A Suitable Boy(179)

‘No, I won’t, you don’t appreciate my voice.’ She looked downwards and pouted.

‘Well,’ said the Rajkumar, ‘at least grace us with some poetry.’

This sent Tahmina Bai into gales of laughter. Her pretty little jowls shook, and she snorted with delight. The Rajkumar was mystified. After another swig from his bottle, he looked at her in wonderment.

‘Oh, it’s too – ah, ah – grace us with some – hah, hah poetry!’

Tahmina Bai was no longer in a sulk but in an ungovernable fit of laughter. She squealed and squealed and held her sides and gasped, the tears running down her face.

When she was finally capable of speech, she told them a joke.

‘The poet Akbar Allahabadi was in Banaras when he was lured by some friends into a street just like ours. He had drunk quite a lot – just like you – so he leaned against a wall to urinate. And then – what happened? – a courtesan, leaning out from a window above, recognized him from one of his poetry recitals and – and she said –’ Tahmina Bai giggled, then started laughing again, shaking from side to side. ‘She said – Akbar Sahib is gracing us with his poetry!’ Tahmina Bai began to laugh uncontrollably once more, and to Maan’s fuddled amazement he found himself joining in.

But Tahmina Bai had not finished her joke, and went on: ‘So when he heard her, the poet made this remark on the spur of the moment:

“Alas – what poor poetry can Akbar write

When the pen is in his hand and the inkpot upstairs?” ’



This was followed by squeals and snorts of laughter. Then Tahmina Bai told Maan that she herself had something to show him in the other room, and led him in, while the Rajkumar took another couple of swigs.

After a few minutes she emerged, with Maan looking bedraggled and disgusted. But Tahmina Bai was pouting sweetly. She said to the Rajkumar: ‘Now, I have something to show you.’

‘No, no,’ said the Rajkumar. ‘I‘ve already – no, I’m not in the mood – come, Maan, let’s go.’

Tahmina Bai looked affronted, and said: ‘Both of you are – are – very similar! What do you need me for?’

The Rajkumar had got up. He put an arm around Maan and they struggled towards the door. As they walked into the corridor they heard her say: ‘At least have some biryani before you leave. It will be ready in a few minutes –’

Hearing no response from them, Tahmina Bai let fly: ‘It might give you strength. Neither of you could grace me with your poetry!’

She began to laugh and shake, and her laughter followed them all the way down the stairs into the street.





6.20


EVEN though he had not done anything as such with her, Maan was feeling so remorseful about having visited such a low singing girl as Tahmina Bai that he wanted to go to Saeeda Bai’s again immediately and beg her forgiveness. The Rajkumar persuaded him to go home instead. He took him to the gate of Prem Nivas and left him there. Mrs Mahesh Kapoor was awake. When she saw Maan so drunk and unsteady she was very unhappy. Though she did not say anything to him, she was afraid for him. If his father had seen him in his present state he would have had a fit.

Maan, guided to his room, fell on his bed and went off to sleep.

The next day, contrite, he visited Saeeda Bai, and she was glad to see him. They spent the evening together. But she told him that she would be occupied for the next two days, and that he should not take it amiss.

Maan took it greatly amiss. He suffered from acute jealousy and thwarted desire, and wondered what he had done wrong. Even if he could have seen Saeeda Bai every evening, his days would merely have trickled by drop by drop. Now not only the days but the nights as well stretched interminably ahead of him, black and empty.

He practised a bit of polo with Firoz, but Firoz was busy during the days and sometimes even during the evenings with law or other work. Unlike the young Bespectacled Bannerji, Firoz did not treat time spent playing polo or deciding on a proper walking-stick as wasted; he considered these activities proper to the son of a Nawab. Compared to Maan, however, Firoz was an addict to his profession.

Maan tried to follow suit – to do a bit of purchasing and to seek a few orders for the cloth business in Banaras – but found it too irksome to pursue. He paid a visit or two to his brother Pran and his sister Veena, but the very domesticity and purposefulness of their lives was a rebuke to his own. Veena told him off roundly, asking him what kind of an example he thought he was setting for young Bhaskar, and old Mrs Tandon looked at him even more suspiciously and disapprovingly than before. Kedarnath, however, patted Maan on the shoulder, as if to compensate for his mother’s coldness.