A Suitable Boy(182)

‘It’s just a heart, not brick and stone,’ sang Maan.

‘Come, Sahib,’ said the watchman calmly and led Maan gently but firmly down the street in the direction of Prem Nivas.

‘Here, this is for you – you’re a good man –’ said Maan, reaching into his kurta pockets. He turned them inside out, but there was no money in them.

‘Take my tip on account, ’ he suggested.

‘Yes, Sahib,’ said the watchman, and turned back to the rose-coloured house.





6.23


DRUNK, broke, and far from happy, Maan tottered back to Prem Nivas. To his surprise and rather unfocused distress, his mother was waiting up for him again. ‘When she saw him, tears rolled down her cheeks. She was already overwrought because of the business with the navratan.

‘Maan, my dear son, what has come over you? What has she done to my boy? Do you know what people are saying about you? Even the Banaras people know by now.’

‘What Banaras people?’ Maan inquired, his curiosity aroused.

‘What Banaras people, he asks,’ said Mrs Mahesh Kapoor, and began to cry even more intensely. There was a strong smell of whisky on her son’s breath.

Maan put his arm protectively around her shoulder, and told her to go to sleep. She told him to go up to his room by the garden stairs to avoid disturbing his father, who was working late in his office.

But Maan, who had not taken in this last instruction, went humming off to bed by the main stairs.

‘Who’s that? Who’s that? Is it Maan?’ came his father’s angry voice.

‘Yes, Baoji,’ said Maan, and continued to walk up the stairs.

‘Did you hear me?’ called his father in a voice that reverberated across half of Prem Nivas.

‘Yes, Baoji,’ Maan stopped.

‘Then come down here at once.’

‘Yes, Baoji.’ Maan stumbled down the stairs and into his father’s office. He sat down on the chair across the small table at which his father was sitting. There was no one in the office besides the two of them and a couple of lizards that kept scurrying across the ceiling throughout their conversation.

‘Stand up. Did I tell you to sit down?’

Maan tried to stand up, but failed. Then he tried again, and leaned across the table towards his father. His eyes were glazed. The papers on the table and the glass of water near his father’s hand seemed to frighten him.

Mahesh Kapoor stood up, his mouth set in a tight line, his eyes stern. He had a file in his right hand, which he slowly transferred to his left. He was about to slap Maan hard across the face when Mrs Mahesh Kapoor rushed in and said: ‘Don’t – don’t – don’t do that –’

Her voice and eyes pleaded with her husband, and he relented. Maan, meanwhile, closed his eyes and collapsed back into the chair. He began to drift off to sleep.

His father, enraged, came around the table, and started shaking him as if he wanted to jolt every bone in his body.

‘Baoji!’ said Maan, awoken by the sensation, and began to laugh.

His father raised his right arm again, and with the back of his hand slapped his twenty-five-year-old son across the face. Maan gasped, stared at his father, and raised his hand to touch his cheek.

Mrs Mahesh Kapoor sat down on one of the benches that ran along the wall. She was crying.

‘Now you listen, Maan, unless you want another of those – listen to me,’ said his father, even more furious now that his wife was crying because of something he had done. ‘I don’t care how much of this you remember tomorrow morning but I am not going to wait until you are sober. Do you understand?’ He raised his voice and repeated, ‘Do you understand?’

Maan nodded his head, suppressing his first instinct, which was to close his eyes again. He was so sleepy that he could only hear a few words drifting in and out of his consciousness. Somewhere, it seemed to him, there was a sort of tingling pain. But whose?

‘Have you seen yourself? Can you imagine how you look? Your hair wild, your eyes glazed, your pockets hanging out, a whisky stain all the way down your kurta –’

Maan shook his head, then let it droop gently on his chest. All he wanted to do was to cut off what was going on outside his head: this angry face, this shouting, this tingling.

He yawned.

Mahesh Kapoor picked up the glass and threw the water on Maan’s face. Some of it fell on his own papers but he didn’t even look down at them. Maan coughed and choked and sat up with a start. His mother covered her eyes with her hands and sobbed.

‘What did you do with the money? What did you do with it?’ asked Mahesh Kapoor.

‘What money?’ asked Maan, watching the water drip down the front of his kurta, one channel taking the route of his whisky stain.