Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

Maan was silent. He began wondering how he could get away to pay a visit to his friend the Sub-Divisional Officer, who had organized the hunt a couple of months earlier.

‘That things will swing back into order once they’ve been displaced is an optimistic and childish conceit,’ said his father. ‘The toy you should be thinking of is not the swing but the slide,’ he continued after a pause. ‘Now Nehru cannot control the Congress. And if he cannot control it, I cannot rejoin it — nor Rafi Sahib, nor any of the rest. It’s as simple as that.’

‘Yes, Baoji,’ said Maan, taking a mild swipe at a tall weed with his walking stick, and hoping that he was not going to be treated to a long lecture on the rights and wrongs of various party positions. He was in luck. A man came running across the fields to announce that the jeep of the Sub-Divisional Officer Sandeep Lahiri had been sighted heading towards the farm.

The ex-Minister growled: ‘Tell him I’m taking a walk.’

But Sandeep Lahiri appeared a few minutes later, walking gingerly (and without his accompanying policemen) along the little ridges between the fields of emerald-coloured rice. On his head was his sola topi, and there was a nervous smile above his weak chin.

He greeted Mahesh Kapoor with a mere ‘Good morning, Sir,’ and Maan, whom he had not expected to see, with a hello.

Mahesh Kapoor, who was still used to being addressed by his erstwhile title, looked a little closely at Sandeep Lahiri.

‘Yes?’ he asked abruptly.

‘Quite a pleasant day—’

‘Have you simply come to pay your respects?’ asked Mahesh Kapoor.

‘Oh, no, Sir,’ said Sandeep Lahiri, horrified by the thought.

‘You have not come to pay your respects?’ asked Mahesh Kapoor.

‘Well, not not to — but, well, I’ve come for a little help and advice, Sir. I heard you had just arrived here, and so I thought—’

‘Yes, yes—’ Mahesh Kapoor was walking on, and Sandeep Lahiri was following him on the narrow divider, rather unsteadily.

Sandeep Lahiri sighed, and plunged into his question. ‘It is like this, Sir. The government has authorized us — us SDOs, that is — to collect money from the public — voluntary donations — for a small celebration on Independence Day, which is — well — just a few days away now. Does the Congress Party traditionally have any particular hold on these funds?’

The words ‘Congress Party’ struck an angry chord in Mahesh Kapoor’s breast. ‘I have nothing to do with the Congress Party,’ he said. ‘You are well aware of the fact that I am no longer a Minister.’

‘Yes, Sir,’ said Sandeep Lahiri. ‘But I thought—’

‘You had better ask Jha, he virtually runs the District Congress Committee. He can speak for the Congress.’

Jha was the Chairman of the Legislative Council, an old Congressman who had caused Sandeep Lahiri much trouble already, ever since the SDO had arrested his nephew for hooliganism and affray. Jha, whose ego required him to interfere in every decision of the administration, was the cause of half of Sandeep Lahiri’s problems.

‘But Mr Jha is—’ began Sandeep Lahiri.

‘Yes, yes, ask Jha. I have nothing to do with it.’

Sandeep Lahiri sighed again, then said:

‘On another problem, Sir—’

‘Yes?’

‘I know that you are no longer Minister of Revenue, and that this is not a direct concern of yours, but, Sir, the increase in the number of evictions of tenants after the Zamindari Act was passed—’

‘Who says it is not my concern?’ asked Mahesh Kapoor, turning around and nearly bumping into Sandeep Lahiri. ‘Tell me who says that?’ If there was one subject that cut Mahesh Kapoor to the quick, it was this unspeakable side effect of his pet legislation. Peasants were being evicted from their homes and lands all over the country, wherever Zamindari Abolition Bills were being or had been passed. In almost every case the intention of the zamindar was to show that the land was and always had been under his direct cultivation, and that no one other than him had any rights in it at all.

‘But, Sir, you just said—’

‘Never mind what I just said. What are you doing about the problem?’

Maan, who had been walking behind Sandeep Lahiri, had also stopped. At first he looked at his father and his friend, and enjoyed their mutual discomfiture. Then, looking upwards at the great cloudy sky that merged with the far horizon, he thought of Baitar and Debaria, and sobered up.

‘Sir, the scale of the problem defeats the imagination. I cannot be everywhere at once.’

‘Start an agitation,’ said Mahesh Kapoor.

Sandeep Lahiri’s weak chin dropped. That he, as a civil servant, should start any kind of agitation was unthinkable — and it was amazing that an ex-Minister had suggested it. On the other hand, his sympathy with the evicted peasants, dispossessed and destitute as they were, had forced him to speak to Mahesh Kapoor, who was popularly seen as their champion. It had been his secret hope that Mahesh Kapoor himself might stir things up once he realized the scope of their distress.

‘Have you talked to Jha?’ asked Mahesh Kapoor.

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘And what does he say?’

‘Sir, it is no secret that Mr Jha and I do not see eye to eye. What distresses me is likely for that very reason to delight him. And since he gets a large part of his funds from the landlords—’

‘All right, all right,’ said Mahesh Kapoor. ‘I’ll think about it. I have just arrived here. I have had hardly any time to ascertain things — to talk to my constituents—’

‘Your constituents, Sir?’ Sandeep Lahiri looked delighted that Mahesh Kapoor should be thinking of fighting from the Rudhia subdivision seat instead of from his regular urban constituency.

‘Who can tell, who can tell?’ said Mahesh Kapoor in sudden good humour. ‘All this is very premature. Now that we are at the house, have some tea.’

Over tea, Sandeep and Maan got a chance to talk. Maan was disappointed to learn that there were no immediate prospects of a hunt. Sandeep had a distaste for hunting, and organized a hunt only when his duties demanded it.

Luckily, from his point of view, they no longer did. With the rains, poor though they were proving to be this year, the natural food chain had revived and the wolf menace had subsided. Some villagers, however, attributed their greater security to the personal intercession of the SDO with the wolves. This, together with his clear goodwill towards the people under his care, his effective on-the-site methods of determining the facts of a case in the course of his judicial duties (even if it meant holding court under a village tree), his fairness in revenue matters, his refusal to countenance those illegal evictions that came to his notice, and his firm hold on law and order in his subdivision, had made Sandeep Lahiri a popular figure in the area. His sola topi was, however, still an object of mockery for some of the younger people.

After a while Sandeep took permission to leave. ‘I have an appointment with Mr Jha, Sir, and he is not someone who cares to be kept waiting.’

‘About the evictions,’ continued the ex-Minister of Revenue, ‘I would like to see a list for this area.’

‘But, Sir—’ began Sandeep Lahiri. He was thinking that he had no such list, and wondering whether he should, ethically speaking, part with it even if he had.

‘However inadequate, however incomplete,’ said Mahesh Kapoor, and got up to escort the young man to the door before he could mention some new scruple that had occurred to him.

Sandeep Lahiri’s visit to Jha’s office was a fiasco.

Jha, as an important political figure, a friend of the Chief Minister, and the Chairman of the Upper House of the state legislature, was used to being consulted by the SDO on all important matters. Lahiri on the other hand saw no need to consult a party leader on matters of routine administration. He had not very long ago been at university, where he had drunk deeply of the general principles of constitutional law, the separation of the party and the state, and liberalism a la Laski. He tried to keep local politicians at arm’s length.