Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

So far, however, Kidwai had acted his usual elusive self, keeping his options open with a series of contradictory statements. He had announced from Bombay that he was delighted by Nehru’s victory, but that he saw little prospect of his own return to the Congress fold. ‘Realizing now that their election prospects were not bright they have deserted Mr Tandon and sponsored Pandit Nehru’s candidature. This is pure opportunism. The future of the country is dark if such opportunism is tolerated,’ he said. However, the wily Mr Kidwai added that if certain ‘undesirable elements’ who were still entrenched in the executives of states such as Uttar Pradesh, Purva Pradesh, Madhya Bharat, and Punjab were to be removed by Pandit Nehru, ‘then everything would be all right’. As if to make matters murkier, he mentioned that the KMPP was thinking of an electoral alliance with the Socialist Party, and that then ‘the chances of the party succeeding in most of the states are very bright’. (The Socialist Party, for its part, showed no enthusiasm to ally itself with anyone.) A couple of days later Kidwai suggested a purge of ‘corrupt elements’ in the Congress as a condition for winding up his own party and rejoining the Congress. Kripalani, however, who was the other half of the K-K combine, insisted that there was no question of his deserting the KMPP and rejoining the Congress, no matter what its internal rearrangements.

Kidwai was something of a river dolphin. He enjoyed swimming in silty water and outwitting the crocodiles around him.

Meanwhile, all the other parties were commenting, with various degrees of heat, upon Nehru’s reassertion of his power within the Congress. Of the socialist leaders, one denounced the combination of the Congress Presidency with the Prime Ministership as a sign of totalitarianism; one said that this was not a worrying possibility, as Nehru did not have the makings of a dictator; and one simply pointed out that, as a tactical move, the Congress had improved its chances in the General Elections.

On the right, the President of the Hindu Mahasabha inveighed against what he called ‘the proclamation of dictatorship’. He added: ‘Although this dictatorship has raised Pandit Nehru to the highest pinnacle of glory, it has also got within itself the germs of his fall.’

Mahesh Kapoor attempted to dismiss this confusion of opinion and information from his mind and tried to come to grips with three straightforward questions. Since he was feeling sick of politics, should he simply leave politics and retire? If not, which party was the best place for him — or should he fight as an Independent? And if he decided to remain and fight the next election, what was the best place for him to fight from? He walked up to the roof, where an owl, ensconced in a tower, was startled by his approach; he walked down to the rose garden, where the flowerless bushes edged the fresh green lawn; and he wandered through some of the rooms of the Fort, including the huge Imambara downstairs. Sharma’s words to him in another garden came back to haunt his mind. But by the time the anxious munshi had found him and announced that the Nawab Sahib was awaiting him at lunch, he was no nearer a solution.

The Nawab Sahib had been sitting for the last hour in the huge, vaulted, dust-pervaded library with its green glass skylight, working on his edition of the poems of Mast, some of the documents and manuscripts for which were held here at the Fort. He was deeply saddened by the deterioration of this magnificent room and the poor condition of its holdings. He planned to move all the Mast materials to his library in Brahmpur at the end of this visit, together with some of the other more precious contents of the Baitar Fort library. Given his reduced means, the library at the Fort was becoming impossible for him to maintain — and the dust and confusion and infestation of silverfish grew worse month by month.

This was somewhat on his mind when he greeted his friend in the great, gloomy dining hall decorated with dark portraits of Queen Victoria, King Edward VII and the Nawab Sahib’s own ancestors.

‘I’ll take you to the library after lunch,’ said the Nawab Sahib.

‘Good,’ said Mahesh Kapoor. ‘But the last time I entered a library of yours I recall that it resulted in the destruction of one of your books.’

‘Well,’ said the Nawab Sahib thoughtfully, ‘I don’t know which is worse: the cerebral seizures of the Raja of Marh or the cancer of the silverfish.’

‘You should keep your books in better order,’ said Mahesh Kapoor. ‘It’s one of the finest private libraries in the country. It would be a tragedy if the books were to be damaged.’

‘I suppose you might say it is a national treasure,’ said the Nawab Sahib with a faint smile.

‘Yes,’ said Mahesh Kapoor.

‘But I doubt that the national purse would open itself to help maintain it.’

‘No.’

‘And, thanks to plunderers like you, I certainly can’t any longer.’

Mahesh Kapoor laughed. ‘I was wondering what you were aiming at. Anyway, even if you lose your case in the Supreme Court you’ll still be a few thousand times richer than me. And I work for my living, unlike you — you’re just decorative.’

The Nawab Sahib helped himself to some biryani. ‘You’re a useless person,’ he countered. ‘What does a politician do, in fact, except make trouble for others?’

‘Or counter the troubles that other people make,’ said Mahesh Kapoor.

Neither he nor the Nawab Sahib needed to mention what he was referring to. Mahesh Kapoor had succeeded, while he was still with the Congress, in getting the Minister for Rehabilitation to bend the ear of the Prime Minister to get the government to grant the Nawab Sahib and Begum Abida Khan certificates entitling them to the permanent retention of their property in Brahmpur. This had been necessary in order to counter an order by the Custodian-General of Evacuee Property issued on the grounds that Begum Abida Khan’s husband was a permanent evacuee. Their case was only one of several where similar action had needed to be taken at the governmental level.

‘Well,’ continued the ex-Minister of Revenue, ‘where will you cut back when half your rents disappear? I really do hope that your library won’t suffer.’

The Nawab Sahib frowned. ‘Kapoor Sahib,’ he said, ‘I am less concerned about my own house than those who depend on me. The people of Baitar expect me to put on a proper show for our festivals, especially for Moharram. I will have to keep that up in some fashion. I have certain other expenses — the hospital and so on, the monuments, the stables, musicians like Ustad Majeed Khan who expect to be retained by me a couple of times a year, poets who depend on me, various endowments, pensions; God — and my munshi — knows what else. At least my sons don’t make vast demands on me; they’re educated, they have their own professions, they aren’t wastrels, like the sons of others in my position—’

He stopped suddenly, thinking of Maan and Saeeda Bai.

‘But tell me,’ he continued after the briefest of pauses, ‘what, for your part, are you going to do?’

‘Me?’ said Mahesh Kapoor.

‘Why don’t you run for the elections from here?’

‘After what I’ve done to you — you want me to run from here?’

‘No, really, Kapoor Sahib, you should.’

‘That’s what my grandson says.’

‘Veena’s boy?’

‘Yes. He’s worked out that this constituency is the most favourable for me — among the rural ones.’

The Nawab Sahib smiled at his friend and looked towards the portrait of his great-grandfather. Mahesh Kapoor’s remark had made him think of his own grandsons, Hassan and Abbas — who had been named after the brothers of Hussain, the martyr of the festival of Moharram. He thought for a while of Zainab too, and the unhappiness of her marriage. And, fleetingly and regretfully, of his own wife, who lay buried in the cemetery just outside the Fort.