‘The Nawab Sahib has purdah in his house in Brahmpur, so I shouldn’t have assumed it would be different here,’ said Maan.
‘It is, though,’ said Rasheed. ‘The Muslim women of the lower castes need to work in the fields, so they can’t maintain purdah. But we Shaikhs and Sayyeds try to. It’s simply a matter of honour, of being the big people in the village.’
Just as Maan was about to ask Rasheed if his village was mainly or exclusively Muslim, Rasheed’s grandfather came along to look at what they were doing. The old man was still wearing his green lungi, but had added a white vest. With his white beard and somewhat failing eyes, he looked more frail than he did when he had loured over Maan in the morning.
‘What are you teaching him, Rasheed?
‘Urdu, Baba.’
‘Yes? Good, good.’
To Maan he said: ‘How old are you, Kapoor Sahib?’
‘Twenty-five.’
‘Are ou married?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well,’ said Maan, ‘it hasn’t happened yet.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with you, is there?’
‘Oh, no!’ said Maan. ‘Nothing.’
‘Then you should get married. This is the time, when you are young. Then you won’t be an old man when your children are growing up. Look at me. I’m old now, but I wasn’t once.’
Maan was tempted to exchange a glance with Rasheed, but sensed that it wasn’t the right thing to do.
The old man picked up the exercise book that Maan had been writing on and held it away from his eyes. The whole page was covered with the same two letters. ‘Seen, sheen,’ said the old man. ‘Seen, sheen, seen, sheen, seen, sheen. Enough of this! Teach him something more, Rasheed – this is all very well for children. He’ll get bored.’
Rasheed nodded his head but said nothing.
The old man turned back to Maan and said: ‘Are you bored yet?’
‘Oh no,’ said Maan, quickly. ‘I’ve been learning to read. This is just the calligraphy part.’
‘That’s good,’ said Rasheed’s grandfather. ‘That’s very good. Carry on, carry on. I will go over there’ – he pointed across the way to a charpoy lying in front of another house – ‘and read.’
He cleared his throat and spat onto the ground, then walked slowly away. In a few minutes Maan saw him seated cross-legged on the charpoy with his spectacles on, swaying backwards and forwards, reciting from a large book placed in front of him that Maan assumed was the Quran. Since he was only about twenty steps away, the murmur of his recitation merged with the sounds of the children, who were now daring each other to go and touch Maan – ‘the lion’.
Maan said to Rasheed, ‘I’ve been thinking of writing a letter. Do you think you could write it for me and, well, help me compose it? I can still barely string two words together in this script.’
‘Of course,’ said Rasheed.
‘You really don’t mind?’ said Maan.
‘No, of course not. Why should I?’ said Rasheed.
‘Actually, it’s to Saeeda Bai.’
‘I see,’ said Rasheed.
‘Maybe after dinner?’ said Maan. ‘I’m not in the mood now with all these kids running around.’ He was afraid that they might start chanting ‘Saeeda Bai! Saeeda Bai!’ at the top of their lungs.
Rasheed didn’t say anything for a few moments, then waved away a fly and said: ‘The only reason why I’m getting you to write these two letters again and again is that the way you draw the curve is too shallow. It should be more rounded. Like this –’ And he drew the letter ‘sheen’ very slowly.
Maan could sense that Rasheed was not happy, that he in fact disapproved, but he did not know what to do about it. He could not bear to think that he would not hear from Saeeda Bai, and he feared that she might not write to him unless he wrote to her. In fact he wasn’t even sure that she had his postal address. Of course ‘c/o Abdur Rasheed, village Debaria, tehsil Salimpur, Distt Rudhia, P.P.’ would get to him, but Maan was not certain that Saeeda Bai was certain that it would.
Since she could read nothing but Urdu, he would have to get an Urdu scribe to write his letter for him until he himself learned the script sufficiently well to be able to do so. And who other than Rasheed could or would help him by writing it, and – unless Saeeda Bai’s hand was exceptionally clear and careful – by reading out her reply to him when it came?
Maan was staring down at the ground in his perplexity when he noticed that a huge crowd of flies had gathered around the spot where Baba had spat. They were ignoring the sherbet that Maan and Rasheed were drinking.