Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

The days stretched by, hardly differentiated one from another. When the postman came to the house, he usually greeted Maan’s expectant expression with a rueful one. Over the weeks he received two letters: one from Pran, one from his mother. He learned from Pran’s letter that Savita was well, that his mother had not been too well, that Bhaskar sent his love and Veena her affectionate admonitions, that the Brahmpur Shoe Mart had woken up, that the English Department was still sound asleep, that Lata had gone to Calcutta, that Mrs Rupa Mehra had gone to Delhi. How distant those worlds appeared, he thought, like the occasional white clouds that fluffed themselves into existence and disappeared miles above him. His father, it seemed, was coming home as late as ever: he was now deep into consultations with the Advocate-General about the legal challenge to the Zamindari Act; he could not spare the time to write, or so his mother explained, but he had asked after Maan’s health and about the farm. She insisted that she herself was in good health; occasional minor complaints that Pran might have unnecessarily mentioned she attributed to old age — Maan was not to worry about her. The late onset of the rains had affected the garden, but they were expected soon, and when everything was green again, Maan would be interested to notice two small innovations: a slight unevenness in the side lawn, and a bed of zinnias planted below his window.

Firoz too must be deeply involved in the zamindari case, thought Maan, excusing his friend’s silence. As for the one silence that pounded most deeply in his ears, it had hurt him most of all in the days immediately following his own letter, when he could scarcely breathe without thinking of it. Now it too was a dull pain, mediated by the heat and the elastic days. Yet when he lay on the charpoy in the early evening light reading the poems of Mir, especially the one that reminded him of that first evening when he saw her in Prem Nivas, the memory of Saeeda Bai came back to Maan and pierced him with longing and bewilderment.

He could not talk to anyone about this. Rasheed’s mildly Cassius-like smile when he saw him lost in tender contemplation of Mir would have turned to patent scorn if he had known whom he wished he were gazing at instead. The one time Rasheed had discussed love in general terms with Maan he had been as intense and definitive and theoretical about it as he was about everything else. It was clear to Maan that he had never experienced it. Maan was often exhausted by Rasheed’s earnestness; in this particular case he wished he had never opened the subject.

Rasheed for his part was glad that he had Maan to talk to about his ideas and feelings, but he could not understand Maan’s monumental directionlessness. Having got as far as he himself had from a background where higher education had seemed as unattainable as the stars, he believed that will and effort could get him anywhere. He attempted bravely, fervently, and perhaps obsessively, to reconcile everything — family life, learning, calligraphy, personal honour, order, ritual, God, agriculture, history, politics; this world and all the other worlds, in short — into a comprehensible whole. Exacting with himself, he was exacting with others. And it seemed to Maan, who was somewhat in awe of his energy and sense of principle, that he was wearing himself out by feeling so deeply and taking on so insistently all the burdens and responsibilities of mankind.

‘By doing nothing — or worse than nothing — I’ve managed to displease my father,’ said Maan to Rasheed as they sat talking under the neem one day. ‘And by doing something — or better than something — you’ve managed to displease yours.’

Rasheed had added in a troubled tone that his father would be much more than displeased if he knew just what he had succeeded in doing. Maan had asked him to explain what he meant, but he had shaken his head, and Maan, though uneasy about the remark, had not followed it up. He was by now used to Rasheed’s alternation of secretiveness with sudden, even intimate, confidences. As a matter of fact, when Maan had told him about the munshi and the old woman at Baitar Fort, Rasheed had been on the verge of unburdening himself about his own visit to the patwari. But something had stopped his tongue. After all, no one in this village, not even Kachheru himself, knew about that act of attempted justice; and it was best left so. Besides, the patwari had not been in the village for the past week or two, and Rasheed had not yet received the expected confirmation of his instructions.

Instead Rasheed had said: ‘Did you get the woman’s name? How do you know the munshi won’t want to take his spite out on her?’ Maan, shocked by the possible consequences of his own impracticality, had shaken his head.

A couple of times Rasheed did succeed in getting the reluctant Maan to discuss zamindari, but Maan’s opinions were characteristically and vexatiously nebulous. He had reacted instinctively, indeed, violently, to suffering and cruelty, but he did not have much of an opinion on the general rights and wrongs of the system. He did not want the legislation on which his father had worked for years to be thrown out by the courts, but neither did he want Firoz and Imtiaz to lose the larger part of their family estate. To Rasheed’s specific argument that the larger landlords did not work (or did not have to work) for their living, it was not to be expected that Maan would respond with proletarian indignation.

Rasheed had no qualms about speaking harshly about his own family and their treatment of those who served them. About the Nawab Sahib, though, whom Rasheed had met only once, he spoke no ill to Maan. He had known quite early, as a result of their train journey from Brahmpur, that Maan was a friend of the young Nawabzadas; and he did not wish either to make Maan uncomfortable or to remind himself of past humiliation by describing the treatment he had received when he had gone to Baitar House in search of employment some months ago.

One evening, when Maan was working on some exercises that Rasheed had set him before going off to the mosque, Rasheed’s father interrupted him. He was carrying Meher, who was asleep, in his arms.

Without any preliminaries he said to Maan: ‘Now that you’re by yourself can I ask you a question? I’ve been wondering about it for some time.’

‘Of course,’ Maan replied, setting down his pen.

Rasheed’s father sat down.

‘Now, let me see,’ he began, ‘how do I put this? Not being married is considered by my religion and yours to be. . ’ He paused, searching for the word. He had sounded disapproving.

‘Adharma? Against correct principles?’ suggested Maan.

‘Yes, call it adharma,’ said Rasheed’s father, relieved. ‘Well, you’re twenty-two, twenty-three. . ’

‘Older.’

‘Older? That’s bad. You should have got married by now. I believe that a man between the ages of seventeen and thirty-five is in the prime of his life.’

‘Ah,’ said Maan, nodding in wary agreement. Rasheed’s grandfather had brought up the subject at the very beginning of his stay. No doubt Rasheed would be plaguing him next.

‘Not that I noticed any falling off in my strength even when I was forty-five,’ continued Rasheed’s father.

‘That’s good,’ said Maan. ‘I know some people who are old at that age.’

‘But then, you see,’ continued Rasheed’s father, ‘then came the death of my son, and the death of my wife — and I fell apart.’

Maan remained silent. Kachheru arrived with a lantern, and placed it a little distance away.

Rasheed’s father, who had intended to advise Maan, gently swerved off into his own memories: ‘My elder son was a wonderful boy. In a hundred villages there was no one like him. He was strong as a lion and over six feet tall — a wrestler and a weight-lifter — he did English exercises. He would lift two maunds of iron easily. And he had a wonderful fresh face; and was always so good-natured and smiling — he greeted people with such great friendliness that he would make their hearts happy. And when he wore the suit I got made for him, he looked so good that people said he should be a Superintendent of Police.’