Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

Saeeda Bai did not lose a syllable of her marsiya as she saw Firoz enter, though her eyes flashed. Already the listeners were in a high state of excitement. Men and women alike were weeping; some of the women were beating their breasts and lamenting for Hussain. Saeeda Bai’s own soul seemed to have entered the marsiya, but one part of it observed the congregation and noted the entrance of the Nawab of Baitar’s son. She would have to deal with this trouble later; for the moment she had simply to bear it. But the agitation she felt communicated itself into the force of her indignation against the killer of Imam Hussain:

‘And as that accursed mercenary pulled out the bloodied spear

The Prince of Martyrs bowed his head in gratitude to God.

The hell-bent, brutal Shamr unsheathed his dagger and advanced—

The heavens shook, the earth quaked seeing such foul, odious acts.

How can I say how Shamr put the dagger to his throat—

It was as if he trampled on the Holy Book itself!’

‘Toba! toba!’ ‘Ya Allah!’ ‘Ya Hussain! Ya Hussain!’ cried the audience. Some were so choked with grief they could not speak at all, and when the next stanza revealed his sister Zainab’s grief — her swooning away — her shock when she reopened her eyes and saw her brother’s head, the head of the Holy Prince of Martyrs, raised upon a lance — there was a dreadful silence in the audience, a pause before renewed lamentation. Firoz glanced at Tasneem; her eyes were still cast down, but her lips moved to the famous words that her sister was reciting.

‘Anis, thou canst not write of Zainab’s lamentations more!

The body of Hussain lay there, unburied, in the sun;

Alas, the Prophet found no peace in his last resting place!

His holy progeny imprisoned and his house burnt down!

How many homes Hussain’s death left all ruined, desolate!

The Prophet’s progeny, thus never prospered after him.’

Here Saeeda Bai stopped, and looked around the room, her eyes resting for a moment on Firoz, then on Tasneem. After a while she said, casually, to Tasneem: ‘Go and feed the parakeet, and tell Bibbo to come here. She likes to be present at the soz-khwani.’ Tasneem left the room. Others in the audience began to recover, and talk among themselves.

Firoz’s heart fell. His eyes followed Tasneem to the door. He was in a state of volatile distraction. He had never seen her look so beautiful as now, unadorned, her cheeks stained with tears. Lost in contemplation, he hardly noticed when Bilgrami Sahib greeted him.

But Bilgrami Sahib was now telling him about the time he had visited Baitar during the Moharram celebrations — and Firoz’s mind was drawn back against his will to the Fort and the Imambara with its red-and-white chandelier and the paintings of Karbala on the wall and the marsiyas chanted under the hundreds of flickering lights.

The Nawab Sahib’s great hero was Al-Hur, the officer who had been sent at first to seize Hussain; but who at the end had detached himself with thirty horsemen from the main force of the enemy and had joined the weaker side to face inevitable death. Firoz had tried to argue the point once or twice with his father; but had given it up. His father, whom Firoz suspected of being half in love with noble failure, felt too strongly about the matter.

Saeeda Bai now began singing a short marsiya particularly suited for soz. This contained no introduction, no elaboration of the physical beauty of the hero, no vaunting on the battlefield by the hero of his lineage and prowess and exploits, no long battle scenes, no description of horse or sword, almost nothing but the most moving parts of the story: the scenes of leave-taking from his loved ones, his death, the lamentations of the women and children. At the lamentations Saeeda Bai’s voice rose into the air in a strange sobbing wail, intensely musical, intensely beautiful.

Firoz had heard soz before, but it was nothing compared to this. He turned to the spot where Tasneem had been sitting, and noticed the frivolous Bibbo there instead. Her hair was undone, and she was crying her eyes out, beating her breast and leaning forward as if she were about to faint with sorrow. So were many of the women around her. Bilgrami Sahib was sobbing into his handkerchief, which his hands clutched in the gesture of prayer. Saeeda Bai’s eyes were closed; even for this supremely controlled artist, her art had passed beyond her own restraint. Her body, like her voice, was shaking with grief and pain. And Firoz, though he did not realize it, was himself weeping uncontrollably.

‘Why did you miss last night?’ demanded Bhaskar, who had been promoted tonight to be Angad, a monkey-prince, because the boy playing that part had fallen ill, probably from growling himself hoarse on previous evenings. Bhaskar knew Angad’s lines, but unfortunately there was nothing to say today — it was all just running around and fighting.

‘I was asleep,’ said Maan.

‘Asleep! You are like Kumbhkaran,’ said Bhaskar. ‘You missed the best part of the battle. You missed the building of the bridge to Lanka — it stretched across from the temple to the houses there — and you missed Hanuman going to get the magic herb — and you missed the burning of Lanka.’

‘But I’m here now,’ said Maan. ‘Give your uncle some credit.’

‘And this morning, when Daadi was worshipping the weapons and pens and books, where were you?’

‘Well, I don’t believe in all that,’ said Maan, attempting a different tack. ‘I don’t believe in weapons and shooting and hunting and violence. Did she worship your kites as well?’

‘Aré, Maan, shake hands with me,’ said a familiar voice out of the crowd. Maan turned around. It was the Rajkumar of Marh, accompanied by the Vakil Sahib’s younger brother. Maan was a bit surprised to see the Rajkumar here, at this neighbourhood Ramlila. He would have thought he would be at some great, soulless, official one, trailing his father around. Maan shook hands with him very cordially.

‘Have some paan.’

‘Thanks,’ said Maan, took two, and almost choked. There was a powerful dose of tobacco in the paan. For a minute or two he was literally speechless. He had planned to ask the Rajkumar what he was doing these days without even his studies to occupy him; but by the time he had recovered, young Goyal, who appeared to be very proud to be sporting minor royalty around, had quickly dragged the Rajkumar away to introduce him to someone else.

Maan turned and stared at the effigies. Along the western edge of the square of Shahi Darvaza stood three huge figures — fierce and flammable — of wood, cane, and coloured paper, with red light-bulbs for their eyes. The ten-headed Ravana required twenty bulbs, which flickered more menacingly than those of his lieutenants. He was the embodiment of armed evil: each of his twenty hands carried a weapon — bows made of cane, maces made of silver paper, wooden swords and discuses, bamboo spears, even a mock pistol. To one side of Ravana stood his vile brother Kumbhkaran, fat, vicious, idle and gluttonous; and to his other side stood Meghnad, his courageous and arrogant son who just the previous day had struck Lakshman with a javelin in the breast and almost killed him. Everyone was comparing the effigies with those of earlier years, and excitedly anticipating their conflagration as the climax of the evening: the destruction of evil, the triumph of good.

But before that could happen, the actors playing the parts of these figures had to meet their fates in due order before the public eye.

At seven o’clock the loudspeakers overhead belched forth a sudden cacophony of drumbeats, and the little red-faced monkeys, made up to look fierce and martial with all that art, indigo and zinc oxide could contrive, swarmed out of the temple building in search of the enemy, whom they quickly found and noisily engaged with. Screams were heard, together with pious shouts of ‘Jai Siyaram!’ and demonic cries of ‘Jai Shankar!’ Even the vowels in the name of Lord Shiva, the great patron of Ravana, had been extended in a mocking and sinister manner, so that the sound that emerged was more like ‘Jai Shenker!’ This was followed each time by Ravana’s bizarre and grisly laugh that chilled the blood of most of the spectators, even if it made the actor’s friends laugh.