Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

But Pran walked home in high spirits. He had enjoyed the party, had enjoyed getting away both from work and — he had to admit it — the family circle of wife, mother-in-law, and sister-in-law.

What a pity, he thought, that Haresh was already spoken for. Despite his misquotations, Pran had liked him, and wondered if he might be a possible ‘prospect’ for Lata. Pran was concerned about her. Ever since she had received a phone call at dinner a few days ago, she had not been herself. But it had become difficult to talk even to Savita about her sister. Sometimes, thought Pran, I feel they all see me as an interloper — a mere meddler among Mehras.

Haresh, with an effort, woke up early despite a heavy head, and took a rickshaw to Ravidaspur. He had with him the lasts, the other materials he had promised, and Sunil’s shoes. People in rags were moving about the lanes among the thatched mud huts. A boy was dragging a piece of wood with a string and another boy was trying to hit it with a stick. As he walked across the unstable bridge, he noticed that a thick, whitish vapour lay over the black water of the open sewer, where people were performing their morning ablutions. How can they live like this? he thought to himself.

A couple of electric wires hung casually from poles or were tangled among the branches of a dusty tree. A few houses tapped illegally into this meagre source by slinging a wire over the main line. From the dark interiors of the other huts came the flicker of makeshift lamps: tins filled with kerosene, whose smoke filled the huts. It was easy for a child or a dog or a calf to knock these over, and fires sometimes started this way, spreading from hut to hut and burning everything hidden in the thatch for safe-keeping, including the precious ration-cards. Haresh shook his head at the waste of it all.

He got to the workshop and found Jagat Ram sitting on the step by himself, watched only by his small daughter. But to Haresh’s annoyance he found that what he was working on was not the brogues but a wooden toy: a cat, it appeared. He was whittling away at it with great concentration, and looked surprised to see Haresh. He set the unfinished cat down on the step and stood up.

‘You’ve come early,’ he said.

‘I have,’ said Haresh brusquely. ‘And I find you are working on something else. I am making every effort on my part to supply you with materials as quickly as possible, but I have no intention of working with someone who is unreliable.’

Jagat Ram touched his moustache. His eyes took on a dull glow, and his speech became staccato:

‘What I mean to say—’ he began, ‘—have you even asked? What I mean to say is — do you think I am not a man of my word?’

He stood up, went inside, and fetched the pieces he had cut according to the patterns Haresh had given him from the handsome maroon leather that he had fetched the previous night. While Haresh was examining them, he said:

‘I haven’t punched them with the brogue design yet — but I thought I’d do the cutting myself, not leave it to my cutter. I’ve been up since dawn.’

‘Good, good,’ said Haresh, nodding his head and in a kinder tone. ‘Let’s see the piece of leather I left for you.’

Jagat Ram rather reluctantly took it out from one of the brick shelves embedded in the wall of the small room. Quite a lot of it was still unused. Haresh examined it carefully, and handed it back. Jagat Ram looked relieved. He moved his hand to his greying moustache and rubbed it meditatively, saying nothing.

‘Excellent,’ said Haresh with generous enthusiasm. Jagat Ram’s cutting had been both surprisingly swift and extremely economical of the leather. In fact, he appeared to have an intuitive spatial mastery that was very rare even among trained shoemakers of many years’ standing. It had been hinted at yesterday in his comments when he had constructed the shoe in his mind’s eye after just a brief glance at the components of the pattern.

‘Where’s your daughter disappeared to?’

Jagat Ram permitted himself a slight smile. ‘She was late for school,’ he said.

‘Did the people from the Lovely Shoe Shop turn up yesterday?’ asked Haresh.

‘Well, yes and no,’ said Jagat Ram and did not elaborate further.

Since Haresh had no direct interest in the Lovely people, he did not press the question. He thought that perhaps Jagat Ram did not want to talk about one of Kedarnath’s competitors in front of Kedarnath’s friend.

‘Well,’ said Haresh. ‘Here is all the other stuff you need.’ He opened his briefcase and took out the thread and the components, the lasts and the shoes. As Jagat Ram turned the lasts around appreciatively in his hands, Haresh continued: ‘I will see you three days from today at two o’clock in the afternoon, and I will expect the brogues to be ready by then. I have bought my ticket for the six-thirty train back to Kanpur that evening. If the shoes are well made, I expect I will be able to get you an order. If they are not, I’m not going to delay my journey back.’

‘I will hope to work directly with you if things work out,’ said Jagat Ram.

Haresh shook his head. ‘I met you through Kedarnath and I’ll deal with you through Kedarnath,’ he replied.

Jagat Ram nodded a little grimly, and saw Haresh to the door. There seemed to be no getting away from these bloodsucking middlemen. First the Muslims, now these Punjabis who had taken their place. Kedarnath, however, had given him his first break, and was not such a bad man — as such things went. Perhaps he was merely blood-sipping.

‘Good,’ said Haresh. ‘Excellent. Well, I have a lot of things to do. I must be off.’

And he walked off with his usual high energy through the dirty paths of Ravidaspur. Today he was wearing ordinary black Oxfords. In an open but filthy space near a little white shrine he saw a group of small boys gambling with a tattered pack of cards — one of them was Jagat Ram’s youngest son — and he clicked his tongue, not so much from moral disapproval as from a feeling of annoyance that this should be the state of things. Illiteracy, poverty, indiscipline, dirt! It wasn’t as if people here didn’t have potential. If he had his way and was given funds and labour, he would have this neighbourhood on its feet in six months. Sanitation, drinking water, electricity, paving, civic sense — it was simply a question of making sensible decisions and having the requisite facilities to implement them. Haresh was as keen on ‘requisite facilities’ as he was on his ‘To Do’ list. He was impatient with himself if anything was lacking in the former or undone in the latter. He also believed in ‘following things through’.

Oh yes; Kedarnath’s son, what’s his name now, Bhaskar! he said to himself. I should have got Dr Durrani’s address from Sunil last night. He frowned at his own lack of foresight.

But after lunch he collected Bhaskar anyway and took a tonga to Sunil’s. Dr Durrani looked as if he had walked to Sunil’s house, reflected Haresh, so he couldn’t live all that far away.

Bhaskar accompanied Haresh in silence, and Haresh, for his own part, was happy not to say anything other than where they were going.

Sunil’s faithful, lazy servant pointed out Dr Durrani’s house, which was a few doors away. Haresh paid off the tonga, and walked over with Bhaskar.

A tall, good-looking fellow in cricket whites opened the door.

‘We’ve come to see Dr Durrani,’ said Haresh. ‘Do you think he might be free?’

‘I’ll just see what my father is doing,’ said the young man in a low, pleasant, slightly rough-edged voice. ‘Please come in.’

A minute or two later he emerged and said, ‘My father will be out in a minute. He asked me who you were, and I realized I hadn’t asked. I’m sorry, I should introduce myself first. My name’s Kabir.’