A couple of times Rasheed did succeed in getting the reluctant Maan to discuss zamindari, but Maan’s opinions were characteristically and vexatiously nebulous. He had reacted instinctively, indeed, violently, to suffering and cruelty, but he did not have much of an opinion on the general rights and wrongs of the system. He did not want the legislation on which his father had worked for years to be thrown out by the courts, but neither did he want Firoz and Imtiaz to lose the larger part of their family estate. To Rasheed’s specific argument that the larger landlords did not work (or did not have to work) for their living, it was not to be expected that Maan would respond with proletarian indignation.
Rasheed had no qualms about speaking harshly about his own family and their treatment of those who served them. About the Nawab Sahib, though, whom Rasheed had met only once, he spoke no ill to Maan. He had known quite early, as a result of their train journey from Brahmpur, that Maan was a friend of the young Nawabzadas; and he did not wish either to make Maan uncomfortable or to remind himself of past humiliation by describing the treatment he had received when he had gone to Baitar House in search of employment some months ago.
10.19
ONE evening, when Maan was working on some exercises that Rasheed had set him before going off to the mosque, Rasheed’s father interrupted him. He was carrying Meher, who was asleep, in his arms.
Without any preliminaries he said to Maan: ‘Now that you’re by yourself can I ask you a question? I’ve been wondering about it for some time.’
‘Of course,’ Maan replied, setting down his pen.
Rasheed’s father sat down.
‘Now, let me see,’ he began, ‘how do I put this? Not being married is considered by my religion and yours to be…’ He paused, searching for the word. He had sounded disapproving.
‘Adharma? Against correct principles?’ suggested Maan.
‘Yes, call it adharma,’ said Rasheed’s father, relieved. ‘Well, you’re twenty-two, twenty-three…’
‘Older.’
‘Older? That’s bad. You should have got married by now. I believe that a man between the ages of seventeen and thirty-five is in the prime of his life.’
‘Ah,’ said Maan, nodding in wary agreement. Rasheed’s grand-father had brought up the subject at the very beginning of his stay. No doubt Rasheed would be plaguing him next.
‘Not that I noticed any falling off in my strength even when I was forty-five,’ continued Rasheed’s father.
‘That’s good,’ said Maan. ‘I know some people who are old at that age.’
‘But then, you see,’ continued Rasheed’s father, ‘then came the death of my son, and the death of my wife – and I fell apart.’
Maan remained silent. Kachheru arrived with a lantern, and placed it a little distance away.
Rasheed’s father, who had intended to advise Maan, gently swerved off into his own memories: ‘My elder son was a wonderful boy. In a hundred villages there was no one like him. He was strong as a lion and over six feet tall – a wrestler and a weight-lifter – he did English exercises. He would lift two maunds of iron easily. And he had a wonderful fresh face; and was always so good-natured and smiling – he greeted people with such great friendliness that he would make their hearts happy. And when he wore the suit I got made for him, he looked so good that people said he should be a Superintendent of Police.’
Maan shook his head sadly. Rasheed’s father was telling his story without tears, but not coldly – as if he were recounting with sympathy the story of someone other than himself.
‘Well, anyway,’ he went on, ‘after his accident at the railway station, I don’t know what happened to me. I didn’t leave the house for months. My strength drained away. I was unconscious for days. He was so young. And then a little later his mother died.’
He looked up towards the house, half-turning away from Maan, and continued: ‘This house was ghostly. I don’t know what would have happened to me. I was so full of grief and weakness that I wanted to die. There was no one in the house even to offer me water.’ He closed his eyes. ‘Where is Rasheed?’ he asked somewhat coldly, turning back to Maan.
‘At the mosque, I think.’
‘Ah, yes, well, finally, Baba took me in hand and said I should pull myself together. Our religion says that the izzat, the honour of an unmarried man is half that of a married man. Baba insisted that I should get a second wife.’
‘Well, he was speaking from experience,’ said Maan with a smile.
‘Yes. Well, Rasheed has told you no doubt that Baba had three wives. We two brothers and our sister are all from different wives. He didn’t have three wives at the same time, mind you, just one wife at a time. “Marté gae, karté gae”. When one died he married another. There’s a tradition of remarriage in this family: my grandfather had four wives, my father three and I two.’