Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

The judge saw no reason why a man who had been so badly injured would go out of his way to protect someone who had deliberately inflicted such an injury on him. There was no evidence of collusion among the witnesses, no attempt by the defence to suborn anyone. He was led to the inescapable conclusion that Maan was not guilty.

He acquitted Maan of both charges and ordered him released immediately.

Mahesh Kapoor embraced his son. He too was dumbfounded. He turned towards the courtroom, which was now in uproar, and saw the Nawab Sahib talking to Firoz. Their eyes met for an instant. Mahesh Kapoor’s were full of perplexity and gratitude.

The Nawab Sahib shook his head slightly, as if to disown responsibility, and turned again to talk to his son.

Pran had not been correct in imagining that his father would become superstitious. Mahesh Kapoor did, however, take an unsteady step towards countenancing superstition. In late March, a few days before Ramnavami, he acquiesced in Veena’s and old Mrs Tandon’s request to hold a reading of the Ramcharitmanas at Prem Nivas for the family and a few friends.

Why he agreed was unclear even to himself. His wife had asked for the reading the previous year and he associated the request with her. She had even asked for a section of the Ramcharitmanas — the section involving Hanuman in Lanka — to be read to her on her deathbed. Perhaps Mahesh Kapoor felt sorry that he had refused her in the past — or perhaps he was simply too exhausted to refuse anyone anything any longer. Or perhaps — though it is unlikely that he would ever have accepted such a reason — perhaps he wished to give thanks to something beneficent and mysterious outside himself that had kept his son safe when he had seemed logically to be doomed and had restored his hope of friendship with the Nawab Sahib when it had appeared to be beyond repair.

Old Mrs Tandon was the only one of the group of three samdhins who attended. Mrs Rupa Mehra was in Calcutta, frantically making wedding purchases. And Mrs Mahesh Kapoor’s small brass bell no longer rang in the tiny alcove where she used to perform her puja.

One morning, while the recitation was going on, a white owl walked into the room where the listeners were sitting. It stayed for a few minutes, then slowly walked out again. Everyone was alarmed by the presence of this inauspicious bird in the daytime, and took it as a bad sign. But Veena disagreed. She said that the white owl, being the vehicle of Lakshmi, was a symbol of good luck in Bengal. It might well be an emissary sent from the other world to bring them good fortune and to take back good news.

When Maan was in jail, his mind had often turned to Rasheed’s tormented madness and delusion. They were both outcastes, even if his own delusion had been temporary. The difference between them, Maan had felt, was that he, despite his physical incarceration, had at least preserved the love of his family.

He had asked Pran to send Rasheed some money, not out of a sense of expiation, but because he thought it might be practically useful. He remembered how gaunt and wasted he had looked that day in Curzon Park, and wondered if what his uncle managed to send him together with what Rasheed himself was earning sufficed for rent and food. Maan feared that sooner or later the tuitions too were bound to stop.

When he was out on bail, he did not visit, but sent some more money, again anonymously, by mail. He felt that for him, a man with a violent crime hanging over his head, to visit Rasheed in person might lead to unforeseeable constructions and consequences. In any case, it would not help Rasheed’s balance of mind.

When Maan was found innocent and finally set free, his thoughts turned once more to his old teacher and erstwhile friend. But again he was not certain if seeing him was a good idea, so he wrote a letter first. He received no reply.

When a second letter was neither replied to nor returned, Maan decided that at least he had not met with a refusal. He went to Rasheed’s address, but Rasheed was not there any longer. He spoke to the landlord and his wife, and told them he was a friend. He sensed that they were not very pleased. He asked them what Rasheed’s new address was, and they told him they did not know. When he said that he had written two letters to Rasheed recently and asked them where they were, the man looked at his wife, appeared to come to a decision, fetched them from inside and gave both of them to Maan. They were unopened.

Maan had no idea whether Rasheed had got the money he had sent. He asked the landlord when exactly it was that Rasheed had left, and whether any earlier letters had been received. They replied that he had left some time ago, but he could not get them to be more specific than that. They appeared to be annoyed, but whether at Rasheed or at him, he did not know.

Maan, worried, now asked Pran to trace Rasheed through either the History Department or the Registrar’s Office. Neither knew his whereabouts. A clerk in the Registrar’s Office mentioned that Rasheed had withdrawn from the university; he had said that he refused to attend lectures when he was needed to campaign for the sake of the country.

Maan next wrote in his rather blunt Urdu script to Baba and Rasheed’s father, asking for news and for Rasheed’s latest address. Perhaps, Maan suggested, the Bear might know where he was. He got a short and not unsympathetic reply. Baba said that everyone at Debaria was very pleased with his acquittal and sent their respects to his father as well. In addition, the Bear and the guppi had both requested him to send Maan their regards. The guppi had been so impressed by reports of the dramatic scene in court that he was thinking of retiring from his life’s vocation in Maan’s favour.

As for news of Rasheed, they had none, nor did they have any address. The last they had seen of him was during the campaign, when he had antagonized people still further and harmed his own party with his wild accusations and insults. His wife had been very upset, and now that he had disappeared she was distraught. Meher was fine, except — and here Baba grew a little indignant — her maternal grandfather was trying to claim that she should come and live with her mother and baby sister in his village.

If Maan had any news of Rasheed, Baba said, he should inform them as soon as he could. They would be very grateful. For the moment, sadly, even the Bear had none.

Saeeda Bai had left the court after her brief appearance, but she knew within half an hour of the verdict that Maan was safe. She gave thanks to God for preserving him. That he was lost to her she had the wisdom or experience to realize, but that his youth would not be spent in imprisonment and misery was a stifling weight off her heart. She saw Maan with all his faults, but could not cut him off from her love.

Perhaps this was the first time in her life that Saeeda Bai herself had loved unrequitedly. Again and again she saw Maan as she had first seen him: the eager Dagh Sahib of that first evening at Prem Nivas, full of liveliness and charm and energy and affection.

Sometimes her mind turned to the Nawab Sahib — and to her mother — and to her own younger self, a mother at fifteen. ‘Do not let the bee enter the garden’—she murmured the famous line—‘that the moth may not be unjustly killed.’ And yet the strange and tenuous links of causation could act beneficently as well. For out of the shame and violation of her youth her beloved Tasneem had been born.

Bibbo rebuked Saeeda Bai for spending so much time these days looking into space. ‘At least sing something!’ she said. ‘Even the parakeet’s becoming dumb by example.’