Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

Kabir flushed. ‘No, Mrs Mehra, I—’

‘I want to attend,’ said Lata, giving Kabir a sharp glance. ‘This has nothing to do with anyone else.’

Mrs Rupa Mehra was suddenly tempted to give both of them two tight slaps. But instead she glared at Lata, and at Kabir, and even at Malati for good measure, then turned and left without another word.

‘Well there are many possibilities for riots,’ said Firoz. ‘Shias with Shias, Shias with Sunnis, Hindus with Muslims—’

‘And Hindus with Hindus,’ added Maan.

‘That’s something new in Brahmpur,’ said Firoz.

‘Well, my sister says that the jatavs tried to force themselves on to the local Ramlila Committee this year. They said that at least one of the five swaroops should be selected from among scheduled caste boys. Naturally, no one listened to them at all. But it could spell trouble. I hope you aren’t going to participate in too many events yourself. I don’t want to have to worry about you.’

‘Worry!’ laughed Firoz. ‘I can’t imagine you worrying about me. But it’s a nice thought.’

‘Oh?’ said Maan. ‘But don’t you have to put yourself in front of some Moharram procession or other — you one year, Imtiaz the next, I thought you said?’

‘That’s only on the last couple of days. For the most part I just lie low during Moharram. And this year I know where I will spend at least a couple of my evenings.’ Firoz sounded deliberately mysterious.

‘Where?’

‘Somewhere where you, as an unbeliever, will not be admitted; though in the past you have performed your prostrations in that shrine.’

‘But I thought she didn’t—’ began Maan. ‘I thought she didn’t even allow herself to sing during those ten days.’

‘She doesn’t,’ said Firoz. ‘But she has small gatherings at her house where she chants marsiyas and performs soz — it really is something. Not the marsiyas so much — but the soz, from what I hear, is really astonishing.’

Maan knew from his brief incursions into poetry with Rasheed that marsiyas were laments for the martyrs of the battle of Karbala: especially for Hussain, the grandson of the Prophet. But he had no idea what soz was.

‘It’s a sort of musical wailing,’ said Firoz. ‘I’ve only heard it a few times, and never at Saeeda Bai’s. It grips the heart.’

The thought of Saeeda Bai weeping and wailing passionately for someone who had died thirteen centuries before was both perplexing and strangely exciting for Maan. ‘Why can’t I go?’ he asked. ‘I’ll sit quietly and watch — I mean, listen. I attended Bakr-Id, you know, at the village.’

‘Because you’re a kafir, you idiot. Even Sunnis aren’t really welcome at these private gatherings, though they take part in some processions. Saeeda Bai tries to control her audience, from what I’ve heard, but some of them get carried away with grief and start cursing the first three caliphs because they usurped Ali’s right to the caliphate, and this enrages the Sunnis, quite naturally. Sometimes the curses are very graphic.’

‘And you’ll be attending all this soz stuff. Since when have you become so religious?’ asked Maan.

‘I’m not,’ said Firoz. ‘In fact — and you’d better not tell anyone I said this — but I’m not a great fan of Hussain. And Muawiyah, who got him killed, wasn’t as dreadful as we make him out to be. After all, the succession was quite a mess before that, with most of the caliphs getting assassinated. Once Muawiyah set things up dynastically, Islam was able to consolidate itself as an empire. If he hadn’t, everything would have fallen back into petty tribes bickering with each other and there’d be no Islam to argue about. But if my father heard me say this he’d disown me. And Saeeda Bai would tear me apart with her own lovely soft hands.’

‘So why are you going to Saeeda Bai’s?’ said Maan, somewhat piqued and suspicious. ‘Didn’t you say you weren’t exactly made welcome there when you happened to visit?’

‘How can she turn back a mourner during Moharram?’

‘And why do you want to go there in the first place?’

‘To drink at the fountain of Paradise.’

‘Very funny.’

‘I mean, to see the young Tasneem.’

‘Well, give my love to the parakeet,’ said Maan, frowning. He continued to frown when Firoz got up, stood behind his chair, and put his hands on Maan’s shoulders.

‘Can you imagine,’ said old Mrs Tandon: ‘Rama or Bharat or Sita — a chamar!’

Veena looked uncomfortable at such an outright statement of the feelings of the neighbourhood.

‘And the sweepers want the Ramlila to continue after Rama’s return to Ayodhya and his meeting with Bharat and the coronation. They want all those shameful episodes about Sita put in.’

Maan asked why.

‘Oh, you know, they style themselves Valmikis these days, and they say that Valmiki’s Ramayana, which goes on and on about all these episodes, is the true text of the Ramayana,’ said old Mrs Tandon. ‘Just trouble-making.’

Veena said: ‘No one disputes the Ramayana. And Sita did have a horrible life after she returned from Lanka. But the Ramlila has always been based on the Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas, not Valmiki’s Ramayana. The worst of all this is that Kedarnath has to do so much of the explaining on both sides and has to shoulder most of the trouble. Because of his contact with the scheduled castes,’ she added.

‘And I suppose,’ said Maan, ‘because of his sense of civic duty?’

Veena frowned and nodded, not sure if the irresponsible Maan was being sarcastic at her expense.

‘I remember our days in Lahore — none of this could ever have happened,’ said old Mrs Tandon with tender nostalgia and a look of shining faith in her eyes. ‘The people contributed without being asked, even the Municipal Council provided free lighting, and the effigies we made for Ravana were so frightening that children would hide their faces in their mothers’ laps. Our neighbourhood had the best Ramlila in the city. And all the swaroops were brahmin boys,’ she added approvingly.

‘But that would never do,’ said Maan. ‘Bhaskar would never have been eligible then.’

‘No, he wouldn’t,’ said old Mrs Tandon thoughtfully. This was the first time she had considered the matter from this angle. ‘That would not have been good. Just because we aren’t brahmins! But people were old-fashioned then. Some things are changing for the better. Bhaskar must certainly get a part next year. He knows half of them by heart already.’

Kedarnath had, in this matter of the actor-deities or swaroops, been surprised to find that one of the leaders of the untouchables was the jatav Jagat Ram from Ravidaspur. It was difficult for him to think of Jagat Ram as having anything to do with local agitation, for he was a fairly sober man who had concentrated, by and large, on his work and his large family; and had played no active role in the strike in Misri Mandi. But Jagat Ram had, by virtue of his relative prosperity — if it could be called that — and the fact that he was at least minimally literate, been pressured by his neighbours and fellow-workers into representing them. He did not want to accept; having accepted, though, he did what he could. However, he felt at a disadvantage in two respects. First, it was only by stretching a point that he could claim to have a stake in what went on in Misri Mandi. Secondly, since his livelihood depended on Kedarnath and other local figures, he knew that for the sake of his family he had to tread carefully.

Kedarnath for his part was not unsympathetic in a theoretical sense to the general question of opening up the field of actors. But the Ramlila in his eyes was not a competition or a political act but an enactment of faith by the community. Most of the boys who acted in it had known each other from childhood, and the scenes that were represented had the sanction of hundreds of years of tradition. The Ramlila of Misri Mandi was famous throughout the city. To tack on scenes after the coronation of Rama struck him as being pointlessly offensive — a political invasion of religion, a moralistic invasion of morality. As for some sort of quota system among the swaroops, that would only lead to political conflict and artistic disaster.