A Suitable Boy(155)

Ustad Majeed Khan said slowly and passionlessly: ‘But they, believe me, would have felt dishonoured if they had been alive to see their son flirting with the sister of an employer, whose body his bow helps sell.’

He looked at his watch and got up. He had another performance in ten minutes. Almost to himself and with the utmost simplicity and sincerity, he said, ‘Music is not a cheap spectacle – not the entertainment of the brothel. It is like prayer.’

Before Ishaq could respond he had started walking towards the door. Ishaq got up and almost lunged towards him. He was gripped by an uncontrollable spasm of pain and fury, and his two friends had to force him bodily down into his chair. Other people joined in, for Ishaq was well-liked, and had to be prevented from doing further damage.

‘Ishaq Bhai, enough’s been said.’

‘Listen, Ishaq, one must swallow it – whatever our elders say, however bitter.’

‘Don’t ruin yourself. Think of your brothers. If he talks to the Director Sahib…’

‘Ishaq Bhai, how many times have I told you to guard your tongue!’

‘Listen, you must apologize to him immediately.’

But Ishaq was almost incoherent: ‘Never – never – I’ll never apologize – on my father’s grave – to that – to think, that such a man who insults the memory of his elders and mine – everyone creeps on all fours before him – yes, Khan Sahib, you can have a twenty-five-minute slot – yes, yes, Khan Sahib, you decide which raag you will sing – O God! If Miya Tansen were alive he would have cried to hear him sing his raag today – that God should have given him this gift –’

‘Enough, enough, Ishaq ’ said an old sitar player.

Ishaq turned towards him with tears of hurt and anger: ‘Would you marry your son to his daughter? Or your daughter to his son? Who is he that God is in his pocket? – he talks like a mullah about prayer and devotion – this man who spent half his youth in Tarbuz ka Bazaar –’

People began to turn away in pity and discomfort from Ishaq. Several of Ishaq’s well-wishers left the canteen to try and pacify the insulted maestro, who was about to agitate the airwaves in his own great agitation.

‘Khan Sahib, the boy didn’t know what he was saying.’

Ustad Majeed Khan, who was almost at the door of the studio, said nothing.

‘Khan Sahib, elders have always treated their youngers like children, with tolerance. You must not take what he said seriously. None of it is true.’

Ustad Majeed Khan looked at the interceder and said: ‘If a dog pisses on my achkan, do I become a tree?’

The sitar player shook his head and said, ‘I know it was the worst time he could have chosen – when you were about to perform, Ustad Sahib…’

But Ustad Majeed Khan went on to sing a Hindol of calm and surpassing beauty.





6.3


IT had been some days since Saeeda Bai had saved Maan from suicide, as he put it. Of course it was extremely unlikely – and his friend Firoz had told him so when he had complained to him of his lovelorn miseries – that that happy-go-lucky young man would have made any attempt even to cut himself while shaving in order to prove his passion for her. But Maan knew that Saeeda Bai, though hard-headed, was – at least to him – tender-hearted; and although he knew she did not believe that he was in any danger from himself if she refused to make love to him, he also knew that she would take it as more than a merely flattering figure of speech. Everything is in the saying, and Maan, while saying that he could not go on in this harsh world without her, had been as soulful as it was possible for him to be. For a while all his past loves vanished from his heart. The dozen or more ‘girls of good family’ from Brahmpur whom he had been in love with and who in general had loved him in return, ceased to exist. Saeeda Bai – for that moment at least – became everything for him.

And after they had made love, she became more than everything for him. Like that other source of domestic strife, Saeeda Bai too made hungry where most she satisfied. Part of it was simply the delicious skill with which she made love. But even more than that it was her nakhra, the art of pretended hurt or disaffection that she had learnt from her mother and other courtesans in the early days in Tarbuz ka Bazaar. Saeeda Bai practised this with such curious restraint that it became infinitely more believable. One tear, one remark that implied – perhaps, only perhaps implied – that something he had said or done had caused her injury – and Maan’s heart would go out to her. No matter what the cost to himself, he would protect her from the cruel, censorious world. For minutes at a time he would lean over her shoulder and kiss her neck, glancing every few moments at her face in the hope of seeing her mood lift. And when it did, and he saw that same bright, sad smile that had so captivated him when she sang at Holi at Prem Nivas, he would be seized by a frenzy of sexual desire. Saeeda Bai seemed to know this, and graced him with a smile only when she herself was in the mood to satisfy him.