A Suitable Boy(335)

‘Ruining you?’ said Maan, dazed.

‘But your hunt tomorrow –’ the munshi gasped out. He realized well enough that he was in double jeopardy. Maan’s father was Mahesh Kapoor, and such an incident would not increase his tenderness towards the Baitar Estate. And Maan was Firoz’s friend; Firoz was volatile and his father was fond of him and sometimes listened to him; and the munshi feared to think what might happen if the Nawab Sahib, who liked to imagine that an estate could be run painlessly and benevolently, came to hear of the munshi’s threats to an old woman.

‘Hunt?’ said Maan, staring at him.

‘And your clothes are still in the wash –’

Maan turned away in disgust. He told Waris to follow him. He went to his room, dumped his belongings in his bag and walked out of the Fort. A rickshaw was summoned to take him to the station. Waris wanted to accompany him, but Maan did not let him come.

Waris’s last words to him were: ‘I sent a jungle fowl to the Nawab Sahib. Could you see if he got it? And give my best to that old fellow, Ghulam Rusool, who used to work here.’





10.10


‘SO TELL ME,’ said Rasheed to his four-year-old daughter Meher as they sat on a charpoy outside his father-in-law’s house, ‘what have you learned?’

Meher, who was sitting on her father’s lap, rattled off her version of the Urdu alphabet as follows: ‘Alif-be-te-se-he-che-dal-bari-ye!’

Rasheed was not pleased. ‘That is a very abridged version of the alphabet,’ he said. He reflected that during his absence in Brahmpur, Meher’s education had very considerably regressed. ‘Now, Meher, you must try harder than that. You are a bright girl.’

Though Meher was indeed a bright girl, she did not evince any further interest in the alphabet beyond adding two or three letters to her list.

She was pleased to see her father, but had been very shy with him when he had walked into the house the previous evening after an absence of several months. It had taken all her mother’s persuasion and even the bribe of a cream biscuit to make her greet Rasheed. Finally, and very hesitantly, she had said, ‘Adaab arz, Chacha-jaan.’

Very softly, her mother had said, ‘Not Chacha-jaan. Abba-jaan.’ This correction had brought on another attack of shyness. Now, however, Rasheed had re-established himself in her good graces, and she was chatting away with him as if the intervening months had not existed.

‘What do they sell in the village shop?’ asked Rasheed, hoping that Meher might give a better account of herself in practical affairs than she had with the alphabet.

‘Sweets, savouries, soap, oil,’ said Meher. Rasheed was pleased. He bounced her up and down on his knee, and asked for a kiss, which he promptly got.

A short while later, Rasheed’s father-in-law emerged from the house where he had been talking to his daughter. He was a tall, gentle man with a well-trimmed white beard, and was known in the village as Haji Sahib in recognition of the fact that he had performed the pilgrimage to Mecca some thirty years earlier.

Seeing his son-in-law and granddaughter still talking away outside the house and making no attempt at activity, he said: ‘Abdur Rasheed, the sun is getting higher, and if you must go today, you had better make a move soon.’ He paused. ‘And be sure that you eat a large spoonful of ghee from that canister at every meal. I make certain that Meher does, and that’s why her skin looks so healthy and her eyes shine as bright as diamonds.’ Haji Sahib bent down to pick up his granddaughter and hugged her. Meher, who had figured out that she, her baby sister, and her mother would be going to Debaria with their father, clung to her Nana with great affection, and extracted a four-anna coin from his pocket.

‘You come too, Nana-jaan,’ she insisted.

‘What have you found?’ said Rasheed. ‘Put it back. Bad habit, bad habit,’ he said, shaking his head.

But Meher appealed to her Nana, who let her keep her doubtfully gotten gains. He was very sad to see them go, but he went inside to fetch his daughter and the baby.

Rasheed’s wife emerged from the house. She was wearing a black burqa with a thin veil across her face, and was holding the baby in her arms. Meher went over to her mother, pulled at her burqa, and asked to hold the baby.

‘Not now, Munia is asleep. In a little while,’ her mother said in a soft voice.

‘Have something to eat. Or at least a glass of sherbet before you go,’ said Haji Sahib, who a few minutes earlier had been pressing them to make haste.

‘Haji Sahib, we must go,’ said Rasheed. ‘We should spend a little time near the town.’

‘Then I’ll come with you to the railway station,’ said Haji Sahib, nodding slowly.