Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

Moazzam, once again fascinated by Maan’s watch, said: ‘Look: the two hands are coming together now.’

‘Don’t give Moazzam your watch,’ advised Rasheed. ‘I’ve warned you already. Or your torch. He likes to find out what makes them work, but he doesn’t operate very scientifically. I once found him bashing my watch with a brick. He had taken it out of my bag when I wasn’t looking. Luckily, the basic machinery still worked. But the glass, needle, spring — all were smashed. It cost me twenty rupees to have it repaired.’

But Moazzam was now counting and tickling Meher’s toes — to her great delight. ‘Sometimes he says the most interesting and even sensitive things,’ said Rasheed. ‘He is very puzzling. The trouble is that his parents spoiled him, and did not discipline him at all. Now he just follows his own inclinations. Sometimes he steals money from them or others and goes off into Salimpur. What he does there no one knows. Then he resurfaces after a few days. He’s very intelligent, even affectionate. But he’ll come to a bad end.’

Moazzam, who had overheard this, laughed and said, a little resentfully: ‘I won’t. It’s you who will come to a bad end. Eight, nine, ten; ten, nine, eight — keep still — seven, six. Give me that charm — you’ve played with it long enough.’

Noticing a couple of other visitors approaching in the distance, he handed Meher to her great-grandfather, who had emerged from the house, and wandered off to investigate and — if necessary — challenge them.

‘Quite a mischievous kid,’ said Maan.

‘Mischievous?’ said Baba. ‘He’s a rogue — a thief — at the age of twelve!’

Maan smiled.

‘He broke the fan of that bicycle-operated winnowing machine there. He’s not mischievous, he’s a hooligan,’ continued Baba, rocking Meher to and fro, very vigorously for an old man.

‘Now he’s so big,’ continued Baba, throwing a dirty look in Moazzam’s direction, ‘that he has to have fancy food. So he steals — from people’s pockets. Every day he steals rice, daal, whatever he can, from his own house and sells it at the bania’s shop. Then he’s off to Salimpur to eat grapes and pomegranates!’

Maan laughed.

Suddenly Baba thought of something. ‘Rasheed!’ he said.

‘Yes, Baba?’

‘Where’s that other daughter of yours?’

‘Inside, Baba, with her mother. I think she’s feeding.’

‘She’s a weakling. Hardly seems to be a child of my stock. She should be given buffalo’s milk to drink. When she smiles she looks like an old woman.’

‘Many children do, Baba,’ said Rasheed.

‘Now this is a healthy child. See how her cheeks glow.’

Two men — also brahmins from the village — now approached the open courtyard, preceded by Moazzam and followed by Kachheru. Baba went forward to greet them, and Rasheed and Maan moved their own charpoy closer to the end of the courtyard where Rasheed’s father was sitting with the Football. It was becoming a conference.

To add to the numbers, Netaji also appeared shortly from the direction of Sagal. Qamar, the sardonic schoolteacher who had made a very brief appearance at the shop in Salimpur, was with him. They had just been visiting the madrasa to talk with the teachers.

Everyone greeted everyone else, though with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Qamar was not delighted to see such an accumulation of brahmins, and greeted them in the most perfunctory manner — although the recent arrivals, Bajpai (complete with his sandalwood-paste caste-mark) and his son Kishor Babu, were very good people. They for their part were not happy to see their fellow-brahmin, the Football, who was a mischief-maker and liked nothing better than to set people off against each other.

Kishor Babu was a shy and gentle soul. He told Maan that he was very pleased to make his acquaintance at last, and took both his hands in his own. After that he tried to pick up Meher, who, however, would not let him and ran off to sit on her grandfather’s lap while he examined the betel nuts that Kachheru had brought. Netaji went across the way to fetch another charpoy.

Bajpai had caught hold of Maan’s right hand and was examining it carefully. ‘One wife. Some wealth,’ he said. ‘As for the line of wisdom. . ’

‘. . it seems not to exist.’ Maan finished the sentence for him and smiled.

‘The line of life is not very favourable,’ said Bajpai encouragingly.

Maan laughed.

Qamar meanwhile was looking disgusted at this whole exercise. Here was another example of the pitiful superstition of the Hindus.

Bajpai continued: ‘You were four children, only three remain.’

Maan stopped laughing, and his hand tensed.

‘Am I right?’ said Bajpai.

‘Yes,’ said Maan.

‘Which one passed away?’ asked Bajpai, looking at Maan’s face intently and kindly.

‘No,’ said Maan, ‘that’s what you have to tell me.’

‘I believe it was the youngest.’

Maan was relieved. ‘I am the youngest,’ he said. ‘It was the third who died when he was less than a year old.’

‘All bogus, all bogus,’ said Qamar, with a look of contempt. He was a man of principle and could not abide charlatanism.

‘You should not say so, Master Sahib,’ said Kishor Babu mildly. ‘It is quite scientific. Palmistry — and astrology too. Otherwise why would the stars be where they are?’

‘Everything is scientific for you,’ said Qamar. ‘Even the caste system. Even worshipping the linga and other disgusting things. And singing bhajans to that adulterer, that teaser of women, that thief Krishna.’

If Qamar was spoiling for a quarrel, he did not get what he wanted. Maan looked at him in surprise but did not interfere. He too was interested in what Bajpai and Kishor Babu would say. As for the Football, his small eyes darted swiftly from one side to another.

Kishor Babu now spoke in a slow and considered voice: ‘You see, Qamar Bhai, it is like this. It is not these images that we worship. They are only points of concentration. Now tell me, why do you turn towards Mecca when you pray? No one would say that you are worshipping the stone. And with Lord Krishna, we do not think of him in those terms. For us he is the incarnation of Vishnu himself. Why, even I am named after Lord Krishna in a way.’

Qamar snorted. ‘Don’t tell me,’ he said, ‘that the ordinary Hindus of Salimpur who do their puja every morning before their four-armed goddesses and their elephant-headed gods are using them as points of concentration. They are worshipping those idols, plain and simple.’

Kishor Babu sighed. ‘Ah, the common people!’ he said, in a manner that implied that this explained everything. He was a firm believer in the caste system.

Rasheed felt it necessary to intervene on the side of the Hindu minority. ‘Anyway, people are good or bad according to what they do, not according to what they worship.’

‘Really, Maulana Sahib?’ said Qamar sourly. ‘So it doesn’t matter who or what you worship? What do you think about all this, Kapoor Sahib?’ he continued provocatively.

Maan thought for a few seconds but said nothing. He looked over to where Meher and two of her friends were trying to put their arms around the corrugated bark of the neem tree.

‘Or don’t you have any views on the subject, Kapoor Sahib?’ Qamar persisted. Being from outside the village, he could be as abrasive as he wished.

Kishor Babu was now looking quite distressed. Neither Baba nor his sons had so far participated in the theological skirmish. Kishor Babu felt that as his hosts they ought to have intervened to prevent it from getting out of hand. He sensed that Maan did not care at all for Qamar’s method of questioning, and feared that he might react strongly.