A Suitable Boy(140)

As if in response to his thoughts, Firoz now entered the room. Zainab and the children were delighted to see him.

‘Firoz Mamu, Firoz Mamul’ said the children. ‘Why didn’t you have lunch with us?’

Firoz looked impatient and troubled. He placed his hand on Hassan’s head.

‘Abba-jaan, your munshi has arrived from Baitar. He wants to talk to you,’ he said.

‘Oh,’ said the Nawab Sahib, not happy about this demand on his time when he would rather have been talking to his daughter.

‘He wants you to come to the estate today. There is some crisis or other brewing.’

‘What manner of crisis?’ asked the Nawab Sahib, He did not relish the thought of a three-hour drive in a jeep in the April sun.

‘You’d better speak to him,’ said Firoz. ‘You know how I feel about your munshi. If you think that I should come with you to Baitar, or go instead of you, that’s all right. I don’t have anything on this afternoon. Oh yes, I do have a meeting with a client, but his case isn’t due to come up for a while, so I can postpone it.’

The Nawab Sahib got up with a sigh and washed his hands.

When he got to the ante-room where the munshi was waiting, he asked him brusquely what the matter was. Apparently, there were two problems, both brewing simultaneously. The main one was the perennial difficulty of realizing land-rent from the peasants. The Nawab Sahib did not like the strong-arm methods that the munshi was inclined to employ: the use of local toughs to deal with defaulters. As a result, collections had diminished, and the munshi now felt that the Nawab Sahib’s personal presence at Baitar Fort for a day or two and a private talk with a couple of local politicians would help matters considerably. Normally, the sly munshi would have been unwilling to involve his master in the stewardship of his own estate, but this was an exception. He had even brought along a small local landlord to confirm that matters were troubled and required the Nawab Sahib’s presence in the area immediately, not only on his own behalf but also because it would help the other landlords.

After a brief discussion (the other problem involved trouble at the local madrasa or school), the Nawab Sahib said: ‘I have some things to do this afternoon. But I’ll talk matters over with my son. Please wait here.’

Firoz said that on the whole he felt his father should go, if only to make sure that the munshi was not robbing him blind. He would come along as well and look at the accounts. They might well have to spend a night or two in Baitar, and he did not want his father to be by himself. As for Zainab, whom the Nawab Sahib was reluctant to leave ‘alone in the house’ as he put it, she was matter-of-fact about his departure, though sorry to see him go.

‘But Abba-jaan, you’ll be back tomorrow or the day after and I’m here for another week. Anyway, isn’t Imtiaz due to return tomorrow? And please don’t worry about me, I’ve lived in this house most of my life.’ She smiled. ‘Just because I’m now a married woman doesn’t mean that I am less capable of taking care of myself. I’ll spend my time gossiping in the zenana, and I’ll even take over your duty of telling the children a ghost story.’

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.





5.12


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.