Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

A little colour was applied to the Professor’s broad forehead as he bent downwards.

But Maan, who had been leaning, downcast, on Firoz’s shoulder, now dropped a canna he had been toying with and advanced with an open-hearted smile towards Professor Mishra. ‘So you are the notorious Professor Mishra,’ he said in delighted welcome. ‘How wonderful to meet so infamous a man.’ He embraced him warmly. ‘Tell me, are you really an Enemy of the People?’ he asked encouragingly. ‘What a remarkable face, what a mobile expression!’ he murmured in awed appreciation as Professor Mishra’s jaw dropped.

‘Maan,’ said Pran, startled.

‘So nefarious!’ said Maan, in wholehearted approval.

Professor Mishra stared at him.

‘My brother calls you Moby-Dick, the great white whale,’ continued Maan in a friendly way. ‘Now I see why. Come for a swim,’ he invited Professor Mishra generously, indicating the tub full of pink water.

‘No, no, I don’t think—’ began Professor Mishra weakly.

‘Imtiaz, give me a hand,’ said Maan.

‘Myocardial,’ said Imtiaz to indicate his willingness. They lifted Professor Mishra by the shoulders and led him physically to the tub.

‘No, no, I’ll get pneumonia!’ cried Professor Mishra in anger and bewilderment.

‘Stop it, Maan!’ said Pran sharply.

‘What do you say, Doctor Sahib?’ Maan asked Imtiaz.

‘No contraindications,’ said Imtiaz, and the two pushed the unprepared professor into the tub. He splashed around, wet to the bone, submerged in pinkness, wild with rage and confusion. Maan looked on, helpless with happy laughter, while Imtiaz grinned beneficently. Pran sat down on a step with his head in his hands. Everyone else looked on horrified.

When Professor Mishra got out of the tub he stood on the verandah for a second, trembling with wetness and emotion. Then he looked around the company like a bull at bay, and walked dripping down the steps and out of the garden. Pran was too taken aback even to apologize. With indignant dignity the great pink figure made its way out of the gate and disappeared along the road.

Maan looked around at the assembled company for approval. Savita avoided looking at him, and everyone else was quiet and subdued, and Maan felt that for some reason he was in the doghouse again.

Dressed in a fresh, clean kurta-pyjama after a long bath, happy under the influence of bhang and a warm afternoon, Maan had gone to sleep back in Prem Nivas. He dreamed an unusual dream: he was about to catch a train to Banaras to meet his fiancée. He realized that if he did not catch this train he would be imprisoned, but under what charge he did not know. A large body of policemen, from the Inspector-General of Purva Pradesh down to a dozen constables, had formed a cordon around him, and he, together with a number of mud-spattered villagers and about twenty festively dressed women students, was being herded into a compartment. But he had left something behind and was pleading for permission to go and get it. No one was listening to him and he was becoming more and more vehement and upset. And he was falling at the feet of the policemen and the ticket examiner and pleading that he be allowed to go out: he had left something somewhere else, perhaps at home, perhaps on another platform, and it was imperative that he be allowed to go and get it. But now the whistle was blowing and he had been forced on to the train. Some of the women were laughing at him as he got more and more desperate. ‘Please let me out,’ he kept insisting, but the train had left the station and was picking up speed. He looked up and saw a small red-and-white sign: To Stop Train Pull Chain. Penalty for Improper Use Rupees 50 . He leapt on to a berth. The villagers tried to stop him as they saw what he was about to do, but he struggled against them and grabbed hold of the chain and pulled it down with all his might. But it had no effect. The train kept gathering speed, and now the women were laughing even more openly at him. ‘I’ve left something there,’ he kept repeating, pointing in the general direction from which they had come, as if somehow the train would listen to his explanation and consent to stop. He took out his wallet and begged the ticket examiner: ‘Here is fifty rupees. Just stop the train. I beg you — turn it back. I don’t mind going to jail.’ But the man kept examining everyone else’s ticket and shrugging off Maan as if he was a harmless madman.

Maan woke up, sweating, and was relieved to return to the familiar objects of his room in Prem Nivas — the stuffed chair and the overhead fan and the red rug and the five or six paperback thrillers.

Quickly dismissing the dream from his mind, he went to wash his face. But as he looked at his startled expression in the mirror a picture of the women in the dream came vividly back to him. Why were they laughing at me? he asked himself. Was the laughter unkind. .? It was just a dream, he went on, reassuringly. But though he kept splashing water on his face, he could not get the notion out of his head that there was an explanation, and that it lay just beyond his reach. He closed his eyes to recapture something of the dream once more, but it was all extremely vague now, and only his unease, the sense that he had left something behind, remained. The faces of the women, the villagers, the ticket collector, the policemen, had all been washed away. What could I have left behind? he wondered. Why were they laughing at me?

From somewhere in the house he could hear his father calling sharply: ‘Maan, Maan — are you awake? The guests will start arriving for the concert in half an hour.’ He did not answer and looked at himself in the mirror. Not a bad face, he thought: lively, fresh, strong-featured, but balding slightly at the temples — which struck him as being a bit unfair, considering that he was only twenty-five. A few minutes later a servant was sent to inform him that his father wished to see him in the courtyard. Maan asked the servant if his sister Veena had arrived yet, and heard that she and her family had come and gone. Veena had in fact come to his room but, finding him asleep, had not let her son Bhaskar disturb him.

Maan frowned, yawned, and went to the clothes’ cupboard. He wasn’t interested in guests and concerts and he wanted to go to sleep again, dreamlessly this time. That was how he usually spent the evening of Holi when he was in Banaras — sleeping off his bhang.

Downstairs the guests had started coming in. They were most of them dressed in new clothes and, apart from a little red under the nails and in the hair, were not outwardly coloured by the morning’s revels. But they were all in excellent humour, and smiling, not just from the effect of the bhang. Mahesh Kapoor’s Holi concerts were an annual ritual, and had been going on at Prem Nivas for as long as anyone could remember. His father and grandfather had hosted them as well, and the only years that anyone could remember that they had not been held were when their host had been in jail.

Saeeda Bai Firozabadi was the singer tonight, as she had been for the last two years. She lived not far from Prem Nivas, came from a family of singers and courtesans, and had a fine, rich, and powerfully emotional voice. She was a woman of about thirty-five, but her fame as a singer had already spread outwards from Brahmpur and nowadays she was called for recitals as far away as Bombay and Calcutta. Many of Mahesh Kapoor’s guests this evening had come not so much to enjoy their host’s — or, more accurately, their unobtrusive hostess’s — excellent hospitality as to listen to Saeeda Bai. Maan, who had spent his previous two Holis in Banaras, knew of her fame but had not heard her sing.

Rugs and white sheets were spread over the semi-circular courtyard, which was bounded by whitewashed rooms and open corridors along the curve, and was open to the garden on the straight side. There was no stage, no microphone, no visible separation of the singer’s area from the audience. There were no chairs, just pillows and bolsters to lean on, and a few potted plants around the edge of the sitting area. The first few guests were standing around sipping fruit juice or thandai and nibbling kababs or nuts or traditional Holi sweets. Mahesh Kapoor stood greeting his guests as they came into the courtyard, but he was waiting for Maan to come down to relieve him so that he could spend a little time talking to some of his guests instead of merely exchanging perfunctory pleasantries with all of them. If he doesn’t come down in five minutes, said Mahesh Kapoor to himself, I’ll go upstairs and shake him awake myself. He may as well be in Banaras for all his usefulness. Where is the boy? The car’s already been sent for Saeeda Bai.