Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

So the three of them went to Calcutta with Lata and Mrs Rupa Mehra.

Their departure from Brahmpur was delayed for a couple of days by Dr Kishen Chand Seth falling ill. And their return to Brahmpur was brought forward by a couple of days because of sudden and devastating events. But these events were entirely unforeseeable, and arose neither out of electioneering nor out of anyone’s illness nor out of Professor Mishra’s manipulations. The events involved Maan; and as a result of them the family was never the same again.

In the first week of December, Maan was still in Brahmpur. He had no plans whatsoever to go back to Banaras. As far as he was concerned, the entire city — ghats, temples, shop, fiancée, debtors, creditors and all — could have sunk into the Ganga and not a ripple would have been felt downstream. He wandered about Brahmpur quite happily, taking the occasional stroll through the old town to the Barsaat Mahal, passing through Tarbuz ka Bazaar on the way. He met the Rajkumar’s university friends for an evening or two of poker. The Rajkumar himself, after his expulsion, had disappeared from Brahmpur for a while and returned to Marh.

Maan appeared erratically at meals at Prem Nivas and Baitar House, and his cheerful presence acted as a tonic on his mother. He visited Veena, Kedarnath and Bhaskar. He spent a little time with Firoz, though not as much as he would have liked: Firoz, after his work in the zamindari case, had had a fair amount of success obtaining briefs. Maan also discussed campaign strategy with his father and with the Nawab Sahib, who had pledged Mahesh Kapoor his support in his candidacy. And he visited Saeeda Bai whenever he could.

In between ghazals one evening Maan said to her:

‘I must meet Abdur Rasheed one of these days, Saeeda. But I understand he doesn’t come here any more.’

Saeeda Bai looked at Maan thoughtfully, her head slightly to one side. ‘He has gone mad,’ she stated simply. ‘I can’t have him here.’

Maan laughed and waited for her to elaborate. She did not.

‘What do you mean, mad?’ he said at last. ‘You told me before that you thought he had an interest in Tasneem, but — surely—’

Saeeda Bai rather dreamily played an ornament on the harmonium, then said:

‘He has been sending strange letters to Tasneem, Dagh Sahib, which naturally I don’t allow the girl to read. They are offensive.’

Maan could not believe that Rasheed, whom he knew to be an upright man, particularly where it came to women or his sense of duty, could possibly have written letters of an offensive nature to Tasneem. Saeeda Bai, one of whose traits was the habitual exaggeration of nuance, was, to his mind, being over-protective of her sister. He did not say so, however.

‘Why do you want to see him anyway?’ asked Saeeda Bai.

‘I promised his family I would,’ said Maan. ‘And I also want to talk to him about the elections. My father will be fighting from the constituency that includes his village.’

Now Saeeda Bai became cross. ‘Has this entire city lost its senses?’ she exclaimed. ‘Elections! Elections! Is there nothing else in the world other than paper and boxes?’

Indeed, Brahmpur was talking of very little else. Campaigning had begun; most candidates, after filing their nomination papers, had remained in their constituencies and begun canvassing immediately. Mahesh Kapoor had decided to wait a few weeks in Brahmpur. Since he was Revenue Minister again, he had some work to do.

Maan, by way of apology, said: ‘Saeeda, you know I have to help my father with these elections. My elder brother is not well and, besides, he has his teaching. And I know the constituency. But my exile will be short this time.’

Saeeda Bai clapped her hands and called for Bibbo.

Bibbo came running.

‘Bibbo, are we on the voting list for Pasand Bagh?’ she demanded.

Bibbo did not know, but she thought they were not. ‘Should I try to find out?’ she asked.

‘No. It is not necessary.’

‘Whatever you say, Begum Sahiba.’

‘Where were you this afternoon? I was looking for you everywhere.’

‘I had gone out, Begum Sahiba, to buy some matches.’

‘Does it take an hour to buy matches?’

Saeeda Bai was becoming determinedly annoyed.

Bibbo was silent. She could not very well tell Saeeda Bai, who had been in such a flap about Rasheed, that she had surreptitiously been carrying letters to and fro between Firoz and Tasneem.

Saeeda Bai now turned briskly to Maan: ‘Why are you lingering here?’ she asked him. ‘There are no votes to be had in this house.’

‘Saeeda Begum—’ protested Maan.

Saeeda Bai said sharply to Bibbo: ‘What are you gawking at? Didn’t you hear me tell you to go?’

Bibbo grinned and left. Suddenly Saeeda Bai got up and went into her room. She returned with three of the letters Rasheed had mailed Tasneem.

‘His address is on these,’ she said to Maan as she threw them on to the low table. Maan noted the address down in his unformed Urdu script, noticing, however, that Rasheed’s writing was very much worse than he remembered it.

‘There is something wrong with his head. You will find him a liability in your electoral endeavours,’ said Saeeda Bai.

The rest of the evening was not a success. Public life had entered the boudoir, and together with it all Saeeda Bai’s fears for Tasneem.

After a while she reverted to a kind of dreaminess again.

‘When do you leave?’ she asked Maan indifferently.

‘In three days, Inshallah,’ replied Maan as cheerfully as he could.

‘Inshallah,’ repeated the parakeet, responding to a phrase he recognized. Maan turned towards it and frowned. He was in no mood for the half-witted bird. A weight had descended on him; Saeeda Bai, it appeared, did not care whether he stayed or left.

‘I am tired,’ said Saeeda Bai.

‘May I visit you on the eve of my departure?’

‘No longer did I desire to wander in the garden,’ murmured Saeeda Bai to herself, quoting Ghalib.

She was referring to Maan and to the fickleness of men in general, but Maan thought she was referring to herself.

Maan visited Rasheed’s room the next day. It was located in a seedy and crowded part of the old city with narrow, unrepaired lanes and the stench of poor drainage. Rasheed was living alone. He could not afford to keep his family with him in Brahmpur. He cooked for himself whenever he could, he gave his tuitions, he studied, he was involved in some work for the Socialist Party, and he was trying to write a pamphlet — half popular, half scholarly — on the sanction for and meaning of secularism in Islam. He had run his life for months on willpower rather than on a combination of food and affection. When he saw Maan at his door Rasheed looked astonished and worried. Maan noticed with a shock that even more of his hair had gone white. His face was gaunt, but his eyes still held a sort of fire.

‘Let us go for a walk,’ Rasheed suggested. ‘I have a tuition in an hour. There are too many flies here. Curzon Park is on the way. We can sit there and talk.’

In the mild December sunshine they sat in the park under a large, small-leafed ficus. Every time someone passed them, Rasheed would lower his voice. He looked extremely tired, but talked almost without stopping. Early on in the conversation it became apparent to Maan that Rasheed was not going to help his father in any sense. He was going to support the Socialist Party in the Salimpur-cum-Baitar constituency and he was, he said, going to campaign tirelessly for them and against the Congress throughout the university vacation. He talked endlessly about feudalism and superstition and the oppressive structure of society and especially the Nawab Sahib of Baitar’s role in the system. He said that the leaders of the Congress Party — and presumably Mahesh Kapoor — were hand in glove with the large landlords, which was why landlords would be compensated for the lands that were to be taken over by the state. ‘But the people will not be duped,’ he said. ‘They understand things only too well.’