‘Worry!’ laughed Firoz. ‘I can’t imagine you worrying about me. But it’s a nice thought.’
‘Oh?’ said Maan. ‘But don’t you have to put yourself in front of some Moharram procession or other – you one year, Imtiaz the next, I thought you said?’
‘That’s only on the last couple of days. For the most part I just lie low during Moharram. And this year I know where I will spend at least a couple of my evenings.’ Firoz sounded deliberately mysterious.
‘Where?’
‘Somewhere where you, as an unbeliever, will not be admitted; though in the past you have performed your prostrations in that shrine.’
‘But I thought she didn’t –’ began Maan. ‘I thought she didn’t even allow herself to sing during those ten days.’
‘She doesn’t,’ said Firoz. ‘But she has small gatherings at her house where she chants marsiyas and performs soz – it really is something. Not the marsiyas so much – but the soz, from what I hear, is really astonishing.’
Maan knew from his brief incursions into poetry with Rasheed that marsiyas were laments for the martyrs of the battle of Karbala: especially for Hussain, the grandson of the Prophet. But he had no idea what soz was.
‘It’s a sort of musical wailing,’ said Firoz. ‘I’ve only heard it a few times, and never at Saeeda Bai’s. It grips the heart.’
The thought of Saeeda Bai weeping and wailing passionately for someone who had died thirteen centuries before was both perplexing and strangely exciting for Maan. ‘Why can’t I go?’ he asked. ‘I’ll sit quietly and watch – I mean, listen. I attended Bakr-Id, you know, at the village.’
‘Because you’re a kafir, you idiot. Even Sunnis aren’t really welcome at these private gatherings, though they take part in some processions. Saeeda Bai tries to control her audience, from what I’ve heard, but some of them get carried away with grief and start cursing the first three caliphs because they usurped Ali’s right to the caliphate, and this enrages the Sunnis, quite naturally. Sometimes the curses are very graphic.’
‘And you’ll be attending all this soz stuff. Since when have you become so religious?’ asked Maan.
‘I’m not,’ said Firoz. ‘In fact – and you’d better not tell anyone I said this – but I’m not a great fan of Hussain. And Muawiyah, who got him killed, wasn’t as dreadful as we make him out to be. After all, the succession was quite a mess before that, with most of the caliphs getting assassinated. Once Muawiyah set things up dynastically, Islam was able to consolidate itself as an empire. If he hadn’t, everything would have fallen back into petty tribes bickering with each other and there’d be no Islam to argue about. But if my father heard me say this he’d disown me. And Saeeda Bai would tear me apart with her own lovely soft hands.’
‘So why are you going to Saeeda Bai’s?’ said Maan, somewhat piqued and suspicious. ‘Didn’t you say you weren’t exactly made welcome there when you happened to visit?’
‘How can she turn back a mourner during Moharram?’
‘And why do you want to go there in the first place?’
‘To drink at the fountain of Paradise.’
‘Very funny.’
‘I mean, to see the young Tasneem.’
‘Well, give my love to the parakeet,’ said Maan, frowning. He continued to frown when Firoz got up, stood behind his chair, and put his hands on Maan’s shoulders.
15.4
‘CAN YOU imagine,’ said old Mrs Tandon: ‘Rama or Bharat or Sita – a chamar!’
Veena looked uncomfortable at such an outright statement of the feelings of the neighbourhood.
‘And the sweepers want the Ramlila to continue after Rama’s return to Ayodhya and his meeting with Bharat and the coronation. They want all those shameful episodes about Sita put in.’
Maan asked why.
‘Oh, you know, they style themselves Valmikis these days, and they say that Valmiki’s Ramayana, which goes on and on about all these episodes, is the true text of the Ramayana,’ said old Mrs Tandon. ‘Just trouble-making.’
Veena said: ‘No one disputes the Ramayana. And Sita did have a horrible life after she returned from Lanka. But the Ramlila has always been based on the Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas, not Valmiki’s Ramayana. The worst of all this is that Kedarnath has to do so much of the explaining on both sides and has to shoulder most of the trouble. Because of his contact with the scheduled castes,’ she added.
‘And I suppose,’ said Maan, ‘because of his sense of civic duty?’