour of Waris. He apologized for Waris’s crudity: ‘But, Sir, what can we do, they are such yokels hereabouts.’ Maan told him that he planned to be taken around town by the yokel, and the munshi licked his moustache in nervous displeasure.

Then he brightened up and informed Maan that he was going to arrange a hunt for him the next day.

Waris packed lunch, offered Maan a choice of hats, and showed him around the sights of the town, telling him all about the improvements that had taken place since the time of the Nawab Sahib’s heroic great-grandfather. He shouted roughly at people who stared at the white-shirted, white-trousered sahib. By late afternoon they had returned to the Fort. At the gate the porter spoke sternly to Waris:

‘Munshiji said you were to be back by three. There is a shortage of wood in the kitchen. He is very annoyed. He is sitting with the estate tehsildar in the big office room and he says you are to report to him immediately.’

Waris grimaced. He realized he was in some sort of minor trouble. The munshi was always irritable at this time of day; it was like a malarial cycle. Maan, however, said:

‘Look, I’ll come with you and explain things.’

‘No, no, Maan Sahib, why bother? A hornet bites the haramzada’s penis at four thirty every day.’

‘It’s no trouble.’

‘You are very good, Maan Sahib. You must not forget me when you go away.’

‘Of course I won’t. Now let’s see what your munshi has to say.’

They entered the hot paved courtyard and walked up the stairs to the large office room. The munshi was sitting not at the big desk in the corner (reserved presumably for the Nawab Sahib) but cross-legged on the floor in front of a small, wooden, brass-inlaid writing desk with a sloping surface. The knuckles of his left hand were pressed into his grey-and-white moustache. He was looking disgustedly at an old woman, very poor by the look of her tattered sari, who was standing before him, her face streaked with tears.

The estate tehsildar was standing behind the munshi and was looking angry and fierce.

‘Do you think you can enter the Fort like this under false pretences and then expect us to listen to you?’ said the munshi testily. He did not notice Maan and Waris, who were standing just outside the door; they had paused when they heard the sound of his raised voice.

‘I had no other way,’ faltered the old woman. ‘Allah knows I have tried to speak to you — please, Munshiji, listen to my prayers. Our family has served this house for generations—’

The munshi interrupted her: ‘Were you serving this house when your son tried to get his tenancy on to the village records? What does he want to do? Take away the land that does not belong to him? If we have taught him a lesson, that is nothing strange.’

‘But it is only the truth — the land has been farmed by him—’

‘What? Have you come here to argue and to teach me about truth? I know how much truth there is in what you people say.’ An abrasiveness now appeared beneath the smoothness of his voice. Nor did he bother to disguise his pleasure in exercising the power of crushing her under his heel.

The old woman started trembling. ‘It was a mistake. He should not have done it. But apart from our land, what do we have, Munshiji? We will starve if you take our land away. Your men have beaten him up, he has learned his lesson. Forgive him — and forgive me, who have come to you with folded hands, for having given birth to the miserable boy.’

‘Go,’ said the munshi. ‘I have heard enough. You have your hut. Go and parch grain. Or sell your withered body. And tell your son to plough someone else’s fields.’

The woman started weeping helplessly.

‘Go,’ repeated the munshi. ‘Are you deaf as well as stupid?’

‘You have no humanity,’ said the old woman between sobs. ‘A day will come when your deeds will be weighed. On that day, when God says—’

‘What?’ The munshi had stood up. He stared into the woman’s wrinkled face with its tearful and downcast eyes and its bitter mouth. ‘What? What was that you said? I was thinking of being lenient, but now I know what it is my duty to do. We cannot have people like you creating trouble on the Nawab Sahib’s land after having enjoyed his grace and hospitality for years.’ He turned to the estate tehsildar. ‘Get the old witch out of here — throw her out of the Fort and tell the men that I want her out of her house in the village by tonight. That will teach her and her ingrate of a son—’

He stopped in mid-sentence and stared, not in real or pretended anger but in unsimulated terror. His mouth closed and opened, he panted almost soundlessly, and his tongue moved towards his moustache.

For Maan, white-faced with rage, his mind a blank of fury, was walking towards him like an automaton, looking neither left nor right, and with murder in his eyes.

The tehsildar, the old woman, the manservant, the munshi himself — no one moved. Maan grabbed hold of the munshi’s fat, rough-stubbled neck and started shaking him wordlessly and violently, hardly mindful of the terror in the man’s eyes. His own teeth were bared, and he looked terrifying. The munshi gasped and choked — his hands flew up to his neck. The tehsildar stepped forward — but only a step. Suddenly Maan let the munshi go, and he crumpled downwards on to his desk.

No one said anything for a minute. The munshi gasped and coughed. Maan was stunned by what he had just done.

He could not understand why he had reacted in this disproportionate way. He should simply have yelled at the munshi and put the fear of God into him. He shook his head. Waris and the tehsildar each stepped forward now, one towards Maan, one towards the munshi. The old woman’s mouth was open in horror, and she was repeating ‘Ya Allah! Ya Allah!’ softly to herself.

‘Sahib! Sahib!’ croaked the munshi, finding his voice at last. ‘Huzoor knows it was only a joke — a way of — these people — I never intended — a good woman — nothing will happen — her son, his field back — Huzoor must not think—’ Tears were rolling down his cheeks.

‘I am going,’ said Maan, half to himself, half to Waris. ‘Get me a rickshaw.’ He was sure he had come within an inch of killing the man.

The resilient munshi suddenly leapt forward and almost lunged at Maan’s feet, touching them with his hands and his head and lying gasping and prostrate before him. ‘No, no, Huzoor — please — please — do not ruin me,’ he wept, unmindful of his audience of underlings. ‘It was a joke — a joke — a way of making a point — no one means such things, I swear by my father and mother.’

‘Ruining you?’ said Maan, dazed.

‘But your hunt tomorrow—’ the munshi gasped out. He realized well enough that he was in double jeopardy. Maan’s father was Mahesh Kapoor, and such an incident would not increase his tenderness towards the Baitar Estate. And Maan was Firoz’s friend; Firoz was volatile and his father was fond of him and sometimes listened to him; and the munshi feared to think what might happen if the Nawab Sahib, who liked to imagine that an estate could be run painlessly and benevolently, came to hear of the munshi’s threats to an old woman.