A Suitable Boy(261)

The platform was as crowded as ever with passengers and their friends and families and servants, hawkers, railway staff, coolies, vagrants and beggars. Babies wailed and whistles blew. Stray dogs slunk about with punished eyes, monkeys bared aggressive teeth. There was a pervasive railway platform stench. It was a hot day, and the fans were not working in the bogeys. The train sat at the narrow-gauge platform for half an hour after it was due to depart. Maan was stifled by the heat in the second-class compartment, but did not complain. He kept looking up glumly towards his luggage: a deep blue leather suitcase and several smaller bags.

Rasheed, who, Maan decided, looked rather wolf-like in feature, had loped off to talk to some boys in another carriage. They were students at the Brahmpur madrasa – or Muslim school – who were going back to their districts for a few days.

Maan began to feel very sleepy. The fans were still not working, and the train showed no sign of starting. He touched the upper part of his ear, where he had placed a small piece of cotton-wool containing a drop of Saeeda Bai’s rose perfume, and passed his hand slowly across his face. It was wet with perspiration.

To minimize the uncomfortable sensation of sweat trickling down his face, Maan tried to remain as still as he could. The man opposite him was fanning himself with a Hindi newspaper.

The train at last began to move. It passed through the city for a while, then moved into the open countryside. Villages and fields went by, some patched and dusty and fallow, others yellow with wheat or green with other crops. The fans began to whirr and everyone looked relieved.

In some of the fields along the railway track, the wheat harvest was going on. In others it had just taken place, and the dry stubble was glinting in the sun.

Every fifteen minutes or so the train stopped at a small railway station, sometimes in the middle of nowhere, sometimes in a village. Very occasionally it would halt in a small town, the headquarters of a subdivision of the district they were travelling through. A mosque or a temple, a few neem or pipal or banyan trees, a boy driving goats along a dusty dirt track, the sudden turquoise flash of a kingfisher – Maan vaguely registered these. After a while he closed his eyes again, and was overwhelmed by his feeling of separation from the one person whose company he desired. He wanted to see nothing and hear nothing, just to recall the sights and sounds of the house in Pasand Bagh: the delicious perfumes of Saeeda Bai’s room, the evening cool, the sound of her voice, the pressure of her hand on his. He began to think even of her parakeet and her watchman with affection.

But even when he closed his eyes to cut out the dry brightness of the afternoon light and the monotonous fields stretching out to the huge visible quadrant of dusty sky, the sounds of the train bore in on him with amplified volume. The jolting and clicking of the train as it rocked sideways and slightly upwards, the sound of it going over a small bridge or the whooshing of a train rushing past in the opposite direction, the sound of a woman coughing or the crying of a child, even the dropping of a coin or the rustle of a newspaper, all took on an unbearable intensity. He rested his head on his hands, and stayed still.

‘Are you all right? Are you feeling all right?’ It was Rasheed who was speaking to him.

Maan nodded, and opened his eyes. .

He looked at his fellow passengers, then again at Rasheed. He decided that Rasheed looked too gaunt for someone who was only his own age. He also had a few white hairs.

Well, thought Maan, if I can begin to go bald at twenty-five, why shouldn’t he begin to go white?

After a while he asked: ‘How’s’ the water at your place?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s fine, isn’t it?’ said Maan anxiously. He was beginning to wonder what life would be like in the village.

‘Oh yes, we pump it up by hand.’

‘Don’t you have any electricity?’

Rasheed smiled a little sardonically and shook his head.

Maan was silent. The serious practical implications of his exile were beginning to seep in.

They had stopped just beyond a small station. The train tanks were being filled with water from above, and, as the engine steamed out, the sound of water dropping on the roof of the compartment reminded Maan of rain. There would be weeks of unbearable heat until the monsoons.

‘Flies!’

It was the man sitting next to Rasheed who had spoken. He looked like a dried-out farmer, about forty years of age. He was rolling some tobacco in his palm with the thumb of his other hand. He rubbed it, then tamped it down, threw off the excess, examined the residue with care, selected out the impurities, took a pinch, licked the inside of his lower lip, and spat out a bit sideways onto the floor.