A Suitable Boy(55)

In time, Saeeda Bai had been able to afford her present house in Pasand Bagh, and had gone to live there with her mother and young sister. The three women, separated by gaps of about twenty and fifteen years respectively, were all attractive, each in her own way. If the mother had the strength and brightness of brass, Saeeda Bai had the tarnishable brilliance of silver, and young, soft-hearted Tasneem, named after a spring in Paradise, protected by both mother and sister from the profession of their ancestors, had the lively elusiveness of mercury.

Mohsina Bai had died two years ago. This had been a terrible blow for Saeeda Bai, who sometimes still visited the graveyard and lay weeping, stretched out on her mother’s grave. Saeeda Bai and Tasneem now lived alone in the house in Pasand Bagh with two women servants: a maid and a cook. At night the calm watchman guarded the gate. Tonight Saeeda Bai was not expecting to entertain visitors; she was sitting with her tabla player and sarangi player, and amusing herself with gossip and music.

Saeeda Bai’s accompanists were a study in contrast. Both were about twenty-five, and both were devoted and skilled musicians. Both were fond of each other, and deeply attached – by economics and affection – to Saeeda Bai. But beyond that the resemblance ended. Ishaq Khan, who bowed his sarangi with such ease and harmoniousness, almost self-effacement, was a slightly sardonic bachelor. Motu Chand, so nicknamed because of his plumpness, was a contented man, already a father of four. He looked a bit like a bulldog with his large eyes and snuffling mouth, and was benignly torpid, except when frenziedly drumming his tabla.

They were discussing Ustad Majeed Khan, one of the most famous classical singers of India, a notoriously aloof man who lived in the old city, not far from where Saeeda Bai had grown up.

‘But what I don’t understand, Saeeda Begum,’ said Motu Chand, leaning awkwardly backwards because of his paunch, ‘is why he should be so critical of us small people. There he sits with his head above the clouds, like Lord Shiva on Kailash. Why should he open his third eye to burn us up?’

‘There is no accounting for the moods of the great,’ said Ishaq Khan. He touched his sarangi with his left hand and went on, ‘Now look at this sarangi – it’s a noble instrument – yet the noble Majeed Khan hates it. He never allows it to accompany him.’

Saeeda Bai nodded; Motu Chand made reassuring sounds. ‘It is the loveliest of all instruments,’ he said.

‘You kafir,’ said Ishaq Khan, smiling twistedly at his friend. ‘How can you pretend to like this instrument? What is it made of?’

‘Well, wood of course,’ said Motu Chand, now leaning forward with an effort.

‘Look at the little wrestler,’ laughed Saeeda Bai. ‘We must feed him some laddus.’ She called out for her maid, and sent her to get some sweets.

Ishaq continued to wind the coils of his argument around the struggling Motu Chand.

‘Wood !’ he cried. ‘And what else?’

‘Oh, well, you know, Khan Sahib – strings and so on,’ said Motu Chand, defeated as to Ishaq’s intention.

‘And what are these strings made of?’ continued Ishaq Khan relentlessly.

‘Ah!’ said Motu Chand, getting a glimpse of his meaning. Ishaq was not a bad fellow, but he appeared to get a cruel pleasure from worsting Motu Chand in an argument.

‘Gut,’ said Ishaq. ‘These strings are made of gut. As you well know. And the front of a sarangi is made of skin. The hide of a dead animal. Now what would your brahmins of Brahmpur say if they were forced to touch it? Would they not be polluted by it?’

Motu Chand looked downcast, then rallied. ‘Anyway, I’m not a brahmin, you know…’ he began.

‘Don’t tease him,’ said Saeeda Bai to Ishaq Khan.

‘I love the fat kafir too much to want to tease him,’ said Ishaq Khan.

This was not true. Since Motu Chand was of an alarmingly equable bent of mind, what Ishaq Khan liked more than anything else was to upset his balance. But this time Motu Chand reacted in an irksomely philosophical manner.

‘Khan Sahib is very kind,’ he said. ‘But sometimes even the ignorant have wisdom, and he would be the first to acknowledge this. Now for me the sarangi is not what it is made of but what it makes – these divine sounds. In the hands of an artist even this gut and this skin can be made to sing.’ His face wreathed with a contented, almost Sufi, smile. ‘After all, what are we all but gut and skin? And yet’ – his forehead creased with concentration – ‘in the hands of one who – the One…’

But the maid now came in with the sweets and Motu Chand’s theological meanderings halted. His plump and agile fingers quickly reached for a laddu as round as himself and popped it whole into his mouth.