‘Please.’
‘This bill of your father’s is going to make a vast amount of additional work for us, you know,’ said Sandeep Lahiri a little later. ‘But it’s a good thing, I suppose.’ He sounded unconvinced. ‘Oh, it’s almost time for the news.’ He went over to his sideboard, on which rested a large radio in a handsome polished wooden cabinet. It had a great many white dials.
He turned it on. A big green valve-light slowly began to glow and the sound of a male voice singing an evening raag gradually filled the room. It was Ustad Majeed Khan. With a grimace of instinctive distaste Sandeep Lahiri turned the volume down.
‘Well,’ he said to Maan, ‘I’m afraid there’s no getting around this stuff. It’s the price of the news, and I pay it for a minute or two every day. Why can’t they put on something listenable, like Mozart or Beethoven?’
Maan, who had heard western classical music perhaps three times in his life, and had not enjoyed the experience, said: ‘Oh, I don’t know. Most people here wouldn’t enjoy it.’
‘Do you really think so?’ said Sandeep. ‘I feel they would. Good music is good music. It’s just a question of exposure, I feel. Exposure, and a little bit of guidance.’
Maan looked doubtful.
‘Anyway,’ said Sandeep Lahiri, ‘I’m sure they don’t enjoy this awful stuff. What they really want is film songs, which All India Radio will never give them. As for me, if it weren’t for the BBC, I don’t know what I’d do out here.’
But as if in response to these remarks a series of pips now sounded and a distinctly Indian voice with a distinctly British veneer announced: ‘This is All India Radio… The news, read by Mohit Bose.’
10.4
THE next morning they drove out for the hunt.
A few cattle were being herded along the road. When they saw the white jeep approach at high speed they scattered in alarm. As the jeep came closer, the driver leaned on the horn for a good twenty seconds, increasing their panic. When it passed them it raised a great cloud of dust. The herdboys coughed in admiration: they recognized the jeep as the SDO’s. It was the only motor vehicle on the road, and the driver raced along as if he were absolute king of the highway. Not that the road was a highway exactly: it was a fairly solid dirt road, which might be more difficult to negotiate once the monsoon broke, but was fine for the present.
Sandeep had lent Maan a pair of khaki shorts, a khaki shirt, and a hat. Leaning against the door on Maan’s side was the rifle that was kept at the SDO’s bungalow. Sandeep had (with distaste) learned to fire it once but was not at all keen to fire it again. Maan could stand in for him.
Maan had gone hunting for nilgai and deer a number of times with friends from Banaras, had hunted wild boar too, and had once, without success, hunted for leopard. He had greatly enjoyed it. He had never hunted wolf before, and was not sure how exactly it would be managed. Presumably there would be beaters. Since Sandeep did not seem to be knowledgeable about matters of technique, Maan asked him about the background to the problem.
‘Aren’t wolves normally scared of the villagers?’ he asked.
‘That’s what I thought too,’ said Sandeep. ‘We don’t have so many wolves left anyway, and people don’t have permission to go around shooting them unless they become a menace. But I’ve seen children who’ve been mauled by wolves, and even the remains of children killed and eaten by wolves. It’s really terrible. The people of these villages are absolutely terrified. I suppose they are inclined to exaggerate, but the forest officers have confirmed from pug-marks and so on that it’s wolves we’re talking about, not leopards or hyenas or anything else.’
They were now driving through an area of undulating ground covered with scrub and rocky outcrops. It was getting warmer. The occasional village looked even more barren and destitute than those closer to the town. At one point they stopped and asked the villagers if they had seen the others in their party go past.
‘Yes, Sahib,’ said one villager, a middle-aged man with white hair, who was awestruck by the fact that the SDO had appeared in their midst. He told them that a jeep and a car had gone past earlier.
‘Has there been any problem with wolves in this village?’ asked Sandeep.
The villager shook his head from left to right. ‘Yes, indeed, Sahib,’ he said, his face taut with the memory. ‘Bacchan Singh’s son was sleeping outside with his mother and a wolf grabbed him and took him off. We chased him with lanterns and sticks, but it was too late. We found the boy’s body the next day in a field. It was partly eaten. Sahib, please save us from this menace, you are our mother and father. These days we can neither sleep indoors for the heat nor outside for fear.’