Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

Though somewhat apprehensive — about what exactly he would not have been able to say — the Nawab Sahib acquiesced in what was obviously sound advice and, taking affectionate leave of his daughter and only forbearing from kissing his grandchildren because they were having an afternoon nap, left Brahmpur for Baitar within the hour.

Evening came. Baitar House wore a deserted look. Half the house was unoccupied anyway, and servants no longer moved through the rooms at dusk, lighting candles or lamps or turning on electric lights. On this particular evening even the rooms of the Nawab Sahib and his sons and the occasionally occupied guest room were unlit, and from the road it would almost have seemed that no one lived there any longer. The only activity, conversation, bustle, movement took place in the zenana quarters, which did not face the road.

It was not yet dark. The children were asleep. It had been less difficult than Zainab had thought to distract them from the fact that their grandfather was not there to tell them the promised ghost story. Both of them were tired out from their previous day’s journey to Brahmpur, although they had insisted the previous night on remaining awake till ten.

Zainab would have liked to settle down with a book, but decided to spend the evening talking to her aunt and great-aunts. These women, whom she had known from childhood, had spent their entire lives since the age of fifteen in purdah — either in their father’s or in their husband’s house. So had Zainab, although she considered herself, by virtue of her education, to have a wider sense of the world. The constraints of the zenana, the women’s world that had driven Abida Khan almost crazy — the narrow circle of conversation, the religiosity, the halter on boldness or unorthodoxy of any kind — were seen by these women in an entirely different light. Their world was not busy with great concerns of state, but was essentially a human one. Food, festivals, family relations, objects of use and beauty, these — mainly for good but sometimes for ill — formed the basis, though not the entirety, of their interests. It was not as if they were ignorant of the great world outside. It was rather that the world was seen more heavily filtered through the interests of family and friends than it would be for a sojourner with more direct experience. The clues they received were more indirect, needing more sensitive interpretation; and so were those they gave out. For Zainab — who saw elegance, subtlety, etiquette and family culture as qualities to be prized in their own right — the world of the zenana was a complete world, even if a constrained one. She did not believe that because her aunts had met no men other than those of the family since they were young, and had been to very few rooms other than their own, they were as a result lacking in perspicacity about the world or understanding of human nature. She liked them, she enjoyed talking to them, and she knew what enjoyment they obtained from her occasional visits. But she was reluctant to sit and gossip with them on this particular visit to her father’s house only because they would almost certainly touch upon matters that would hurt her. Any mention of her husband would remind her once again of the infidelities that she had only recently come to know of, and that caused her such startling anguish. She would have to pretend to her aunts that all was well with her, and even indulge in light banter about the intimacies of her family life.

They had been sitting and talking for only a few minutes when two panic-stricken young maidservants rushed into the room and, without making even the usual salutation, gasped out:

‘The police — the police are here.’

They then burst into tears and became so incoherent that it was impossible to get any sense out of them.

Zainab managed to calm one of them down a little, and asked her what the police were doing.

‘They have come to take over the house,’ said the girl with a fresh bout of sobbing.

Everyone looked aghast at the wretched girl, who was wiping her eyes with her sleeve.

‘Hai, hai!’ cried an aunt in pitiable distress, and began weeping. ‘What will we do? There is no one in the house.’

Zainab, though shocked at the sudden turn of events, thought of what her mother would have done if there had been no one — that is, no men — in the house.

After she had partially recovered from the shock, she shot a few quick questions at the maidservant:

‘Where are they — the police? Are they actually in the house? What are the servants doing? And where is Murtaza Ali? Why do they want to take over the house? Munni, sit up and don’t sob. I can’t make any sense out of what you are saying.’ She shook and consoled the girl alternately.

All that Zainab could ascertain was that young Murtaza Ali, her father’s personal secretary, was standing at the far end of the lawn in front of Baitar House desperately trying to dissuade the police from carrying out their orders. The maidservant was particularly terrified because the group of policemen was headed by a Sikh officer.

‘Munni, listen,’ said Zainab. ‘I want to talk to Murtaza.’

‘But—’

‘Now go and tell Ghulam Rusool or some other manservant to tell Murtaza Ali that I want to talk to him immediately.’

Her aunts stared at her, appalled.

‘And, yes, take this note to Rusool to give to the Inspector or whoever it is who is in charge of the police. Make sure that it gets to him.’

Zainab wrote a short note in English as follows:

Dear Inspector Sahib,

My father, the Nawab of Baitar, is not at home, and since no legitimate action should be taken without intimating him first, I must ask you not to proceed further in this matter. I would like to speak to Mr Murtaza Ali, my father’s personal secretary, immediately, and request you to make him available. I would also ask you to note that this is the hour of evening prayer, and that any incursion into our ancestral house at a time when the occupants are at prayer will be deeply injurious to all people of good faith.

Sincerely,

Zainab Khan

Munni took the note and left the room, still snivelling but no longer panic-stricken. Zainab avoided her aunts’ glances, and told the other girl, who had calmed down a little as well, to make sure that Hassan and Abbas had not been woken up by the commotion.

When the Deputy Superintendent of Police who was in charge of the contingent that had come to take over Baitar House read the note, he flushed red, shrugged his shoulders, had a few words with the Nawab Sahib’s private secretary, and — quickly glancing at his watch — said:

‘All right, then, half an hour.’

His duty was clear and there was no getting around it, but he believed in firmness rather than brutality, and half an hour’s delay was acceptable.

Zainab had got the two young maidservants to open the doorway that led from the zenana to the mardana, and to stretch a sheet across it. Then, despite the unbelieving ‘toba’s’ and other pious exclamations of her aunts, she told Munni to tell a manservant to tell Murtaza Ali to stand on the other side of it. The young man, crimson-faced with embarrassment and shame, stood close by the door which he had never imagined he would ever even approach in his lifetime.

‘Murtaza Sahib, I must apologize for your embarrassment — and my own,’ said Zainab softly in elegant and unornate Urdu. ‘I know you are a modest man and I understand your qualms. Please forgive me. I too feel I have been driven to this recourse. But this is an emergency, and I know that it will not be taken amiss.’

She unconsciously used the first person plural rather than the singular that she was used to. Both were colloquially acceptable, but since the plural was invariant with respect to gender, it defused to some small extent the tension across the geographical line that lay between the mardana and zenana quarters, the breach of which had so shocked her aunts. Besides, there was implicit in the plural a mild sense of command, and this helped set a tone that enabled the exchange not merely of embarrassment — which was unavoidable — but of information as well.