Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

As he entered the doorway she said, ‘Dagh Sahib, Dagh Sahib, you did not need to do that.’

Maan looked at her — she appeared a little tired. She was wearing the same red silk sari that she had worn in Prem Nivas. He smiled and said: ‘Every object strives for its proper place. A book seeks to be near its truest admirer. Just as this helpless moth seeks to be near the candle that infatuates him.’

‘But, Maan Sahib, books are chosen with care and treated with love,’ said Saeeda Bai, addressing him tenderly by his own name for — was it? — the first time, and entirely disregarding his conventionally gallant remark. ‘You must have had this book in your library for many years. You should not have parted with it.’

Maan had in fact had the book on his bookshelf, but in Banaras. He had remembered it for some reason, had thought immediately of Saeeda Bai, and after some search had obtained a perfect second-hand copy from a bookseller in Chowk. But in the pleasure of hearing himself so gently addressed, all he now said was, ‘The Urdu, even of those poems that I know by heart, is wasted on me. I cannot read the script. Did you like it?’

‘Yes,’ said Saeeda Bai very quietly. ‘Everyone gives me jewels and other glittering things, but nothing has caught my eyes or my heart like your gift. But why are we standing? Please sit down.’

Maan sat down. There was the same slight fragrance that he had noticed before in this room. But today attar of roses was slightly interfused with attar of musk, a combination which made the robust Maan almost weak with longing.

‘Will you have some whisky, Dagh Sahib?’ asked Saeeda Bai. ‘I am sorry that this is the only kind we have got,’ she added, indicating the half-empty bottle of Black Dog.

‘But this is excellent whisky, Saeeda Begum,’ said Maan.

‘We’ve had it for some time,’ she said, handing him the glass.

Maan sat silent for a while, leaning against a long cylindrical bolster and sipping his Scotch. Then he said, ‘I’ve often wondered about the couplets that inspired Chughtai’s paintings, but have never got around to asking someone who knows Urdu to read them to me. For instance, there is one picture that has always intrigued me. I can describe it even without opening the book. It shows a watery landscape in orange and brown, with a tree, a withered tree, rising out from the water. And somewhere in the middle of the water floats a lotus on which a small, smoky oil lamp is resting. Do you know the one I’m talking about? I think it’s somewhere at the beginning of the book. On the page of tissue that covers it is the single word “Life!” That’s all there is in English, and it is very mysterious — because there is a whole couplet underneath in Urdu. Perhaps you could tell me how it reads?’

Saeeda Bai fetched the book. She sat down on Maan’s left, and as he turned the pages of his magnificent gift, she prayed that he would not come upon the torn page that she had carefully patched together. The English titles were oddly succinct. After flipping past ‘Around the Beloved’, ‘The Brimming Cup’, and ‘The Wasted Vigil’, Maan came to ‘Life!’

‘This is the one,’ he said, as they re-examined the mysterious painting. ‘Ghalib has plenty of couplets dealing with lamps. I wonder which one this is.’

Saeeda Bai turned back to the covering sheet of tissue, and as she did their hands touched for a moment. With a slight intake of breath, Saeeda Bai looked down at the Urdu couplet, then read it out:

‘The horse of time is galloping fast: let us see where he halts.

Neither is the hand on the reins nor the foot in the stirrup.’

Maan burst out laughing. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that should teach me how dangerous it is to come to conclusions based on shaky assumptions.’

They went through a couple of other couplets, and then Saeeda Bai said: ‘When I looked through the poems this morning, I wondered what the few pages in English at the end of the book were all about.’

The beginning of the book from my point of view, thought Maan, still smiling. Aloud, he said: ‘I suppose it’s a translation of the Urdu pages at the other end — but why don’t we make sure?’

‘Certainly,’ said Saeeda Bai. ‘But to do so you will have to change places with me and sit on my left. Then you can read a sentence in English and I can read its translation in Urdu. It will be like having a private tutor,’ she added, a slight smile forming on her lips.

The very nearness of Saeeda Bai in these last few minutes, delightful as it had been, now created a small problem for Maan. Before he got up to change places with her he had to make a slight adjustment to his clothing in order not to let her see how aroused he was. But when he sat down again it seemed to him that Saeeda Bai was more amused than ever. She’s a real sitam-zareef, he thought to himself — a tyrant with a smile.

‘So, Ustad Sahib, let’s begin our lesson,’ she said, raising an eyebrow.

‘Well,’ said Maan, not looking at her, but acutely conscious of her closeness. ‘The first item is an introduction by a certain James Cousins to Chughtai’s illustrations.’

‘Oh,’ said Saeeda Bai, ‘the first item from the Urdu side is an explanation by the artist himself of what he hoped to do by having this book printed.’

‘And,’ continued Maan, ‘my second item is a foreword by the poet Iqbal to the book as a whole.’

‘And mine,’ said Saeeda Bai, ‘is a long essay, again by Chughtai himself, on various matters, including his views on art.’

‘Look at this,’ said Maan, suddenly involved in what he was reading. ‘I’d forgotten what a pompous foreword Iqbal wrote. All he seems to talk about is his own books, not the one that he’s introducing. “In this book of mine I said this, in that book of mine I said that”—and only a few patronizing remarks about Chughtai and how young he is—’

He stopped indignantly.

‘Dagh Sahib,’ said Saeeda Bai, ‘you’re getting heated all right.’

They looked at each other, Maan thrown a little off balance by her directness. It seemed to him that she was trying to refrain from laughing outright. ‘Perhaps I should cool you down with a melancholy ghazal,’ continued Saeeda Bai.

‘Yes, why don’t you try?’ said Maan, remembering what she had once said about ghazals. ‘Let’s see what effect it has on me.’

‘Let me summon my musicians,’ said Saeeda Bai.

‘No,’ said Maan, placing his hand on hers. ‘Just you and the harmonium, that’ll be enough.’

‘At least the tabla player?’

‘I’ll keep the beat with my heart,’ said Maan.

With a slight inclination of the head — a gesture that made Maan’s heart almost skip a beat — Saeeda Bai acquiesced. ‘Would you be capable of standing up and getting it for me?’ she asked slyly.

‘Hmm,’ said Maan, but remained seated.

‘And I also see that your glass is empty,’ added Saeeda Bai.

Refusing this time to be embarrassed by anything, Maan got up. He fetched her the harmonium and himself another drink. Saeeda Bai hummed for a few seconds and said, ‘Yes, I know which one will do.’ She began to sing the enigmatic lines:

‘No grain of dust in the garden is wasted.

Even the path is like a lamp to the tulip’s stain.’

At the word ‘dagh’ Saeeda Bai shot Maan a quick and amused glance. The next couplet was fairly uneventful. But it was followed by:

‘The rose laughs at the activities of the nightingale—

What they call love is a defect of the mind.’

Maan, who knew these lines well, must have shown a very transparent dismay; for as soon as Saeeda Bai looked at him, she threw back her head and laughed with pleasure. The sight of her soft white throat exposed, her sudden, slightly husky laughter, and the piquancy of not knowing whether she was laughing with or at him made Maan completely forget himself. Before he knew it and despite the hindrance of the harmonium, he had leaned over and kissed her on the neck, and before she knew it she was responding.