Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

Pran rebutted the friendly sarcasm seriously. ‘As it happens, yes, I did suggest leniency. Besides, I know how things can get out of hand. I thought of what happened when Maan decided to play Holi with Moby-Dick.’ The incident with Professor Mishra was by now notorious throughout the university.

‘Oh, yes,’ said the physicist who had wandered over, ‘what’s happened to your readership?’

Pran sucked in his breath slowly. ‘Nothing,’ he said.

‘But it’s been months that the post has been lying open.’

‘I know,’ said Pran. ‘It’s even been advertised, but they don’t seem to want to set a date for the selection committee to meet.’

‘It’s not right. I’ll talk to someone at the Brahmpur Chronicle ,’ said the young physicist.

‘Yes, yes,’ said Sunil enthusiastically. ‘It has come to our knowledge that despite the chronic understaffing in the English Department of our renowned university and the availability of a more than suitable local candidate for the post of reader which has been lying unfilled now for an unconscionable length of time—’

‘Please—’ said Pran, not at all calmly. ‘Just let things take their natural course. Don’t get the papers involved in all this.’

Sunil looked meditative for a while, as if he was working something out. ‘All right, all right, have a drink!’ he said suddenly. ‘Why don’t you have a drink in your hand?’

‘First he grills me for half an hour without offering me a drink, then he asks me why I don’t have one. I’ll have whisky — with water,’ said Pran, in a less agitated tone.

As the evening went on, the talk of the party turned to news in the town, to India’s consistently poor performance in international cricket (‘I doubt we will ever win a Test match,’ said Pran with confident pessimism), to politics in Purva Pradesh and the world at large, and to the peculiarities of various teachers, both at Brahmpur University and — for the Stephanians — at St Stephen’s in Delhi. To the mystification of the non-Stephanians, they participated in chorus with a querulous: ‘In my class I will say one thing: you may not understand, you may not want to understand, but you will understand!’

Dinner was served, and it was just as rudimentary as Pran had predicted. Sunil, for all his good-natured bullying of his friends, was himself bullied by an old servant whose affection for his master (whom he had served since Sunil was a child) was only equalled by his unwillingness to do any work.

Over dinner there was a discussion — somewhat incoherent because some of the participants were either belligerent or erratic with whisky — about the economy and the political situation. Making complete sense of it was difficult, but a part of it went like this:

‘Look, the only reason why Nehru became PM was because he was Gandhi’s favourite. Everyone knows that. All he knows how to do is to make those bloody long speeches that never go anywhere. He never seems to take a stand on anything. Just think. Even in the Congress Party, where Tandon and his cronies are pushing him to the wall, what does he do? He just goes along with it, and we have to—’

‘But what can he do? He’s not a dictator.’

‘Do you mind not interrupting? I mean to say, may I make my point? After that you can say whatever you want for as long as you want. So what does Nehru do? I mean to say, what does he do? He sends a message to some society that he’s been asked to address and he says, “We often feel a sense of darkness.” Darkness — who cares about his darkness or what’s going on inside his head? He may have a handsome head and that red rose may look pretty in his buttonhole, but what we need is someone with a stout heart, not a sensitive one. It’s his duty as Prime Minister to give a lead to the country, and he’s just not got the strength of character to do it.’

‘Well—’

‘Well, what?’

‘You just try to run a country. Try to feed the people, for a start. Keep the Hindus from slaughtering the Muslims—’

‘Or vice versa.’

‘All right, or vice versa. And try to abolish the zamindars’ estates when they fight you every inch of the way.’

‘He isn’t doing that as PM — land revenue isn’t a Central subject — it’s a state subject. Nehru will make his vague speeches, but you ask Pran who’s the real brains behind our Zamindari Abolition Bill.’

‘Yes,’ admitted Pran, ‘it’s my father. At any rate, my mother says he works terribly late and sometimes comes back home from the Secretariat after midnight, dog-tired, then reads through the night to prepare for the next day’s arguments in the Assembly.’ He laughed shortly and shook his head. ‘My mother’s worried because he’s ruining his health. Two hundred clauses, two hundred ulcers, she thinks. And now that the Zamindari Act in Bihar has been declared unconstitutional, everyone’s in a panic. As if there’s not enough to panic about anyway, what with the trouble in Chowk.’

‘What trouble in Chowk?’ asked someone, thinking Pran was referring to something that might have happened that day.

‘The Raja of Marh and his damned Shiva Temple,’ said Haresh promptly. Though he was the only one from out of town, he had just been filled in on the facts by Kedarnath, and had made them his own.

‘Don’t call it a damned Shiva Temple,’ said the historian.

‘It is a damned Shiva Temple, it’s caused enough deaths already.’

‘You’re a Hindu, and you call it a damned temple — you should look at yourself in the mirror. The British have left, in case you need reminding, so don’t put on their airs. Damned temple, damned natives—’

‘Oh God! I’ll have another drink after all,’ said Haresh to Sunil.

As the discussion rose and subsided over dinner and afterwards, and people formed themselves into small knots or tied themselves into worse ones, Pran drew Sunil aside and inquired casually, ‘Is that fellow Haresh married or engaged or anything?’

‘Anything.’

‘What?’ said Pran, frowning.

‘He’s not married or engaged,’ said Sunil, ‘but he’s certainly “anything”.’

‘Sunil, don’t talk in riddles. It’s midnight.’

‘This is what comes of turning up late for my party. Before you came we were talking at length about him and that sardarni, Simran Kaur, whom he’s still infatuated with. Now why didn’t I remember her name an hour ago? There was a couplet about him at college:

Chased by Gaur and chasing Kaur;

Chaste before but chaste no more!

I can’t vouch for the facts of the second line. But, anyway, it was clear from his face today that he’s still in love with her. And I can’t blame him. I met her once and she was a real beauty.’

Sunil Patwardhan recited a couplet in Urdu about the black monsoon clouds of her hair.

‘Well, well, well,’ said Pran.

‘But why do you want to know?’

‘Nothing,’ shrugged Pran. ‘I think he’s a man who knows his own mind, and I was curious.’

A little later the guests started taking their leave. Sunil suggested that they all visit Old Brahmpur ‘to see if anything’s going on’.

‘Tonight at the midnight hour,’ he intoned in a sing-song, Nehruvian voice, ‘while the world sleeps, Brahmpur will awake to life and freedom.’

As Sunil saw his guests to the door he suddenly became depressed. ‘Good night,’ he said gently; then in a more melancholy tone: ‘Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.’ And a little later, as he closed the door, more to himself than anyone else, he mumbled, in the liltingly incomplete cadence with which Nehru ended his Hindi speeches: ‘Brothers and sisters — Jai Hind!’