Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

She came forward to welcome him, then stopped. ‘Pran, are you all right?’ she asked. ‘You don’t look at all well to me.’

‘Yes, Ammaji, I’m fine. Thanks to Ramjap Baba,’ he couldn’t resist adding.

‘You should not make fun of that good man.’

‘No, no,’ said Pran. ‘How is Bhaskar?’

‘He’s talking quite well, and even walking around. He insists on going back to Misri Mandi. But the air here is so much fresher.’ She gestured towards the garden. ‘And Savita?’

‘She’s annoyed that I spend so little time with her. I had to promise to return for lunch. I really don’t like all this extra work on the committee, but if I don’t do it, someone else will have to.’ He paused. ‘Other than that, she’s very well. Ma fusses over her so much that she’s going to want to have a baby every year.’

Mrs Mahesh Kapoor smiled to herself. Then an anxious look appeared on her face, and she said: ‘Where has Maan got to, do you know? He isn’t in the village, and he isn’t on the farm, and no one in Banaras knows where he is. He’s just disappeared. He hasn’t written for two weeks. I’m very worried about him. All your father says is that he can be in the underworld for all he cares so long as he’s not in Brahmpur.’

Pran frowned at this second reference to his brother that morning, then assured his mother that Maan disappearing for two weeks or even ten should not be cause for alarm. He may have decided to go hunting or for a trek in the foothills or for a holiday at Baitar Fort. Firoz might know his whereabouts; he’d be meeting Firoz this afternoon, and he would ask him if he’d heard from his friend.

His mother nodded unhappily. After a while she said:

‘Why don’t all of you come to Prem Nivas? It’ll be good for Savita in the last few days.’

‘No, Ammaji, she prefers to be where she’s used to living. And now that Baoji’s thinking of leaving the Congress Party the house will be full of politicians of every kind trying to persuade him or dissuade him. And you’re looking tired too. You take care of everyone, and don’t let anyone take care of you. You really look exhausted.’

‘Ah, that’s old age,’ said his mother.

‘Why don’t you call the mali into the house, where it’s cool, and give him his instructions there?’

‘Oh no,’ said Mrs Mahesh Kapoor. ‘That wouldn’t work at all. It would have a bad effect on the morale of the flowers.’

Pran went home, and rested in lieu of lunch. He met Firoz a little later in the Chief Justice’s courtroom at the Brahmpur High Court. Firoz was appearing for a student who had a grievance against the university. The student had been one of the brightest chemistry students the university could remember, and was well liked by his teachers. In the April examination, however, at the end of the academic year, he had done something so surprising that it was virtually inexplicable. He had gone to the bathroom in the middle of a paper, and then, seeing a couple of his friends standing just outside the exam hall, had stopped to talk to them for a minute. He claimed that they had talked about the fact that it was too hot to think; and there was no reason to assume that he was not telling the truth. His friends were both philosophy students, and could not possibly have helped him in his exam; in any case, he was by far the best chemistry student of his year.

But he was duly reported. It was clear that he had infringed the stringent rules for the examinations. On the grounds that an exception could not be made for him, his papers were cancelled and he was not allowed to appear for the remaining exams. In effect, he was to lose a year. He had appealed to the Vice-Chancellor to let him appear for the ‘compartmental’ exams; these exams, normally held in August for students who had failed in a single paper, would enable him to enter the next year if he took them as a set. His appeal had been turned down. In desperation he had turned to the possibility of a legal remedy. Firoz had agreed to be his lawyer.

Pran, being the junior member of the student welfare committee, which had been consulted in the original decision, had been asked by the Proctor to sit in on the hearings. He greeted Firoz with a nod in the courtroom, and said: ‘Let’s meet outside after this is over.’ He was not used to seeing Firoz in a black gown with white bands round his neck, and he was pleasantly impressed even while he thought it looked rather silly.

Firoz had filed a writ petition on the student’s behalf, claiming that his rights under the Constitution had been infringed. The Chief Justice made short work of his submission. He told him that hard cases made bad law; that the university could be trusted to act as its own overseeing authority unless the process of such oversight was blatantly unfair, as was not the case here; and that if the student insisted — unwisely, in his view — on recourse to the law, he should have been advised to file a suit with the local magistrate, not to come directly with a writ to the High Court. Writs to the High Court were a newfangled device that had come in under the recent Constitution, and the Chief Justice did not much care for them. He felt they were used far too often simply in order to jump the queue.

He cocked his head to one side, and said, looking down at Firoz: ‘I see no reason for a writ at all, young man. Your client should have gone to a munsif magistrate. If he wasn’t satisfied with his decision he could have gone to the District Judge on appeal, and then come here on further appeal. You should spend a little time choosing the appropriate forum rather than wasting the time of this court. Writs and suits are two quite different things, young man, two quite different things.’

Outside the court, Firoz was fuming. He had advised his client not to attend the hearing, and he was glad he had. He himself had been shaken by the injustice of it all. And for the Chief Justice to have rebuked him, to have implied that he had not considered the proper forum — that too was intolerable. He had helped argue the zamindari case before this very judge in this very courtroom; the Chief Justice must know that he was not given to flippant arguments and unconsidered recourse. Nor did Firoz like being called ‘young man’ unless it was imbedded in an approving remark.

Pran, whose heart was on the student’s side, sympathized with Firoz. He patted him on his shoulder.

‘It’s the correct recourse,’ said Firoz, loosening the bands around his neck as if they were constraining the flow of blood to his head. ‘In a few years writs will be the accepted method in such cases. Suits are just too slow. August would have come and gone by the time we got a hearing.’ He paused, and added passionately: ‘I hope they’re flooded with writs soon.’ Then, with a slight smile, he remarked: ‘Of course, this old man will have retired by then. He and all his brethren.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Pran. ‘I know what I meant to ask you. Where’s Maan?’

‘Is he back?’ said Firoz with pleasure. ‘Is he here?’

‘No, I’m asking you. I haven’t heard and I thought you might have.’

‘Am I your brother’s keeper?’ said Firoz. ‘Well, I suppose, after a fashion, I am,’ he went on, gently. ‘Or wouldn’t mind being. But no, I haven’t heard. I thought he might be here by now, what with his nephew and all that. But, as I said, I haven’t heard from him. Nothing to worry about, I hope?’

‘No, no, nothing. My mother’s worried. You know how mothers are.’

Firoz smiled slightly ruefully, rather in the way his mother used to smile. He looked very handsome at that moment.

‘Well,’ said Pran, changing the subject. ‘Are you your own brother’s keeper? Why haven’t I seen Imtiaz for so many days? Perhaps you can let him take a stroll outside his cage.’