Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

‘I will sit here,’ said Rasheed after a while, ‘and think.’

He made the word sound actively ominous.

Maan had not been following Rasheed’s activities. He was troubled by his talk of the patwari, though now he did recall faintly that someone — Rasheed’s father or grandfather — had once mentioned something about a patwari to him. He knew that Rasheed had been moved to pity and indignation on behalf of the poorer people in the village; Maan’s mind went back to the old man, destitute and dying, whom Rasheed had gone to visit, and because of whom he had taken up cudgels against the elders outside the mosque. But Rasheed was so rigid, expected so much of others and of himself, reacted so much in anger and pride, hammered away so powerfully in every direction he turned to, that — apart from putting other people’s backs up — he must have worn himself out completely. Had he suffered from any specific shock that had caused him to crack in this way — to behave so sanely — at least at the beginning — and yet so deludedly? He still gave tuitions; did he still make ends meet? He was looking so poorly. And was he still the exacting, careful teacher, with his insistence on perfect, unbending alifs? What did his students and their families think of him?

And what did Rasheed’s own family think? Did they know what had happened to him? If they knew, how could they be indifferent to his pitiable state? When he went to Debaria, Maan decided, he would ask them directly what they knew and tell them what they didn’t. And where were Rasheed’s wife and children?

Deeply disturbed, he mentioned to Saeeda Bai some of the things that were on his mind. He could not understand how he had obtained either Rasheed’s hatred or his conditional forgiveness. The image of Rasheed and his wild imaginings would haunt Maan for weeks.

Saeeda Bai, for her part, became so concerned about Tasneem’s safety that she summoned the watchman and told him that under no circumstances was Tasneem’s old Arabic teacher to be admitted to the house. When Maan mentioned Rasheed’s belief that there was a plot to marry him against his will to the infatuated Tasneem, Saeeda Bai indignantly and with disgust in her voice read out a part of one of Rasheed’s letters, which certainly gave Maan the impression that the overwhelming weight of passion was on Rasheed’s side. He had written to Tasneem that he wanted to bury his face in the clouds of her hair and so on and so forth. Even his handwriting, about which he used to be so particular, had regressed to a scrawl under the force of his feelings. The letter, to judge from the excerpt that Saeeda Bai read, was alarming. When he added to this the whole bizarre conception of a plot with all its conditions and ramifications, about which Saeeda Bai had until then been ignorant, Maan could not help sympathizing with her agitation, her inability to concentrate on anything else — on music, on him, on herself. He tried in vain to distract her. So vulnerable did she seem to him that he longed to take her in his arms — but he sensed that hers was a volatile and explosive vulnerability and that he would be hurtfully rebuffed.

‘If there is anything I can do at any time,’ he told her, ‘you have only to send for me. I don’t know what to do or what to advise. I will be in Rudhia District, but they will keep track of me at the Nawab Sahib’s house.’ Maan did not mention Prem Nivas because Saeeda Bai was no longer persona grata there.

Saeeda Bai’s face became pale.

‘The Nawab Sahib has promised to assist my father’s campaign,’ Maan explained.

‘Poor girl, poor girl,’ said Saeeda Bai softly. ‘O God, what a world this is. Go now, Dagh Sahib, and may God keep you.’

‘Are you sure—’

‘Yes.’

‘I will not be able to think of anything but you, Saeeda,’ said Maan. ‘At least give me a smile before I leave.’

Saeeda Bai gave him a smile, but her eyes were still sad. ‘Listen, Maan,’ she said, addressing him by his name, ‘think of many things. Never place your happiness in one person’s power. Be just to yourself. And even if I am not invited to sing at Holi in Prem Nivas, come here and I will sing for you.’

‘But Holi is more than three months away,’ said Maan. ‘Why, I will see you in less than three weeks.’

Saeeda Bai nodded. ‘Yes, yes,’ she said absently. ‘That’s right, that’s quite right.’ She shook her head slowly a couple of times and closed her eyes. ‘I don’t know why I am so tired, Dagh Sahib. I don’t even feel like feeding Miya Mitthu. God keep you in safety.’

The electorate of Salimpur-cum-Baitar consisted of roughly 70,000 people, about half Hindu and half Muslim.

Apart from the two smallish towns included in its name, the constituency encompassed over a hundred villages, including the twin villages of Sagal and Debaria where Rasheed’s family lived. It was a single member constituency: only one candidate would be elected to the Legislative Assembly by the voters. Ten candidates in all were standing: six represented parties, and four were Independents. Of the former, one was Mahesh Kapoor, the Minister of Revenue, who was the candidate for the Indian National Congress. Of the latter, one was Waris Mohammad Khan, the candidate who had been put up as a dummy by the Nawab Sahib of Baitar in case his friend did not get the Congress ticket or chose not to stand or bowed out of the race for some reason or other.

Waris was delighted to be a candidate, even though he knew that he would be expected to throw his weight as actively as possible behind Mahesh Kapoor. Just the look of his name on the list of validly nominated candidates outside the office of the Returning Officer made him smile with pride. Khan came just below Kapoor in the list, which was arranged in the order of the English alphabet. Waris thought this significant: the two allies could almost be paired together by a bracket. Though everyone knew what his function in the election was, the fact that he was present on the same list as some of the better-known citizenry of the district — indeed, of the state — gave Waris a certain standing at the Fort. The munshi continued to order him about, but more cagily than before. And when Waris chose not to obey, he had the ready excuse that he was busy with election work.

When Maan and his father arrived at Baitar Fort, Waris reassured them:

‘Now, Minister Sahib, Maan Sahib, leave everything in the Baitar area to me. I’ll arrange everything — transport, meetings, drums, singers, everything. Just tell the Congress people to send us lots of those Nehru posters, and also a lot of Congress flags. We’ll see that they are put up everywhere. And we won’t let anyone go to sleep for a month,’ he continued happily. ‘They won’t even be able to hear the azaan for the slogans. Yes. And I’ve made sure that the water for your bath is hot. Tomorrow morning I’ve arranged for a tour of some of the villages, and in the evening we return to the town for a meeting. And if Maan Sahib wants to hunt — but I fear there will be no time for that. Votes before nilgai. But first I have to make sure that a good many of our supporters attend the Socialist Party meeting this evening to heckle them properly. Those haramzadas don’t even think our Nawab Sahib should get compensation for the land that is going to be snatched from him — just imagine! What an injustice it is already. And now they want to add insult to injury—’ Waris suddenly stopped, the realization striking him that he was addressing the very author of the black act. ‘What I mean is—’ He finished with a grin, and shook his head vigorously, as if shaking the very thought out of his brain. They were, of course, allies now.